Speaker 1: What really I was looking for was like, who is
Speaker 1: the person I am now? How was she created? And
Speaker 1: how we're kind of coming to terms with all of that?
Speaker 1: Help me move forward? How does reckoning with the past
Speaker 1: help us understand the present? Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is our friend and the poet Maggie Smith. She's
Speaker 1: the author of several books, including Good Bones and the
Speaker 1: national bestsellers Golden Rod and Keep Moving Notes on loss, creativity,
Speaker 1: and change. Maggie's poems and essays have appeared in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, and
Speaker 1: many other publications, and her poem good Bones went viral
Speaker 1: internationally and since then has been translated into nearly a
Speaker 1: dozen languages and featured on the CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary. Today, Maggie,
Speaker 1: Eric and Jinny discuss her new book, You Could Make
Speaker 1: This Place Beautiful, a memoir. Hi, Maggie walk into the show. Oh,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Hello Jinny, Hello Hairic, Hello man.
Speaker 1: So this will be a three person conversation. We have
Speaker 1: Maggie back on. We're going to be discussing her new
Speaker 1: memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do, with the parable Jinny.
Speaker 1: Would you like to do it? Oh? Sure, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So Maggie. There was a grandparent talking with their grandchild
Speaker 1: and they said, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us who are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf who represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and one is a bad wolf that represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks and looks up at their grandparent and say, well, grandparent,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparents says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So how does that parable apply to you in your
Speaker 1: life and in your work? At this point, I feel
Speaker 1: like I should have cheated and listened to my earlier
Speaker 1: responses to this question and then improved upon my earlier
Speaker 1: responses to this question. You know, I think for me
Speaker 1: it comes down a lot to choice and intention, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean, as we were talking before we started recording,
Speaker 1: there are always going to be things like anger, or
Speaker 1: a sense of injustice, or a sense of being wronged,
Speaker 1: or things not turning out the way we had hoped.
Speaker 1: And those things are all valid and real and we
Speaker 1: can't just sort of box them up and put them away.
Speaker 1: But what gets more time, space, power, momentum energy, to
Speaker 1: me has to be the desire for peace more than
Speaker 1: the desire to wage war. And so that's sort of
Speaker 1: where I'm at right now, both with my writing and
Speaker 1: that this book, and with my living and my parenting,
Speaker 1: is how can I sort of put peace for myself
Speaker 1: and my kids at the front of my decision making,
Speaker 1: and then how can I make sure that the things
Speaker 1: I'm doing a line that right, And if I keep
Speaker 1: that in mind, I won't always succeed, but I think
Speaker 1: I can help myself from failing too often and slipping
Speaker 1: into negative patterns. So I have a follow up question
Speaker 1: to your answer, because something you said really struck me
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you would elaborate a little
Speaker 1: bit on it. So you said you're prioritizing or choosing
Speaker 1: peace for you for your kids. What does peace look
Speaker 1: like or feel like or mean right now to you? Guys?
Speaker 1: Calm you know, I mean it, peace sounds kind of boring,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't sound as energetic as joy, for example, peace,
Speaker 1: But it's the thing I wish for on sort of
Speaker 1: every wish, like every eleven eleven, every little piece of
Speaker 1: dandelion fluff, every one, two, three, four on the digital clock.
Speaker 1: Like peace is what I'm looking for, and probably more
Speaker 1: than joy, just that sense of like even keeled living,
Speaker 1: you know, having gone through so much upheaval between the
Speaker 1: divorce and the pandemic, what I'm really wanting to offer
Speaker 1: them in particular is a real sense of stability and yeah,
Speaker 1: and just like a soft place to just land and be.
Speaker 1: And I need that too, I mean, I guess I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I offer that to them, and this would be the
Speaker 1: place where if my therapist we're also on this podcast,
Speaker 1: she would jump in and say, don't forget that you
Speaker 1: also live in your house. Yeah yeah, yeah, like you
Speaker 1: are a person living in the house too. You are
Speaker 1: not just the sort of like distant overseer of others lives.
Speaker 1: It's you two. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I was listening
Speaker 1: to an interview yesterday Brene Brown was talking, and she
Speaker 1: was just reflecting on how we have the ordinary moments
Speaker 1: as kind of a steady diet until life throws us
Speaker 1: a curveball and the apple carts turned over and everything
Speaker 1: is chaotic, and then all we want it's like ordinary
Speaker 1: moments again, sort of that like you're saying, what I
Speaker 1: feel like you're saying, is that piece that stability, that rhythm,
Speaker 1: that calm, and that feels like such an oasis. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. Yeah, just to have no news, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to go five days without talking to
Speaker 1: someone and not have a lot of updates, that would
Speaker 1: be really nice, yea. Yeah, yeah, peace sounds boring until
Speaker 1: you've been at war. Exactly exactly as we were talking,
Speaker 1: I was thinking a little bit about this question I'm
Speaker 1: always interested in, which is relating to difficult emotions and
Speaker 1: this sort of thing and trying to choose peace over conflict.
Speaker 1: Although in a divorce, which is what much of this
Speaker 1: memoir is about, there is a certain amount of inevitable
Speaker 1: conflict that's in there, and so striking that balance of like,
Speaker 1: all right, how do I defend what needs defended? How
Speaker 1: do I take care of what needs taken care of?
Speaker 1: How do I allow myself to feel the natural emotions
Speaker 1: that are coming up? Right? We don't want to squelch
Speaker 1: our emotions and orient towards a more peaceful state. And
Speaker 1: that's a lot of juggling going on there, Right, That's
Speaker 1: a lot of juggling, which is why I think these
Speaker 1: things can be so very difficult. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 1: lot of juggling. I think in some ways for me,
Speaker 1: mine need to understand things in order to set them down.
