Speaker 1: We're making the world. It's not separate from us. The
Speaker 1: world we live in is not something that's being done
Speaker 1: to us right, It's something we're making every day. So
Speaker 1: how do we make it Welcome to the One You Feed?
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: 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 poet Maggie Smith, and it's her second time
Speaker 1: on the One You Feed podcast. She's the author of
Speaker 1: national bestsellers Golden Rod and Keep Moving, Notes on Loss,
Speaker 1: creativity and change, as well as good Bones. The Well
Speaker 1: speaks of its own Poison and Lamp of the Body.
Speaker 1: Maggie's poems and essays are widely published and anthologized, appearing
Speaker 1: in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: The Paris Review, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: We're also proud to say that Maggie is from our
Speaker 1: hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Maggie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me back. Yeah, I'm excited that you
Speaker 1: are back. And we have Jenny joining us again. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here. Yes, so right, Jenny, Hi Maggie.
Speaker 1: He had such a great time talking with Maggie last time,
Speaker 1: and so many of our listeners loved it so much,
Speaker 1: we thought, let's do it again, and let's do it
Speaker 1: with Jinny because we thought it would be fun. So
Speaker 1: here we are, Here we are. You want to take
Speaker 1: it away, Yes I will. Here we go. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lay the parable on you, Maggie. Let's see what comes up.
Speaker 1: So there's a grandmother talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves at battle within us.
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 granddaughter stops and thinks for a second and looks
Speaker 1: up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to ask you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you today, in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I was dropping my kids back off
Speaker 1: at school to day from lunch and explaining to them
Speaker 1: what I was doing today and telling them about the parable,
Speaker 1: and my daughter was like, oh, I get it right,
Speaker 1: Like wherever you give attention, that's the thing that grows, right,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that thrives. And I said yes, And
Speaker 1: then I drove home and I thought a little bit
Speaker 1: about it, and I thought, you know what I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to do more now than probably the last time
Speaker 1: I answered this question, is let feelings come and pass
Speaker 1: and not even sort of call them negative or positive
Speaker 1: or bad or good. It's sort of that, you know,
Speaker 1: the realka no feeling is final. And so right now
Speaker 1: I think I'm I don't know what I said the
Speaker 1: first time I answered this question, but I think right
Speaker 1: now what I'm trying to think about is how not
Speaker 1: to sort of judge myself for what I'm feeling in
Speaker 1: the moment, or or even worse like, sort of pathologize
Speaker 1: what I'm feeling in the moment and letting myself just Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little envious right now, or I'm feeling angry,
Speaker 1: or I'm feeling lonely, or whatever the feeling is, and
Speaker 1: just waiting it out because so much of I think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, progressing through anything is having some patience
Speaker 1: with it and knowing that it's not going to last forever.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm rethinking it a little bit now now.
Speaker 1: I love that you know, you and I are kind
Speaker 1: of walking along parallel streets here, because I too, have
Speaker 1: really been. Even in the last couple of years, my
Speaker 1: focus in a sense of wonder has been revolving around
Speaker 1: how my feelings can just come and go, and that
Speaker 1: they go they don't stay, and that I don't have
Speaker 1: to act on them for them to go anywhere, that
Speaker 1: they can just move through me. And that is something
Speaker 1: that I wish I had really experientially discovered much earlier
Speaker 1: in life than I did. You know, wouldn't that have
Speaker 1: been nice, and so I was thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up sort of a black and white thinker.
Speaker 1: So you know, my personality, my Myers Briggs is I
Speaker 1: n F J. And the only letter on that continuum
Speaker 1: that I need to keep in check is the J.
