Speaker 1: Fresh starts. Do you believe in fresh starts, Chris, I do.
Speaker 1: I've had multiple fresh starts in my life, and always
Speaker 1: for the better after I got through them. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: of us in recovery certainly believe in fresh starts because
Speaker 1: suddenly there's a day where it's like everything sort of changes. Right.
Speaker 1: Fourteen years ago for me was the last drink, So yeah,
Speaker 1: we can make big changes. I can also think back
Speaker 1: about seven years ago to kind of when I became
Speaker 1: a steady meditator and helping people find that fresh start
Speaker 1: and making those consistent, long term changes in their life
Speaker 1: is what I do in the one you feed Personal
Speaker 1: Transformation program. So if you're looking for a fresh start
Speaker 1: in go to Eric Zemmer dot coach slash application and
Speaker 1: sign up for a thirty minute call with me and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about whether I can help you or not.
Speaker 1: No pressure, no hard sales, just an opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: about you and your life and see if we're a fit,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure that you get some information that's
Speaker 1: helpful to you either way. That's Eric Zimmer dot coach
Speaker 1: slash application. The future is empty. I'm making it up
Speaker 1: as I go. I don't know what will happen. Probably
Speaker 1: there will be some plot twists, not all of them
Speaker 1: will be good. The past has told us that welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how their people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Maggie Smith, a poet
Speaker 1: whose work has been widely published, anthologized, and has appeared
Speaker 1: in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and the list goes on and on. She's also a Columbus,
Speaker 1: Ohio native, which we are very proud of. Today, Maggie
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss her new non poetry book, Keep Moving
Speaker 1: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change, and Maggie, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hi, thanks for having me. I am really
Speaker 1: happy to have you on. We're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about your book called Keep Moving Notes on Loss, Creativity
Speaker 1: and Change. But before we do that, we'll start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother
Speaker 1: talking to her grandson and she says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Mm hmm, I love that parable,
Speaker 1: you know. I was thinking about how when you feed something,
Speaker 1: it thrives. If you want to feed a fire, you
Speaker 1: give it oxygen. If you want to starve it, you
Speaker 1: take that oxygen source away, and when you feed something,
Speaker 1: it gets bigger and stronger. And I think, for many years,
Speaker 1: without realizing it, I was feeding my fear more than
Speaker 1: anything else, and it was, you know, sort of unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to me, getting bigger and stronger. I was giving it
Speaker 1: oxygen every day. And I call myself a recovering pessimist
Speaker 1: um because when I was going through probably the hardest
Speaker 1: year of my life, I decided to feed my hope instead,
Speaker 1: really just out of need just to function, I needed
Speaker 1: to feel something other than fear, and so I tried
Speaker 1: feeding that every day with small actions, and what surprised
Speaker 1: me was that it got bigger and stronger and sort
Speaker 1: of one out over the fear at least some days.
Speaker 1: You know, I think some days one wolf is maybe
Speaker 1: edging out the other one. It's not. It's not always
Speaker 1: a straight shot. Some hours I'm doing better than other hours.
Speaker 1: But what I really learned was it's about making conscious
Speaker 1: choices and and what you give your attention and energy too.
Speaker 1: And so I've really tried over the past couple of
Speaker 1: years to give more attention and energy to the things
Speaker 1: that are going right, into the places where I can
Speaker 1: make a positive change rather than allowing myself to sort
Speaker 1: of backslide into worry and um worst case scenario thinking,
Speaker 1: which is really easy to backslide into. And the more
Speaker 1: I focus on the good stuff, the more I notice it,
Speaker 1: the more it presents itself to me. Learning that about
Speaker 1: a daily practice For me, it was writing, you know,
Speaker 1: writing myself a little pep talk every day and focusing
Speaker 1: on something positive. That daily practice of feeding that positive
Speaker 1: part surprised me and how effective it was to spend
Speaker 1: time doing that, especially first thing in the morning every day,
Speaker 1: And it also alerted me to the fact that I
Speaker 1: hadn't been doing that and that the reason my fear
Speaker 1: was so big is that it was getting all the
Speaker 1: attention and talking the loudest and taking up all the
Speaker 1: all the air in the room. A lot of people
Speaker 1: ask like, well, how do you get from being someone
Speaker 1: who's afraid to being someone who's brave, Like it's just
Speaker 1: a switch that you can flip on or off. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's it at all. I think it's
Speaker 1: little things that you do on a daily basis based
Speaker 1: in awareness and trying to turn your attention toward something
Speaker 1: that maybe is feels unnatural, like optimism when you're depressed, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even that question assumes that we are one type of
Speaker 1: person or the other. I'm a brave person, I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of person, and we certainly have tendencies. But those tendencies,
Speaker 1: even outside of some genetic component, are simply the results
Speaker 1: of what has been fed up to that point, oh,
Speaker 1: completely consciously or unconsciously. You know. We we are simply
Speaker 1: just a result of constant causes and conditions. And so
Speaker 1: to even assume that I'm a brave person or I'm
Speaker 1: an afraid person is imputing a constancy that we may
Speaker 1: just not have. Yeah. Absolutely. And also, you need fear
Speaker 1: in order to be brave. I mean, if you didn't
Speaker 1: have any fear, you wouldn't need courage. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of handy like that. It actually it forces you
Speaker 1: to work that muscle. If you weren't scared, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a thing to overcome. The bravery would be kind
Speaker 1: of a moot, point yep. I want to come back
Speaker 1: to the recovering pessimist part and ask you a couple
Speaker 1: of questions about that, particularly as it relates to poetry.
Speaker 1: But before that, let's back up and just set the
Speaker 1: stage for this latest book. It's called Keep Moving, Notes
Speaker 1: on Loss, Creativity, and Change. And up until this book,
Speaker 1: you had been a poet, primarily been known for writing poems.
Speaker 1: And this book is not a poetry book. It's a
Speaker 1: collection of short, little daily things that you wrote yourself
Speaker 1: that you needed during a really difficult time in your life.
