October 26, 2025 • 40 mins
My five year old daughter recently asked me why sometimes we ask God for things and she doesn’t give them to us (I secretly love that she refers to God as female, even though we’ve never gendered God in our house).
As I processed the answer to her question — and thought about all the things I’ve wanted in my life but never gotten — I recorded this episode.
This episode is an in-real-time, thinking-out-loud kind of an episode. More of a “questions” kind of episode than an “answers” kind of episode.
But maybe, as I talk out loud to myself about what it means to want something and not have it, you’ll hear something that resonates with you that you can take with you on your own journey of wanting and not having.
What do you want that you don’t (yet) have?
The answer to that question might be a powerful invitation on a journey that will change your life forever.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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 get the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold? It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
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 what to do when you
don't get what you want. This is a topic that
is feeling personal to me right now because if you listen,
you know all of this already. But the last handful
of years for me have been filled with lots of
(00:50):
disappointment around wanting things and then not getting exactly what
I want. And maybe on the face of it, it's
like there are many times in life when we just
simply don't get what we want. I think that's true,
obviously and simple and can be as simple as that.
And also this conversation in our current culture around visualization, manifestation,
(01:11):
positive thinking, the idea that you can manifest something out
of nothing. There is some truth to that, or that
wouldn't be even appealing to us. I think there is
validity to that conversation and to that idea. And this
is why it's so compelling to us, because we intuitively
understand that we are creative beings and we are here
to make something, to bring something out of the darkness,
(01:35):
to take chaos and organize it and make it not chaos.
So intuitively, as human beings, we understand that that's our
work here, that's our creative work, that's what we came
here to do. And then also I think as human
beings who are living and breathing and moving in the world,
we recognize that there are plenty of things that we
want that we simply don't get or don't know how
(01:55):
to get. And there's not any measure of positive thinking
or visualization or vision boards or dreaming or meditation or
anything that can bring into actuality the thing that we
are dreaming of. And sometimes I think we get answers
for that we understand, oh, that thing I wanted. Like,
here's a great example. I was married before my current
(02:18):
husband and my ex husband and I really wanted to
have a baby, or at least I really wanted to
have a baby, and we were actively trying to have
a baby for almost two years and never were able
to get pregnant, and at the time that felt like
this huge heartbreak, and then later I was able to
look back and go like, thank God that we did
not get pregnant, because I would be tied to this
individual for the rest of my life. And obviously, again
(02:41):
this is complicated, and this is where the conversation becomes sticky,
because if we had become pregnant, if there was a
child in this world from that relationship, and I was
tied to this person forever, there would also be meaning
and purpose inside of that. So this is where the
idea of manifestation for me breaks down. But I'll tell
you the reason why I wanted to even address this
conversation many reasons, but one is because my five year
(03:02):
old daughter asked me recently, how come sometimes God doesn't
give us what we want? Sometimes we ask her, she says,
because my daughter calls God, she which I love. Sometimes
we ask God for something and she doesn't give us
what we want. How come that is, mom? And I
didn't really have a great answer for her. I thought
it was such a beautiful question, and I really affirmed
her curiosity I just thought, like, it's amazing that she's
(03:23):
even thinking about that or asking that, wondering that. But
the fact of the matter is, I don't have a
great answer for her. I don't understand why sometimes we
want things that we are not able to actualize in
this lifetime. And I'm actively in a season of life
right now where this dream of this business that Matt
and I wanted to create started in twenty twenty and
(03:44):
was on this amazing trajectory for a period of time,
and it felt like so risky and uncertain and exciting,
and yet we were being affirmed along the way. So
we were on this journey that was following this positive trajectory,
and then everything fell part in twenty twenty four. So
I've been grieving the loss of that dream for over
a year, and it is sad that we didn't get
(04:05):
what we want in that case. And I'm coming to
the point in the story where I'm able to begin
to look back at it and recognize it as protection,
protection that I don't understand yet, similar to not being
able to get pregnant in my first marriage, I couldn't
understand in the moment that this was actually a great
thing that my patience was going to pay off and
(04:25):
that I was going to end up with a life
that was more beautiful and even more simple than I
could imagine. And that's beginning to happen for me with
this story. As the timeline moves forward, it's like, Oh,
I'm starting to see how maybe that thing that we
thought we wanted so desperately and we put everything on
the line for it wasn't actually the thing, and that's
why we weren't able to bring it to fruition. But
(04:47):
it's really difficult to see that in the moment. It's
much easier to see it later. So that part of
my story is starting to look different or I'm starting
to look at it through a different lens. But the
part of my story that I'm actively in is this
pregnancy journey or fertility journey, which I don't know if
you would really consider a fertility journey because I'm not
really having infertility issues. I guess I don't know. Maybe
(05:09):
miscarriage is an infertility issue. I'm not having issues getting pregnant.
I'm having issues staying pregnant, is what I'm trying to say.
So I'm really wanting to add another child to our family. Actually, weirdly,
in my ideal world, we would add two more children
to our family. But I'm forty two years old. The
window is rapidly closing for me to be able to
carry a child. It's like I one is going to
have to just do it. I've got time for one
(05:30):
more pregnancy and maybe we'll get some like miraculous twins
or something. So I'm holding space for this. I'm excited
about it. I'm really anticipating and hopeful and really wanting
to have another baby. And yet I have been pregnant
multiple times and have not been able to sustain the pregnancy.
So it's another one of those things in my life
that I'm asking myself this question, how come you can
(05:54):
not just want something? How come you can feel something,
sense something into it, something, touch into something, really believe
in the deepest part of who you are that this
thing is for you and is coming to you and
is meant for you, and yet also live in the
uncertainty of not knowing if it will come. I think,
(06:18):
like I've talked about before, and like I know I
mentioned on last week's episode, living an uncertainty means admitting
we don't know what's going to happen, and so I
think it's naive of us to say in the vein
of positive thinking, like you know, I know for sure,
for sure that this thing is coming for me, because
I've visualized it. I do have a really hopeful expectancy
(06:40):
that this thing that I want is coming for me,
and that I'm being asked to be patient and wait
for it. But I don't know that for sure. I
have to hold that loosely. I have to hold it
with an open hand. And I think this is something
that we're all doing in one way or the other
in our lives. And for me right now, it's the pregnancy.
That's the picture of what I'm hoping for or wanting.
But for you it's probably something different. Maybe for you
(07:01):
it's a partner, or maybe for you it's also a pregnancy,
or maybe for you it's a job or a new
place that you want to live, or a business that
you want to start, or a financial goal that you
want to hit or whatever. It is something that you
can taste, you can touch, you can you know, you
can't physically touch it yet, but you can touch it
into you can into it and feel that it's there
(07:22):
for you, that you desire it, that you want it,
that it's on the horizon, and you have a sense
that it's meant for you. And yet no matter what
you do, no matter how you twist yourself into notots,
no matter what you try, maybe you've tried everything. Maybe
it's like, you know, here's another great example is if
you're dealing with a health issue, like a chronic pain
or chronic kind of health issue like inflammation or food
(07:45):
allergies or something like that, and you're trying to troubleshoot
this thing, and you've hired every doctor, and you've tried
everything everyone has mentioned, and you've gone on every supplement,
and you've been to the acupuncturist and you've tried the
alternative stuff, and you've gone to the emergency room and everything.
You've changed your diet, you've cut this out, you've cut
that out, you've stopped using the microwave. You know, you've
(08:07):
done all of this stuff, and then you're like, what
the heck? Like, I've done everything that a person could
possibly do. I'm coming at this with the most earnestness possible,
and yet I still can't seem to bring this thing
into form. And that feeling can be extremely frustrating. So
I want to talk about this today because I realized
(08:27):
recently that my ideas about this have changed quite a
bit over the years, and yet changed quite a bit
and also come full circle back to sort of the
same place, meaning when I wrote Packing Light, which came
out in twenty thirteen, so that book is more than
ten years old now. When that book came out, that
book really is about learning to tap into your own desire,
(08:50):
to tap into your own sense of I want, and
to take steps toward actualizing what you want. That really
is what the book is about. It's coming up age story.
It's a memoir about how I quit my job at
the time to go on this road trip around the
country with a friend of mine. She really wanted to
be a musician. I wanted to be an author. We
(09:11):
were like, you know, there's no time like the present.
