October 11, 2025 • 33 mins
Human beings don’t deal well with uncertainty, which is why a mystery draws you in and why a cliffhanger on a TV show can keep you watching well past your bedtime.
Your brain is wired for answers.
Yet life is full of uncertainty. So how do we manage this tension?
When a story is unfolding and you wonder, “how will this end?” Or when the big questions of life go unanswered and you lie awake wondering, Who is God? What am I here for? What does all of this mean?
How do we handle not knowing?
In today’s episode, I want to share a practice I’ve been using that is helping me live with the inevitable uncertainty of life.
But I’m not just living with it. I’m using it as leverage to unfold into the fullness of myself.
Check out the episode and I’d love to hear what you think.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and covered it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about a topic that I know I have talked about before,
but I have more to say about this and I
have I have things I want to talk about it
in a little bit of a different way than I've
talked about it before. And I think this is going
(00:46):
to be really meaningful for you. I know it has
been meaningful for me, and it has really helped me
to think about my life extremely differently, especially when I'm
in a period of time that has a lot of
uncertainty to it. So the way I've talked about the
subject before is this idea of not writing the ending
to a story too soon when you're in your life
and you're in that place in the story where you
(01:09):
don't know what the ending is going to look like yet,
and you haven't had your quote unquote happy ending. It
is so tempting to want to write the ending now
because and I'm going to argue this today on this episode,
that writing the ending now ends the discomfort of sitting
in the uncertainty. And yet when we write the ending
too soon, we miss out on so much. When we
(01:32):
create those foregone conclusions, we a short circuit the process
that life has us in whatever we were here to
learn in the story, like whatever kind of transformation was
trying to take place in the story, we short circuit that.
We also maybe write the ending in a way that
is not as good as it could have been if
we would have allowed the ending to come to us,
(01:55):
if we would have stayed open to receiving the beautiful
ending of our own story. And we also create beliefs
that seem quite solid, Like you create a belief about
yourself or about your situation when you write the ending
to your story, that becomes quite solid, and it becomes
the filter through which you interpret everything else in your life.
(02:17):
And so when you do that, it's this idea of
confirmation bias, like I've created this belief for myself, and
now all the information that comes into my life, I'm
going to filter through that belief, and so it just
confirms my previous belief, and maybe the belief isn't even
true or isn't even real. Like if I create a
(02:37):
belief about myself that I am lazy, let's say, let's
say that's the belief that I create about myself. I
come to this conclusion that the reason all these things
have happened to me in my life is because I'm
lazy and I don't have the discipline to really get
these things done or to have the stuff that I
perceive other people have. Okay, so I've created this belief
that I'm lazy, and now every data point that comes
(03:00):
into my life comes through that filter and is interpreted
through that filter. It's a confirmation bias, and it creates
an unnecessary way for me to interpret my life. Whereas
if I could have just stayed open, maybe a different
conclusion would have come to me about why X, Y
and Z have taken place, or why you know, I
(03:22):
perceive that I don't have what other people have, or
however you want to look at that. But that's what
I want to talk about today, is how quick we
are to jump to conclusions how quick we are to
finish the story before it's finished, and how much we
have to gain from staying open to how the story
wants to finish itself, how the story wants to write itself,
(03:46):
and the challenges. Can I stay in the discomfort of
the I don't know? Can I stay in the discomfort
of the uncertainty long enough for the transformation to take place,
long enough for me to receive what this story is
trying to show me? Or do I get so uncomfortable
that I have to really quick tie things up and
write an ending to the story that now is extremely
(04:07):
solid and now has this confirmation bias to it, where
where now every detail that comes into my life is
filtered through this conclusion that I made. The reason I
got started thinking about this is a total side note,
but I'm going to share it with you anyway, because
this is a detail about me that you may or
may not know. If you know me or you're close
to me in my life, you would know this, but
if not, you probably don't because I don't talk about
(04:29):
it that often. I have a mild obsession with true crime,
and I know I'm not the only woman on the
planet Earth who has a mild obsession with true crime.
I will say I've had this obsession in my life
since long before true crime was as popular as it
is today. I had the idea in undergrad when I
was getting my English degree that I was going to
get my English degree and then I was going to
(04:50):
go become a lawyer. And my parents would even joke
all the time, like I was born to be a lawyer.
I was supposed to be a trial lawyer because I
was just such a good arguer. But for me, it
wasn't so much about the arguing. It was more about
this idea that you could collect all this evidence in
a case. You could find all these data points and
then it's like the mind puzzle of figuring out how
(05:11):
to put them together in a way that makes sense, which,
oddly enough, is what I do when I'm sitting down
with a client at my kitchen table to take their
personal story and put it into a book outline. It
is the same mind puzzle. So I'm literally using that
skill or that obsession that I have. I'm just using
it in a really different context. But that is what
gets me so hooked about true crime stories is you're
(05:34):
gathering all this evidence. You're gathering all this information. You're
gathering all of this intel, and you're trying to put
it together in a way that makes sense. And a
lot of times what will happen is, you know, let's
say you have ten pieces of information, just for an
easy round number. You have ten pieces of information, and
seven of the pieces fit really well in this one theory,
But then you have three pieces of information that just
simply don't make sense inside of that theory. And then
(05:55):
you have another theory where six pieces of information fit
and four don't fit. That's using. Then you have another
piece where nine pieces fit and one doesn't really make
sense but kind of makes sense, and you have to
try to figure out, like which one of these is
the most logical, which one fits the best, And in
order to really get to the bottom of what actually
took place and this particular circumstance, you have to stay
(06:17):
open to all of the information that's available to you.
And this is one of the big mistakes that a
lot of people make when they're investigating a crime. And
one of the reasons why wrongful convictions are so common
is because as an investigator, you have to stay open
to all the information before you draw a foregone conclusion.
(06:38):
You cannot just jump immediately to a conclusion. You have
to stay open to all the information that exists. So
the most recent case that I've been interested in, and
I will give a quick warning that this is adult content.
So if you're listening with kids in the background, I
would either skip over this part. If maybe you just
would prefer not to listen to it and you can
skip over this part, or if you have kids, skip
(06:58):
over this part. But I won't get too graphic, but
I do want to tell you about this case because
it's pertinent to what I'm talking about today. The case
that I have been listening to this past week is
the case of Ellen Greenberg, which I have been aware
of for a couple of years because I listened to
a crime podcast called Crime Junkie, which is one of
the best ones that's out there in my opinion. I
(07:19):
listened to Crime Junkie and they reported on this case
a couple of years ago. I think back on twenty
twenty two, and this is a crime that took place
in twenty eleven. It's been in and out of the
media thanks to her parents who really have done all
the work that any loved one can do to bring
media attention back around and around again to this case.
And it's been in the media more recently because there
(07:41):
was a documentary release that's on Hulu about this case.
So there's all kinds of podcast episodes, all kinds of
the Hulu documentary YouTubers who were talking about this case.