Speaker 1: It's the judgment side of things. Everything else I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I'm pretty happy about, you know, being intuitive
Speaker 1: and feeling and and all this, But the J is
Speaker 1: the thing I really need to work on. And when
Speaker 1: I think about it, I'm like, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in a pretty structured home, which was lovely and
Speaker 1: I was happy, but I also grew up with a
Speaker 1: very strong sense of right and wrong. This is the
Speaker 1: way you do things, and this is the way you
Speaker 1: don't do things. These are the grades you get, and
Speaker 1: these are the grades you don't get. This is how
Speaker 1: you act, and this is how you don't act. This
Speaker 1: is appropriate dress and this is not appropriate dress. And
Speaker 1: thinking about that as a parent now and having to
Speaker 1: sort of like loosen my grip a little bit on
Speaker 1: on the sort of the black and white right and wrong,
Speaker 1: bad and good dichotomy of things and trying to let
Speaker 1: go of that kind of binary thinking a little bit
Speaker 1: um not having total anarchy in my home, but letting
Speaker 1: go of it enough that, you know, we can have
Speaker 1: conversations about like, well, maybe it's not bad to dye
Speaker 1: your hair when you're twelve, Like what's a little blue
Speaker 1: hair in the grand scheme of things, you know? Or
Speaker 1: maybe it's not bad to use like a mild four
Speaker 1: letter word now and again in context it's you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't deserve to be grounded for a month
Speaker 1: when doing these sorts of things. So I'm I'm having to,
Speaker 1: like both as a parent and in my own life
Speaker 1: just sort of like dial it back a little bit
Speaker 1: and stop and think, like, Okay, what's really at stake here,
Speaker 1: Like what's really going on and what's really at stake,
Speaker 1: and what would it cost me to like say yes
Speaker 1: instead of no in this situation, or to like take
Speaker 1: a beat and not be reactive and like instead of
Speaker 1: shooting that email of that text right back, sit with
Speaker 1: it for an hour or two, or sleep on it
Speaker 1: and come back to it the next day and see
Speaker 1: if I'm like maybe slightly operating at a lower vibration
Speaker 1: in that moment. Oh my gosh, yes, I feel like
Speaker 1: everything you're saying. I want to jump in and say
Speaker 1: me too. And I'm wondering if maybe I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one that feels that way. I mean, you're writing
Speaker 1: speaks to so many people, so maybe you have a
Speaker 1: gift of being able to like allow others to see
Speaker 1: themselves or identify with what you're saying. But I even
Speaker 1: think that's my Myers Briggs personality type. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: off by a letter, but I'm pretty sure that I'm
Speaker 1: the same way, you know, and and the black and
Speaker 1: white thinking I can relate to. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just dressing the words right and wrong up
Speaker 1: in different costumes when I say this, But like the
Speaker 1: Buddhist idea of skillful and unskillful has been helpful for
Speaker 1: me to sort of shift a little bit out of
Speaker 1: right and wrong, you know, because I'm realizing that, like
Speaker 1: there's so much a rule book to life, and there's
Speaker 1: a section that's like here's the right way to live
Speaker 1: and here's the wrong way to live, that that's not
Speaker 1: really how it works. There's sort of just what you're
Speaker 1: doing right now. And for me, I've found that if
Speaker 1: I can orient around what's the direction I'm hoping to
Speaker 1: head in and then are there things they're skillful for that,
Speaker 1: and then are there things that are may be less skillful.