If we don't do this now, we'll never be able
to do this, And so we both quote our full
time jobs. We sold almost everything that we owned. We
packed what was left into a little super outback that
was my car, and we drove that car all over
the country to the lower forty eight and then eventually
we made it to Alaska and Hawaii, not driving obviously,
but we made it to all fifty states on this
(09:33):
tour where she played her music. I acted as I
guess her, like pseudo manager. We were blogging and vlogging
while we were going, posting on Facebook, posting on social media,
keeping a blog. People were following us. And the book
is me telling the story of how a how terrifying
it was for me to break the mold and break
out of the box of what I thought was expected
(09:54):
of me and to step out and do this quote
unquote different thing. So that's part of the stories about
but it's the hero. The transformation of the hero is
really going from someone who didn't really know what she
wanted with her life to someone who was on a
mission to achieve something that was really important to her.
And I think that was an important transformation at the time.
(10:15):
It's a very youthful transformation. And I'll talk about how
this comes back full circle, but at the time it
was this extremely youthful transformation and also pertinent to the
environment that I was born into and that I grew
up in, like the environment that I started out in,
because from Joseph Campbell's perspective, you have the environment that
(10:37):
the hero starts out in, and then you have the
new world that they step into after the inciting incident.
So for me, the inciting incident was my French aireas like, hey,
do you want to go on this trip with me?
I'm going to quit my job. I'm gonna leave everything behind,
I'm going to sell all my stuff, I'm going to
move out of my apartment. I'm going to leave everything
that I know. I'm going to go on this tour.
And I want to busk on the side of the
(10:57):
road and just make money as I go and fill
my gas tank. And I think it could be so
fun to go together, and you could blog along the way,
and you could write your book, and I could become
a musician and you could become an author, and this
would be so great. And so she's the guide who
comes into my life, who inspires me to do something different,
something outside of the box, something I hadn't considered before,
and I would absolutely never have done if it wasn't
(11:19):
for her. So she comes in and breaks the mold
and pushes me off the cliff, off of the ordinary world,
as Joseph Campbell calls it, into this new world, this
brand new world that I had not experienced before, where
there's way more uncertainty, where things are constantly changing, where
I have no control over my environment, where I don't
know where our next paycheck is coming from, where I
(11:41):
don't have the approval of my parents. Because even though
my parents were somewhat supportive, I think they thought, I know,
they thought that what I was doing was a little
bit crazy, and I know my mom was really worried
and concerned about me, and I talk about this in
the book, but there's a point where our car breaks
down and we go to the dealership and literally trade
in the broken car for a new car. And I
(12:01):
remember my dad saying to me, like, whatever you do,
do not buy a new car. Just whatever you do,
however you choose to solve this problem, don't let that
be the solve. And I'm literally like defying his advice
in real time, which was such an important moment of
actualization for me. I mean, I was twenty three years
old when this was happening. I think I was twenty
six when I was writing the book. I guess one
(12:21):
of the benefits of that protective bubble is that you
are protected. You know it is a safe ish environment,
and that's a whole rabbit trail that I don't want
to go down. But there is a sense of safety
to that protective bubble. But the drawback to the protective
bubble is that things are kind of dictated for you,
and everything is extremely predictable and the rules are pretty
(12:42):
black and white, and the ground you stand on is
not at all shaky and so on that hand. On
one hand, it can feel like, oh, I feel really sturdy.
I feel so secure. I never wonder about look, what's right,
what's wrong. I never wonder about what's going to happen
to me when I die. I don't have any of
these like big aching questions that I have to answer.
(13:03):
So I feel really sturdy and secure. And yet I
don't really have a strong sense of self because I'm
not required to like go inside and ask myself, what
do I think about things? How do I feel about things?
What's really important to me? What am I passionate about?
And I've never even really given the opportunity to like
go after something and fall flat on my face, which
is this interesting. I feel like I'm like having an
(13:25):
epiphany as I'm saying this out loud, but I'll keep going.
I feel like I'm like having an epiphany as I'm
saying this out loud, but I'll keep going. So inside
of that protective bubble, you're really protected from feeling pain,
(13:45):
You're protected from feeling you know, heartbreak, You're protected from
all kinds of stuff. But you're also, in that sense protected.
You're insulated from the human experience. You're insulated from feeling passion,
You're insulated from feeling joy, from bliss, you know, from
all of those things. And that's the environment that I
grew up in. So for me, I know it might
not seem like a big deal, but I'm setting this
(14:07):
up to say that for me to make a choice
that went against what I assumed my parents wanted for me,
what everybody else around me was doing what I assumed
was the quote unquote right choice, for me to make
that choice was an absolutely terrifying prospect. So when Sharea
originally asked me to go on this trip, I was
(14:30):
so instantly excited about it that my answer was yes.
But if you read the book, you'll see that in
the first couple of chapters my yes wavered pretty significantly
because I started having all this fear come in. So
at one point I have this big turning point moment
in the book where I have this encounter with God
and this is so wild, like how much I mean,
it's weird, like how much my views have changed? And
(14:52):
also not at all, But I have this encounter with
God in the book where I feel like God says
to me, you don't have to go. You do know
you don't have to go on this trip, and I'm like,
I don't have to go, and the question is like, okay,
well do you want to go? And it was this
epiphany of realizing that it wasn't about what was right
(15:12):
or what I had to do or what I should do.
It was way more about touching into what do I want?
What is important to me? What matters to me? What
are my values? What am I passionate about? What do
I desire? What do you freaking want? Ali? And Sharia
asks me that, and I felt God asking me that,
and I felt this huge invitation and a push off
the cliff in that season of my life in that
(15:34):
book to go like what do you want? What matters
to you, what's important to you? And those were things
that I had not really considered inside of that environment.
I don't know if that's something that you resonate with.
Maybe you grew up in a different kind of environment
than I did. But for me, it was just like
I hadn't even given myself permission at twenty something years
old to consider what did I want? And so tapping
(15:55):
into what I wanted was the answer to all the
questions like what was the solution to all my problems?
It was, you know, terrifying, to say the least. It
was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
But allowing myself to wake up what I wanted was
the beginning of adulthood for me and the beginning of
the rest of my life. So, on the one hand,
(16:18):
what you want, I believe, and I still believe this
I've come full circle is absolutely sacred. What you want
is so sacred that it is your direct connection, your
direct line of connection to your soul, to who you
really are in truth, you know, the highest version of you,
to what you came here to do, to your purpose,
(16:39):
to your absolute essence. It is your connection to yourself.
And if you lived in an environment as a child,
or still do, maybe live in an environment where what
you want isn't seen as important or doesn't really matter,
or no one asks you that question, or you don't
get to explore that very often. I really do think
that you're shut off to yourself. And so what you
(16:59):
want is it's so important that it is absolutely sacred.
It's in a way on the one hand, it's in
a way kind of gospel. It's like so valuable that
a price tide cannot be put on it. And here's
the contradiction, here's the paradox that I think we live in.
(17:20):
Because I also want to in a way title this
episode what you want is meaningless because the journey that
I have been on in the last five years, I
think this is one of the takeaways for me, that
what you want is sacred and also meaningless. That in
the one sense, what you want is your direct connection
to yourself, to your soul, to the truest essence of you.
(17:43):
And on the other hand, what you want doesn't matter.
What you want maybe something you never get here in
the physical form. It's extremely possible that what you want
is something that you will never get. And so the
tension that I'm living in, the tension that I think
we live in, that I don't have an answer to yet,
is what the hell? Like, like, what the actual f?
(18:07):
You know, I won't say the word because we'd have
to bleep it out on this episode, but like, seriously,
what the f that we live in this tension of
the most important thing that you can do is to
figure out what you want? Like, what do you want
to bring into this world? What do you want to contribute?
What do you want to make while you're here? What's
the legacy that you want to leave behind? What matters
to you more than anything else matters to you? Oh
(18:29):
and by the way, after you figure that out, you
may just have to live an endless want of that
thing forever. It feels like the cruelest joke. And because
I'm in this fertility space, my own personal fertility space,
and I'm hoping to be pregnant again, I'm scrolling on
Instagram and I'm talking with people, and I just you
(18:52):
know how this happens in life that a your brain
is like hyper attuned to other people who are talking
about the subject. And also the Instagram al go them
likes to see what you pay attention to and listen
to what you talk about and feed you more of
that so I'm seeing like endless amounts of women talk
about fertility and take pregnancy tests and find out they're
pregnant for the first time after years of waiting, and
(19:14):
also women find out that they're not pregnant, or that
they've had losses, they've had like late stage losses, or
they've had a still birth, or I'm seeing a lot
of this content because I'm in this space and I'm
consuming so much of it. And also I have people
in my real world who are talking to me about
these things and are experiencing these things. And it's heartbreaking
(19:36):
to think that we live in a world where you
could want something so innocent, so precious, so sacred, so important,
so pure, like the purity of wanting a child, or
wanting a partner even you know, or wanting yeah, like
(19:56):
financial stability of financial independence, the purity of wanting like
a job where you feel like you're making a positive contribution.