There's a lot of information in this case that's been
released to the public. But essentially the case is that
a young woman twenty seven years old is found stabbed
(08:02):
in her apartment and the question that we have to
answer is was this woman murdered or did she die
by suicide? And originally the investigators on scene made the
assumption that that she had died by suicide, but then
when the medical examiner examined her body, the medical examiner's
determination on the death certificate was homicide. And then later
(08:25):
three months later, two or three months later, the medical
examiner changed his determination back to suicide. So you have
this flip flopping back and forth. You have a lot
of information, You have a nine one one call from
the fiance at the time, you have some CCTV footage,
you have you know, deposition documents, you have so many
(08:47):
different items to take in in this case to really
understand what took place. And I think one of the
big mistakes that was made in this case, and one
of the reasons why we're all still so confused and
why we don't have answers, is because the investigators in
this setting did exactly what I'm suggesting that we should
avoid doing in our lives, which is the investigators made
(09:09):
a snap judgment based on what was there in the moment.
And I mean, you can also argue that there's like
a conspiratorial thing happening. I tend to lean away from conspiracies,
especially in a case like this where you have so
many players involved. It seems really extremely unlikely to me
that you could get that many people to be on
the same page and to keep their mouth shut. I'm
(09:29):
not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying I tend to
lean away from conspiracy theories because, again, speaking of not knowing,
we just simply don't know. But in my opinion, what
happened is you have investigators on the scene who were
told one thing by the fiance, they jump to a conclusion,
they call this a suicide. Then you have the medical
examiner who's just looking at the wounds on her body,
(09:50):
who calls it a homicide. And then you have this
clash of what the original investigators said versus what them said.
They come together, they apparently have this meeting again. Is
there something that's spiratorial happening there? I don't know for sure,
but for sure there's a clash of opinions. They come
together and discuss in secret. Nobody knows what happened in
(10:11):
this meeting. Some more information and the emmy changes his
determination from homicide to suicide. So there's a question mark here.
It's an open story loop. How did this woman die?
Did she die by suicide or did she die by homicide?
That question is if you're into this sort of thing,
is what pulls you into the story because your brain,
(10:35):
whether or not you are like a true crime junkie,
your brain wants to know the answer to that question.
And especially in a case where the stakes are as
high as this case is, or as any murder investigationists.
When the stakes are high like that, your brain wants
to know the answer to this question. What happened here?
What happened to this poor young woman? And this is
(10:56):
why I talk about in our personal stories in our lives,
which hopefully are not as high stakes as this, but
in our lives. It's so important to see our lives
through the lens of storytelling. Because if your life feels
boring to you, or you feel disconnected from it, or
it feels like it's random and stuff is just kind
of happening and you're not really sure what's going on,
and it doesn't really feel that exciting, the chances are
you haven't drilled in on what is the question that
(11:18):
my life is asking me? What's the open story loop here?
Like the what's the question that I do not have
an answer to? Once your brain locks in on that question,
it will become obsessive. It will not let go of
the question until you have the answer. And these are
big questions that we're asking ourselves most of the time.
I mean, I know from talking to many of you
(11:40):
that the questions we're asking ourselves are things like is
there a God? Who is God? What am I doing here?
What's my purpose on this earth? Who am I like?
Why does my life matter? Those are big, deep, important
questions that we're asking ourselves. And when you can lock
in on that question, your life becomes absolutely obsessive to you,
(12:01):
like you can't stop thinking about it until you start
to find the answers to these questions. Now, that's a
good thing from the standpoint that, or it can be
helpful from the standpoint that it's hard to be depressed
when you're hooked on a question because your brain is
so focused on the question that you're not just like,
I don't know, it's all meaningless. I don't understand. It's
(12:23):
hard to be depressed when you're hooked on a question
that you want the answer to. It's hard to be
depressed when you're hooked on a question that you want
the answer to because you're locked in. It's like think
of like working on a puzzle that you just really
(12:44):
want to solve the puzzle. When you're in that state,
you're not in a depressive state. You're in almost like
a hyper arousal state, maybe even like on the other
side of the coin, So from that standpoint, like you know,
looking at our lives through the lens of a story
can really suck us in and pull us in such
a great way. On the other side of the coin,
it can be uncomfortable to sit in that uncertainty. It
(13:07):
can be extremely uncomfortable to sit with the question of
I don't know who God is, I don't know who
I am, I don't know what I'm here for, I
don't know what my purpose is. I don't know the
answer to these questions. And this is what I want
to talk about today, is our tolerance, our ability to
sit with the I don't know. Sitting with the I
don't know is extremely important for a bunch of reasons,
(13:31):
and I want to go through a couple of them.
Number one is because when you come to a foregone conclusion,
when you jump to the end of the story before
the story is ready to be concluded, you likely are
going to come up with the wrong answer. Now, in
the case of homicide versus suicide, you've got two options here,
and you know it's kind of the flip of a coin.
(13:51):
So it's like fifty to fifty. If you were going
to guess which one it is without knowing all the information,
you might get lucky and get the answer right. But
when this stakes are that high, you don't want to guess.
You don't want to flip the coin on someone's life.
Like if this was a homicide, you want to make
sure that the person who is responsible for this homicide
is held accountable, and that there's justice served for the
(14:14):
poor woman who lost her life if this is not
a homicide, if it really is a suicide, you want
to make sure that nobody is wrongfully held accountable, that
nobody loses even more years of their life life for
being wrongfully accused. So the stakes are extremely high. Even
though you've got only really two options here. You don't
want to just flip the coin on this thing. You
(14:35):
want to make sure that you really get it right.
And in the case of these bigger questions of life,
like you know, who is God? Who am I? What
am I doing here? You have infinite options for what
the answer could be, infinite options for what the conclusion
could be, So it's not just a flip of a coin.
And also the stakes are high, so you don't want
to just guess at what the answer is. You want
(14:56):
to really know what the answer is. And what I'm
arguing today in this episode is that in order to
really know what the answer is, we have to build
our tolerance for sitting with that feeling of uncertainty. I'll
give you a couple of examples from my life to
help us unpack this and talk about it. One is
an example that I have shared in part on a
(15:17):
previous episode, which is that my husband and I would
really like to have another baby. We have an almost
four year old and a new five year old who
are happy and healthy and wonderful, and we love being parents,
and we would really love to grow our family. I'm
forty two years old, my husband's forty five years old.
I feel that our window is kind of closing if
you just look at the data that's available to us
(15:38):
about a forty two year old woman in her fertility
and the chances of getting pregnant, et cetera, et cetera.
Plus we've had two miscarriages. The window does seem to
be kind of closing, and the chances seem to be
getting lower and lower. And yet we would really love
to grow our family. And I would like to say
that I carry a belief that that's possible for us,
that I'm open to it, that I'm open to receiving
that blessing into our lives. So I sit in the
(16:01):
uncertainty of like, will we be able to grow our family?
Will we not be able to grow our family? I
don't know that's the reality, and I could say, no,
I do know we are going to be able to
grow our family. I could say that, and I think
a lot of self help and positive thinking and affirmations, etc.