Speaker 1: Can you sort of set up that difficult time in
Speaker 1: your life just to give listeners a sense of kind
Speaker 1: of where this emerged from. Yeah, in the fall of
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, my marriage ended, and so after I
Speaker 1: don't know, eighteen and a half years and two kids,
Speaker 1: I was suddenly thinking, Okay, what now, what do I
Speaker 1: do now? And I was in a really dark place,
Speaker 1: and one day I just got up and I wrote
Speaker 1: myself a little note to self, And the first one
Speaker 1: was it was something about burning grief and anger as
Speaker 1: fuel and using it to get through the day. And
Speaker 1: that was where the phrase keep moving came from. It
Speaker 1: was from that fuel, just keep going. And it felt
Speaker 1: really good to just write that thing to myself. And
Speaker 1: I posted it on social media more as a way
Speaker 1: of sort of holding myself accountable for that intention, but
Speaker 1: also as a way of kind of coming clean because
Speaker 1: I think those of us on social media can agree
Speaker 1: probably that we maybe present ourselves at our best light there,
Speaker 1: and we have these sort of curated feeds, and we
Speaker 1: don't always align our online selves or public selves with
Speaker 1: what's happening inside our homes, you know, behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: And it felt important to me to align those two
Speaker 1: selves instead of just saying, hey, I published a poem
Speaker 1: on the internet. Meanwhile I'm barely getting out of bed
Speaker 1: at home. I just I needed to be one person
Speaker 1: in the world and that one person was having a
Speaker 1: hard time. But what I found was, as I did
Speaker 1: this as a daily practice, it was helping me. But
Speaker 1: I started hearing from other people on Twitter or on Instagram,
Speaker 1: or people if they knew me, would text me or
Speaker 1: email me and say, oh my gosh, I needed this today,
Speaker 1: or this thing that you wrote for yourself just got
Speaker 1: me through the last three hours, or I wish I
Speaker 1: had had some of these five years ago when I
Speaker 1: was going through my own worst year, and it was
Speaker 1: the strangest thing because I have never felt more alone
Speaker 1: than I did, and like those first few months when
Speaker 1: everything really just imploded, and then at the same time,
Speaker 1: I had never felt more like a greater sense of
Speaker 1: purpose and community because suddenly these things I was writing
Speaker 1: to myself meant something to other people who have their
Speaker 1: own stuff going on, whether it was a divorce or
Speaker 1: a job loss or I mean, this was pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: So you know, a lot of us are going through
Speaker 1: stuff right now, but a couple of years ago we
Speaker 1: were going through stuff too. You know, life. Life didn't
Speaker 1: just get hard, right, I got harder, but not hard.
Speaker 1: Reading the book definitely took me back to when my
Speaker 1: marriage imploded. My son was too, and I was so
Speaker 1: devastated when it happened, and reading it sort of took
Speaker 1: me back to that. And you know, I certainly thought
Speaker 1: your book would have been a lovely thing to have
Speaker 1: during that point. My lifeline was a book called When
Speaker 1: Things Fall Apart by Pema Children, which is such a
Speaker 1: powerful book about similar ideas, right, And I think the
Speaker 1: thing that I loved about what you're doing through that
Speaker 1: book is you're showing that like there is something brighter
Speaker 1: up ahead and that this loss in pain can transform
Speaker 1: you and at the same time, this really sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's both both. Those messages are really important because we
Speaker 1: just give people the boy this is gonna be You're
Speaker 1: you're growing. You know what a growing what a growth opportunity? Right,
Speaker 1: You're just like shut up, Right. But if, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, always see the pain, we get lost in it.
Speaker 1: And so I always feel like to give people both
Speaker 1: as a tricky balance, and I felt like the book
Speaker 1: did a nice job of that. Oh I'm so glad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you only focus on how
Speaker 1: wrong everything is, you lose your sort of hope and
Speaker 1: motivation to keep pressing forward. I mean, that's a really
Speaker 1: dangerous headspace to be in. You know, hope is imaginative,
Speaker 1: and if you can't picture the future being better than
Speaker 1: the present, if you can't picture yourself crawling out of
Speaker 1: the bottom of the dark, well then it's going to
Speaker 1: be really hard to take steps to do that. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, yes, I you know, have never
Speaker 1: really been much of a self help reader. And obviously
Speaker 1: I call myself a recovering pessimist, so I've never really
Speaker 1: been much of a Pollyanna or a particularly hopeful person.
Speaker 1: I was sort of the ere in my family, which
Speaker 1: is why all of the things that have happened in
Speaker 1: the past couple of years are kind of funny. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're an my family, but I think it's it's
Speaker 1: really important to be able to hold both. And it's
Speaker 1: not even a butt, it's an And like everything is
Speaker 1: terrible right now, and so much is suddenly possible because
Speaker 1: this thing just burnt down. And now it's not only
Speaker 1: that I have to make it something else. I get
Speaker 1: to make it something else, Like I get to make
Speaker 1: it up now, I get to build something from scratch.
Speaker 1: And sort of shifting my thinking from the half to
Speaker 1: to the get to has been part of what I've
Speaker 1: been working on. Personally, I do have to do it
Speaker 1: because no one else is going to do it for me.
Speaker 1: But also it does feel like an opportunity to maybe
Speaker 1: do some things differently that I wouldn't have thought to
Speaker 1: do when I, you know, met my ex husband in
Speaker 1: my early twenties. And what does your life look like
Speaker 1: when you build it in your early twenties, And then
Speaker 1: if you either get to or have to or forced
Speaker 1: to reevaluate in your forties or in your fifties or
Speaker 1: in your sixties, what might you do differently because you're
Speaker 1: not exactly the same person anymore either, And maybe some
Speaker 1: of the things that you would have gone along with
Speaker 1: just because of sheer momentum or inertia. Um, how are
Speaker 1: those two things related exactly? Maybe maybe you wouldn't do
Speaker 1: those things the same anymore as a person really interested
Speaker 1: in how people change, we do know that there are
Speaker 1: few things as fertile for true transformation than just basically
Speaker 1: heart wrecking loss. You know, you never wish it on anybody.