These desires that we have are so pure. I really
do believe that they are the purest part of ourselves
leaking out. And it feels at points almost like a
(20:17):
cruelty that you could have access to these desires and
not have access to the solution to the desire. And
yet one of the things that I'm learning as I
move through this time is that that liminal space between
the wanting and the getting is also magic. It's so sacred,
(20:39):
like this space between the wanting and the getting is
where compassion is born. You know. I will be sitting
in bed at night, sometimes scrolling on Instagram longer than
I would like to admit, watching total strangers take pregnancy
tests and, like I said, either find out that they
still aren't pregnant or find out that they're pregnant for
the first time after a loss or something like that,
(21:00):
and I will be in tears, and my husband will
look over and he's like, are you crying for a
total stranger right now? And I'm like, yes, yes, i am.
I feel deeply connected to these people who I don't
know and will probably never know in real life, and
yet I feel connected to them because I feel connected
to what it feels like to have that pure longing
(21:25):
and to not have control over how or if or
when the longing will be met. And someone recently said
this to me about pregnancy and longing and waiting and
infertility and all of these subjects that really stuck with me,
and it's something that I think applies outside of that context,
which is this idea that basically, using your intuition, this
(21:47):
like mother's intuition that we have, you can tap into
the feeling of connecting to that soul that wants to
come in. And I've had this experience with each of
my kids. Actually, I knew my kids' names before I
even knew I was pregnant with any of them. So
my daughter, her name came to me two days before
I found out I was pregnant, and then my son, Charlie,
(22:09):
his name came to me months before I knew I
was pregnant with him. It was like their little way
of telling me, this is my name, and it's just
like their name would come to me and I would
just be like, that's that's the baby, and just a
crazy experience of a mother being tapped in and being
able to sense this little being on the other side.
So this person basically was saying to me, like, you
can connect to that little soul or that little being
(22:33):
who is thinking about coming in or thinking, yeah, about
coming to earth, and like joining this physical space, and
whether or not that being comes into the physical it
doesn't make them any less real. And I know that's
like simple, but it's also really not simple and not
(22:53):
something that we think about that often. I think when
we talk about manifestation as a culture, we have this
idea that manifestation is as black and white, as like
I want a Mercedes, I want a black Mercedes. I'm
stealing this example from Mary and Williamson because so perfect.
But she's like, you want a black Mercedes. And you
say to yourself, black Mercedes, black Mercedes, black Mercedes, black Mercedes,
(23:14):
over and over again, and you think positive about your
black Mercedes, and you visualize your black Mercedes, and then
you finally get your black Mercedes. And she says that
may work much of the time, but so what's the point.
So now you have a black Mercedes, and what's the point.
And that has stuck with me a lot, because it's
like you can bring something out of nothing into existence,
you can manifest it into existence, which is what manifestation means.
(23:36):
But what's the point if it's just you know, repeating
like a million dollars, a million dollars, a million dollars,
it shows up in your bank account. I think we
have to dig a little bit deeper and ask ourselves, like,
what is the thing that we're really wanting to create? Like,
what's the legacy we're wanting to leave? What am I
wanting to be known for? What did I come here
to do? And our souls know that more than our
(23:58):
minds do. And so sometimes we get stuck and our
minds thinking, Okay, if I can't get pregned, or if
I don't I ovulate on this date, and I have,
you know, this little window, and I've got to take
the test, and then this happens, and then I got
to wait this many days, and you know, you get
stuck in your mind trying to coordinate and trying to
plan and trying to control a situation that is utterly uncontrollable,
(24:20):
and you lose sight of the fact that this thing
that you sense and feel and know to be true
is true, whether it comes into physical form or not.
And that sounds ridiculous when you think of it, like
a black Mercedes, because the black Mercedes is meaningless. It's like, yeah,
I mean, black Mercedes exists out there, whether or not
(24:43):
it exists in my driveway. Yeah, because it's kinda it does.
It's it's just kind of pointless, like the metaphor breaks down.
But when I tell you like the baby that you want,
or the partner that you want, the love that you
want in your life, the thing that you are craving,
that contribution that you want to make, that thing that
you want to create, the creativity that you want to
(25:04):
bring into your life, it exists. Whether that thing ever
comes into physical form or not. It is as true
today as it was yesterday, as it was ten years ago,
as it will be in fifty years from now. It's true.
It's true. It's true. What you're sensing is real. It's
just not tangible. It's not in physical form just yet.
(25:36):
I think with manifestation, we can put this incredible pressure
on ourselves that it's our responsibility to make sure something
happens in a certain way. And that's control, that's not creativity.
And maybe that's what I'm getting at. Maybe that's the
main message of this, that control and creativity are at
odds with one another and cannot coexist together. Control and
(25:56):
creativity are two opposite things, and creativity is about creating
something out of nothing. And I think I said this
on last week's episode, but I was talking about what
an amazing metaphor giving birth or pregnancy and birth are
for this idea of creating something out of nothing, that
when we just do what we would have done otherwise,
(26:17):
because it is because of passion, because of desire, because
of interest, because of curiosity, when we just do what
we would have done otherwise, things are created and there's
really not that much that we can contribute to it
other than just following our bliss. As Joseph Campbell says,
(26:37):
you know, and I think this phrase follow your bliss
gets misinterpreted, and definitely in Christianity it was for me
growing up, follow your bliss was seen as like a
really dangerous thing to do, because the heart is wicked
above all things. But the more that I have sat
with this phrase, the more I'm like, yeah, really, you know,
following your desire, following your passion, following your playful is,
(27:00):
following your creativity is the path to getting everything that
you want. And I just think that what we want
can sometimes get distorted or disturbed or twisted into something different.
I'll share this last example before wrapping up. But this
project that Matt and I ventured into in the last
(27:21):
five years was a massive undertaking, and a lot of
people told us that it wasn't going to work, and
we still did it, you know, maybe kind of naively,
but we both really believed, with deep, deep conviction that
it was going to work. And now that we're on
the other side of it, now that the whole thing
has fallen apart, we can look back and point to various,
(27:42):
you know, like turns on the journey where we made
decisions that maybe contributed to the downfall of the project,
or where other people did things that it's like, oh gosh,
like that feels so unfair that that happened that way
because that person made a decision that probably contributed to
the downfall of the project. And also moments like a
(28:03):
crossroads moments a couple of different moments that were crossroads
where we could have gone one way and instead we
chose to go the other way. And I think Matt
and I would both agree to say that there were
different ways along the journey where we really lost our way,
like we lost the thing we wanted. We had such
conviction that it was going to work, that we were
(28:25):
being called to do this, like I was having dreams,
like when I tell you like that, I would wake
up and be like I was visited in a dream
by an angel who told me that, you know, like X,
Y and Z these messages for the project. It was
such an insane sense of being pulled in this direction
(28:47):
with certainty and fear, for sure, but also like you know,
an excitement and a hopefulness and a desire and a
curiosity and a passion about what we were doing. And
yet very points along the way, I think the vision
got quite twisted because it was just like, well, if
you want this thing to work, it's going to have
to kind of be this way. And so we were
(29:09):
just like, okay, well, we don't know, we've never done
anything like this before, so sure, we'll do it that way.
And slowly, over time what we were doing became something
different than what the original vision was, which can sometimes
be fine, but I think in our case, slowly but
surely along the way, we really lost. We lost ourselves,
We lost our souls, We lost our souls, the essence
(29:32):
of why we had wanted to come on this journey
in the first place, and the essence of what we
were trying to create. So in that way, the whole
thing falling apart is a grace because it means that
you know, now we still have an opportunity to create
the original thing that we wanted to create, and now
we have all this experience that we can bring to
the table with us. But it's even about more than
just that, because it's like, you know, I think we
(29:54):
all want to say, well, this is the reason why
that happened because of X, Y, and Z, and I
think sometimes that the reason for heartbreak is just that
heartbreak is part of the human experience too, And so
I've been sitting with that a lot that you know,
there's like, it works when you think about the project
to say, well, one of the reasons this didn't work
out is because you know, some of the decisions that
(30:16):
we made really distorted what we were trying to make,
and so we were protected from building something that we
wouldn't have liked anyway. So that works when you apply
that to the project, But what about when you apply
that to someone who wants to have a baby and
has a still birth, or someone who wants to have
a baby and can't get pregnant or something like that.