Would sort of recommend that you take that approach and
(16:22):
that you say that. My personal opinion is that is
spiritual bypassing, and it's the exact opposite of what I'm
talking about, that we think that having a positive thought
or assuming yes, I'm going to be able to have
a baby, I'm certain of this. I'm one hundred percent
certain that we'll be able to grow our family. You
could say that that would maybe increase your likelihood or
(16:44):
increase your chances of having a baby, but it still
doesn't change the fact that what's true is that we
don't know. We just simply don't know. That's the reality
of the matter. And if I want to end this
story really quickly, if I'm too uncomfortable sitting in the
uncertain and I want to end the story quickly so
that I have answers, I have to either bypass it
(17:06):
spiritually by saying we are going to have a baby,
or I have to go the other way by saying
this is too much. I can't sit with this anymore.
It's too much uncertainty for me. I need to just
end this. I need to say that we're just not
going to try. And I think I did mention in
that other episode that there's a part of me that
has wanted to do that, that said to my husband, Oh,
(17:27):
it's so hard, like the not knowing the countdown to
your next cycle to take a test, the like finding
out we're pregnant, then finding out we lose the pregnancy,
not hearing a heartbeat, those types of things. It's so uncomfortable,
and I think this is why we jump to conclusions,
because sitting in the uncertainty is truly so uncomfortable. We
don't want to do it. And so because we don't
(17:49):
want to do it, we find ways to quickly resolve
the story without allowing for the story to resolve itself.
And so we usually do one or the other. We
either do the positive thinking thing where it's like, no,
I'm certain this is gonna happen, this is coming for me,
I believe it with every fiber of my being, or
(18:09):
we go I can't do this anymore. We're just gonna
call it quit. So we're just gonna have this is
our family, we're just gonna move on. And I'm sure
there's a way in your life where you've done this too,
where there's something that you've really wanted, or you've been after,
there's a question that's been open in your life, and
you feel that you don't want to sit in the uncertainty,
and so you write the end of the story very quickly.
(18:32):
Maybe I think a lot of us do this when
you hear gossip, or you hear information, or you only
know part of a story and it seems kind of
iffy to you, Like the information that you hear seems
like either really shocking or it seems like, oh, that
seems weird. I didn't I wouldn't have expected that to
happen or that person to have said that. So then
what your brain does, because our brains are really smart,
(18:52):
and they want to come up with a conclusion, They
want to come up with a solution, so they start
filing in information, which is information that you don't have
access to, and so the information that you fill in
may or may not be accurate. It's so uncomfortable to
go like, huh, interesting, I don't know why that happened. Interesting,
I don't know why that person said that interesting, I
(19:15):
don't know all the information here. That is so uncomfortable
that instead we jump to conclusions. We gossip behind people's backs.
We allow our brains to make up the whole story,
to fill in all the blanks, and that process of
filling in all the blanks can be quite dangerous. It
can dangerous on many different levels, like there can be
lots of unintended consequences from jumping to conclusions in our stories.
(19:39):
I'll tell you another personal story that really demonstrates this.
So Matt and I met on a blind date. I
was living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time. He was
living in Los Angeles, California. I was in California on
(19:59):
a work trip. I bumped into an acquaintance someone who
I did not know very well. We chatted for a
couple of minutes about how things were going. It was
very surface level, extremely small talkish, and then what I
remember from that conversation is being kind of jarred because
it went from small talk to like, are you single?
What's your deal? Do you have a boyfriend? What's your
I was just like, whoa hold on, what's going on?
(20:21):
But anyway, he tells me that he has this friend
he wants to introduce me to. Would I be willing
to go on a date with this person tonight? I'm like,
I'm open. Sure, let's go on a date. I said,
I fly out tomorrow morning, so it really would have
to be tonight. If you can arrange it that quickly,
then I'm open to meeting someone new. I thought, you know,
it's probably gonna be too quick to happen. But sure enough,
(20:41):
within about twenty minutes, he had texted Matt. Matt had
texted me Matt and I are texting. We make a
plan for where to meet that night, And I was
just like, oh my gosh, wow, what a whirland. Okay,
I'm meeting this guy named Matt Ford tonight. Well, of
course I did what every person would immediately do, which
is try to google Matt Ford. But because Matt's name
was so common, his first name and his last name
(21:03):
are both extremely common, and because of that, I couldn't
find him anywhere. Also, Matt is not a big social
media person. He doesn't love to be on camera, so
he didn't have an Instagram. He had a LinkedIn, I think,
but even his LinkedIn was buried under a bunch of
other Matt Fords, and so despite my searching, I never
was able to see a picture of him before I
finished my work day and then quickly changed and then
(21:25):
drove to the restaurant. So I had not even seen
a photo of this man before I walked into the restaurant.
But I walked into the restaurant and my first intuitive
impression of Matt was like so grounded, so kind, such
a good friend. I remember thinking that, which is an
odd thing to think about someone that you're set up
with on a romantic date. Which is why it's such
(21:47):
a memorable impression to me, because I just remember thinking like,
this man seems like an amazing friend. We just had
such a good conversation. He was so thoughtful, he was
really engaged. He was very present. It was not like fireworky,
like oh this is the man I'm going to marry.
It was just like wow, like what a refreshing experience
with a person, which is important to the rest of
the story because I have this initial impression of Matt.
(22:09):
He walks me to my car, we part ways. He's like,
I really enjoyed talking to you. I'd love to be
in contact. Can I reach out to you? Again, I
said sure. We parted ways that night, and then moving forward,
I really didn't hear from Matt again. I think it
was like another month before I heard from him. Anyway,
when I did hear from him, he was coming to Nashville.
We met up again in Nashville. I'm fast forwarding through
(22:29):
a bunch of stuff here, but we met up again
in Nashville, went on a couple more dates. We had
been in contact. But even Matt, I know, Matt would
not mind me saying this, because he's very open about this,
and he would tell you this if he was sitting here.
But he did not do a great job of communicating
in the beginning. There was a lot going on with
him that he wasn't saying to me. One main thing,
which was that he had been in a long distance
(22:50):
relationship with a woman from Nashville, of all places, and
so this felt kind of like a little too close
to home. That relationship had obviously fallen apart, and so
he was nervous about, you know, committing to me. He
was nervous about jumping into this relationship. It wasn't about
him having another girlfriend on the side, or talking to
(23:10):
anyone else or anything, but he was extremely nervous to commit.
So that feeling of him being nervous to commit was
a disparate information from what I had picked up in
that first meeting, which is that he seemed so grounded,
so loyal, so trustworthy, so friendly, so kind. So I'm
my system is receiving these two pieces of information, the
(23:31):
first intuitive hit I had about him, and then this
other information that it's kind of inconsistent. He there's something
going on that I don't know about. And because I
had been in a toxic relationship before Matt, I was
reading these signs as he's lying to me. He's not
who he says he is, He's hiding something. My system
was like on full alert, and so I don't know.
(23:53):
We were a couple of dates into our relationship. We
met at the beginning of August in California. That was
our first date that we were set up on. That
was August fourth or fifth, I think, And then by Thanksgiving,
So by November of that year, twenty seventeen, I was
sitting at a friend's house. I will never forget. I'm
sitting in her house. It's after Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm like,
(24:14):
I can't do this. Anymore. When I talk to him tomorrow,
I'm gonna tell him I'm done. I just I can't
do the wishy washy. I need something more solid than this.