Speaker 1: You actually say that at some point in the book,
Speaker 1: like I never would have chosen any of this, but
Speaker 1: since it was chosen for me, I'm going to choose
Speaker 1: to create something out of it. And we do know
Speaker 1: that real loss and real pain can have a transformative
Speaker 1: effect like few other things, because the rest of the
Speaker 1: time life just kind of goes along and you steer
Speaker 1: the shift and make some changes. But that sort of
Speaker 1: when it all, as you say, burns down can be
Speaker 1: a really powerful time. But again, to say that has
Speaker 1: to be done with a certain degree of delicacy, because
Speaker 1: again nobody wants to hear it makes me think of
Speaker 1: an Ann Lamock quote, which is it's similar. She basically
Speaker 1: says something like yeah, yeah, yeah, let go and let
Speaker 1: god I know, I know, you know, and if I could,
Speaker 1: I would, And in the meantime, I want to stab
Speaker 1: you in the forehead with a fork, right or something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, it's that basic idea of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this is the growth opportunity, but zip it
Speaker 1: about it because I'm dying over here. Yeah. Like, I
Speaker 1: definitely went through a period where if one more person
Speaker 1: said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I was
Speaker 1: just like, I don't want to be stronger. I want
Speaker 1: to be happy. Yes, I just want to feel better.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be better. I don't want to grow.
Speaker 1: I just want to feel Okay, I just want to function.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, yeah, it's that's that's a hard pill
Speaker 1: to swallow for people, I think is that you know
Speaker 1: you're growing and this is going to be really good
Speaker 1: for you. And you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I tell people when they're going through their own stuff,
Speaker 1: because now people call me when they're going through things,
Speaker 1: I do say it gets better, because I do think
Speaker 1: that is fair to say it gets better, it gets easier,
Speaker 1: not because you get to heal. I have a real
Speaker 1: dubious relationship with the word healing. You know, not because
Speaker 1: you get to heal or set down the thing that
Speaker 1: you're carrying, but because you will learn how to carry
Speaker 1: it better and differently, and so it's not always going
Speaker 1: to hurt the way that it hurts right now. But
Speaker 1: you're not ever really going to be able to set
Speaker 1: it down either. And that's like the sort of tough love,
Speaker 1: realistic part I think of this book, which is like,
Speaker 1: you just learn how to carry it differently, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the word heal. That would be an
Speaker 1: interesting place to take it. Tell me why why you're
Speaker 1: dubious about it. I think healing it feels like a cure,
Speaker 1: like there's a cure for the human condition, which I
Speaker 1: don't think there is. And there's like a there's a
Speaker 1: Beckett quote that I'm not going to be able to
Speaker 1: think of exactly, but it's something like, you're on earth.
Speaker 1: There's no cure for that. There isn't. So if your
Speaker 1: heart is broken, if you lose a child, if your
Speaker 1: marriage ends that you thought was a forever thing, if
Speaker 1: the career you thought you would have, that you've been
Speaker 1: working for all your life is suddenly up in smoke,
Speaker 1: healing feels a little too neat to me. My friend,
Speaker 1: the poet Dana Levin said recently something about it's not
Speaker 1: about healing, it's about endurance, and that to me feels right,
Speaker 1: and that I think maybe speaks to that carrying like
Speaker 1: healing suggests that you get to set it down or
Speaker 1: that you don't feel it anymore, and I think endurance
Speaker 1: to me, suggests that you just learn how to live
Speaker 1: with it better, and that feels more realistic. To me.
Speaker 1: Healing sounds great. I mean, don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: am team healing. If that is on the menu, I'm
Speaker 1: ordering it. I don't necessarily believe that it's on the
Speaker 1: menu for me. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about that.
Speaker 1: I think I can look back at some things in
Speaker 1: my life. That marriage I told you, you know, falling
Speaker 1: apart happened when my son was two and a half
Speaker 1: and he's twenty two now, so twenty years ago, and
Speaker 1: I can largely say it doesn't feel like I'm still
Speaker 1: carrying it. But it's been a long time. That gives
Speaker 1: me so much hope though, because I'm only two years out,
Speaker 1: so that gives me hope that maybe my sense of
Speaker 1: healing is just the fact that I'm just not there yet.
Speaker 1: I've got to I've got the I need the endurance
Speaker 1: to get me through the years until that. Maybe I
Speaker 1: feel some of the healing, but some things, like the
Speaker 1: loss of a child, I would be willing to believe
Speaker 1: that never fully heals. It seems to me it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Before I did this, I had a solar energy company
Speaker 1: and it was my life and my hope and my dream.
Speaker 1: I had to put it down, and I thought I
Speaker 1: would be heartbroken about that forever, and I occasionally still
Speaker 1: feel a little something about it. But the podcast emerged
Speaker 1: out of it. But I think the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: healing is my experience with it has been the only
Speaker 1: hope to whatever extent healing is possible for me. It
Speaker 1: comes through being really fully willing to feel it. You know,
Speaker 1: the thing I did right when that relationship fell apart
Speaker 1: was I just fell apart. That's what I did, right.
Speaker 1: I allowed myself if I'd followed advice way longer than
Speaker 1: anybody would have said would be appropriate. I allowed myself
Speaker 1: to sob. You know, I wrote angry letter after angry
Speaker 1: letter after angry letter that I destroyed, like I really
Speaker 1: worked to like move those emotions through. I think that's
Speaker 1: so smart. That's the important part. And all this stuff
Speaker 1: is such a tricky balance. Back to this idea, we
Speaker 1: need both and we've got to feel the feelings. And
Speaker 1: sometimes if we just immediately jumped to, oh, it's going
Speaker 1: to be okay, we bypassed that process now in my case,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like in your case, that wasn't even
Speaker 1: an option. There wasn't even an option to bypass the feelings.
Speaker 1: Like if I could have, I'm almost certain I would have.
Speaker 1: If that had been on the menu, I would have
Speaker 1: ordered it, exactly. It's just not who I am as
Speaker 1: a person. I mean, that's the part of part of
Speaker 1: writing this book, you know. I remember writing this book
Speaker 1: and talking to a friend at a coffee shop as
Speaker 1: I was writing this book and thinking, what am I doing.
Speaker 1: I'm basically spending the this year of my life not
Speaker 1: only feeling all of this, but having to process it
Speaker 1: in words, and so even professionally, what was paying my
Speaker 1: bills was stewing in my own juices, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe this isn't the right thing. And then
Speaker 1: I realized, actually it was exactly the right thing, because
Speaker 1: I think if I had done something else for work,
Speaker 1: if I had had a regular day job, I could
Speaker 1: have thrown myself into that job and not processed all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. You know, when a relationship ends, especially
Speaker 1: along one, it's never just about that. It's about everything else.