Speaker 1: It helps me listen my grip a little bit on
Speaker 1: this idea of right and wrong, you know, right and
Speaker 1: everything's contextual. Right, That's the thing is that the problem
Speaker 1: is like what's right or wrong or skillful or unskillful
Speaker 1: totally is contextual. You know, even for children. What might
Speaker 1: have been a thing that was you know, okay for
Speaker 1: my son fifteen years ago might be very different for
Speaker 1: your kids today. So we might even say, like, look,
Speaker 1: we can't even just carry that forward. And when you
Speaker 1: were talking, it made me think of something, Jenny, that
Speaker 1: you were talking about recently. You were talking about the
Speaker 1: inner critic, Yes, and you were saying that some people
Speaker 1: often think the inner critic gets for at a young age,
Speaker 1: you know, around eight or whatever, and that's why it's
Speaker 1: black and white thinking. And so Maggie, as you were
Speaker 1: sort of saying, you're carrying some of these things forward
Speaker 1: from being young. You know that black and white thinking
Speaker 1: is where we're carrying it forward from. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: like the inner critic, if it's like essentially an eight
Speaker 1: year old inside of us bossing us around, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. When I sort of had that framework,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I realized, like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: would tell it. First of all, you know, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: operating at your capacity. And when I let an eight
Speaker 1: year old necessarily judge my life right now, no, they
Speaker 1: don't have the capacity. No, I have a nine year
Speaker 1: old to who well actuallys me every once in a while,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, did you just well actually mean, don't
Speaker 1: you even think you know more about the way this
Speaker 1: world works. I am not a genius, but I have
Speaker 1: a few years on you. So let's just dial it back. See,
Speaker 1: that's what you should be saying to our inner critics,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, yeah, and they're loud. That's the thing
Speaker 1: about the inner critic. They're loud. And the inner critic,
Speaker 1: I think, is maybe the cousin of like whatever the
Speaker 1: inner thing is that tells us we're frauds. That's sort
Speaker 1: of like imposter syndrome that we carry with us is
Speaker 1: sort of related to the inner critic. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that dates back to eight or if maybe
Speaker 1: that's more of like a sixteen to eighteen year old, well,
Speaker 1: bad bad seed inside of us. But yeah, keeping those
Speaker 1: things and check is hard. I mean it is, it's hard.
Speaker 1: And also then you know, those of us who are
Speaker 1: parents like sort of reparenting ourselves in a way in
Speaker 1: order to parent, maybe in different ways that seem either
Speaker 1: more conducive to who we are as people or more
Speaker 1: conducive to who our individual kids are. You know, I
Speaker 1: have two kids and they're not the same, so I
Speaker 1: don't approach them the same on bad days, Like if
Speaker 1: one of them is having kind of a rotten day,
Speaker 1: I can use humor to refuse the situation. The other
Speaker 1: one would get so angry if I try to like
Speaker 1: lighten things up, Like I need to recognize how bad
Speaker 1: it is and be with you in the well of badness,
Speaker 1: Like that's what that other child needs. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, part of getting older is also getting to
Speaker 1: know ourselves and knowing if we are feeling that way ourselves,
Speaker 1: like how do we get ourselves out of it? Knowing
Speaker 1: yourself really well I think is important and sort of
Speaker 1: in order to parent yourself through hard times. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that that is so fluid, right, Like who we are
Speaker 1: is always changing, so revisiting that I think is useful.
Speaker 1: And the last thing I wanted to sort of touch
Speaker 1: on that you said as you were responding to the parable.
Speaker 1: That really struck a chord deep within me, because I
Speaker 1: find myself really noticing this a lot and hoping that
Speaker 1: I can maybe shift away from it. Is really judging
Speaker 1: myself for how I'm feeling, Like I so often right
Speaker 1: have this inner voice going like, you shouldn't this way,
Speaker 1: you should you should feel some other way than you're feeling,
Speaker 1: or you shouldn't feel the way you are feeling. And
Speaker 1: my so much suffering comes from that, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: god suffering, the sort of guilt and shame you feel
Speaker 1: about having some other negative feeling that just then compounds it,
Speaker 1: you know, like you feel angry and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: I should be more dignified about this. I shouldn't let
Speaker 1: this get to me. Or you have people in your
Speaker 1: life who tell you you shouldn't let this get to
Speaker 1: you, you you should let this roll off your back, and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, am I a lesser person because I'm
Speaker 1: taking this hard because I'm really absorbing this, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, capital as sensitive and I should be handling
Speaker 1: this differently. That's that's the worst, because not only are
Speaker 1: you feeling that sort of bad wolf feeling. Then you're
Speaker 1: shaming yourself for feeling that feeling, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we just make it even bigger? I hate that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's really the sort of no feeling as
Speaker 1: final letting it pass thing is so important, I think
Speaker 1: because that comes without judgment. Has that gotten harder for you, Maggie?