This is not working for me. And she said to me,
is it possible for you to just wait? Like, is
it possible for you to just hold on and to
not jump to any conclusions and to just give it
(24:34):
a little bit more time? And this is the part
that I remember so vividly. She was said, you're still
collecting information. You don't know why he's acting the way
that he's acting. Can you hang in there for a
little bit longer and get the rest of the information.
And I really took her words to heart. And I
will say, as a side note here, having been in
(24:57):
a toxic relationship before where I gas lipped my myself for
years to not believe myself about what I knew was true,
I want to double down on this idea that what
your system is telling you is true is true. And
what I was picking up on about Matt, that he
was noncommittal, is true. But your system will also interpret
things in a way that is not always true. So
(25:20):
my system was interpreting this that he's not committal because
he's got someone else on the side or whatever, he's
not being honest with me. He wasn't being honest with me,
but it wasn't what I was worried about. So I
want to say, whatever you're feeling, especially in a romantic relationship,
you have every right to speak up for yourself, to
set boundaries, to express what you need. And I did
eventually do that with Matt. I eventually told him, you know,
(25:43):
I think it was like a couple weeks later that
I just was like, this is not working for me.
I need this to be more consistent. You know, I
don't want to be dating other people, but if you're
dating other people, I need to know about that. So like,
if you want to do this, let's jump in with
both feet. But if you don't want to do this,
then like I need to walk the other way. And
so that was an important conversation for me, using my
voice and speaking up in our relationship, and I think
(26:03):
set a really healthy foundation for us. But what my
friend said to me that day really sticks out to
me for a bunch of reasons. Number one, because it's
so uncomfortable to sit in that uncertainty of not knowing
what's going on. Your system is reacting. I was literally
having panic attacks because this felt so familiar to the
toxic relationship I'd been in before, where I was being
(26:24):
lied to and betrayed and things were going on behind
my back. And I had ignored those intuitions for so long,
and now they're screaming at me, and I'm refusing to
ignore them. But the interpretation that I had of them
wasn't necessarily correct. And so she's saying to me, can
you sit with this for a little bit longer? Can
you sit in the uncertainty? Can you invite more information?
(26:45):
Can you just collect more information before you draw your conclusions?
And one of the reasons why this feels so significant
is because I would not be in this relationship today
if it weren't for that conversation with her, I would
have told him to go take a hike. And the
relationship I'm meant today is so sturdy, And so I
tell everyone all the time when people say marriage is hard,
(27:06):
I'm like, I don't know if I just looked out,
but my marriage is not hard. My life is hard,
My marriage is easy. We have so much fun together.
It's so sturdy and predictable, we argue, but we do
not fight. Nobody throws things, raises their voices, nobody slams doors,
nobody runs out like we have a really healthy, loving,
lovely relationship. And I would not have that if I
(27:27):
had jumped to those conclusions back then. So that's one
of the reasons why this is really important. But another reason,
and these are tied together as a reason I believe
that I even am capable of having this relationship with
Matt is because what was trying to happen an unfold
inside of me and inside of my system. What was
trying to heal, what was trying to come to light,
what was trying to grow, what was trying to transform.
(27:50):
All happened because I chose to sit in that uncertainty.
I chose to stay in it, even when I didn't
know the answer, and it was incredibly uncomfortable. I had
panic attack after panic attack after panic attack. I was
on the phone with my therapist emergency sessions, calling for
more medication, like I was melting down. I was literally unraveling,
(28:13):
you know, in real time. And yet if I hadn't
been able to stay with myself and that and to
contain what was taking place, I really believe those panic
attacks were the trauma moving up and out of my body.
So I'm absolutely advocating that you get support for yourself
and that you reach out and that you don't suffer
through this alone. And I don't think that you, you know,
(28:35):
need to be necessarily suffering. But I'm also saying, like,
hanging in there with that relationship, hanging in there in
that situation is a big reason, the reason, the only
reason that I have this relationship today, in part because
I became the person that I needed to be in
that time of uncertainty, and also because I allowed myself
(28:59):
to stay open to receiving more information about Matt. What
I learned about him is that he was incredibly timid
about stepping into a relationship with me, in part because
he could see He saw me really clearly. You know,
he saw that I was wounded, He saw that I
was healing and that I was I just needed some
space to heal. And he was worried about his ability
(29:19):
to step into the situation and really be what I
needed him to be. He was worried about getting hurt again.
You know, he had been hurt in this past relationship.
He was worried about that. So there were you know,
we were kind of tiptoeing around each other, and one
of the things that I'm so grateful for is that
we stayed in it and held the space for each
other to have our own experiences. It was really rocky.
(29:41):
I mean I say really rocky. It was rocky and
exactly the ways that I've described for the first four
months of our relationship, I want to say, like August, September, October, November, December,
so five months. And then by the start of twenty eighteen,
it really wasn't rocky from that point on, so twenty eighteen,
and then I moved to California at the end of
(30:02):
twenty eighteen in December, and then he proposed in February
of twenty nineteen, and then we got married in November
of twenty nineteen, and then my daughter was born in
July of twenty twenty. So from January of twenty eighteen forward,
our relationship has not been rocky at all. But for
those couple of months, I mean, sitting in that uncertainty
for five months was extremely, extremely uncomfortable. And I think
(30:24):
that that's where all the growth, all the transformation happens
in the hero of the story and where we really
gather enough evidence and enough information to develop a conclusion
that's based on truth. One of the things that I've noticed,
is I've been listening to different episodes of people reporting
on this situation with Ellen Greenberg, is that the investigators
(30:46):
obviously jumped to conclusions before they had all the information
when they were on site that day. We don't know
why they did that. Many many, many of these journalists, reporters, podcasters, YouTubers, etc.
Are also jumping to conclusions without having all the information.
The fact of the matter is, if we're being honest
with ourselves, we do not have all the information. We
do not know what happened in that apartment that day.
(31:08):
There are only two people who know what happened in
that apartment that day. One of them is no longer here,
and actually she may be the only one who knows
what happened in that apartment that day. We just simply
don't know. I can say with relative certainty that her
fiance also knows more information than what he's telling us.
He has spoken with police, but has not spoken with
(31:28):
the media, which, honestly, if I were in his position,
I would do the exact same thing. So I don't
find that altogether suspicious. But when you are looking at
a story where like this is a great example, but
if you could use any example when you're looking at
a story where you're like, huh, this does not make sense.
The fact of the matter is you don't have all
(31:49):
the information. And this is the second piece of this
that I want to talk about. And maybe what I'll
do is to talk about this in the episode next week,
because I really need to start wrapping up. But I
want to just emphasize the importance of being able to
look at a story, to look at a situation, to
look at something that's unfolding in your life, and just
(32:09):
say like, I don't have all of the information. I
don't know what's happening here, and sitting in the uncertainty
is uncomfortable. And one of the things that brings some
comfort to the discomfort is just to remind yourself, oh,
I don't have all the data. That's part of why
I'm confused. So, in other words, not to gaslight yourself
(32:31):
into thinking like I'm confused because there's something wrong with me. No, No,
I'm confused because I don't have all the information. Because
the story has not been completed yet, so that's where
I want to leave it for today's episode. I do
want to talk about this a little bit more on
next week's episode because there's way more that I want
to say about this. I want to share another personal
(32:52):
story that relates to what I've been talking about and
how I'm learning to remind myself that I don't have
all the information and how deeply comforting that can be.