Speaker 1: It's about who am I? And who were we? And
Speaker 1: what was all of this? And I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: the such big questions. And I think as painful as
Speaker 1: it was to really go in and feel everything, it
Speaker 1: was really useful. You know. Writing Keep Moving was really
Speaker 1: useful because it forced me to face myself every day
Speaker 1: and really I never let myself off the hook, and
Speaker 1: I probably, if not healed, I probably processed things better
Speaker 1: and got to a better place faster than if I
Speaker 1: had spent that time distracting myself from it. It makes
Speaker 1: me think a little bit. I often say to this
Speaker 1: to people. The second time I got sober, I was
Speaker 1: in a relationship with somebody who was a heavy drinker
Speaker 1: and it was around me all the time, and they
Speaker 1: don't recommend that. And if I could have changed it,
Speaker 1: I would have. But it built a strengthen me that
Speaker 1: you know, I was no longer like I had to
Speaker 1: go into that awkward duckling phase that all alcoholics go through.
Speaker 1: It's like suddenly I have to emerge into the world
Speaker 1: where people drink again. I'm like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of prepared for that. I want to read
Speaker 1: one of your little what do you call them? So
Speaker 1: I want to read a little one hey, to give
Speaker 1: listeners a sense of kind of what the book is
Speaker 1: made of. And it's one that speaks to what we've
Speaker 1: just been talking about. Stop calling your heart broken. Your
Speaker 1: heart works just fine. If you are feeling love, anger, gratitude, grief,
Speaker 1: it is because your heart is doing its work. Let
Speaker 1: it keep moving. There it is. Yeah, I remember describing
Speaker 1: myself as broken hearted over and over again, and and
Speaker 1: it just hit me one day that metaphor, because so
Speaker 1: much of the way we talk on a daily basis
Speaker 1: is metaphor. So much of the way we talk about
Speaker 1: grief and change, it's all like journey and struggle and battle.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all metaphor. And it occurred to me, like, actually,
Speaker 1: my heart's not broken. It's working. If it were broken,
Speaker 1: I might feel better because I wouldn't be feeling all
Speaker 1: of this pain. It's definitely working. Oh, it's in there.
Speaker 1: It's in there. Another thing that I wanted to touch on,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of just jumping around because the book
Speaker 1: is lots of these little notes, so I just extre
Speaker 1: acted a lot of them that spoke to me. But
Speaker 1: one that spoke to me and I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: is it says, remember when you would have been over
Speaker 1: the moon, thrilled to have just a fraction of your
Speaker 1: life as it is now? Look around you. It is enough.
Speaker 1: And I kind of wanted to talk about that because
Speaker 1: as I was reading your book, I was so struck
Speaker 1: by and I'm sure other people have commented upon this
Speaker 1: is the book starts with you in devastation and now
Speaker 1: your life, I mean, at least from a professional success.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I've talked about like you know,
Speaker 1: you're on the Today Show, You're interviewed by Maria Shreivor,
Speaker 1: like amazing things are happening. You know. It was so
Speaker 1: interesting to me to sort of be watching it from
Speaker 1: the end. I know it's not the end. Stories actually
Speaker 1: never end, but this vantage point looking back, but that
Speaker 1: idea of remember when you would have been over the moon,
Speaker 1: thrilled to have just a fraction of your life as
Speaker 1: it is now? Yeah, I mean even for sure now
Speaker 1: there are things that have happened related to this book
Speaker 1: that I never would have dreamed of But even then,
Speaker 1: even even at my worst, even at my lowest, I
Speaker 1: had two healthy kids, and you know, a house on
Speaker 1: a street with neighbors I love, and a freelance career
Speaker 1: that I found really fulfilling, and friends and family who
Speaker 1: loved me and had my back, um when I really
Speaker 1: needed them. So even then, even when I was at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the well, I needed to take the
Speaker 1: time and look around and say, Okay, actually, yes, this
Speaker 1: one piece which was a really big piece, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not minimizing it's a really big piece. This piece has
Speaker 1: now sort of like broken off the continent. It was
Speaker 1: sailing away. But look at everything that's still here. You know,
Speaker 1: after the book ends, I have to keep living. That's
Speaker 1: that's how books work. We don't get to stay in them.
Speaker 1: We have to keep living our lives. Um. So many
Speaker 1: wonderful things have happened because the book has touched people
Speaker 1: in ways I didn't think about is even being possible.
Speaker 1: You know, when you write a book for yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways I wrote the notes for myself, and
Speaker 1: then the essays in the book those I really think
Speaker 1: of as being for the reader, those essays are really
Speaker 1: for other people. And there to give context to the quotes,
Speaker 1: but also a way of me having a direct conversation
Speaker 1: with the reader about here are some things I've been through,
Speaker 1: and here are some of the ways I reframed those
Speaker 1: experiences for myself, and maybe thinking about them in this
Speaker 1: way will help you reframe something tough that you're going
Speaker 1: through too. I had somebody say to me yesterday about
Speaker 1: your book that she's dealing with something totally different. She
Speaker 1: was like, it's helping me with emptiness syndrome. That makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, actually, because I mean, all of
Speaker 1: our big life changes when when you really think about it,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is, they're all like identity issues, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you lose your job and so much of
Speaker 1: you was tied up and what you do for a living,
Speaker 1: the question is who am I? If your spouse leaves you?
Speaker 1: The question is like who am I? If your kids
Speaker 1: move out and you've been actively invested in parenting on
Speaker 1: a daily basis and that big part of your life
Speaker 1: is no longer there? Who am I? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think so much of this. Even though those things are
Speaker 1: all really different, they all put us in a place
Speaker 1: where we feel uncertain about the future and questioning like
Speaker 1: who we are, what our role is, what our usefulness is,
Speaker 1: what's coming for us. And frankly, this year with the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I think we're all feeling a lot of those feelings
Speaker 1: because none of us are living the same lives that
Speaker 1: we lived a year ago. And some of those changes
Speaker 1: have been positive, and some of those changes have been negative.