Speaker 1: You know, I have this sort of real analytical bent
Speaker 1: to me that doesn't always serve me well. The need
Speaker 1: to know, the need to figure it out, the need
Speaker 1: to solve is a lot of what drove me to
Speaker 1: write this book, and a lot of sort of managing
Speaker 1: all of that conflicting emotion and needing desperately to be
Speaker 1: able to set a lot of it down. And that's
Speaker 1: what the book sort of allowed me to do, is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it can live in here now. It's interesting you say
Speaker 1: that because one of the things that really struck me
Speaker 1: as I read You're absolutely beautiful, beautifully written, beautifully honest
Speaker 1: memoir is sprinkled throughout because it's so interesting the way
Speaker 1: you sort of organize and structure this memoir. It's unconventional
Speaker 1: in terms of the other memoirs I've written, and I
Speaker 1: really liked it. But you say, periodically throughout you have
Speaker 1: a page that will say A friend says, every book
Speaker 1: begins with an unanswerable question, and then it'll lists a
Speaker 1: question right that you seem to have pondered upon. And
Speaker 1: the book has many of these kind of inserted throughout.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder, are these questions ultimately unanswerable to you?
Speaker 1: I mean I sense your writing as an attempt to
Speaker 1: sort of answer them. I mean, do you answer them
Speaker 1: for yourself? I think the answers keep changing. That's the
Speaker 1: other slippery part of this is a question like how
Speaker 1: do you heal? Is in some ways unanswerable and in
Speaker 1: other ways, it's answerable differently every single day, because what
Speaker 1: is required of you or what feels good or what
Speaker 1: would help you in that moment is not necessarily what
Speaker 1: you needed the week before, the month before. So I
Speaker 1: don't know that they're sort of ultimately existentially unanswerable. It's
Speaker 1: just that there isn't a neat response that would encapsulate
Speaker 1: everything for all of those questions. It's interesting. When I
Speaker 1: wrote the first draft of this book, there was just
Speaker 1: one chapter that was a list of all the questions.
Speaker 1: It was just one chapter. All the questions were listed
Speaker 1: at one time, and then through the editing process, we
Speaker 1: realized that we thought it would be more impactful to
Speaker 1: spread them out, so that the sort of text leading
Speaker 1: into the question and then whatever was going to follow
Speaker 1: a sort of ping off of those things. And it
Speaker 1: gave me more kind of touch points to reflect on
Speaker 1: in the book by spreading them out. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there are certain days where some of those
Speaker 1: questions feel like they have clearer answers than others. What
Speaker 1: does the rilca live the questions? Now, that's part of
Speaker 1: the comfort that you have to get to. I think
Speaker 1: when going through any kind of being change in life
Speaker 1: is like not expecting answers because they're not necessarily owed
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, you know, yeah, as frustrating as that
Speaker 1: can be, Like does life owe me answers to these questions? No? No,
Speaker 1: not really, like I can do my best with them.
Speaker 1: But a lot of it is like accepting that life
Speaker 1: is like a que and a very heavy on the queue,
Speaker 1: very light, frustratingly light on the a yep yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's what the writing's for. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: does seem that those questions, some of them, may have
Speaker 1: felt unanswerable in the moment when originally posed, and later
Speaker 1: on there is some sort of answer, even if that
Speaker 1: answer is just your life becomes the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: But I love what you say that those answers are
Speaker 1: always changing, you know. How do you heal? I mean
Speaker 1: that is such a individual question, Like there's no right
Speaker 1: answer that we could say, like, oh, here's how you heal?
Speaker 1: Like who are you? What are you going through? What
Speaker 1: have you done before? I mean, there's so many variables
Speaker 1: that go into these things. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: what I need now may not be what I needed
Speaker 1: three months ago, which is a little bit frustrating sometimes
Speaker 1: when you feel like I've found this thing that really
Speaker 1: works for me, and then it doesn't anymore, and what
Speaker 1: you need is something different, and that tends to keep
Speaker 1: us on our toes. Yeah, well it's funny. I mean,
Speaker 1: just even talking about anger and negative emotions. I think
Speaker 1: I needed my anger for a time. You know. It
Speaker 1: felt almost protective for a while, because if you're angry,
Speaker 1: you're not sad, right. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how it creates that little barrier, but that's my experience.
Speaker 1: And then it stops serving me. Yes, and I needed
Speaker 1: to put that down and just let myself be sad,
Speaker 1: you know. And that didn't feel great, but it's what
Speaker 1: I needed. And I think what ultimately made whatever healing
Speaker 1: has been possible possible was not getting stuck in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keep moving as someone might. Oh my gosh, it's a
Speaker 1: great theme. You begin this memoir with a quote that
Speaker 1: has lodged itself in my heart and in my mind.
Speaker 1: I've carried it with me since reading it, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to revisit it now. You begin with this
Speaker 1: beautiful quote by Emily Dickinson. It says, I am out
Speaker 1: with lanterns looking for myself. I just have this image
Speaker 1: and tell me if I'm off. But the events during
Speaker 1: the memoir were happening where you were looking for yourself,
Speaker 1: and then the writing of this book was another iteration
Speaker 1: of you looking for yourself through the writing of this
Speaker 1: And you go on to say, but here's the thing
Speaker 1: about carrying light with you no matter where you go,
Speaker 1: and no matter what you find or don't find, you
Speaker 1: change the darkness. Just by entering it. You clear a
Speaker 1: path through. Tell me more about that and what that
Speaker 1: means to you. I think Keep Moving as a book
Speaker 1: was really about pressing forward out of necessity, like I
Speaker 1: had to tell myself positive truths every day to sort
Speaker 1: of move, And this book was more a kind of
Speaker 1: reckoning with the past, and for me, it was mostly
Speaker 1: about my divorce, sort of getting to answer that question.