So I'll share that on next week's episode. Until then,
I hope you have a lovely week, and I'll see
you back next week on the Write Your Story podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and covered it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about a topic that I know I have talked about before,
but I have more to say about this and I
have I have things I want to talk about it
in a little bit of a different way than I've
talked about it before. And I think this is going
(00:46):
to be really meaningful for you. I know it has
been meaningful for me, and it has really helped me
to think about my life extremely differently, especially when I'm
in a period of time that has a lot of
uncertainty to it. So the way I've talked about the
subject before is this idea of not writing the ending
to a story too soon when you're in your life
and you're in that place in the story where you
(01:09):
don't know what the ending is going to look like yet,
and you haven't had your quote unquote happy ending. It
is so tempting to want to write the ending now
because and I'm going to argue this today on this episode,
that writing the ending now ends the discomfort of sitting
in the uncertainty. And yet when we write the ending
too soon, we miss out on so much. When we
(01:32):
create those foregone conclusions, we a short circuit the process
that life has us in whatever we were here to
learn in the story, like whatever kind of transformation was
trying to take place in the story, we short circuit that.
We also maybe write the ending in a way that
is not as good as it could have been if
we would have allowed the ending to come to us,
(01:55):
if we would have stayed open to receiving the beautiful
ending of our own story. And we also create beliefs
that seem quite solid, Like you create a belief about
yourself or about your situation when you write the ending
to your story, that becomes quite solid, and it becomes
the filter through which you interpret everything else in your life.
(02:17):
And so when you do that, it's this idea of
confirmation bias, like I've created this belief for myself, and
now all the information that comes into my life, I'm
going to filter through that belief, and so it just
confirms my previous belief, and maybe the belief isn't even
true or isn't even real. Like if I create a
(02:37):
belief about myself that I am lazy, let's say, let's
say that's the belief that I create about myself. I
come to this conclusion that the reason all these things
have happened to me in my life is because I'm
lazy and I don't have the discipline to really get
these things done or to have the stuff that I
perceive other people have. Okay, so I've created this belief
that I'm lazy, and now every data point that comes
(03:00):
into my life comes through that filter and is interpreted
through that filter. It's a confirmation bias, and it creates
an unnecessary way for me to interpret my life. Whereas
if I could have just stayed open, maybe a different
conclusion would have come to me about why X, Y
and Z have taken place, or why you know, I
(03:22):
perceive that I don't have what other people have, or
however you want to look at that. But that's what
I want to talk about today, is how quick we
are to jump to conclusions how quick we are to
finish the story before it's finished, and how much we
have to gain from staying open to how the story
wants to finish itself, how the story wants to write itself,
(03:46):
and the challenges. Can I stay in the discomfort of
the I don't know? Can I stay in the discomfort
of the uncertainty long enough for the transformation to take place,
long enough for me to receive what this story is
trying to show me? Or do I get so uncomfortable
that I have to really quick tie things up and
write an ending to the story that now is extremely
(04:07):
solid and now has this confirmation bias to it, where
where now every detail that comes into my life is
filtered through this conclusion that I made. The reason I
got started thinking about this is a total side note,
but I'm going to share it with you anyway, because
this is a detail about me that you may or
may not know. If you know me or you're close
to me in my life, you would know this, but
if not, you probably don't because I don't talk about
(04:29):
it that often. I have a mild obsession with true crime,
and I know I'm not the only woman on the
planet Earth who has a mild obsession with true crime.
I will say I've had this obsession in my life
since long before true crime was as popular as it
is today. I had the idea in undergrad when I
was getting my English degree that I was going to
get my English degree and then I was going to
(04:50):
go become a lawyer. And my parents would even joke
all the time, like I was born to be a lawyer.
I was supposed to be a trial lawyer because I
was just such a good arguer. But for me, it
wasn't so much about the arguing. It was more about
this idea that you could collect all this evidence in
a case. You could find all these data points and
then it's like the mind puzzle of figuring out how
(05:11):
to put them together in a way that makes sense, which,
oddly enough, is what I do when I'm sitting down
with a client at my kitchen table to take their
personal story and put it into a book outline. It
is the same mind puzzle. So I'm literally using that
skill or that obsession that I have. I'm just using
it in a really different context. But that is what
gets me so hooked about true crime stories is you're
(05:34):
gathering all this evidence. You're gathering all this information. You're
gathering all of this intel, and you're trying to put
it together in a way that makes sense. And a
lot of times what will happen is, you know, let's
say you have ten pieces of information, just for an
easy round number. You have ten pieces of information, and
seven of the pieces fit really well in this one theory,
But then you have three pieces of information that just
simply don't make sense inside of that theory. And then
(05:55):
you have another theory where six pieces of information fit
and four don't fit. That's using. Then you have another
piece where nine pieces fit and one doesn't really make
sense but kind of makes sense, and you have to
try to figure out, like which one of these is
the most logical, which one fits the best, And in
order to really get to the bottom of what actually
took place and this particular circumstance, you have to stay
(06:17):
open to all of the information that's available to you.
And this is one of the big mistakes that a
lot of people make when they're investigating a crime. And
one of the reasons why wrongful convictions are so common
is because as an investigator, you have to stay open
to all the information before you draw a foregone conclusion.
(06:38):
You cannot just jump immediately to a conclusion. You have
to stay open to all the information that exists. So
the most recent case that I've been interested in, and
I will give a quick warning that this is adult content.
So if you're listening with kids in the background, I
would either skip over this part. If maybe you just
would prefer not to listen to it and you can
skip over this part, or if you have kids, skip
(06:58):
over this part. But I won't get too graphic, but
I do want to tell you about this case because
it's pertinent to what I'm talking about today. The case
that I have been listening to this past week is
the case of Ellen Greenberg, which I have been aware
of for a couple of years because I listened to
a crime podcast called Crime Junkie, which is one of
the best ones that's out there in my opinion. I
(07:19):
listened to Crime Junkie and they reported on this case
a couple of years ago. I think back on twenty
twenty two, and this is a crime that took place
in twenty eleven. It's been in and out of the
media thanks to her parents who really have done all
the work that any loved one can do to bring
media attention back around and around again to this case.
And it's been in the media more recently because there
(07:41):
was a documentary release that's on Hulu about this case.
So there's all kinds of podcast episodes, all kinds of
the Hulu documentary YouTubers who were talking about this case.
There's a lot of information in this case that's been
released to the public. But essentially the case is that
a young woman twenty seven years old is found stabbed
(08:02):
in her apartment and the question that we have to
answer is was this woman murdered or did she die
by suicide? And originally the investigators on scene made the
assumption that that she had died by suicide, but then
when the medical examiner examined her body, the medical examiner's
determination on the death certificate was homicide. And then later
(08:25):
three months later, two or three months later, the medical
examiner changed his determination back to suicide. So you have
this flip flopping back and forth. You have a lot
of information, You have a nine one one call from
the fiance at the time, you have some CCTV footage,
you have you know, deposition documents, you have so many
(08:47):
different items to take in in this case to really
understand what took place. And I think one of the
big mistakes that was made in this case, and one
of the reasons why we're all still so confused and
why we don't have answers, is because the investigators in
this setting did exactly what I'm suggesting that we should
avoid doing in our lives, which is the investigators made
(09:09):
a snap judgment based on what was there in the moment.