It just doesn't translate. I think sometimes the reason for
heartbreak is because heartbreak is part of the human experience,
(30:38):
and heartbreak is how our hearts become soft enough to
be compassionate to others around us, and how our heartbreak
can be our great awakening too, And so there doesn't
have to be a reason why the thing happened other
than just that this is part of what it means
to be human. And I think for us that's a
big piece of why we didn't get what we want
(30:58):
when it came down to this project. You can look
at the practicals of like, well, this happened, and that happened,
and this is why the deal fell apart and whatever.
But also I think part of why we were we
felt so strongly that we wanted to make this thing
and then it didn't come to fruition is because that's
just part of life. And when I talk about that
(31:21):
kind of sheltered atmosphere of my upbringing, I was saying
how one of the perks of this is that it
is kind of a bubble. It makes you feel very
secure and protected and like nothing bad can ever happen
to you. But I think we do ourselves and our
kids a disservice by creating a world where they think
nothing bad can ever happen to them. Maybe on one
level that is important to do when kids are really little,
(31:41):
but at age appropriate ways. I think we have to
introduce this idea quite young that like, bad things are
going to happen to you in the world, that's just
the world that we live in. And when bad things
do happen to you, the heartbreaks and it becomes softer
on the other side. And for me, you know, avoiding
heartbreak only made me feel self righteous and a sense
(32:05):
of security that wasn't that was not real, and stepping
willingly openly into fear, like going on the road trip,
the fifty state road trip with Sharia. I was terrified
to do that, but I'm so glad I did it,
and my heart was broken a thousand times on that trip.
You know, I read the book, but or don't read it.
I haven't looked at the book in forever because I'm
(32:26):
my mind has changed about so many things since then.
I'm scared of what I put in that book. But
I know for sure that like my friendship with Sharia
shaped me in so many important ways. We fought on
that trip like I've never fought with a friend before,
and yet I would protect her like a sister. So
I mean, Shary and I broke each other's hearts. We
broke our own hearts. I broke up with a boyfriend
(32:46):
on the trip that I was very attached to and
at the time felt like the end of the actual world.
And we at the end of the book, there's well,
I don't know, I'll just give it away, I guess
because I'm telling you not to read the book. But
at the end of the book, there's a moment where
I realize I've come all this way and I've been
Sharia's support person. I've gone to every show, I've videotaped her,
(33:09):
I've been her cheerleader, I've gotten her water, I've you know,
like been her manager basically this whole time. And I've
never even written my own book, because that was the
thing I was most terrified of, was putting my voice
on paper. And she says to me, she gives me
another push. She's my guide in the story, and she
gives me another push at the end of the book
and just says, like, what is I make a comment
(33:30):
to her that I've supported her all this way and
that I don't feel that support reciprocally, and in the book,
she says, what am I supposed to support you doing?
You're not even writing your book, which maybe, on the
one hand, is a little bit of an aggressive thing
to say. But the fact of the matter is that
she was right. She was right, and that was another
way that my heart was broken at the end of
this that I realized that I had spent all of
(33:50):
my energy supporting her and hadn't actually believed in myself
enough to support my own creative efforts. And so you know,
that's the transformation. At the end of the book, I've
become person who's ready to step into my own creativity.
And even now that I'm saying this, I feel like
I'm so glad that I recorded this episode because I'm
learning so much even just talking about this. But I
(34:11):
think that there is a through line here of I
think the title of the episode is that what you
want is sacred and also doesn't matter, or what you
want is sacred and also meaningless. What you want is
so sacred it is your lifeline to who you are,
to what matters to you, to what you're here for,
to what you came to do. If you can be
really honest with yourself about what you want. The reason
(34:34):
I think we don't like to be honest with ourselves
about what we want is that we're terrified we won't
get it. And the fact of the matter is you
might not. You may not. You know. One of the
things that I have wanted since I can remember is
to be a New York Times bestselling author. And I
may never be a New York Times spusselling author. I'm
not saying I won't be. I'm just saying there is
uncertainty around this and it's something that I want but
(34:57):
that I don't know if I can have. And same
thing with having another child. This is something that I
want and I don't know if I can have, and
same thing with this thing that we wanted to build.
It's something that we wanted and who knows if we
will ever have it. So whatever it is for you
that you want is your direct access to who you
really are and to what you came here to do.
And yet, do you have the courage to really admit
to yourself what it is that you want? Like, if
(35:19):
you boil it all down, I'm sure that there's a
whole long list of things. Some of what we want
gets cultured into us. I think, you know, like all
the life coaches and influencers who are like dream bigger,
like whatever you think you want multiply at times ten
because the universe is abundant and it is available to you.
It's like, yeah, okay, I mean I do. Yes, there's
(35:41):
some truth to that, but also maybe what you want
is less complicated than that. When you really boil it down,
what is the thing that you actually want? And when
I think about this, you know, the two things that
I actually want are to grow our family and to
be in community with the people around us. That's it.
So yeah, for a while, it was like, I want
to turn the publishing industry on its head. I want
(36:01):
to help, you know, one hundred thousand authors. I want
to be a New York Times bestselling author. I want
to have a ten million dollar business. I want to
have all these employees. And I don't want any of
that anymore. I mean, oddly I shouldn't say I don't
want any of that anymore. That list of things to
want feels like a foreign list to me. The version
of me that wrote that list. I can understand her,
(36:24):
I can still sense her and feel her. She's still here,
but I have evolved to somebody new, to somebody different.
And if I don't ever get on the New York
Times list. I'm going to be just fine. That's not
going to break my heart. What will break my heart
is if I don't get to add more kids to
our family, and that I may get to and I
may not get to, and that's just going to be
the way that it is. And I live in that uncertainty,
(36:45):
and I live with that open handedness, and I live
holding that space and community, you know. I mean, it's
like I want to bring people together in community around us.
I want to be in community with my family, with
our broader family. I have my mother in law who
lives here, my brother in law who lives here. That's
they're part of our community, and then our neighbors and
our friends, and I want to be together in community
(37:07):
with those people. And that's sometimes easier said than done.
I mean, being in community is messy and complicated and
confusing and can also speaking of things that can break
your heart, like living in true community will absolutely shatter
your heart. So if only for the reason that I mean,
take the conflict out of it, which is an inevitable
part of a relationship, but take conflict out of it.
(37:28):
Being in community breaks your heart because you watch the
people who are family to you get broken over losing
something or losing someone, or not getting what they wanted
or wished for or worked for, over the unfairness of
the world that we live in. Like, just open your eyes.
It doesn't take much to have your heart broken in
this world that we're living in. So in conclusion, In conclusion,
(37:54):
what I'm saying is this liminal space between knowing what
you want but not having it yet is a limit
space that each of us will live in. It is
an essential part of the human experience. There's no getting
around it. You can live in denial if you want,
and that is a weird way to sort of get
around it. But living in denial is also living without joy.
You know, living without heartbreak is also living without bliss.
(38:17):
And so living in this liminal space is an inevitable
part of being human and the way that we start
to sink a little deeper into that as first by
admitting what do I want and also admitting to ourselves
that we do not have total control over getting that thing.
Can you admit to yourself what you want and not
go into an immediate spiral about the step by step
(38:41):
plan that you need to put in place to get
that thing. Can you admit to yourself what you want
and just let it be what you want? Just let
the desire be with you for a moment. Can you
just sit with it for just a minute and not
immediately have to try to access it or actualize it.
I think that's and this is where the birth metaphor
(39:03):
really comes in. It's like you just follow your bliss
and then you wait, and that's pretty much all you
can do. And I speak from experience, personal experience, and
also watching all these people having fertility struggles around me,
Like you can do all the things, you can be
on all the supplements, you can quit, all the foods,
you can drink no coffee, you can time it perfectly,
(39:24):
you can test on all the strips and all the
you can do everything right, and you can still not
get pregnant. And you also can be sixteen and you know,
have a one night stand and get pregnant. So make
it makes sense. It does not make sense, and it's
not always logical. I'm not saying that there aren't actions
that you can take, but I'm asking you, do you
(39:44):
have the strength to admit to yourself what you want
and then to just sit with the desire for a
minute and let the desire be your teacher. That's the
question I have for you to end today's episode, and
I'll be back next week with another episode of the
Write Your Story Podcast. Thanks for being here.