Speaker 1: As you've published a book that lots of people look
Speaker 1: up to and see you as this person who I mean,
Speaker 1: even though the book is all about not having it
Speaker 1: together right, people tend to elevate and go, oh, she's
Speaker 1: figured it out, She's got it, and you're seen in
Speaker 1: that sort of position. Is that made it harder for
Speaker 1: you to have negative feelings without judging them. It is
Speaker 1: a little harder to share them because we change, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you were just saying we change. So I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly the same as I was last year, and
Speaker 1: I'm not actually exactly the same as I was when
Speaker 1: I wrote Keep Moving. And I'm not exactly the same
Speaker 1: as I was when I was writing the posts and
Speaker 1: sharing them on social media before it was a book.
Speaker 1: And frankly, a lot has happened in the past three
Speaker 1: years that have made things harder, not easier. So if
Speaker 1: you pick up a book, especially if it's nonfiction, you're
Speaker 1: reading is a time capsule of that writer's life at
Speaker 1: a certain time. And whether the book has a happy
Speaker 1: ending or a sad ending or an ambiguous ending, you
Speaker 1: aren't really privy unless you know the person or you
Speaker 1: Internet stalk them to what happened next right, um, And
Speaker 1: so in any given time, whatever I'm writing and sharing
Speaker 1: is just slice of life, quite literally, and what happens
Speaker 1: tomorrow or the next day might end up in a
Speaker 1: later book, or it might just be something for me
Speaker 1: and my you know, close circle to know about. But
Speaker 1: it can make things challenging, if you know, if you
Speaker 1: write a book that's a lot about optimism and then
Speaker 1: your life gets harder. But I will say the perk
Speaker 1: of writing a book about sort of facing things with
Speaker 1: hope and optimism and then your life getting unexpectedly harder
Speaker 1: is that you have something to draw from, which is
Speaker 1: I wrote all of those things and felt all of
Speaker 1: those things, and now I'm actually returning to those things.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of in a weird thing past
Speaker 1: me set sort of made this thing, and sets, you know,
Speaker 1: put this little message in a bottle in the water,
Speaker 1: and now two me can pick it up and open
Speaker 1: the book and read something that I wrote in nineteen
Speaker 1: and think, Okay, I may not feel that in this moment,
Speaker 1: but things were hard then and they got better, and
Speaker 1: then now they're kind of complicated in other ways. I
Speaker 1: know this to be true, even if I'm not feeling
Speaker 1: it in the moment. I know it to be real
Speaker 1: and true, and so I'm going to lean on this now.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of I weirdly built myself this
Speaker 1: sort of pordable shelter that I've carried into the present moment,
Speaker 1: and I'm leaning on it in ways that I think
Speaker 1: other readers are leaning on it even though I wrote it,
Speaker 1: which is strange. That's so interesting you bring that up,
Speaker 1: and to think of you experiencing your work in that way.
Speaker 1: It's really cool because in the journal that you published
Speaker 1: called Keep Moving, it's the journal it's got fifty two
Speaker 1: prompts writing prompts in it that people can work their
Speaker 1: way through really difficult times. Reflecting on these writing prompts
Speaker 1: to sort of draw on some inner resilience and ways
Speaker 1: to move through difficulty, so that there's some transformation and
Speaker 1: some resilience, and I just love so many of the prompts.
Speaker 1: But one of the prompts is to write a letter
Speaker 1: to your future self. And you've essentially kind of done
Speaker 1: that in some of your books, right like your past self.
Speaker 1: At least it's a time capsule, so you can go
Speaker 1: back and look, if nothing else, for proof that you'll
Speaker 1: make it, that you can get through whatever you're going through.
Speaker 1: It's reassuring. I mean, I find in some ways that
Speaker 1: the perk of going through a difficult time when you've
Speaker 1: already been through a particular difficult time as being like, well,
Speaker 1: I did that, so I can do this, right. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like the first time you get your
Speaker 1: heartbroken and you're like, well, what is this? Like I
Speaker 1: want to curl into a ball. I'm never going to
Speaker 1: feel this bad. Nothing's ever going to hurt this much.