Speaker 1: I mean, who doesn't quote David Byrne on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: like how did I get here? You know that moment
Speaker 1: when you wake up and you're like, this is not
Speaker 1: my beautiful life, this is not my this, this is
Speaker 1: not my that. Just that feeling that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us have, particularly in midlife, where we have
Speaker 1: a moment and the moment is or the invitation is
Speaker 1: sort of created by some sort of breakage, right, because
Speaker 1: if life we're going fine, probably wouldn't have that panic
Speaker 1: moment where you thought, how did I get here? So
Speaker 1: whatever rupture happens, you know, losing someone close to you
Speaker 1: or losing your job, or having something happen to a
Speaker 1: relationship you're in, creates this like need to reflect and
Speaker 1: look back on all of the paths, roads taken, roads
Speaker 1: not taken, choices made, choices not made that led you
Speaker 1: to that place, and so sort of like traveling back
Speaker 1: into the dark to figure out kind of how did
Speaker 1: I get here? How is this my life? How am
Speaker 1: I in this space? I had to take my Emily
Speaker 1: Dickinson poetry lantern with me to kind of light at
Speaker 1: least the few steps in front of me that I
Speaker 1: could light, because what I was looking for was answers
Speaker 1: I think to how my life turned out in a
Speaker 1: way that I hadn't expected and didn't see coming. But
Speaker 1: what really I was looking for was like, who is
Speaker 1: the person I am now? How was she created? And
Speaker 1: how we'll kind of coming to terms with all of
Speaker 1: that help me move forward? How does reckoning with the
Speaker 1: past help us understand the present and then feel a
Speaker 1: little bit more confident moving into the future because we
Speaker 1: know ourselves. If you don't know yourself, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you keep going. It's very confusing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I love that line. You change the darkness just by
Speaker 1: entering it. You clear a path through. And that goes
Speaker 1: back to I think unanswerable questions, meaning that it's the
Speaker 1: act of asking them that clears the path. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to get to an answer, but the questioning
Speaker 1: is what being able to look at it this way
Speaker 1: and let me turn it over and look at it
Speaker 1: that way, and what if I thought about it that way.
Speaker 1: That's what, at least for me, clears a path through.
Speaker 1: Is being willing to take the time and have the
Speaker 1: courage to ask the questions. Oh yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: you have a lot of poet in you, Eric. I
Speaker 1: love that that sort of like idea of holding a
Speaker 1: many faceted thing and looking at it from different dimensions
Speaker 1: and looking at all the different sides of it. I
Speaker 1: think for me, that's what this book project was like,
Speaker 1: because I've never really written about my whole life. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean like from birth to present. I mean
Speaker 1: my parenting life, my work life, my writing life, my
Speaker 1: life as a friend, my life as a daughter, as
Speaker 1: a sister, as a wife, as an ex wife. And
Speaker 1: there was something about writing this whole book that encouraged
Speaker 1: me to see the connections and sort of touch points
Speaker 1: between those facets that might be living on the other
Speaker 1: side of the object. Right. But it's almost like when
Speaker 1: you visit a place, you don't necessarily have the frame
Speaker 1: of reference for where you're visiting, but if you look
Speaker 1: at that place on a map and you can get
Speaker 1: the perspective of, oh, my gosh, I was in France.
Speaker 1: That's very close to Switzerland. You know, I have no
Speaker 1: idea where I was when I was there. And something
Speaker 1: about the whole book project, of working on something of
Speaker 1: this size really just sort of invited me to see
Speaker 1: how different parts of my life were related and interconnected
Speaker 1: in a way that I don't think I would have
Speaker 1: been able to sort of shine light on those things
Speaker 1: if I hadn't approached all of this and sort of
Speaker 1: one fell swoop. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting to me that it's actually fascinating that
Speaker 1: I can sometimes open my mouth and say something or
Speaker 1: bring pen to paper and write something that I've never
Speaker 1: thought before. It just comes out, you know. It comes
Speaker 1: out in the writing, it comes out in the talking.
Speaker 1: And unless we engage with a medium like either one
Speaker 1: of those or something else, you know, for that matter,
Speaker 1: it might be unexplored darkness that we just didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that corner was there. You know. So the benefit
Speaker 1: to writing this menimoir for you is something we've just explored.
Speaker 1: But you say, the question I keep asking myself as
Speaker 1: I write this book, the question I keep insisting upon,
Speaker 1: is this, how can this story, this experience be useful
Speaker 1: to anyone other than me? How can I make this
Speaker 1: material into a tool that you can use to play
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate. Experience is instructive, you say. People make connections
Speaker 1: on their own right. So I think it's really interesting
Speaker 1: because I certainly did. As I read your book, read
Speaker 1: about this divorce, read about your experience. Throughout I had
Speaker 1: moments of my own where the way you languaged something
Speaker 1: unlocked and showed me something in my own life that
Speaker 1: I had not seen that way before. I will pause
Speaker 1: for a moment before diving into one such example, but
Speaker 1: I just want you to know it truly is instructive
Speaker 1: people do make these connections. It really is so useful.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. I mean, now I think about
Speaker 1: having that desperate need to want the book to be useful,
Speaker 1: and I think about it, and I think, okay, So
Speaker 1: underlying that desire is I think probably something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who write about their lives feel, which is,
Speaker 1: who else cares? How is it not merely self indulgent?
Speaker 1: The desire to make it useful for the reader also,
Speaker 1: I think comes from a place of really questioning and
Speaker 1: wondering how to justify the kind of project that is
Speaker 1: writing about your single, solitary minuscule in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things life. And so it means a lot to
Speaker 1: hear that, because I think if it makes maybe one
Speaker 1: person even feel less alone or seen, or it resonates
Speaker 1: in some way, or calls something up or helps them
Speaker 1: figure something out for themselves, or you know, whatever that
Speaker 1: touch point is, I guess then the book has sort
Speaker 1: of done its job if it has one. Did you ever,
Speaker 1: or do you ask the same question about poems? I'm
Speaker 1: curious no about the need for them to be useful,
Speaker 1: And I'm just kind of curious, are they self evidently
Speaker 1: useful or that's not the point. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's the point, And I actually don't think it's the
Speaker 1: point of memoir either, which is why I think it's
Speaker 1: sort of funny. Like I don't think literature in general
Speaker 1: needs to have a job other than just being itself.