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 get the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold? It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
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 what to do when you
don't get what you want. This is a topic that
is feeling personal to me right now because if you listen,
you know all of this already. But the last handful
of years for me have been filled with lots of
(00:50):
disappointment around wanting things and then not getting exactly what
I want. And maybe on the face of it, it's
like there are many times in life when we just
simply don't get what we want. I think that's true,
obviously and simple and can be as simple as that.
And also this conversation in our current culture around visualization, manifestation,
(01:11):
positive thinking, the idea that you can manifest something out
of nothing. There is some truth to that, or that
wouldn't be even appealing to us. I think there is
validity to that conversation and to that idea. And this
is why it's so compelling to us, because we intuitively
understand that we are creative beings and we are here
to make something, to bring something out of the darkness,
(01:35):
to take chaos and organize it and make it not chaos.
So intuitively, as human beings, we understand that that's our
work here, that's our creative work, that's what we came
here to do. And then also I think as human
beings who are living and breathing and moving in the world,
we recognize that there are plenty of things that we
want that we simply don't get or don't know how
(01:55):
to get. And there's not any measure of positive thinking
or visualization or vision boards or dreaming or meditation or
anything that can bring into actuality the thing that we
are dreaming of. And sometimes I think we get answers
for that we understand, oh, that thing I wanted. Like,
here's a great example. I was married before my current
(02:18):
husband and my ex husband and I really wanted to
have a baby, or at least I really wanted to
have a baby, and we were actively trying to have
a baby for almost two years and never were able
to get pregnant, and at the time that felt like
this huge heartbreak, and then later I was able to
look back and go like, thank God that we did
not get pregnant, because I would be tied to this
individual for the rest of my life. And obviously, again
(02:41):
this is complicated, and this is where the conversation becomes sticky,
because if we had become pregnant, if there was a
child in this world from that relationship, and I was
tied to this person forever, there would also be meaning
and purpose inside of that. So this is where the
idea of manifestation for me breaks down. But I'll tell
you the reason why I wanted to even address this
conversation many reasons, but one is because my five year
(03:02):
old daughter asked me recently, how come sometimes God doesn't
give us what we want? Sometimes we ask her, she says,
because my daughter calls God, she which I love. Sometimes
we ask God for something and she doesn't give us
what we want. How come that is, mom? And I
didn't really have a great answer for her. I thought
it was such a beautiful question, and I really affirmed
her curiosity I just thought, like, it's amazing that she's
(03:23):
even thinking about that or asking that, wondering that. But
the fact of the matter is, I don't have a
great answer for her. I don't understand why sometimes we
want things that we are not able to actualize in
this lifetime. And I'm actively in a season of life
right now where this dream of this business that Matt
and I wanted to create started in twenty twenty and
(03:44):
was on this amazing trajectory for a period of time,
and it felt like so risky and uncertain and exciting,
and yet we were being affirmed along the way. So
we were on this journey that was following this positive trajectory,
and then everything fell part in twenty twenty four. So
I've been grieving the loss of that dream for over
a year, and it is sad that we didn't get
(04:05):
what we want in that case. And I'm coming to
the point in the story where I'm able to begin
to look back at it and recognize it as protection,
protection that I don't understand yet, similar to not being
able to get pregnant in my first marriage, I couldn't
understand in the moment that this was actually a great
thing that my patience was going to pay off and
(04:25):
that I was going to end up with a life
that was more beautiful and even more simple than I
could imagine. And that's beginning to happen for me with
this story. As the timeline moves forward, it's like, Oh,
I'm starting to see how maybe that thing that we
thought we wanted so desperately and we put everything on
the line for it wasn't actually the thing, and that's
why we weren't able to bring it to fruition. But
(04:47):
it's really difficult to see that in the moment. It's
much easier to see it later. So that part of
my story is starting to look different or I'm starting
to look at it through a different lens. But the
part of my story that I'm actively in is this
pregnancy journey or fertility journey, which I don't know if
you would really consider a fertility journey because I'm not
really having infertility issues. I guess I don't know. Maybe
(05:09):
miscarriage is an infertility issue. I'm not having issues getting pregnant.
I'm having issues staying pregnant, is what I'm trying to say.
So I'm really wanting to add another child to our family. Actually, weirdly,
in my ideal world, we would add two more children
to our family. But I'm forty two years old. The
window is rapidly closing for me to be able to
carry a child. It's like I one is going to
have to just do it. I've got time for one
(05:30):
more pregnancy and maybe we'll get some like miraculous twins
or something. So I'm holding space for this. I'm excited
about it. I'm really anticipating and hopeful and really wanting
to have another baby. And yet I have been pregnant
multiple times and have not been able to sustain the pregnancy.
So it's another one of those things in my life
that I'm asking myself this question, how come you can
(05:54):
not just want something? How come you can feel something,
sense something into it, something, touch into something, really believe
in the deepest part of who you are that this
thing is for you and is coming to you and
is meant for you, and yet also live in the
uncertainty of not knowing if it will come. I think,
(06:18):
like I've talked about before, and like I know I
mentioned on last week's episode, living an uncertainty means admitting
we don't know what's going to happen, and so I
think it's naive of us to say in the vein
of positive thinking, like you know, I know for sure,
for sure that this thing is coming for me, because
I've visualized it. I do have a really hopeful expectancy
(06:40):
that this thing that I want is coming for me,
and that I'm being asked to be patient and wait
for it. But I don't know that for sure. I
have to hold that loosely. I have to hold it
with an open hand. And I think this is something
that we're all doing in one way or the other
in our lives. And for me right now, it's the pregnancy.
That's the picture of what I'm hoping for or wanting.
But for you it's probably something different. Maybe for you
(07:01):
it's a partner, or maybe for you it's also a pregnancy,
or maybe for you it's a job or a new
place that you want to live, or a business that
you want to start, or a financial goal that you
want to hit or whatever. It is something that you
can taste, you can touch, you can you know, you
can't physically touch it yet, but you can touch it
into you can into it and feel that it's there
(07:22):
for you, that you desire it, that you want it,
that it's on the horizon, and you have a sense
that it's meant for you. And yet no matter what
you do, no matter how you twist yourself into notots,
no matter what you try, maybe you've tried everything. Maybe
it's like, you know, here's another great example is if
you're dealing with a health issue, like a chronic pain
or chronic kind of health issue like inflammation or food
(07:45):
allergies or something like that, and you're trying to troubleshoot
this thing, and you've hired every doctor, and you've tried
everything everyone has mentioned, and you've gone on every supplement,
and you've been to the acupuncturist and you've tried the
alternative stuff, and you've gone to the emergency room and everything.
You've changed your diet, you've cut this out, you've cut
that out, you've stopped using the microwave. You know, you've
(08:07):
done all of this stuff, and then you're like, what
the heck? Like, I've done everything that a person could
possibly do. I'm coming at this with the most earnestness possible,
and yet I still can't seem to bring this thing
into form. And that feeling can be extremely frustrating. So
I want to talk about this today because I realized
(08:27):
recently that my ideas about this have changed quite a
bit over the years, and yet changed quite a bit
and also come full circle back to sort of the
same place, meaning when I wrote Packing Light, which came
out in twenty thirteen, so that book is more than
ten years old now. When that book came out, that
book really is about learning to tap into your own desire,
(08:50):
to tap into your own sense of I want, and
to take steps toward actualizing what you want. That really
is what the book is about. It's coming up age story.
It's a memoir about how I quit my job at
the time to go on this road trip around the
country with a friend of mine. She really wanted to
be a musician. I wanted to be an author. We
(09:11):
were like, you know, there's no time like the present.
If we don't do this now, we'll never be able
to do this, And so we both quote our full
time jobs. We sold almost everything that we owned. We
packed what was left into a little super outback that
was my car, and we drove that car all over
the country to the lower forty eight and then eventually
we made it to Alaska and Hawaii, not driving obviously,
but we made it to all fifty states on this
(09:33):
tour where she played her music. I acted as I
guess her, like pseudo manager. We were blogging and vlogging
while we were going, posting on Facebook, posting on social media,
keeping a blog. People were following us. And the book
is me telling the story of how a how terrifying
it was for me to break the mold and break
out of the box of what I thought was expected
(09:54):
of me and to step out and do this quote
unquote different thing. So that's part of the stories about
but it's the hero. The transformation of the hero is
really going from someone who didn't really know what she
wanted with her life to someone who was on a
mission to achieve something that was really important to her.