Speaker 1: And then you move through it, and then it happens
Speaker 1: to you thirty more times in your life, and every
Speaker 1: time it still hurts, but you know that you predate
Speaker 1: that pain and that you will survive it. You're going
Speaker 1: to come through that and be on the other side
Speaker 1: of it. And I find that really useful and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, with the journal, the idea was that people
Speaker 1: were kind of using keep moving as writing prompts already,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, well, let's just make this easy
Speaker 1: and we'll make it all sort of one stop shop,
Speaker 1: and you can use the journal instead of maybe writing
Speaker 1: in the margins of the book itself. Though no judgment
Speaker 1: if you do that, because I do that in my books.
Speaker 1: But it really is I think therapeutic to have to
Speaker 1: write some of these things down I personally, and this
Speaker 1: is back to the inner critic, It is really easy
Speaker 1: for me to move through my day thinking about what's wrong.
Speaker 1: This person hasn't responded to my email, this person is
Speaker 1: be difficult, this isn't working out the way I fought.
Speaker 1: I have a deadline coming up. What's going on? I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to pick up my kids from school for
Speaker 1: lunch because now COVID is booming at their schools. It's
Speaker 1: easy to sort of keep a running mental inventory of
Speaker 1: what's wrong. And I find myself not doing that with
Speaker 1: what's right. But if I forced myself to write it down,
Speaker 1: I see how long the list is. And so as
Speaker 1: an exercise, I find that really useful, like to spend
Speaker 1: time instead of just spending time sort of venting the negative,
Speaker 1: to spend time to be like, okay, yes, not to
Speaker 1: diminish any of that. That's all happening and it's real,
Speaker 1: and let's take a beat with that. I thought it
Speaker 1: might be interesting for us to consider one of the prompts.
Speaker 1: This is one that struck me in particular as something
Speaker 1: that I wanted to pause and kind of think about
Speaker 1: because a couple of things came to mind. So anyway
Speaker 1: I was, I was interested to what you guys would say.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to resilience, one of the I
Speaker 1: think ingredients to make resilience is hope, right or hope
Speaker 1: that things will either get better, feel better, they will pass,
Speaker 1: that there will be something that can come from this
Speaker 1: to me that cultivates some resilience to bear the difficult things.
Speaker 1: You know, you write in the journal you say, know
Speaker 1: that fear develops your courage. Without the former, you would
Speaker 1: not need the latter. So the writing prompt that really
Speaker 1: struck me was what precious things might be made from
Speaker 1: this difficult time? What might be possible now that wasn't
Speaker 1: possible before? And finally, what have you learned that you
Speaker 1: could not have known before? That last piece especially struck me.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to know, maybe can you connect back
Speaker 1: to when you wrote these prompts and when you when
Speaker 1: that prompt you know, went from your fingers on the
Speaker 1: keyboard to the screen or the pen to the paper,
Speaker 1: what kind of came up for you or what comes
Speaker 1: up for you now when you hear that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I think there are some lessons you can't
Speaker 1: learn from someone telling you you know, I mean, even
Speaker 1: even someone telling you it's going to be okay. You
Speaker 1: you don't know it until you make it okay. And
Speaker 1: I find that the making it okay usually doesn't look
Speaker 1: the way that we think, Like making it okay doesn't
Speaker 1: mean sort of like getting back the things that you
Speaker 1: lost or sort of perfectly recreating it in some way,
Speaker 1: but a little bit differently, it doesn't mean like restoring
Speaker 1: necessarily even what was lost or what you had before.
Speaker 1: It just for me, I mean, the book is called
Speaker 1: keep Moving, and the journal is called keep Moving. It
Speaker 1: just it meant like keep going. And actually that's part
Speaker 1: of the realco quote. It's let everything happen to you,
Speaker 1: beauty and terror, just keep going. No feeling is final.