Speaker 1: And it just gets sent out into the world and
Speaker 1: then received, and it's kind of none of my business
Speaker 1: what the receiver receives, right, I know what I've sent,
Speaker 1: but what you receive, that's between you and the text.
Speaker 1: It's not really even between you and me. It's between
Speaker 1: you and the text. And I think I was considering
Speaker 1: this book in a new way because there's so much
Speaker 1: of me in the text in a way that there
Speaker 1: hasn't been in my poems or even and keep Moving.
Speaker 1: There's very little artistic distance in this book, and so
Speaker 1: it just felt more vulnerable in that way. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean, poems don't have jobs. Poems just get to
Speaker 1: be poems like kids. Yeah, like kids. Yeah, the palms
Speaker 1: are freeloaders also, just like the children, they just get
Speaker 1: to live, be cared for, be tended to, and no
Speaker 1: one needs them to do much. I suppose that depends
Speaker 1: on where you happen to be a kid in the
Speaker 1: world and what time frame. Yeah, if I can get
Speaker 1: them to take out the recycling, it's a win. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm wrestling with whether I even share them, Like how
Speaker 1: one of your stories sort of applied to me maybe
Speaker 1: just between me and the text. I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: any need to share it. That's the whole point of
Speaker 1: this podcast, I think. Okay, So then does the answer yeah?
Speaker 1: Carry on? So I just I think so, yeah, unless
Speaker 1: Maggie wants to veto that's true, of course I wouldn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So here I'm just gonna read a little
Speaker 1: section here says when Violet woke up that morning, she
Speaker 1: came downstairs into the kitchen where I was standing at
Speaker 1: the counter making a poor over. She handed me a
Speaker 1: piece of paper about my mom Q and an her
Speaker 1: teacher had given out to the whole class for Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: The question was, what has your mother taught you to
Speaker 1: be optimistic? Violethood written optimistic. To say I was surprised
Speaker 1: would be an understatement. It had been a brutal eleven
Speaker 1: months for me, for all of us, that my daughter
Speaker 1: had witnessed me struggling for months and saw hope there
Speaker 1: was no better gift. Well, what that interestingly unlocked inside
Speaker 1: of me? I remember before my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: I saw changes in her. She and my dad were divorcing,
Speaker 1: and so I was at lunch one day with my
Speaker 1: dad and I just said to him, you know, I
Speaker 1: just didn't realize how negative Mom was, like, She's just
Speaker 1: so cynical and critical. And he says, she's been like
Speaker 1: that for a long time, And I thought, huh, Because
Speaker 1: when I look back and I look back at my childhood,
Speaker 1: the mother I remember some of the characteristics she cultivated
Speaker 1: in me, by example, was optimism, encouragement, just all kinds
Speaker 1: of positivity and love and kind of always pointing towards
Speaker 1: the opportunity, not the flaw in things right. And that's
Speaker 1: how I thought of my mother. Now, I do think
Speaker 1: some of the disease of Alzheimer's was causing her to
Speaker 1: become more negative and cynicals, So I do think that
Speaker 1: would played the role. But I also realized that through
Speaker 1: this when I was a young child, my mom was
Speaker 1: going through a very difficult time, and I think what
Speaker 1: she was doing for me was giving me those things
Speaker 1: as an intentional gift right to orient that way towards me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize it at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that she was probably wanting not for
Speaker 1: me to see her sadness, not for me to see,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the despair, all of the struggle,
Speaker 1: you know, and she succeeded. And it's just so interesting
Speaker 1: because I saw some of that in your story in Violet,
Speaker 1: maybe the way she experienced you as a child. I
Speaker 1: received that as a gift, you know, and I hope
Speaker 1: that Violet can take some of that too with her
Speaker 1: from this experience. I love them that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it is an offering, right like frame of mind, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is an offering. I love that story. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the nature of trying
Speaker 1: to write a book like this or really look at
Speaker 1: our lives clearly anyway. And you say this isn't a
Speaker 1: tell all because all is something we can't access, we
Speaker 1: don't get all. Some, yes, most, if we're lucky, all know.
Speaker 1: And then also at another time you say, there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as a tell all, only a tell some,
Speaker 1: a tell most. Maybe this is a tell mine, And
Speaker 1: the mind keeps changing because I keep changing. The mind
Speaker 1: is slippery like that, And I just love this idea
Speaker 1: of recognizing that anything we are saying is again back
Speaker 1: to that it has a perspective to it as a
Speaker 1: lens we're looking through, and that lens is always changing,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always changing. The way I feel about
Speaker 1: a certain aspect of my past can look very different
Speaker 1: one year to the next to the next. The event
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily change, well, it didn't change either I remember
Speaker 1: it differently or I relate to it differently. So there's
Speaker 1: just this sense that I just loved the naming of
Speaker 1: the slipperiness of all that. Yeah. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there are a couple of places in the book where
Speaker 1: I just actually say, like on second thought, or I
Speaker 1: get to a different realization about something by the last
Speaker 1: third of the book, and I feel differently, yeah, than
Speaker 1: I do in the first third. And it's not because
Speaker 1: anything is any quote different. It's because I'm different and
Speaker 1: my perspective on it is different. I'm answering the questions
Speaker 1: for myself in a different way. I mean, we're not static, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the tricky thing about about committing anything to
Speaker 1: the page is that even as this book ended, the
Speaker 1: life continued, right, So even it's a sliver, right, it's
Speaker 1: a time capsule in itself of these events, but also
Speaker 1: how I felt and processed them in a very specific,
Speaker 1: you know, two or three year period of time as
Speaker 1: I was writing it, and in ten years while I
Speaker 1: feel very differently about some of this, maybe right the
Speaker 1: book stops and the life doesn't. If we're lucky, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's a beautiful testimony that we are always changing,
Speaker 1: because I think for me and for many when we're
Speaker 1: in the thick of a difficult time, the tendency is
Speaker 1: to say it's always going to be away, it's always
Speaker 1: going to feel this way, I'm never going to feel better.