And I think that was an important transformation at the time.
(10:15):
It's a very youthful transformation. And I'll talk about how
this comes back full circle, but at the time it
was this extremely youthful transformation and also pertinent to the
environment that I was born into and that I grew
up in, like the environment that I started out in,
because from Joseph Campbell's perspective, you have the environment that
(10:37):
the hero starts out in, and then you have the
new world that they step into after the inciting incident.
So for me, the inciting incident was my French aireas like, hey,
do you want to go on this trip with me?
I'm going to quit my job. I'm gonna leave everything behind,
I'm going to sell all my stuff, I'm going to
move out of my apartment. I'm going to leave everything
that I know. I'm going to go on this tour.
And I want to busk on the side of the
(10:57):
road and just make money as I go and fill
my gas tank. And I think it could be so
fun to go together, and you could blog along the way,
and you could write your book, and I could become
a musician and you could become an author, and this
would be so great. And so she's the guide who
comes into my life, who inspires me to do something different,
something outside of the box, something I hadn't considered before,
and I would absolutely never have done if it wasn't
(11:19):
for her. So she comes in and breaks the mold
and pushes me off the cliff, off of the ordinary world,
as Joseph Campbell calls it, into this new world, this
brand new world that I had not experienced before, where
there's way more uncertainty, where things are constantly changing, where
I have no control over my environment, where I don't
know where our next paycheck is coming from, where I
(11:41):
don't have the approval of my parents. Because even though
my parents were somewhat supportive, I think they thought, I know,
they thought that what I was doing was a little
bit crazy, and I know my mom was really worried
and concerned about me, and I talk about this in
the book, but there's a point where our car breaks
down and we go to the dealership and literally trade
in the broken car for a new car. And I
(12:01):
remember my dad saying to me, like, whatever you do,
do not buy a new car. Just whatever you do,
however you choose to solve this problem, don't let that
be the solve. And I'm literally like defying his advice
in real time, which was such an important moment of
actualization for me. I mean, I was twenty three years
old when this was happening. I think I was twenty
six when I was writing the book. I guess one
(12:21):
of the benefits of that protective bubble is that you
are protected. You know it is a safe ish environment,
and that's a whole rabbit trail that I don't want
to go down. But there is a sense of safety
to that protective bubble. But the drawback to the protective
bubble is that things are kind of dictated for you,
and everything is extremely predictable and the rules are pretty
(12:42):
black and white, and the ground you stand on is
not at all shaky and so on that hand. On
one hand, it can feel like, oh, I feel really sturdy.
I feel so secure. I never wonder about look, what's right,
what's wrong. I never wonder about what's going to happen
to me when I die. I don't have any of
these like big aching questions that I have to answer.
(13:03):
So I feel really sturdy and secure. And yet I
don't really have a strong sense of self because I'm
not required to like go inside and ask myself, what
do I think about things? How do I feel about things?
What's really important to me? What am I passionate about?
And I've never even really given the opportunity to like
go after something and fall flat on my face, which
is this interesting. I feel like I'm like having an
(13:25):
epiphany as I'm saying this out loud, but I'll keep going.
I feel like I'm like having an epiphany as I'm
saying this out loud, but I'll keep going. So inside
of that protective bubble, you're really protected from feeling pain,
(13:45):
You're protected from feeling you know, heartbreak, You're protected from
all kinds of stuff. But you're also, in that sense protected.
You're insulated from the human experience. You're insulated from feeling passion,
You're insulated from feeling joy, from bliss, you know, from
all of those things. And that's the environment that I
grew up in. So for me, I know it might
not seem like a big deal, but I'm setting this
(14:07):
up to say that for me to make a choice
that went against what I assumed my parents wanted for me,
what everybody else around me was doing what I assumed
was the quote unquote right choice, for me to make
that choice was an absolutely terrifying prospect. So when Sharea
originally asked me to go on this trip, I was
(14:30):
so instantly excited about it that my answer was yes.
But if you read the book, you'll see that in
the first couple of chapters my yes wavered pretty significantly
because I started having all this fear come in. So
at one point I have this big turning point moment
in the book where I have this encounter with God
and this is so wild, like how much I mean,
it's weird, like how much my views have changed? And
(14:52):
also not at all, But I have this encounter with
God in the book where I feel like God says
to me, you don't have to go. You do know
you don't have to go on this trip, and I'm like,
I don't have to go, and the question is like, okay,
well do you want to go? And it was this
epiphany of realizing that it wasn't about what was right
(15:12):
or what I had to do or what I should do.
It was way more about touching into what do I want?
What is important to me? What matters to me? What
are my values? What am I passionate about? What do
I desire? What do you freaking want? Ali? And Sharia
asks me that, and I felt God asking me that,
and I felt this huge invitation and a push off
the cliff in that season of my life in that
(15:34):
book to go like what do you want? What matters
to you, what's important to you? And those were things
that I had not really considered inside of that environment.
I don't know if that's something that you resonate with.
Maybe you grew up in a different kind of environment
than I did. But for me, it was just like
I hadn't even given myself permission at twenty something years
old to consider what did I want? And so tapping
(15:55):
into what I wanted was the answer to all the
questions like what was the solution to all my problems?
It was, you know, terrifying, to say the least. It
was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
But allowing myself to wake up what I wanted was
the beginning of adulthood for me and the beginning of
the rest of my life. So, on the one hand,
(16:18):
what you want, I believe, and I still believe this
I've come full circle is absolutely sacred. What you want
is so sacred that it is your direct connection, your
direct line of connection to your soul, to who you
really are in truth, you know, the highest version of you,
to what you came here to do, to your purpose,
(16:39):
to your absolute essence. It is your connection to yourself.
And if you lived in an environment as a child,
or still do, maybe live in an environment where what
you want isn't seen as important or doesn't really matter,
or no one asks you that question, or you don't
get to explore that very often. I really do think
that you're shut off to yourself. And so what you
(16:59):
want is it's so important that it is absolutely sacred.
It's in a way on the one hand, it's in
a way kind of gospel. It's like so valuable that
a price tide cannot be put on it. And here's
the contradiction, here's the paradox that I think we live in.
(17:20):
Because I also want to in a way title this
episode what you want is meaningless because the journey that
I have been on in the last five years, I
think this is one of the takeaways for me, that
what you want is sacred and also meaningless. That in
the one sense, what you want is your direct connection
to yourself, to your soul, to the truest essence of you.
(17:43):
And on the other hand, what you want doesn't matter.
What you want maybe something you never get here in
the physical form. It's extremely possible that what you want
is something that you will never get. And so the
tension that I'm living in, the tension that I think
we live in, that I don't have an answer to yet,
is what the hell? Like, like, what the actual f?
(18:07):
You know, I won't say the word because we'd have
to bleep it out on this episode, but like, seriously,
what the f that we live in this tension of
the most important thing that you can do is to
figure out what you want? Like, what do you want
to bring into this world? What do you want to contribute?
What do you want to make while you're here? What's
the legacy that you want to leave behind? What matters
to you more than anything else matters to you? Oh
(18:29):
and by the way, after you figure that out, you
may just have to live an endless want of that
thing forever. It feels like the cruelest joke. And because
I'm in this fertility space, my own personal fertility space,
and I'm hoping to be pregnant again, I'm scrolling on
Instagram and I'm talking with people, and I just you
(18:52):
know how this happens in life that a your brain
is like hyper attuned to other people who are talking
about the subject. And also the Instagram al go them
likes to see what you pay attention to and listen
to what you talk about and feed you more of
that so I'm seeing like endless amounts of women talk
about fertility and take pregnancy tests and find out they're
pregnant for the first time after years of waiting, and
(19:14):
also women find out that they're not pregnant, or that
they've had losses, they've had like late stage losses, or
they've had a still birth, or I'm seeing a lot
of this content because I'm in this space and I'm
consuming so much of it. And also I have people
in my real world who are talking to me about
these things and are experiencing these things. And it's heartbreaking
(19:36):
to think that we live in a world where you
could want something so innocent, so precious, so sacred, so important,
so pure, like the purity of wanting a child, or
wanting a partner even you know, or wanting yeah, like
(19:56):
financial stability of financial independence, the purity of wanting like
a job where you feel like you're making a positive contribution.