Speaker 1: And I just love that just keep going isn't a
Speaker 1: poem like it seems like really basic advice. But I
Speaker 1: think for me personally, I couldn't have learned that from
Speaker 1: someone telling me. I couldn't have learned it will not
Speaker 1: hurt this bad always. I couldn't have learned. You just
Speaker 1: need to keep moving and be patient with yourself and
Speaker 1: you'll find yourself in a new space. And frankly, someone
Speaker 1: telling me maybe at the time, that painful experiences are
Speaker 1: creative as well as destructive, and that something sort of
Speaker 1: burns down in your life that it gives you room
Speaker 1: to build something else, or maybe reconsider how that thing
Speaker 1: had been built in the first place, and maybe you
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it the same way again, you know, but
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't have dismantled it by choice either, And
Speaker 1: so here you are. I mean, that's so much of
Speaker 1: at least, you know. Going through my divorce made me
Speaker 1: really like look hard at what I had sort of
Speaker 1: co engineered, and when something like that ends, you have
Speaker 1: to think, Okay, so now, what how did I not
Speaker 1: build at well? What might I do differently in my
Speaker 1: forties than I did in my twenties? And the answer
Speaker 1: is lots of things I think if we're living right,
Speaker 1: the answer is lots of things. Also, how do I
Speaker 1: not beat myself up for not knowing better when I
Speaker 1: was twenty two or twenty three or twenty four or five,
Speaker 1: you know, like I built the best I could with
Speaker 1: the materials I had, in the knowledge I had, And
Speaker 1: now I know a little better, and I get to
Speaker 1: pick the materials because none of that exists anymore. And
Speaker 1: so now now what? And so those were hard lessons
Speaker 1: and really ones I wouldn't have chosen to learn, Like
Speaker 1: if you had told me five years ago, like you
Speaker 1: can basically burn your life down, but you'll know yourself
Speaker 1: a lot better and you'll feel really strong. Or you
Speaker 1: can keep everything you have, but your life will be
Speaker 1: a little bit smaller. I probably would have chosen be Like,
Speaker 1: let's be real, Yeah, I would have chosen be. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a first born. I like structure. I
Speaker 1: like to know what's happening next. So I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would have been like, yeah, let's just let's
Speaker 1: just tear this whole thing down. Um, I'm sure it'll
Speaker 1: put my kids through a lot, but I'll know myself
Speaker 1: so much better, So I'm sure it's worth it, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have chosen it. And yet now I will say this,
Speaker 1: looking back, I don't see how it could have been
Speaker 1: any other way. I would definitely undo some of how
Speaker 1: it happened, but I wouldn't undo what happening absolutely, And
Speaker 1: that's a lesson I couldn't have learned any other way
Speaker 1: other than just living it. I think I've said those
Speaker 1: exact words about like really just that there are some
Speaker 1: lessons that other people can't give you through words, that
Speaker 1: it has to be a lived experience. And I can
Speaker 1: even remember in my early twenties thinking to myself just
Speaker 1: wanting everyone to give me all the advice, because if
Speaker 1: they could give me all the advice, then that would
Speaker 1: save me my own failure. Give me the end of
Speaker 1: the chapter or the book, and that way I don't
Speaker 1: have to read it, you know. But it doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. I don't know if that's a I'm a
Speaker 1: firstborn as well, and so it's kind of like, all right,
Speaker 1: just tell me the right way to do it, and
Speaker 1: I'll do it. You want the answer, But back to
Speaker 1: our earlier conversation, that life doesn't work that way. Right
Speaker 1: and wrong is not necessarily as prescriptive. Give me the
Speaker 1: cliffs notes to give me the outline, give me the study,
Speaker 1: show me the right way. I want an A plus,
Speaker 1: nothing less will do. I mean, I think, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's that j in my personality type, but there's like
Speaker 1: nothing I would change about myself more than that, Like
Speaker 1: that sort of perfectionistic impulse. You know, it's the thing
Speaker 1: that made me successful, I think as a kid. It's
Speaker 1: the thing that made me like a good daughter in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways and sort of also brought me
Speaker 1: more misery than I think any other part of my personality,
Speaker 1: that like drive to do things well and and just
Speaker 1: to be ambitious about things, and not just professionally but personally,
Speaker 1: like to be the best mom and the best partner
Speaker 1: and the best neighbor and the I mean, ug, it's exhausting.
Speaker 1: It is exhausting. It's exhausting, and it's like, and how
Speaker 1: how best are you being if in the pursuit of
Speaker 1: that you're just completely ringing yourself out in the process.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like I never had migraines until my forties.