Speaker 1: And again it's the and that's right. Yeah, and back
Speaker 1: to that idea of when you were saying that even
Speaker 1: in the midst of what you were going through, it
Speaker 1: was helpful to look up at all the things you
Speaker 1: still did have. You know, it's and it's this part
Speaker 1: of my life is on fire and these other things
Speaker 1: are good, you know. I find that word is so useful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It really can bring together things that we tend to
Speaker 1: get locked into one or the other, or even I
Speaker 1: think we sometimes lean towards but as if they're in
Speaker 1: opposition and not just naturally occurring together. Um, like, it's
Speaker 1: not light but dark. It's light and dark like things
Speaker 1: things are are beautiful and terrible and lucky and unlucky
Speaker 1: at the same time and always will be. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody. Maybe I just know most the ordinary people,
Speaker 1: but I don't know anybody whose life isn't If we
Speaker 1: were to just sit down an inventory it that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't go good, good good. I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: I wish that wasn't the same. Oh good, good good.
Speaker 1: Oh nope, that's not so good. Like a cynical way
Speaker 1: of saying is it's it's always something, it's always something, right,
Speaker 1: But yes it is. There's always something that's not the
Speaker 1: way you want it to be. But that's life, right,
Speaker 1: that's the way it is. And so which perspective do
Speaker 1: we want to look at? And that even that statement
Speaker 1: is not either or it's really being able to look
Speaker 1: at both perspectives and to find a way to hold
Speaker 1: both of them at the same time. It makes me
Speaker 1: think that every time something good happens, however small, we
Speaker 1: should say there's always something exactly, which is a totally
Speaker 1: different tone, right, because like, there's always something it's annoyed
Speaker 1: because the bad thing crops up. But what if when
Speaker 1: you get to see a beautiful sunset, or your kid
Speaker 1: makes you something out of clay, or a friend you
Speaker 1: know text to you that you haven't heard from in
Speaker 1: a while, what if that is also always something? You know?
Speaker 1: The thing that when you're you're slipping a little bit
Speaker 1: in your day, something arrives to kind of like booy
Speaker 1: you a little. Yeah. I love that. I've recently started
Speaker 1: thinking about a little game called What's Right, which is
Speaker 1: just sort of the opposite like we you know what's wrong,
Speaker 1: we know what's wrong. If I ask anybody in the
Speaker 1: world what's wrong, they will be liked. But we could
Speaker 1: ask the exact opposite question, what's right. And when I
Speaker 1: sit down and start just sort of playing that game,
Speaker 1: I'm just overwhelmed by it. Like there's so much that's right, yep.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the thing, Like directing your attention toward
Speaker 1: that on a daily basis. The more right that you notice,
Speaker 1: I think, the more it creates. And it's sort of
Speaker 1: like this right begets right or hope begets hope kind
Speaker 1: of thing happens and it's snowballs. And I realized that
Speaker 1: probably sounds more Pollyanna than I wanted to you, but
Speaker 1: I honestly believe it that the more you turn your
Speaker 1: attention toward the things that you have to be thankful for,
Speaker 1: the more you'll realize what's actually there. And it's just
Speaker 1: so easy when you're in a dark place, to sort
Speaker 1: of get really claustrophobic and sort of myopic about what
Speaker 1: your life looks like, and just to focus obsessively on
Speaker 1: the things that aren't going well. And whatever whatever that
Speaker 1: thing is that's yelling the loudest is usually something negative,
Speaker 1: and then it colors everything. It just poisons everything. And
Speaker 1: so you could have a beautiful day, and if one
Speaker 1: negative phone call happens, or one you know, terrible interaction,
Speaker 1: or someone says something snarky, or you get some sort
Speaker 1: of professional disappointment, it just shuts everything else down into
Speaker 1: that gray scale space where before it was color. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have to work actively to
Speaker 1: not let that happen. I certainly know I need to
Speaker 1: work actively not to let that happen. And I'm pretty
Speaker 1: certain anybody who's a fan of the One You Feed
Speaker 1: podcast also needs to actively work to not let that happen.
Speaker 1: There are probably lots of people out there that don't
Speaker 1: need to do that. There seemed to be some people
Speaker 1: who are just born with a sunny disposition, but I
Speaker 1: am not one of them. I'm not either. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about an idea in the book that you write about
Speaker 1: called the future is empty. As Ben Buddhist, I always
Speaker 1: want to talk about emptiness so um, but but the
Speaker 1: future is empty. Yeah. So when my marriage ended, I
Speaker 1: suddenly felt like my future was wiped, you know, like
Speaker 1: a hard drive when suddenly like nothing's there anymore, and
Speaker 1: you're you're thinking, where are my documents? They were just here.
Speaker 1: It felt like I had this whole written, planned out novel,
Speaker 1: you know, story, and then suddenly it was just gone.
Speaker 1: I had lost it and I didn't know where it
Speaker 1: had gone and now what, And and thinking about it more,
Speaker 1: I realized that it actually had never been written past
Speaker 1: the moment I was living. And and that we I
Speaker 1: think the way that we use pessimism sometimes as self
Speaker 1: protection to sort of guard ourselves against getting our hopes up,
Speaker 1: I think we also use planning and projecting into the
Speaker 1: future as self protection. Because if we think our life
Speaker 1: as it stands will just continue this way. And if
Speaker 1: we can plan the vacation next year, and if we
Speaker 1: know what professional projects are coming up in one and
Speaker 1: if we you know, you know what our kids are
Speaker 1: going to be doing educationally next year, whatever the thing is,
Speaker 1: it gives us a feeling of control. But really, and
Speaker 1: if has taught us anything, it probably should be this.
Speaker 1: We don't actually get to say, well, the future is
Speaker 1: going to be like, um, it's all it's just empty
Speaker 1: and we're making it up as we Oh, and um,
Speaker 1: I feel often times like I'm sort of like paving
Speaker 1: a road, like one step ahead of the step I'm walking,
Speaker 1: and that's as far as I get to pave it.