Speaker 1: And this is such a beautiful reminder that we don't
Speaker 1: know how you're going to feel, but you'll feel differently,
Speaker 1: you will feel different, you know. Yeah, ideally, ideally, right, ideally,
Speaker 1: And I think that gets to being willing to ask
Speaker 1: the difficult questions, you know, because whether it's about this situation,
Speaker 1: about all situations in general, that's how change happens. I
Speaker 1: think if we stop questioning and we don't recognize that
Speaker 1: this is a tell mine, you know, we then start
Speaker 1: to think we know the answer, and once we think
Speaker 1: we really know the answer, I think that's how humans
Speaker 1: get stuck, you know. And I can look at people
Speaker 1: in my life who are older than me who think about,
Speaker 1: say a situation that happened to them thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: the same way they thought about it then, and to me,
Speaker 1: that's not ideal. Right, Like, I'm hoping that as I
Speaker 1: grow and change, I'm able to say, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I see some things there that I didn't
Speaker 1: see before I had blind spot there I didn't see,
Speaker 1: or now I understand why she did that. And so
Speaker 1: I think that being willing to ask the questions is
Speaker 1: part of what does what you're saying, Jenny is, which
Speaker 1: is that things change. Yeah, you know, it's not just time.
Speaker 1: Time is part of it. And it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: the book unfold because as time goes on, you start
Speaker 1: to heal, and time I think has an element of
Speaker 1: healing in it, but I think it can be much
Speaker 1: accelerated by the questioning. Yeah, time plus curiosity, time plus
Speaker 1: action kindness. Yeah, yes, oh my gosh, curiosity, that's huge.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's really the sort of spirit
Speaker 1: that I entered the book with was a spirit of curiosity,
Speaker 1: like a seeking spirit, which is probably where that epigraph
Speaker 1: really comes from. So I knew if I approached even
Speaker 1: this sort of difficult subject matter with a spirit of
Speaker 1: sort of empathy and curiosity and flexibility and open mindedness
Speaker 1: and also just self forgiveness. Yeah, even that, I probably
Speaker 1: would be on the right path with the writing of it,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like if I had gone down the
Speaker 1: path of writing this book with the opposite all those things, Like,
Speaker 1: I know it's right, I know what happened. My way
Speaker 1: is the way. Yeah, I'm good and these people are bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are ways to approach a situation that
Speaker 1: I think will put you in a stuck place even
Speaker 1: over time. Yes, because you are so committed to your story,
Speaker 1: your version, whatever that thing is, and staying open and
Speaker 1: curious about it, I think is the way to like
Speaker 1: not get in that swamp. Yeah, as I reflect on
Speaker 1: that now that I hear you say that, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you at all contend with an inner critic or
Speaker 1: a self judgment and how did do you sort of
Speaker 1: meet that and work with that through the process of
Speaker 1: writing this book and reflecting on your experience? Because what
Speaker 1: I come away with is not someone you know, beating
Speaker 1: themselves with a stick. I come away with someone gently
Speaker 1: and openly exploring what happened and what happened inside of
Speaker 1: me and around me. And that's beautiful and not necessarily
Speaker 1: my first inclination when I go to self examination. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely have an inner critic. She can
Speaker 1: be loud. Quieting her can be an issue. And actually,
Speaker 1: I think that section you were talking about before, how
Speaker 1: can this book be useful? I think that's the inner
Speaker 1: critic talking. I think it's the critic that says, what
Speaker 1: right do you have? Why spend your time and energy
Speaker 1: doing this? Why tell this story? Why go there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that is the inner critic kind of poking through,
Speaker 1: you know, peeking out from behind the curtain in that
Speaker 1: part of the book. And I think some of the
Speaker 1: threads in the book about wondering about the questions that
Speaker 1: people will ask me about the book is sort of
Speaker 1: my way of trying to get ahead of both inner
Speaker 1: and outer critic. Like, yes, I anticipate the kind of
Speaker 1: pushback I might get both from myself and to others
Speaker 1: about writing this candidly about my experience, and so the
Speaker 1: sort of more meta aspects of the book. I think,
Speaker 1: are me kind of contending with my inner critic and
Speaker 1: having a kind of conversation with myself on the page
Speaker 1: about like why are we doing this, Maggie, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: is the value in this? Like not just for you,
Speaker 1: but like what is the what is the purpose of
Speaker 1: this kind of writing? It's not a self help book, right,
Speaker 1: it's not poetry? So what is this project? Why does
Speaker 1: it have value? That's the inner critic? Yeah. It makes
Speaker 1: me think of the Buddhist story of when the Buddha
Speaker 1: was enlightened. The night of his enlightenment, the last thing
Speaker 1: Mara sort of the shadow said to him was who
Speaker 1: do you think you are? Oh? Yeah, you know. It's
Speaker 1: that idea of like what right do you have to
Speaker 1: any of this that is one hundred percent it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh the shadow. I love the idea of critic selfish shadow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That actually, as a metaphor makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to me. In a divorce, it's very easy for us
Speaker 1: to sort of see what the other person has done,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it's very obvious. You say, betrayal
Speaker 1: is neat because it preempts me from having to look
Speaker 1: really look at my marriage, and it caused me to
Speaker 1: reflect back on as I was joking before, said my
Speaker 1: first divorce, which then leads you to know that there
Speaker 1: was a second one. So looking at my previous marriages,
Speaker 1: in both cases, in the first marriage there was an
Speaker 1: absolute betrayal of the sort that you describe, and in
Speaker 1: the second one person was much louder and much more
Speaker 1: angry than the other person. I was not the loud
Speaker 1: and angry one, as you might imagine, and that made
Speaker 1: it easy to say that the problem is there. The
Speaker 1: problem is you. You fell in love with someone else.