These desires that we have are so pure. I really
do believe that they are the purest part of ourselves
leaking out. And it feels at points almost like a
(20:17):
cruelty that you could have access to these desires and
not have access to the solution to the desire. And
yet one of the things that I'm learning as I
move through this time is that that liminal space between
the wanting and the getting is also magic. It's so sacred,
(20:39):
like this space between the wanting and the getting is
where compassion is born. You know. I will be sitting
in bed at night, sometimes scrolling on Instagram longer than
I would like to admit, watching total strangers take pregnancy
tests and, like I said, either find out that they
still aren't pregnant or find out that they're pregnant for
the first time after a loss or something like that,
(21:00):
and I will be in tears, and my husband will
look over and he's like, are you crying for a
total stranger right now? And I'm like, yes, yes, i am.
I feel deeply connected to these people who I don't
know and will probably never know in real life, and
yet I feel connected to them because I feel connected
to what it feels like to have that pure longing
(21:25):
and to not have control over how or if or
when the longing will be met. And someone recently said
this to me about pregnancy and longing and waiting and
infertility and all of these subjects that really stuck with me,
and it's something that I think applies outside of that context,
which is this idea that basically, using your intuition, this
(21:47):
like mother's intuition that we have, you can tap into
the feeling of connecting to that soul that wants to
come in. And I've had this experience with each of
my kids. Actually, I knew my kids' names before I
even knew I was pregnant with any of them. So
my daughter, her name came to me two days before
I found out I was pregnant, and then my son, Charlie,
(22:09):
his name came to me months before I knew I
was pregnant with him. It was like their little way
of telling me, this is my name, and it's just
like their name would come to me and I would
just be like, that's that's the baby, and just a
crazy experience of a mother being tapped in and being
able to sense this little being on the other side.
So this person basically was saying to me, like, you
can connect to that little soul or that little being
(22:33):
who is thinking about coming in or thinking, yeah, about
coming to earth, and like joining this physical space, and
whether or not that being comes into the physical it
doesn't make them any less real. And I know that's
like simple, but it's also really not simple and not
(22:53):
something that we think about that often. I think when
we talk about manifestation as a culture, we have this
idea that manifestation is as black and white, as like
I want a Mercedes, I want a black Mercedes. I'm
stealing this example from Mary and Williamson because so perfect.
But she's like, you want a black Mercedes. And you
say to yourself, black Mercedes, black Mercedes, black Mercedes, black Mercedes,
(23:14):
over and over again, and you think positive about your
black Mercedes, and you visualize your black Mercedes, and then
you finally get your black Mercedes. And she says that
may work much of the time, but so what's the point.
So now you have a black Mercedes, and what's the point.
And that has stuck with me a lot, because it's
like you can bring something out of nothing into existence,
you can manifest it into existence, which is what manifestation means.
(23:36):
But what's the point if it's just you know, repeating
like a million dollars, a million dollars, a million dollars,
it shows up in your bank account. I think we
have to dig a little bit deeper and ask ourselves, like,
what is the thing that we're really wanting to create? Like,
what's the legacy we're wanting to leave? What am I
wanting to be known for? What did I come here
to do? And our souls know that more than our
(23:58):
minds do. And so sometimes we get stuck and our
minds thinking, Okay, if I can't get pregned, or if
I don't I ovulate on this date, and I have,
you know, this little window, and I've got to take
the test, and then this happens, and then I got
to wait this many days, and you know, you get
stuck in your mind trying to coordinate and trying to
plan and trying to control a situation that is utterly uncontrollable,
(24:20):
and you lose sight of the fact that this thing
that you sense and feel and know to be true
is true, whether it comes into physical form or not.
And that sounds ridiculous when you think of it, like
a black Mercedes, because the black Mercedes is meaningless. It's like, yeah,
I mean, black Mercedes exists out there, whether or not
(24:43):
it exists in my driveway. Yeah, because it's kinda it does.
It's it's just kind of pointless, like the metaphor breaks down.
But when I tell you like the baby that you want,
or the partner that you want, the love that you
want in your life, the thing that you are craving,
that contribution that you want to make, that thing that
you want to create, the creativity that you want to
(25:04):
bring into your life, it exists. Whether that thing ever
comes into physical form or not. It is as true
today as it was yesterday, as it was ten years ago,
as it will be in fifty years from now. It's true.
It's true. It's true. What you're sensing is real. It's
just not tangible. It's not in physical form just yet.
(25:36):
I think with manifestation, we can put this incredible pressure
on ourselves that it's our responsibility to make sure something
happens in a certain way. And that's control, that's not creativity.
And maybe that's what I'm getting at. Maybe that's the
main message of this, that control and creativity are at
odds with one another and cannot coexist together. Control and
(25:56):
creativity are two opposite things, and creativity is about creating
something out of nothing. And I think I said this
on last week's episode, but I was talking about what
an amazing metaphor giving birth or pregnancy and birth are
for this idea of creating something out of nothing, that
when we just do what we would have done otherwise,
(26:17):
because it is because of passion, because of desire, because
of interest, because of curiosity, when we just do what
we would have done otherwise, things are created and there's
really not that much that we can contribute to it
other than just following our bliss. As Joseph Campbell says,
(26:37):
you know, and I think this phrase follow your bliss
gets misinterpreted, and definitely in Christianity it was for me
growing up, follow your bliss was seen as like a
really dangerous thing to do, because the heart is wicked
above all things. But the more that I have sat
with this phrase, the more I'm like, yeah, really, you know,
following your desire, following your passion, following your playful is,
(27:00):
following your creativity is the path to getting everything that
you want. And I just think that what we want
can sometimes get distorted or disturbed or twisted into something different.
I'll share this last example before wrapping up. But this
project that Matt and I ventured into in the last
(27:21):
five years was a massive undertaking, and a lot of
people told us that it wasn't going to work, and
we still did it, you know, maybe kind of naively,
but we both really believed, with deep, deep conviction that
it was going to work. And now that we're on
the other side of it, now that the whole thing
has fallen apart, we can look back and point to various,
(27:42):
you know, like turns on the journey where we made
decisions that maybe contributed to the downfall of the project,
or where other people did things that it's like, oh gosh,
like that feels so unfair that that happened that way
because that person made a decision that probably contributed to
the downfall of the project. And also moments like a
(28:03):
crossroads moments a couple of different moments that were crossroads
where we could have gone one way and instead we
chose to go the other way. And I think Matt
and I would both agree to say that there were
different ways along the journey where we really lost our way,
like we lost the thing we wanted. We had such
conviction that it was going to work, that we were
(28:25):
being called to do this, like I was having dreams,
like when I tell you like that, I would wake
up and be like I was visited in a dream
by an angel who told me that, you know, like X,
Y and Z these messages for the project. It was
such an insane sense of being pulled in this direction
(28:47):
with certainty and fear, for sure, but also like you know,
an excitement and a hopefulness and a desire and a
curiosity and a passion about what we were doing. And
yet very points along the way, I think the vision
got quite twisted because it was just like, well, if
you want this thing to work, it's going to have
to kind of be this way. And so we were
(29:09):
just like, okay, well, we don't know, we've never done
anything like this before, so sure, we'll do it that way.
And slowly, over time what we were doing became something
different than what the original vision was, which can sometimes
be fine, but I think in our case, slowly but
surely along the way, we really lost. We lost ourselves,
We lost our souls, We lost our souls, the essence
(29:32):
of why we had wanted to come on this journey
in the first place, and the essence of what we
were trying to create. So in that way, the whole
thing falling apart is a grace because it means that
you know, now we still have an opportunity to create
the original thing that we wanted to create, and now
we have all this experience that we can bring to
the table with us. But it's even about more than
just that, because it's like, you know, I think we
(29:54):
all want to say, well, this is the reason why
that happened because of X, Y, and Z, and I
think sometimes that the reason for heartbreak is just that
heartbreak is part of the human experience too, And so
I've been sitting with that a lot that you know,
there's like, it works when you think about the project
to say, well, one of the reasons this didn't work
out is because you know, some of the decisions that
(30:16):
we made really distorted what we were trying to make,
and so we were protected from building something that we
wouldn't have liked anyway. So that works when you apply
that to the project, But what about when you apply
that to someone who wants to have a baby and
has a still birth, or someone who wants to have
a baby and can't get pregnant or something like that.