And I mean, you can also argue that there's like
a conspiratorial thing happening. I tend to lean away from conspiracies,
especially in a case like this where you have so
many players involved. It seems really extremely unlikely to me
that you could get that many people to be on
the same page and to keep their mouth shut. I'm
(09:29):
not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying I tend to
lean away from conspiracy theories because, again, speaking of not knowing,
we just simply don't know. But in my opinion, what
happened is you have investigators on the scene who were
told one thing by the fiance, they jump to a conclusion,
they call this a suicide. Then you have the medical
examiner who's just looking at the wounds on her body,
(09:50):
who calls it a homicide. And then you have this
clash of what the original investigators said versus what them said.
They come together, they apparently have this meeting again. Is
there something that's spiratorial happening there? I don't know for sure,
but for sure there's a clash of opinions. They come
together and discuss in secret. Nobody knows what happened in
(10:11):
this meeting. Some more information and the emmy changes his
determination from homicide to suicide. So there's a question mark here.
It's an open story loop. How did this woman die?
Did she die by suicide or did she die by homicide?
That question is if you're into this sort of thing,
is what pulls you into the story because your brain,
(10:35):
whether or not you are like a true crime junkie,
your brain wants to know the answer to that question.
And especially in a case where the stakes are as
high as this case is, or as any murder investigationists.
When the stakes are high like that, your brain wants
to know the answer to this question. What happened here?
What happened to this poor young woman? And this is
(10:56):
why I talk about in our personal stories in our lives,
which hopefully are not as high stakes as this, but
in our lives. It's so important to see our lives
through the lens of storytelling. Because if your life feels
boring to you, or you feel disconnected from it, or
it feels like it's random and stuff is just kind
of happening and you're not really sure what's going on,
and it doesn't really feel that exciting, the chances are
you haven't drilled in on what is the question that
(11:18):
my life is asking me? What's the open story loop here?
Like the what's the question that I do not have
an answer to? Once your brain locks in on that question,
it will become obsessive. It will not let go of
the question until you have the answer. And these are
big questions that we're asking ourselves most of the time.
I mean, I know from talking to many of you
(11:40):
that the questions we're asking ourselves are things like is
there a God? Who is God? What am I doing here?
What's my purpose on this earth? Who am I like?
Why does my life matter? Those are big, deep, important
questions that we're asking ourselves. And when you can lock
in on that question, your life becomes absolutely obsessive to you,
(12:01):
like you can't stop thinking about it until you start
to find the answers to these questions. Now, that's a
good thing from the standpoint that, or it can be
helpful from the standpoint that it's hard to be depressed
when you're hooked on a question because your brain is
so focused on the question that you're not just like,
I don't know, it's all meaningless. I don't understand. It's
(12:23):
hard to be depressed when you're hooked on a question
that you want the answer to. It's hard to be
depressed when you're hooked on a question that you want
the answer to because you're locked in. It's like think
of like working on a puzzle that you just really
(12:44):
want to solve the puzzle. When you're in that state,
you're not in a depressive state. You're in almost like
a hyper arousal state, maybe even like on the other
side of the coin, So from that standpoint, like you know,
looking at our lives through the lens of a story
can really suck us in and pull us in such
a great way. On the other side of the coin,
it can be uncomfortable to sit in that uncertainty. It
(13:07):
can be extremely uncomfortable to sit with the question of
I don't know who God is, I don't know who
I am, I don't know what I'm here for, I
don't know what my purpose is. I don't know the
answer to these questions. And this is what I want
to talk about today, is our tolerance, our ability to
sit with the I don't know. Sitting with the I
don't know is extremely important for a bunch of reasons,
(13:31):
and I want to go through a couple of them.
Number one is because when you come to a foregone conclusion,
when you jump to the end of the story before
the story is ready to be concluded, you likely are
going to come up with the wrong answer. Now, in
the case of homicide versus suicide, you've got two options here,
and you know it's kind of the flip of a coin.
(13:51):
So it's like fifty to fifty. If you were going
to guess which one it is without knowing all the information,
you might get lucky and get the answer right. But
when this stakes are that high, you don't want to guess.
You don't want to flip the coin on someone's life.
Like if this was a homicide, you want to make
sure that the person who is responsible for this homicide
is held accountable, and that there's justice served for the
(14:14):
poor woman who lost her life if this is not
a homicide, if it really is a suicide, you want
to make sure that nobody is wrongfully held accountable, that
nobody loses even more years of their life life for
being wrongfully accused. So the stakes are extremely high. Even
though you've got only really two options here. You don't
want to just flip the coin on this thing. You
(14:35):
want to make sure that you really get it right.
And in the case of these bigger questions of life,
like you know, who is God? Who am I? What
am I doing here? You have infinite options for what
the answer could be, infinite options for what the conclusion
could be, So it's not just a flip of a coin.
And also the stakes are high, so you don't want
to just guess at what the answer is. You want
(14:56):
to really know what the answer is. And what I'm
arguing today in this episode is that in order to
really know what the answer is, we have to build
our tolerance for sitting with that feeling of uncertainty. I'll
give you a couple of examples from my life to
help us unpack this and talk about it. One is
an example that I have shared in part on a
(15:17):
previous episode, which is that my husband and I would
really like to have another baby. We have an almost
four year old and a new five year old who
are happy and healthy and wonderful, and we love being parents,
and we would really love to grow our family. I'm
forty two years old, my husband's forty five years old.
I feel that our window is kind of closing if
you just look at the data that's available to us
(15:38):
about a forty two year old woman in her fertility
and the chances of getting pregnant, et cetera, et cetera.
Plus we've had two miscarriages. The window does seem to
be kind of closing, and the chances seem to be
getting lower and lower. And yet we would really love
to grow our family. And I would like to say
that I carry a belief that that's possible for us,
that I'm open to it, that I'm open to receiving
that blessing into our lives. So I sit in the
(16:01):
uncertainty of like, will we be able to grow our family?
Will we not be able to grow our family? I
don't know that's the reality, and I could say, no,
I do know we are going to be able to
grow our family. I could say that, and I think
a lot of self help and positive thinking and affirmations, etc.
Would sort of recommend that you take that approach and
(16:22):
that you say that. My personal opinion is that is
spiritual bypassing, and it's the exact opposite of what I'm
talking about, that we think that having a positive thought
or assuming yes, I'm going to be able to have
a baby, I'm certain of this. I'm one hundred percent
certain that we'll be able to grow our family. You
could say that that would maybe increase your likelihood or
(16:44):
increase your chances of having a baby, but it still
doesn't change the fact that what's true is that we
don't know. We just simply don't know. That's the reality
of the matter. And if I want to end this
story really quickly, if I'm too uncomfortable sitting in the
uncertain and I want to end the story quickly so
that I have answers, I have to either bypass it
(17:06):
spiritually by saying we are going to have a baby,
or I have to go the other way by saying
this is too much. I can't sit with this anymore.