Speaker 1: And if I try to trick myself into thinking I'm
Speaker 1: paving a mile ahead, I'm just not because that's just
Speaker 1: not how it's at least not how I think life works.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, it actually was really comforting to think, oh,
Speaker 1: it had always been empty. All of the stuff I
Speaker 1: had been thinking was for sure quote unquote for sure
Speaker 1: in the future really wasn't. And so my future now
Speaker 1: was no less empty than it was before. It just
Speaker 1: the difference really is that that person is certainly not
Speaker 1: going to be a part of it, or will be,
Speaker 1: but not in the way that I had expected, And
Speaker 1: now I have to make it up as I go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love that idea, just to think of the
Speaker 1: future is empty. And you go on to describe sort
Speaker 1: of what you just said, and then you said, is
Speaker 1: this freeing or heartbreaking? Comforting or terrifying, all of it
Speaker 1: all at once, and I think it's both. I often
Speaker 1: will do this with coaching clients, is you know, their
Speaker 1: brain will be telling them about how they're going to
Speaker 1: fail in the future, and I'm like, that voice doesn't know.
Speaker 1: If that voice knows, if you've got a future predictor
Speaker 1: in your head that actually knows, you should be betting
Speaker 1: on horses, not talking to me. Yeah, that's a moneymaker
Speaker 1: right there. But assuming you don't have that, that voice
Speaker 1: doesn't know. Yeah, none of these knows. We don't And
Speaker 1: that can be again, depending on the perspective we're taking,
Speaker 1: can be a really positive or comforting thought. But I
Speaker 1: think if we're locked into negative patterns, it can be
Speaker 1: really comforting with like, oh, yeah, the future is empty.
Speaker 1: It's not pre written, no, and as many things can
Speaker 1: go right as can go wrong. And that's what I
Speaker 1: have to keep reminding myself. The future is empty. I'm
Speaker 1: making it up as I go. I don't know what
Speaker 1: well happen. Probably there will be some plot twists, not
Speaker 1: all of them will be good. The past has told
Speaker 1: us that if we're learning from the past a sort
Speaker 1: of project into our future, all that we know is
Speaker 1: that more changes coming, because that's the one thing that
Speaker 1: we've been able to count on in the past. It's
Speaker 1: that we don't know. And again, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: going back to what we were talking about earlier, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have believed in my darkest moment that I would
Speaker 1: have been talking to you right now about this book,
Speaker 1: or that this book would have existed, or that I
Speaker 1: would have had any of the opportunities related um to
Speaker 1: this that have happened this year. I couldn't have foreseen
Speaker 1: the worst parts of my life happening. But I also
Speaker 1: couldn't have foreseen the best parts of my life happening.
Speaker 1: That's just not how it works. You know, I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book, like we don't get to flip
Speaker 1: to the end to see what happens. It would be
Speaker 1: joyless if we could. But it's not on the menu,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to my daughter about that, like we
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen next. But if we did,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be boring? I mean, isn't part of what
Speaker 1: makes life interesting free will a but be also just
Speaker 1: the adventure of it, which would be you know, the
Speaker 1: knowing everything is a kind of death. It's a killer
Speaker 1: of hope and imagination and creativity and motivation. If everything
Speaker 1: is preordained and set in stone for us and we're
Speaker 1: just sort of wrote going through the motions, you know,
Speaker 1: filling a role that's not authorship. That doesn't excite me.
Speaker 1: I'm want to go back to the recovering pessimism for
Speaker 1: a second, because my question is, as you've become less
Speaker 1: pessimistic more optimistic, has that crept into your poetry. I
Speaker 1: think it was creeping into my poetry before I even
Speaker 1: realized I was shifting. I mean, even even the poem
Speaker 1: good Bones, which people think of um, I think is
Speaker 1: being sort of dark. Um it does say the world
Speaker 1: is more than half terrible, ends on a hopeful note
Speaker 1: and a sort of call to action to make the
Speaker 1: world a more beautiful place. So I think I've always
Speaker 1: been sort of carrying the two things that sort of
Speaker 1: light in the dark, the hope and the despair. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I don't know that that my poetry
Speaker 1: is changed greatly becau as of this new outlet or
Speaker 1: this new outlook, because poetry is sort of a quiet,
Speaker 1: quiet place I go to, um and so I'm certainly
Speaker 1: not writing suddenly cheerful poems about you know, kittens and rainbows.
Speaker 1: I'm still using poetry for the most part to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with myself on paper. And often what drives
Speaker 1: me or motivates me to have a conversation with myself
Speaker 1: is puzzling over something or processing something, or sort of
Speaker 1: troubling over something or grappling with something. I think a
Speaker 1: poem of praise another way of saying, this is a
Speaker 1: poem of praise, as I think one of the most
Speaker 1: difficult poems to write, I would agree. I mean, I
Speaker 1: find the world has a shortage of songs and poems
Speaker 1: about being happier, or maybe it doesn't have a short
Speaker 1: a jum it as a shortage of good ones. I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not sure. I'm not sure which it is.
Speaker 1: But it's really hard. I mean, it's it's really tough
Speaker 1: to express that without it being sap. So I'm always
Speaker 1: on the lookout for them, sort of collect them in
Speaker 1: my own way, but they're harder to find. They are,
Speaker 1: I think, maybe, and at least for me. If I'm
Speaker 1: really enjoying a moment in my day, I don't feel
Speaker 1: the need to write about it. I just want to
Speaker 1: live it. Yes, if I'm puzzling over something or sort
Speaker 1: of grappling with something, that is what drives me to
Speaker 1: want to sort of work out and problem solve it
Speaker 1: a little bit on the page. That's a different thing.