Speaker 1: You know, I was not a complete insomniac until really
Speaker 1: my thirties and forties. I mean, I think about, well,
Speaker 1: so many of the things that we put ourselves through
Speaker 1: as we strive, and that's not a headspace I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 1: We thought we might pivot for a moment and go
Speaker 1: to some poetry. There's so many great poems in your
Speaker 1: latest book, Golden Rod, but I was wondering if you
Speaker 1: could read the title poem. Of course, Okay, Golden Rod,
Speaker 1: I'm no botanist. If you're the color of sulfur and
Speaker 1: growing at the roadside, your golden Rod, you don't care
Speaker 1: what I call you. Whatever you were born as, you
Speaker 1: don't know your own name. But driving near Peoria, the
Speaker 1: sky pink orange, the sun bobbing at a horizon, I
Speaker 1: see everything is what it is, exactly in spite of
Speaker 1: the words I use. Black cows, barnes falling in on themselves,
Speaker 1: You deer flowers born with a highway view. Forgive me
Speaker 1: if I've mistaken you, Golden Rod, whatever your name is,
Speaker 1: you are with your own kind. Look, the meadow is
Speaker 1: a mirror full of you, your reflection repeating whatever you are.
Speaker 1: I see you wild yellow, and I would let you
Speaker 1: name me. I think that maybe my favorite poem that
Speaker 1: you have written. Yeah, it conjures up something deep within
Speaker 1: me and it just feels beautiful. When I read that
Speaker 1: for the first time, I thought to myself, like, I
Speaker 1: want to see the world the way Maggie Smith sees
Speaker 1: the world. Like, have you had to cultivate the perspective
Speaker 1: and the mind and the eye of a poet. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sense that you've always sort of been
Speaker 1: able to see the poetry in everyday things like golden
Speaker 1: Rod on the side of the highway. I mean, talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about how you see the world,
Speaker 1: you know. I think I've worked since I was a
Speaker 1: teenager and sort of cultivating the craft of my poems,
Speaker 1: like thinking about how they look on the page, thinking
Speaker 1: about what a sentence can do, what a line can do,
Speaker 1: where I want to break the lines, how I play
Speaker 1: with word choice, or the sounds of the words, and
Speaker 1: the rhythms of the sentences. I think I've cultivated all
Speaker 1: of that. But really, I think the way I see
Speaker 1: things that to me has sort of been something that's
Speaker 1: been pretty natural and and since I was really young,
Speaker 1: and I think seeing things in a sort of peculiar way,
Speaker 1: from lack of a better word, is what led me
Speaker 1: to writing in the first place, like I'm seeing this
Speaker 1: thing and I want to write it down, like or
Speaker 1: this reminds me of this. I want to capture that
Speaker 1: little snippet of of whatever I'm I'm observing or thinking about.
Speaker 1: You know, my kids kind of joke with me that
Speaker 1: I'm not actually very helpful, even with like third fourth
Speaker 1: fifth grade math homework. I'm pretty useless, you know. As
Speaker 1: soon as they bring home something that's like fractions or area,
Speaker 1: I start to kind of sweat and I'm like, we
Speaker 1: can google it. But imagery and metaphor, that's the thing
Speaker 1: for me that's natural. I think most of us have
Speaker 1: something that comes if we're lucky, have something that comes
Speaker 1: really natural, like whatever the sort of our superpower is.
Speaker 1: And it might be you know, caregiving, and it might
Speaker 1: be numbers, and it might be spatial recognition. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many different things. But for me, I think
Speaker 1: like metaphor might be my weird you know. Mostly I'm
Speaker 1: tempted to say mostly useless superpower. I don't actually believe that,
Speaker 1: but it's not useful in the ways that a lot
Speaker 1: of other superpowers are useful. Yeah, I totally know what
Speaker 1: you're saying, And I think I agree with you that
Speaker 1: like it actually is so useful. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's part of how your poetry comes together to be beautiful.
Speaker 1: As your use of metaphor. I wonder do you also
Speaker 1: consider yourself a good teacher. I feel like teachers can
Speaker 1: use metaphor in powerful ways. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think I am a good teacher. I think teaching in
Speaker 1: a classroom setting can be challenging for me because I'm
Speaker 1: an introvert. So the performative aspects of teaching I think
Speaker 1: I'm actually good at. I don't think anyone would know
Speaker 1: how hard it is for me sometimes to do that.