It's too much uncertainty for me. I need to just
end this. I need to say that we're just not
going to try. And I think I did mention in
that other episode that there's a part of me that
has wanted to do that, that said to my husband, Oh,
(17:27):
it's so hard, like the not knowing the countdown to
your next cycle to take a test, the like finding
out we're pregnant, then finding out we lose the pregnancy,
not hearing a heartbeat, those types of things. It's so uncomfortable,
and I think this is why we jump to conclusions,
because sitting in the uncertainty is truly so uncomfortable. We
don't want to do it. And so because we don't
(17:49):
want to do it, we find ways to quickly resolve
the story without allowing for the story to resolve itself.
And so we usually do one or the other. We
either do the positive thinking thing where it's like, no,
I'm certain this is gonna happen, this is coming for me,
I believe it with every fiber of my being, or
(18:09):
we go I can't do this anymore. We're just gonna
call it quit. So we're just gonna have this is
our family, we're just gonna move on. And I'm sure
there's a way in your life where you've done this too,
where there's something that you've really wanted, or you've been after,
there's a question that's been open in your life, and
you feel that you don't want to sit in the uncertainty,
and so you write the end of the story very quickly.
(18:32):
Maybe I think a lot of us do this when
you hear gossip, or you hear information, or you only
know part of a story and it seems kind of
iffy to you, Like the information that you hear seems
like either really shocking or it seems like, oh, that
seems weird. I didn't I wouldn't have expected that to
happen or that person to have said that. So then
what your brain does, because our brains are really smart,
(18:52):
and they want to come up with a conclusion, They
want to come up with a solution, so they start
filing in information, which is information that you don't have
access to, and so the information that you fill in
may or may not be accurate. It's so uncomfortable to
go like, huh, interesting, I don't know why that happened. Interesting,
I don't know why that person said that interesting, I
(19:15):
don't know all the information here. That is so uncomfortable
that instead we jump to conclusions. We gossip behind people's backs.
We allow our brains to make up the whole story,
to fill in all the blanks, and that process of
filling in all the blanks can be quite dangerous. It
can dangerous on many different levels, like there can be
lots of unintended consequences from jumping to conclusions in our stories.
(19:39):
I'll tell you another personal story that really demonstrates this.
So Matt and I met on a blind date. I
was living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time. He was
living in Los Angeles, California. I was in California on
(19:59):
a work trip. I bumped into an acquaintance someone who
I did not know very well. We chatted for a
couple of minutes about how things were going. It was
very surface level, extremely small talkish, and then what I
remember from that conversation is being kind of jarred because
it went from small talk to like, are you single?
What's your deal? Do you have a boyfriend? What's your
I was just like, whoa hold on, what's going on?
(20:21):
But anyway, he tells me that he has this friend
he wants to introduce me to. Would I be willing
to go on a date with this person tonight? I'm like,
I'm open. Sure, let's go on a date. I said,
I fly out tomorrow morning, so it really would have
to be tonight. If you can arrange it that quickly,
then I'm open to meeting someone new. I thought, you know,
it's probably gonna be too quick to happen. But sure enough,
(20:41):
within about twenty minutes, he had texted Matt. Matt had
texted me Matt and I are texting. We make a
plan for where to meet that night, And I was
just like, oh my gosh, wow, what a whirland. Okay,
I'm meeting this guy named Matt Ford tonight. Well, of
course I did what every person would immediately do, which
is try to google Matt Ford. But because Matt's name
was so common, his first name and his last name
(21:03):
are both extremely common, and because of that, I couldn't
find him anywhere. Also, Matt is not a big social
media person. He doesn't love to be on camera, so
he didn't have an Instagram. He had a LinkedIn, I think,
but even his LinkedIn was buried under a bunch of
other Matt Fords, and so despite my searching, I never
was able to see a picture of him before I
finished my work day and then quickly changed and then
(21:25):
drove to the restaurant. So I had not even seen
a photo of this man before I walked into the restaurant.
But I walked into the restaurant and my first intuitive
impression of Matt was like so grounded, so kind, such
a good friend. I remember thinking that, which is an
odd thing to think about someone that you're set up
with on a romantic date. Which is why it's such
(21:47):
a memorable impression to me, because I just remember thinking like,
this man seems like an amazing friend. We just had
such a good conversation. He was so thoughtful, he was
really engaged. He was very present. It was not like fireworky,
like oh this is the man I'm going to marry.
It was just like wow, like what a refreshing experience
with a person, which is important to the rest of
the story because I have this initial impression of Matt.
(22:09):
He walks me to my car, we part ways. He's like,
I really enjoyed talking to you. I'd love to be
in contact. Can I reach out to you? Again, I
said sure. We parted ways that night, and then moving forward,
I really didn't hear from Matt again. I think it
was like another month before I heard from him. Anyway,
when I did hear from him, he was coming to Nashville.
We met up again in Nashville. I'm fast forwarding through
(22:29):
a bunch of stuff here, but we met up again
in Nashville, went on a couple more dates. We had
been in contact. But even Matt, I know, Matt would
not mind me saying this, because he's very open about this,
and he would tell you this if he was sitting here.
But he did not do a great job of communicating
in the beginning. There was a lot going on with
him that he wasn't saying to me. One main thing,
which was that he had been in a long distance
(22:50):
relationship with a woman from Nashville, of all places, and
so this felt kind of like a little too close
to home. That relationship had obviously fallen apart, and so
he was nervous about, you know, committing to me. He
was nervous about jumping into this relationship. It wasn't about
him having another girlfriend on the side, or talking to
(23:10):
anyone else or anything, but he was extremely nervous to commit.
So that feeling of him being nervous to commit was
a disparate information from what I had picked up in
that first meeting, which is that he seemed so grounded,
so loyal, so trustworthy, so friendly, so kind. So I'm
my system is receiving these two pieces of information, the
(23:31):
first intuitive hit I had about him, and then this
other information that it's kind of inconsistent. He there's something
going on that I don't know about. And because I
had been in a toxic relationship before Matt, I was
reading these signs as he's lying to me. He's not
who he says he is, He's hiding something. My system
was like on full alert, and so I don't know.
(23:53):
We were a couple of dates into our relationship. We
met at the beginning of August in California. That was
our first date that we were set up on. That
was August fourth or fifth, I think, And then by Thanksgiving,
So by November of that year, twenty seventeen, I was
sitting at a friend's house. I will never forget. I'm
sitting in her house. It's after Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm like,
(24:14):
I can't do this. Anymore. When I talk to him tomorrow,
I'm gonna tell him I'm done. I just I can't
do the wishy washy. I need something more solid than this.
This is not working for me. And she said to me,
is it possible for you to just wait? Like, is
it possible for you to just hold on and to
not jump to any conclusions and to just give it
(24:34):
a little bit more time? And this is the part
that I remember so vividly. She was said, you're still
collecting information. You don't know why he's acting the way
that he's acting. Can you hang in there for a
little bit longer and get the rest of the information.