Speaker 1: You are always angry. But that made my role so
Speaker 1: much more hidden and so much more subtle, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: still really there, right, I mean, still absolutely there, And
Speaker 1: I just love the nuance that you were taking and
Speaker 1: trying to question your role in it without taking too
Speaker 1: much responsibility at the same time for someone else's behavior. Again,
Speaker 1: we're sort of juggling different things, right, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I do want to understand what I
Speaker 1: contributed here, if for no other reasons, so I don't
Speaker 1: do it next time, right, And as a way of
Speaker 1: understanding why somebody might have acted the way they did,
Speaker 1: but without then suddenly going too far, the other way
Speaker 1: and saying well, they were right to act that way
Speaker 1: because I was X, Y and Z. I've sort of
Speaker 1: skirted both those extremes before. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to fall into either blaming and finger pointing
Speaker 1: and making yourself the victim, or on the other hand,
Speaker 1: sort of justifying or excusing someone else's poor choices, and
Speaker 1: like in between, I think on the continuum in between
Speaker 1: those two things is the space in which you realize
Speaker 1: that all relationships work. Family, parent child, friendship, marriage, partnership.
Speaker 1: These are all co created systems. And yes, you know,
Speaker 1: things can happen that are surprising, and things can happen
Speaker 1: that sort of blow everything up, right, Like, we can't
Speaker 1: always know what will happen, but there's still a whole
Speaker 1: lot going on besides any individual problem that did contribute,
Speaker 1: And so it was important to me to sort of
Speaker 1: be like, hey, also, I'm not perfect, wasn't perfect, will
Speaker 1: never be perfect. These are the ways in which I
Speaker 1: see now I contributed to that system and the way
Speaker 1: that it looked. And here are the bits of my
Speaker 1: family life that I probably inherited from my parents because
Speaker 1: of the way the division of labor in my home.
Speaker 1: For example, between my parents and how I sort of
Speaker 1: recreated some of that in my home, and how it
Speaker 1: didn't serve me, but I didn't change it. A big
Speaker 1: part of this, I think, is like taking responsibility for
Speaker 1: my part and only speaking for myself. Yeah, which ultimately
Speaker 1: is at least for me, has been an empowering thing
Speaker 1: to do because I then realize that what I contribute
Speaker 1: in future relationships can be different, and therefore I co
Speaker 1: create a different system that I'm not sort of victim
Speaker 1: to another person's painful choices, do you suit? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean not that that won't experience people that make
Speaker 1: painful choices that have impact on me, of course, but
Speaker 1: I have a power in the way I respond, and
Speaker 1: I do have choice in the way that I day
Speaker 1: to day meet that system I'm co creating. I think
Speaker 1: that's incredibly empowering. Yeah, it makes me think we are
Speaker 1: talking earlier about asking the questions about it, and by
Speaker 1: doing that you remain unstuck. I think all these things
Speaker 1: are a way of taking the locus of control, such
Speaker 1: as it is, and putting it back inside us to
Speaker 1: some extent. It's not to say like, oh, I'm the
Speaker 1: whole problem. No, of course, not, as you said, co created. However,
Speaker 1: I can only change me. I can't change the other
Speaker 1: person if all the answers lie in the other person
Speaker 1: and their behavior. Yeah, I'm kind of stuck. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: when I say I know people who are like thirty
Speaker 1: years later have the same relation to the other person
Speaker 1: is because they the whole problem was always in the
Speaker 1: other person. And if the problem is always outside on
Speaker 1: interpersonal things, right, the problem is always outside. We have
Speaker 1: very limited means with which to work with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course things then are just happening to you. Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a really disempowering and frankly scary way
Speaker 1: to live, which is to just sort of perceive that
Speaker 1: things are by to happen to you and you desert
Speaker 1: at the mercy of everyone else's decision making. Where it's like, well, now,
Speaker 1: I see I could have done X, right, Not that
Speaker 1: I'm beating myself up about not doing X. Yes, I
Speaker 1: did the best that I could with the information I
Speaker 1: had in the person I was in that iteration of me,
Speaker 1: I did the best I could. But with the information
Speaker 1: I have now, I probably would would do it differently.
Speaker 1: I would set a different boundary. I would ask for
Speaker 1: something else, I would speak up in a different way.
Speaker 1: I would be more assertive. I mean, it's really too
Speaker 1: bad we don't have the wisdom of middle age in
Speaker 1: our teens and twenties as it, truly, you know, when
Speaker 1: so many of us are making those decisions about how
Speaker 1: to live our lives and ways we think are permanent,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean there are decisions I made in
Speaker 1: my twenties I really thought were permanent, that's it, decisions,
Speaker 1: you know. I'd sort of like frozen my life and
Speaker 1: time and I would just copy paste it, basically, you know,
Speaker 1: into infinity, and every year would pretty much look the
Speaker 1: same because I had decided what my life was going
Speaker 1: to be. And you know, some decisions cannot hold, should
Speaker 1: not hold, We're not meant to hold, you know. I
Speaker 1: think about you know Pematrodren's difference between pain and suffering, right, Like,
Speaker 1: pain's not optional pain, we just have to like feel it.
Speaker 1: There we are. I would love to have some other
Speaker 1: multiple choice available to me, but pain is always going
Speaker 1: to be part of it. Actually, my therapist and I
Speaker 1: decided that there is a multiple choice. It's you can
Speaker 1: feel pain, feel sad, and shame yourself for it and
Speaker 1: beat yourself up for it A or B. You can
Speaker 1: feel sad, feel pain and not beat yourself up about it.
Speaker 1: So I feel confident there actually is multiple choice there
Speaker 1: now has to do more with my reaction to it.