It just doesn't translate. I think sometimes the reason for
heartbreak is because heartbreak is part of the human experience,
(30:38):
and heartbreak is how our hearts become soft enough to
be compassionate to others around us, and how our heartbreak
can be our great awakening too, And so there doesn't
have to be a reason why the thing happened other
than just that this is part of what it means
to be human. And I think for us that's a
big piece of why we didn't get what we want
(30:58):
when it came down to this project. You can look
at the practicals of like, well, this happened, and that happened,
and this is why the deal fell apart and whatever.
But also I think part of why we were we
felt so strongly that we wanted to make this thing
and then it didn't come to fruition is because that's
just part of life. And when I talk about that
(31:21):
kind of sheltered atmosphere of my upbringing, I was saying
how one of the perks of this is that it
is kind of a bubble. It makes you feel very
secure and protected and like nothing bad can ever happen
to you. But I think we do ourselves and our
kids a disservice by creating a world where they think
nothing bad can ever happen to them. Maybe on one
level that is important to do when kids are really little,
(31:41):
but at age appropriate ways. I think we have to
introduce this idea quite young that like, bad things are
going to happen to you in the world, that's just
the world that we live in. And when bad things
do happen to you, the heartbreaks and it becomes softer
on the other side. And for me, you know, avoiding
heartbreak only made me feel self righteous and a sense
(32:05):
of security that wasn't that was not real, and stepping
willingly openly into fear, like going on the road trip,
the fifty state road trip with Sharia. I was terrified
to do that, but I'm so glad I did it,
and my heart was broken a thousand times on that trip.
You know, I read the book, but or don't read it.
I haven't looked at the book in forever because I'm
(32:26):
my mind has changed about so many things since then.
I'm scared of what I put in that book. But
I know for sure that like my friendship with Sharia
shaped me in so many important ways. We fought on
that trip like I've never fought with a friend before,
and yet I would protect her like a sister. So
I mean, Shary and I broke each other's hearts. We
broke our own hearts. I broke up with a boyfriend
(32:46):
on the trip that I was very attached to and
at the time felt like the end of the actual world.
And we at the end of the book, there's well,
I don't know, I'll just give it away, I guess
because I'm telling you not to read the book. But
at the end of the book, there's a moment where
I realize I've come all this way and I've been
Sharia's support person. I've gone to every show, I've videotaped her,
(33:09):
I've been her cheerleader, I've gotten her water, I've you know,
like been her manager basically this whole time. And I've
never even written my own book, because that was the
thing I was most terrified of, was putting my voice
on paper. And she says to me, she gives me
another push. She's my guide in the story, and she
gives me another push at the end of the book
and just says, like, what is I make a comment
(33:30):
to her that I've supported her all this way and
that I don't feel that support reciprocally, and in the book,
she says, what am I supposed to support you doing?
You're not even writing your book, which maybe, on the
one hand, is a little bit of an aggressive thing
to say. But the fact of the matter is that
she was right. She was right, and that was another
way that my heart was broken at the end of
this that I realized that I had spent all of
(33:50):
my energy supporting her and hadn't actually believed in myself
enough to support my own creative efforts. And so you know,
that's the transformation. At the end of the book, I've
become person who's ready to step into my own creativity.
And even now that I'm saying this, I feel like
I'm so glad that I recorded this episode because I'm
learning so much even just talking about this. But I
(34:11):
think that there is a through line here of I
think the title of the episode is that what you
want is sacred and also doesn't matter, or what you
want is sacred and also meaningless. What you want is
so sacred it is your lifeline to who you are,
to what matters to you, to what you're here for,
to what you came to do. If you can be
really honest with yourself about what you want. The reason
(34:34):
I think we don't like to be honest with ourselves
about what we want is that we're terrified we won't
get it. And the fact of the matter is you
might not. You may not. You know. One of the
things that I have wanted since I can remember is
to be a New York Times bestselling author. And I
may never be a New York Times spusselling author. I'm
not saying I won't be. I'm just saying there is
uncertainty around this and it's something that I want but
(34:57):
that I don't know if I can have. And same
thing with having another child. This is something that I
want and I don't know if I can have, and
same thing with this thing that we wanted to build.
It's something that we wanted and who knows if we
will ever have it. So whatever it is for you
that you want is your direct access to who you
really are and to what you came here to do.
And yet, do you have the courage to really admit
to yourself what it is that you want? Like, if
(35:19):
you boil it all down, I'm sure that there's a
whole long list of things. Some of what we want
gets cultured into us. I think, you know, like all
the life coaches and influencers who are like dream bigger,
like whatever you think you want multiply at times ten
because the universe is abundant and it is available to you.
It's like, yeah, okay, I mean I do. Yes, there's
(35:41):
some truth to that, but also maybe what you want
is less complicated than that. When you really boil it down,
what is the thing that you actually want? And when
I think about this, you know, the two things that
I actually want are to grow our family and to
be in community with the people around us. That's it.
So yeah, for a while, it was like, I want
to turn the publishing industry on its head. I want
(36:01):
to help, you know, one hundred thousand authors. I want
to be a New York Times bestselling author. I want
to have a ten million dollar business. I want to
have all these employees. And I don't want any of
that anymore. I mean, oddly I shouldn't say I don't
want any of that anymore. That list of things to
want feels like a foreign list to me. The version
of me that wrote that list. I can understand her,
(36:24):
I can still sense her and feel her. She's still here,
but I have evolved to somebody new, to somebody different.
And if I don't ever get on the New York
Times list. I'm going to be just fine. That's not
going to break my heart. What will break my heart
is if I don't get to add more kids to
our family, and that I may get to and I
may not get to, and that's just going to be
the way that it is. And I live in that uncertainty,
(36:45):
and I live with that open handedness, and I live
holding that space and community, you know. I mean, it's
like I want to bring people together in community around us.
I want to be in community with my family, with
our broader family. I have my mother in law who
lives here, my brother in law who lives here. That's
they're part of our community, and then our neighbors and
our friends, and I want to be together in community
(37:07):
with those people. And that's sometimes easier said than done.
I mean, being in community is messy and complicated and
confusing and can also speaking of things that can break
your heart, like living in true community will absolutely shatter
your heart. So if only for the reason that I mean,
take the conflict out of it, which is an inevitable
part of a relationship, but take conflict out of it.
(37:28):
Being in community breaks your heart because you watch the
people who are family to you get broken over losing
something or losing someone, or not getting what they wanted
or wished for or worked for, over the unfairness of
the world that we live in. Like, just open your eyes.
It doesn't take much to have your heart broken in
this world that we're living in. So in conclusion, In conclusion,
(37:54):
what I'm saying is this liminal space between knowing what
you want but not having it yet is a limit
space that each of us will live in. It is
an essential part of the human experience. There's no getting
around it. You can live in denial if you want,
and that is a weird way to sort of get
around it. But living in denial is also living without joy.
You know, living without heartbreak is also living without bliss.
(38:17):
And so living in this liminal space is an inevitable
part of being human and the way that we start
to sink a little deeper into that as first by
admitting what do I want and also admitting to ourselves
that we do not have total control over getting that thing.
Can you admit to yourself what you want and not
go into an immediate spiral about the step by step
(38:41):
plan that you need to put in place to get
that thing. Can you admit to yourself what you want
and just let it be what you want? Just let
the desire be with you for a moment. Can you
just sit with it for just a minute and not
immediately have to try to access it or actualize it.
I think that's and this is where the birth metaphor
(39:03):
really comes in. It's like you just follow your bliss
and then you wait, and that's pretty much all you
can do. And I speak from experience, personal experience, and
also watching all these people having fertility struggles around me,
Like you can do all the things, you can be
on all the supplements, you can quit, all the foods,
you can drink no coffee, you can time it perfectly,
(39:24):
you can test on all the strips and all the
you can do everything right, and you can still not
get pregnant. And you also can be sixteen and you know,
have a one night stand and get pregnant. So make
it makes sense. It does not make sense, and it's
not always logical. I'm not saying that there aren't actions
that you can take, but I'm asking you, do you
(39:44):
have the strength to admit to yourself what you want
and then to just sit with the desire for a
minute and let the desire be your teacher. That's the
question I have for you to end today's episode, and
I'll be back next week with another episode of the
Write Your Story Podcast. Thanks for being here.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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