And I really took her words to heart. And I
will say, as a side note here, having been in
(24:57):
a toxic relationship before where I gas lipped my myself for
years to not believe myself about what I knew was true,
I want to double down on this idea that what
your system is telling you is true is true. And
what I was picking up on about Matt, that he
was noncommittal, is true. But your system will also interpret
things in a way that is not always true. So
(25:20):
my system was interpreting this that he's not committal because
he's got someone else on the side or whatever, he's
not being honest with me. He wasn't being honest with me,
but it wasn't what I was worried about. So I
want to say, whatever you're feeling, especially in a romantic relationship,
you have every right to speak up for yourself, to
set boundaries, to express what you need. And I did
eventually do that with Matt. I eventually told him, you know,
(25:43):
I think it was like a couple weeks later that
I just was like, this is not working for me.
I need this to be more consistent. You know, I
don't want to be dating other people, but if you're
dating other people, I need to know about that. So like,
if you want to do this, let's jump in with
both feet. But if you don't want to do this,
then like I need to walk the other way. And
so that was an important conversation for me, using my
voice and speaking up in our relationship, and I think
(26:03):
set a really healthy foundation for us. But what my
friend said to me that day really sticks out to
me for a bunch of reasons. Number one, because it's
so uncomfortable to sit in that uncertainty of not knowing
what's going on. Your system is reacting. I was literally
having panic attacks because this felt so familiar to the
toxic relationship I'd been in before, where I was being
(26:24):
lied to and betrayed and things were going on behind
my back. And I had ignored those intuitions for so long,
and now they're screaming at me, and I'm refusing to
ignore them. But the interpretation that I had of them
wasn't necessarily correct. And so she's saying to me, can
you sit with this for a little bit longer? Can
you sit in the uncertainty? Can you invite more information?
(26:45):
Can you just collect more information before you draw your conclusions?
And one of the reasons why this feels so significant
is because I would not be in this relationship today
if it weren't for that conversation with her, I would
have told him to go take a hike. And the
relationship I'm meant today is so sturdy, And so I
tell everyone all the time when people say marriage is hard,
(27:06):
I'm like, I don't know if I just looked out,
but my marriage is not hard. My life is hard,
My marriage is easy. We have so much fun together.
It's so sturdy and predictable, we argue, but we do
not fight. Nobody throws things, raises their voices, nobody slams doors,
nobody runs out like we have a really healthy, loving,
lovely relationship. And I would not have that if I
(27:27):
had jumped to those conclusions back then. So that's one
of the reasons why this is really important. But another reason,
and these are tied together as a reason I believe
that I even am capable of having this relationship with
Matt is because what was trying to happen an unfold
inside of me and inside of my system. What was
trying to heal, what was trying to come to light,
what was trying to grow, what was trying to transform.
(27:50):
All happened because I chose to sit in that uncertainty.
I chose to stay in it, even when I didn't
know the answer, and it was incredibly uncomfortable. I had
panic attack after panic attack after panic attack. I was
on the phone with my therapist emergency sessions, calling for
more medication, like I was melting down. I was literally unraveling,
(28:13):
you know, in real time. And yet if I hadn't
been able to stay with myself and that and to
contain what was taking place, I really believe those panic
attacks were the trauma moving up and out of my body.
So I'm absolutely advocating that you get support for yourself
and that you reach out and that you don't suffer
through this alone. And I don't think that you, you know,
(28:35):
need to be necessarily suffering. But I'm also saying, like,
hanging in there with that relationship, hanging in there in
that situation is a big reason, the reason, the only
reason that I have this relationship today, in part because
I became the person that I needed to be in
that time of uncertainty, and also because I allowed myself
(28:59):
to stay open to receiving more information about Matt. What
I learned about him is that he was incredibly timid
about stepping into a relationship with me, in part because
he could see He saw me really clearly. You know,
he saw that I was wounded, He saw that I
was healing and that I was I just needed some
space to heal. And he was worried about his ability
(29:19):
to step into the situation and really be what I
needed him to be. He was worried about getting hurt again.
You know, he had been hurt in this past relationship.
He was worried about that. So there were you know,
we were kind of tiptoeing around each other, and one
of the things that I'm so grateful for is that
we stayed in it and held the space for each
other to have our own experiences. It was really rocky.
(29:41):
I mean I say really rocky. It was rocky and
exactly the ways that I've described for the first four
months of our relationship, I want to say, like August, September, October, November, December,
so five months. And then by the start of twenty eighteen,
it really wasn't rocky from that point on, so twenty eighteen,
and then I moved to California at the end of
(30:02):
twenty eighteen in December, and then he proposed in February
of twenty nineteen, and then we got married in November
of twenty nineteen, and then my daughter was born in
July of twenty twenty. So from January of twenty eighteen forward,
our relationship has not been rocky at all. But for
those couple of months, I mean, sitting in that uncertainty
for five months was extremely, extremely uncomfortable. And I think
(30:24):
that that's where all the growth, all the transformation happens
in the hero of the story and where we really
gather enough evidence and enough information to develop a conclusion
that's based on truth. One of the things that I've noticed,
is I've been listening to different episodes of people reporting
on this situation with Ellen Greenberg, is that the investigators
(30:46):
obviously jumped to conclusions before they had all the information
when they were on site that day. We don't know
why they did that. Many many, many of these journalists, reporters, podcasters, YouTubers, etc.
Are also jumping to conclusions without having all the information.
The fact of the matter is, if we're being honest
with ourselves, we do not have all the information. We
do not know what happened in that apartment that day.
(31:08):
There are only two people who know what happened in
that apartment that day. One of them is no longer here,
and actually she may be the only one who knows
what happened in that apartment that day. We just simply
don't know. I can say with relative certainty that her
fiance also knows more information than what he's telling us.
He has spoken with police, but has not spoken with
(31:28):
the media, which, honestly, if I were in his position,
I would do the exact same thing. So I don't
find that altogether suspicious. But when you are looking at
a story where like this is a great example, but
if you could use any example when you're looking at
a story where you're like, huh, this does not make sense.
The fact of the matter is you don't have all
(31:49):
the information. And this is the second piece of this
that I want to talk about. And maybe what I'll
do is to talk about this in the episode next week,
because I really need to start wrapping up. But I
want to just emphasize the importance of being able to
look at a story, to look at a situation, to
look at something that's unfolding in your life, and just
(32:09):
say like, I don't have all of the information. I
don't know what's happening here, and sitting in the uncertainty
is uncomfortable. And one of the things that brings some
comfort to the discomfort is just to remind yourself, oh,
I don't have all the data. That's part of why
I'm confused. So, in other words, not to gaslight yourself
(32:31):
into thinking like I'm confused because there's something wrong with me. No, No,
I'm confused because I don't have all the information. Because
the story has not been completed yet, so that's where
I want to leave it for today's episode. I do
want to talk about this a little bit more on
next week's episode because there's way more that I want
to say about this. I want to share another personal
(32:52):
story that relates to what I've been talking about and
how I'm learning to remind myself that I don't have
all the information and how deeply comforting that can be.
So I'll share that on next week's episode. Until then,
I hope you have a lovely week, and I'll see
you back next week on the Write Your Story podcast
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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