Speaker 1: But the suffering that's from the resistance to change and
Speaker 1: the refusal to accept that's a place of stuffness I
Speaker 1: don't want to be in. Through the lens of mindfulness
Speaker 1: we talk about, there's the object of our attention, and
Speaker 1: then there's the relationship we have with it, the way
Speaker 1: we are in relationship to it, and that is where
Speaker 1: actually all of our experience with it lies, Like you said,
Speaker 1: the why me or the fighting it, and there may
Speaker 1: be a place for that, right and then there's also
Speaker 1: a place for moving towards acceptance or a wise action
Speaker 1: and a wise response, And however we meet it, that's
Speaker 1: the experience we're going to have, by and large, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of empowering. I think there's another framework
Speaker 1: that you describe in your memoir that was yet again
Speaker 1: another one that just I had this moment of like
Speaker 1: exactly that is it? Exactly you named it? And I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: do you have a copy of your book, Candy, Would
Speaker 1: you mind reading it? I can point you right to
Speaker 1: it because I just love hearing you read your work,
Speaker 1: as you read your poetry. It's been so beautiful. So
Speaker 1: this is page twenty two. As you mentioned your twenty
Speaker 1: year old self. Okay, how I picture it? We are
Speaker 1: all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside.
Speaker 1: We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves, all
Speaker 1: of ourselves wherever we go. Inside forty something me is
Speaker 1: the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child
Speaker 1: I was inside, divorced me, married me, the me who
Speaker 1: loved my husband, the me who believed what we had
Speaker 1: was a revocable and permanent, the me who believed in permanence.
Speaker 1: I still carry these versions of myself. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of reincarnation without death, all these different lives. We get
Speaker 1: to live in this one body as ourselves. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: you were the first person to ever language it like that.
Speaker 1: It's so true. I always feel like little me is
Speaker 1: still there inside of me. Yeah, and you're right, we
Speaker 1: carry all of them with us. What a beautiful way
Speaker 1: to integrate the lives we live. I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: integration a lot, so I love that, And to me,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the same thing we do when
Speaker 1: we revise a piece of writing and then save a
Speaker 1: new version. I never save over right, Like I never
Speaker 1: replace one version with the new version. I always saved
Speaker 1: the old draft because I want to see where I
Speaker 1: was before. I want to be able to follow the
Speaker 1: breadcrumb trail back and see each iteration of that poem
Speaker 1: or essay. And I kind of think of us like
Speaker 1: that too, you know, when we hid a new birthday,
Speaker 1: we're not saving over all of the other drafts of us.
Speaker 1: I think of them as nesting dolls, like those Russian
Speaker 1: Matroiska dolls, because it's like it's all in there, and
Speaker 1: somehow it's just impossibly elastic that we're able to carry
Speaker 1: all of these versions of ourselves with us all the time,
Speaker 1: and all of these memories and all of these different
Speaker 1: ways of being all at the same time. It seems impossible,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a kind of multiverse. It seems impossible,
Speaker 1: and yet that's just how we live. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I love the word carrying because the way you say
Speaker 1: it evoked in me this Tenderness that it's almost like
Speaker 1: I'm carrying the younger versions of me a maternal way.
Speaker 1: It's in a loving way. It's a bringing you with
Speaker 1: me gently. I'm trying to cultivate more of that energy
Speaker 1: in the way I relate to myself. I love that
Speaker 1: you read Tenderness and that someone asked recently, if you
Speaker 1: could go back and revise a poem from a published
Speaker 1: book from twenty years ago, would you do it? And
Speaker 1: I said no, And if I think I would write
Speaker 1: the poem differently now that poem is a record of
Speaker 1: the writer and the person I was then, right, And
Speaker 1: I don't want to erase her by erasing her choices
Speaker 1: and how she wrote that poem. Again, it's we're not
Speaker 1: auto saving, like we're carrying all of it along. That's
Speaker 1: important to me. Let's talk a little bit about another
Speaker 1: thing that comes up in the book a number of times,
Speaker 1: which is the idea of forgiveness. And you say in
Speaker 1: the book, my aspiration is to forgive, you know, you say,
Speaker 1: by the time these pages are printed, by the time
Speaker 1: you're reading this, may I be in a place of forgiveness.
Speaker 1: And I was just thinking about that, and I was
Speaker 1: also thinking about like, we've had a couple of people
Speaker 1: on and we've done episodes on forgiveness, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about how one of the hardest things in the world
Speaker 1: to do is forgive someone who's not sorry. And so
Speaker 1: I'm curious for you, as you continue to have an
Speaker 1: aspiration towards forgiveness, do you feel like you're making progress
Speaker 1: on that And do you feel like there is a
Speaker 1: part of you, a place in you that is afraid
Speaker 1: to forgive or doesn't think that forgiveness is wise at
Speaker 1: the current moment for any number of different reasons. If
Speaker 1: I'm teasing too much out about your current situation, you
Speaker 1: can kick this question down the road. No, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I have a complicated relationship with forgiveness, which
Speaker 1: is why I think I was writing that aspirationally, and
Speaker 1: I think where I landed was acceptance, which feels I
Speaker 1: don't know how you feel about this, but it feels
Speaker 1: somewhat different to me, Like I don't know about the
Speaker 1: Dictionary definition of acceptance versus forgiveness, but I think they
Speaker 1: do feel kind of texturally and qualitatively different to me.