Speaker 1: If I if I'm just having a good day, I
Speaker 1: don't even need to get out my pen. I just
Speaker 1: want to go have the good day. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I think that is definitely part of it. And I
Speaker 1: think it is interesting to to realize that because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people will read an artist whose
Speaker 1: work is primarily what you might call darker and assume
Speaker 1: that that's that person in their entirety, which is certainly
Speaker 1: not the case. It's just that that's where they go
Speaker 1: when they're in that place, and they have plenty, you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of other time that's not there. Yeah, it's always
Speaker 1: funny to me. You know, I haven't given a poetry
Speaker 1: reading in public and you know, a year, but it's
Speaker 1: always funny to me when I give poetry readings, because
Speaker 1: people will come up to me afterwards and say, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize you were so funny. And it's because humor
Speaker 1: doesn't really come out in my poems. Um and so
Speaker 1: when I give a reading, I feel sort of self
Speaker 1: conscious about reading, sort of like a melancholy poem or
Speaker 1: an introspective poem after melancholy or introspective poem, And so
Speaker 1: my readings tend to be sort of self deprecating stand
Speaker 1: up punctuated by poems that are slightly dark. That's what
Speaker 1: makes it fun for me. Um, but I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's jarring for people who expect you in your lived
Speaker 1: life to be like the voice of your poems, and
Speaker 1: that I think is a mistake. I in my lived life,
Speaker 1: I'm closer to the voice in my essays because um,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking as myself. So so keep Moving is a
Speaker 1: sort of a departure for me formally, because in books
Speaker 1: like Good Bones, there is the poems have speakers, and
Speaker 1: those speakers aren't necessarily me. Even if it's first person,
Speaker 1: I it's not Maggie, you know, it's just a person
Speaker 1: speaking the poem. But and keep Moving. I wrote it
Speaker 1: as myself, So the person who wrote those essays is
Speaker 1: the person that you could run into at Kroger. And
Speaker 1: that is also sort of a test of vulnerability, to
Speaker 1: write as yourself without any layers of persona or aesthetic
Speaker 1: distance that that poetry provided and provided some pretty good
Speaker 1: cover that I took for granted until I didn't have
Speaker 1: it anymore. Yeah, Yeah, Would you like to read a
Speaker 1: poem for us? I'd be happy to do. You have
Speaker 1: a request, Well, um, I gave you a couple I like,
Speaker 1: but I am open to whatever. If you've got a
Speaker 1: rainbow and unicorn poem, now is the time to try
Speaker 1: the speaking of darkness. Okay, now, i'll I'm going to
Speaker 1: read one of the ones that you brought up, all right,
Speaker 1: and it actually has darkness and the title and this poem,
Speaker 1: the title is a run in, so it goes straight
Speaker 1: into the first the first sentence of the poem. At
Speaker 1: your age, I wore a darkness several sizes too big.
Speaker 1: It hung on me like a mother's dress. Even now
Speaker 1: as we speak, I am stitching a darkness you'll need
Speaker 1: to unravel, unraveling another you'll need to restitch. What can
Speaker 1: I give you that you can keep? Once you asked,
Speaker 1: does the sky stop? It doesn't stop. It just stops
Speaker 1: being one thing and starts being another. Sometimes we hold
Speaker 1: hands and tip our heads way back so the blue
Speaker 1: fills our whole field of vision, so we feel like
Speaker 1: we're in it. We don't stop, We just stop being
Speaker 1: what we are and start being what where? What can
Speaker 1: I give you to carry there? The shadows of leaves,
Speaker 1: the lace and solace, this soft hand me down darkness.
Speaker 1: What can I give you that will be of use
Speaker 1: in your next life, the one you will live without me?
Speaker 1: I love that poem. I love the lace in solace.
Speaker 1: I just love that you can look at the word
Speaker 1: solace and see the word lace inside of it. Well
Speaker 1: you can, I can now, I can now now there's
Speaker 1: there's always something. But before I wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to see that. Yeah. I particularly enjoy reading your poetry too,
Speaker 1: because it has a real sense of place, like a
Speaker 1: lot of good poetry does. And your sense of place
Speaker 1: is my place because we both grew up in central Ohio,
Speaker 1: and so when you make specific references, I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: been there and there and there and yes, that's the
Speaker 1: way this area looked when I was a child too,
Speaker 1: And so for me it's particularly nice. I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we think of setting as being something
Speaker 1: for fiction, you know, stories need to have a setting,
Speaker 1: But um, I think setting plays a really important part
Speaker 1: in my poems, probably because I still live in my
Speaker 1: hometown more or less and and never really left. And
Speaker 1: so the streets and neighborhoods and houses and kinds of
Speaker 1: trees and kinds of birds and and these things, all
Speaker 1: of these landmarks are really important to me. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the poetry that I am particularly
Speaker 1: drawn to has maybe I was gonna say, has a
Speaker 1: sense of place, but maybe I'm imbuing it with a
Speaker 1: sense of place. I don't know that. We've got another
Speaker 1: of your little notes to yourself at I really liked,
Speaker 1: and it was it is not enough to think positive.
Speaker 1: You have to do positive. Push hope from theory into practice.
Speaker 1: Do something today, however small, to light up your own
Speaker 1: life or shine on someone else. The light will reach
Speaker 1: you to keep moving. Yeah, I mean, I think positive
Speaker 1: thinking always felt a little wishy washy to me. I
Speaker 1: just kept thinking like, well, what does that do? It
Speaker 1: just didn't feel enough to think good thoughts. Um. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of the old you know, thoughts and prayers,
Speaker 1: Like we can't throw thoughts and prayers at things. We
Speaker 1: actually need action to help real people live their real lives.
Speaker 1: And when I was at my lowest, but frankly today
Speaker 1: every day. I need something more than good thoughts to
Speaker 1: get through my day. I need good action. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't look the same every day. I don't mean like
Speaker 1: every day I'm doing volunteer work or every day is
Speaker 1: not some big thing. It just means like doing a
Speaker 1: good thing. Maybe it's you know, calling a friend because
Speaker 1: you know they were having a hard time a few
Speaker 1: days ago, and so you're remembering that and checking in
Speaker 1: or feeling yourself kind of spiraling and knowing that probably
Speaker 1: you need to get out of your house and go
Speaker 1: take a walk, and maybe you could take your dog along,
Speaker 1: and that would be doing your dog is solid too. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: big thing. And that's something that's really helped me on
Speaker 1: a daily basis over the last couple of years. It
Speaker 1: is just trying to focus on what I can control,
Speaker 1: because part of what put me in the bad place
Speaker 1: emotionally was feeling out of control, like feeling like I
Speaker 1: didn't get a say in the way that my life
Speaker 1: was changing. And so part of reframing that for myself is, um,
Speaker 1: I can't always control the circumstances, but I can control
Speaker 1: how I think about them, and how I react to
Speaker 1: them or don't, and so trying to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more mindful about those sorts of things and being
Speaker 1: more positive in my daily interactions with people. You know,
Speaker 1: I might be really tempted to reply to snark with snark,
Speaker 1: but I could also just be the bigger person and
Speaker 1: have some integrity and let it go, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: or if somebody does something that makes me unhappy, I
Speaker 1: can't change what the person did. I just can only
Speaker 1: control my own actions. And sometimes it is frankly exhausting
Speaker 1: trying to be the bigger person. I don't always like it,
Speaker 1: because sometimes it's really satisfying to be reactive. Right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it feels really good in the moment to do the
Speaker 1: wrong thing, but it doesn't pay dividends. It never feels
Speaker 1: good in the long run to have done the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have a conscience, it will come
Speaker 1: back and it will bother you, and you will think
Speaker 1: about it and you will realize that you were widening
Speaker 1: the gap between the person that you want to be
Speaker 1: in the person you were in that moment. That's not good.