Speaker 1: So perhaps the short answer is, I think I've got
Speaker 1: myself to a place of acceptance where I'm not in
Speaker 1: a place of like struggling and pushing back against what is,
Speaker 1: and I'm not blaming myself, but I'm also not blaming
Speaker 1: others like I'm in I think a sort of like
Speaker 1: as peaceful as I can be neutral space about that,
Speaker 1: you know, because what I'm seeking is peace. But forgiveness
Speaker 1: still feels still slightly like my fingers can't quite touch
Speaker 1: it for some of the reasons you're describing. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have any wisdom to share there, I am all ears.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I do. I do think we
Speaker 1: touched on this a little bit earlier, I think in
Speaker 1: this conversation, or I can't remember, maybe we touched on
Speaker 1: in our a few minutes beforehand. But the idea of
Speaker 1: when we really recognize what anger or hate can be
Speaker 1: doing to us, right, for me, that was a fundamental
Speaker 1: step on at least getting to the aspiration for forgiveness,
Speaker 1: where I went like, oh, I see, like another old
Speaker 1: Buddhist story says, resentment is like holding onto hot coals
Speaker 1: you know, the other person isn't getting burned, you know,
Speaker 1: or which we used to say in AA, it's like
Speaker 1: drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die,
Speaker 1: you know, so you get this sense like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: well this is only hurting me, And yet I do
Speaker 1: think you're right. There is a place I think between forgiveness,
Speaker 1: which I've experienced for some people who have harmed me
Speaker 1: in the past true forgiveness. It feels like I have
Speaker 1: extreme warmth towards them when I think about the situation.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cause me any distress. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: over have they apologized they have in those cases, yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least recognized we co created a situation. But
Speaker 1: then I think of other situations where I don't think
Speaker 1: that I'm there. Where I don't want to be is
Speaker 1: I don't want them occupying a bunch of space in
Speaker 1: my brain all the time. And so that does seem
Speaker 1: to be a little bit of the acceptance piece. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like, Okay, I've got to find
Speaker 1: a way to turn the temperature on this whole thing down,
Speaker 1: take them from occupying fifty percent of my mental energy
Speaker 1: to three percent of my mental energy. But I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that I necessarily feel feelings of warmth in my
Speaker 1: heart towards that person. And I've sort of started to
Speaker 1: accept that in certain cases, particularly if the harm is ongoing,
Speaker 1: that that might be just about as far as is
Speaker 1: reasonable to go. Yeah, at least for me. I think
Speaker 1: that seems reasonable to me too, and also self protective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not in a sort of like guarded, overreaching way,
Speaker 1: but in a really reasonable, boundaried way, which is like,
Speaker 1: I respect myself enough that I'm going to keep this
Speaker 1: distance and it might not ever be warm, right. I've
Speaker 1: never thought about warmth and forgiveness is sort of traveling together.
Speaker 1: And I find that interesting because I do think that's clarifying.
Speaker 1: If it's impossible for you to think about having warm
Speaker 1: feelings towards someone, you're probably not in a place of
Speaker 1: forgiveness with them, yeah, But you might be in a
Speaker 1: place of acceptance without warm feelings. I love that you
Speaker 1: brought the word acceptance into the forgiveness conversation, because as
Speaker 1: I think about a relationship where there is well, let
Speaker 1: me say, there has been an apology, but there is
Speaker 1: no change in behavior. With my sisters really ongoing, long, painful,
Speaker 1: difficult relationship, I think lately what I have been able
Speaker 1: to find is accepting of who she is, not that
Speaker 1: I want her in my life. I have a maximum sympathy,
Speaker 1: minimum contact scenario with her, Like, the boundary is there.
Speaker 1: But in terms of how I can have peace up
Speaker 1: in my own head in my heart about the situation,
Speaker 1: I've just sort of accepted this is who she is
Speaker 1: telling me she is through her actions repeatedly, and so
Speaker 1: I am going to accept that, as opposed to constantly
Speaker 1: in my head wishing she was different, wanting her to
Speaker 1: be different, arguing she should be different talking. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like, and it's interesting because I just Instagram. I
Speaker 1: started following this woman, doctor Caroline Leaf. She had a
Speaker 1: post recently that said, you can't hurt others with your thoughts,
Speaker 1: only yourself, And I was like, oh, so all of
Speaker 1: these arguments I'm having with her in my head, all
Speaker 1: of this is only corroding my own brain, you know that.
Speaker 1: So if I can just you know, quit being surprised
Speaker 1: that a snake has bitten me they are a snake
Speaker 1: if they tend to do that, and just accept that's
Speaker 1: who she is, and quit walking in paths riddled with snakes.
Speaker 1: If I can, then I can have some peace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: realistic expectations I think are important, and also having a
Speaker 1: real sort of heart to heart with this self about
Speaker 1: what the people in your life are capable of. Yeah, exactly, Like,
Speaker 1: this is what this person is capable of, Like, this
Speaker 1: is what they have to offer, this is what they're
Speaker 1: bringing to this co created system, And so I have
Speaker 1: to behave accordingly. And I can't make them different. I
Speaker 1: can't make them show up in a different way. I
Speaker 1: can't make them capable of what I think they should. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be capable, you know, the realistic expectations piece of like
Speaker 1: acceptance is big. Yeah, the piece that comes with that
Speaker 1: is huge. I mean for me, since I had that
Speaker 1: realization about my sister, I have spent so much last time,
Speaker 1: very little time at war in my head with her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's like liberating. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: capacity thing is a really important one. When I think
Speaker 1: that somebody should change, or more importantly, could change, I'm
Speaker 1: then very troubled. If on the other hand, it was
Speaker 1: like with Jinny's mom, there became a point with Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: I went like, she can't it can't happen, she can't
Speaker 1: do differently than this. In that moment, it became incredibly
Speaker 1: easy to be like, well, that's the way she is
Speaker 1: that's because she can't not be Yeah. Right, But that
Speaker 1: extends further than we might often think it does with
Speaker 1: people at the very least with a capacity to not
Speaker 1: want to change. I mean, one of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: that I use on this show over and over again
Speaker 1: is when you realize how difficult it is to change yourself,
Speaker 1: you realize the near impossibility of changing anyone else. And
Speaker 1: I just love that because it really puts it in
Speaker 1: perspective for me. I'm like, yeah, you're right, I've got
Speaker 1: my hands full trying to like with me here, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get someone else to do it,
Speaker 1: particularly they don't want to do it. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to mind my own side of the street as best
Speaker 1: as I can. And yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, Maggie, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. We both loved the book. We love
Speaker 1: talking to you as always, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for this generous and fun conversation. Yeah, thank you, Maggie.
Speaker 1: Oh this was a joy. Thank you. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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