Speaker 1: And so I'm always trying to sort of do things
Speaker 1: that would make future me proud of present me, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know future me is really glad. I ordered
Speaker 1: six pints of Jenny's ice cream to be delivered last week. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think future me will also be pleased with
Speaker 1: how I managed a difficult situation this morning. And so
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to sort of even though the future
Speaker 1: is empty, I know future me will be there. I
Speaker 1: hope she'll be there, and I'm hoping I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do my best for her as much as I can. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's that funny Simpsons thing. And I was not really
Speaker 1: a Simpsons guy, but you know, the future Homer. I
Speaker 1: feel really bad for that guy. No kidding, right, A
Speaker 1: bad for present Homer. I mean really present Homer is
Speaker 1: in trouble also. And listeners of the show won't be
Speaker 1: surprised that I picked that piece out, given how frequently
Speaker 1: I trod out this phrase that I heard originally a
Speaker 1: a which is sometimes you can't think your way into
Speaker 1: good action. You have to act your way into good thinking. Oh.
Speaker 1: I like that so fundamental to my approach to life
Speaker 1: that anytime anybody writes anything like that, I end up
Speaker 1: I end up bringing it out of the book. All right,
Speaker 1: One last thing, and then we're going to wrap up,
Speaker 1: which is I don't know if I'm going to pronounce
Speaker 1: this right, but can you tell us about serotinous pine cones?
Speaker 1: You did pronounce it right, yeah, so I know I
Speaker 1: love that word. So serotinous pine cones are the pine
Speaker 1: cones of certain trees that are sealed really tightly with
Speaker 1: this thick layer of resin, and they require forest fires
Speaker 1: to open and then spread their seeds. So even a
Speaker 1: little bit of fire isn't enough to do it. They
Speaker 1: actually need what we would consider to be a catastrophic
Speaker 1: event in order to live and thrive and grow. And
Speaker 1: so I have been watching a nature documentary, as I
Speaker 1: often do with my kids because it's one of the
Speaker 1: things that we can all agree on. Um. They're really
Speaker 1: partial to um Attenborough narration. When there's a different narrator,
Speaker 1: they get very cranky because it doesn't have the same
Speaker 1: quality of his voice. But uh, yeah, So we watched
Speaker 1: a documentary once about these trees, and we got to
Speaker 1: watch the fire and then watch the slow mo of
Speaker 1: the cones opening, and then watching in these charred spaces
Speaker 1: that looks like nothing could possibly ever grow there. Again,
Speaker 1: these new trees grow Jack Pines is one of them.
Speaker 1: Lodgepole Pines is another one. I loved that idea, the
Speaker 1: fact that you have to go through, like you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier, a catastrophic event to get to a place
Speaker 1: where you can grow, that idea of post traumatic growth,
Speaker 1: that maybe, even if it's an unwelcome change, even if
Speaker 1: it's not something you would have ever wished on yourself
Speaker 1: or your family, maybe somehow it makes that level of
Speaker 1: fire is what makes it possible for you to grow
Speaker 1: and become a different kind of person and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a better kind of person even than you were in
Speaker 1: the life that you got to live before. And thinking
Speaker 1: about that metaphor helped me through that time because I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe something's happening here and I can't see it yet.
Speaker 1: There are inner workings that I am not yet privy to,
Speaker 1: and I just have to trust that the person who
Speaker 1: emerges on the other side of this seemingly catastrophic event
Speaker 1: will be um someone worth being and worth knowing. I
Speaker 1: won't know what it's going to be. I still really
Speaker 1: don't know what it's going to be. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: living in the after, but it's not really the after.
Speaker 1: The after is continuing right, Yeah, it's just now. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's just now. Yeah. I love that idea of the
Speaker 1: pine cones. A because nature amazes me, like how could
Speaker 1: that even be? Yeah? And and B it's a great
Speaker 1: metaphor for personal transformation. And see, we've had an awful
Speaker 1: lot of forest fires this year, and it's at least
Speaker 1: marginally comforting to know that nature knows what to do
Speaker 1: with that, and even part of nature is designed for that. Yes,
Speaker 1: part of nature is specifically designed for that. Seems wild
Speaker 1: to me, Like wouldn't we have evolved to a place
Speaker 1: where that wasn't necessary? The answer apparently is no. And
Speaker 1: I think maybe for us to the answer is no,
Speaker 1: like we maybe we still need these shake ups, that
Speaker 1: the snow globes still needs to be picked up and
Speaker 1: shaken really hard sometimes for us to make breakthroughs in
Speaker 1: our lives. Yep. I think so. All right, Well, that
Speaker 1: is where we are going to wrap up. You and
Speaker 1: I will continue in the post show conversation. I may
Speaker 1: lean on you for another poem in there and listeners.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in post show conversations, ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other good stuff, you can go
Speaker 1: to one you Feed dot net slash Join. Maggie, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on. It was such a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you on. I really enjoyed the book
Speaker 1: and I was so happy to have you on. I
Speaker 1: had dreamt that you and I would do this in
Speaker 1: person as a gathering in Columbus, Ohio, an event, and
Speaker 1: finally it was like, well, who knows when that could
Speaker 1: ever occur, So here we are. Let's just say sometime
Speaker 1: in the future, it'll be possible. It will be It'll
Speaker 1: be possible. Thank you. If what you just heard was
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