Speaker 1: But I really need to go sort of like lie
Speaker 1: in a quiet dark space after standing in front of
Speaker 1: people for two hours. Um. But I think the explaining
Speaker 1: things I sort of think of myself when I teach
Speaker 1: is like I'm a teaching artist, right, So here's the
Speaker 1: way I build poems, or here the lessons I've learned
Speaker 1: experientially from building poems over you know, twenty some years.
Speaker 1: So here's what I can pass on to you. Really,
Speaker 1: no differently from if you wanted to teach someone how
Speaker 1: to like why or something, or plum something or construct
Speaker 1: something it's a lot of practice, and to me now
Speaker 1: it almost feels like muscle memory to make a poem.
Speaker 1: I come up with an idea and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can see how I could configure this, and how
Speaker 1: I could wrap it up, and how this image could
Speaker 1: come back later in a sort of echo, and how
Speaker 1: satisfying that could be. And it feels almost like second nature.
Speaker 1: But of course it didn't. When I was eighteen, I
Speaker 1: had the premise, but I didn't know how to sort
Speaker 1: of do the follow through. And now, as someone who
Speaker 1: I think is a little bit better with follow through,
Speaker 1: I love working with students in classes or one on
Speaker 1: one and just seeing like, Okay, I see what you're
Speaker 1: doing in this poem, and here like the five missed
Speaker 1: opportunities that like me now can see though me working
Speaker 1: with this poem where you are couldn't have seen it.
Speaker 1: So maybe me showing you this in this poem will
Speaker 1: help you then apply that knowledge to poem B C,
Speaker 1: D E F and sort of carry it forward that way.
Speaker 1: So you would say that writing poetry is as much
Speaker 1: as skill that can be cultivated as it is sort
Speaker 1: of a way of looking at the world that you
Speaker 1: innately have. Yeah, I mean, I think you know, poetry
Speaker 1: is an art and a craft, and some of the
Speaker 1: art I think it's hard to teach. I can't teach
Speaker 1: you to see a field of flowers the way I
Speaker 1: see a field of flowers when I'm driving by on
Speaker 1: a road trip, Like I I don't know how to
Speaker 1: like quantify or tap into that exactly. But once you
Speaker 1: have something, then the craft kicks in. Like that's the plumbing,
Speaker 1: that's the electrician work, right, Like, once you have something,
Speaker 1: once you have the materials, the raw materials, I can
Speaker 1: teach you how to use those materials sort of optimize
Speaker 1: what you have already. But it's hard to have a
Speaker 1: blank page and work with that. Like you have to
Speaker 1: have something. You have to have something. I think it's
Speaker 1: absolute will be possible to teach creative writing. I just
Speaker 1: can't give you different eyes, right right, right, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll say on this and then I'd
Speaker 1: love another poem, please, is you know I love to write,
Speaker 1: and I often find myself discovering things as they come
Speaker 1: out of me in written word. I'll either say something
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever even thought before it just
Speaker 1: comes out of my mouth, or like I'll write a
Speaker 1: sentence and I'm like, yes, that's exact actually what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's never been in my brain before. It just came
Speaker 1: out of my fingertips. You know, I see you nodding.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's not unique to me obviously. Like that's
Speaker 1: one of the things about writing. Huh. It's one of
Speaker 1: the things. I mean, I don't know what I think
Speaker 1: most of the time until I write it down. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, that makes so much sense. Yeah. I really
Speaker 1: have to process on paper. I really have to. And
Speaker 1: I'm constantly surprising myself, Like I'll write something down or
Speaker 1: I'll type something and then I read it back and
Speaker 1: I'll think, do I think that? Is that how I
Speaker 1: conceive of this? Like is that real and true? Well,
Speaker 1: it just came out of me. So I have to
Speaker 1: sit with that. I have to chew on that a
Speaker 1: little bit more. I have to process that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. But it really is the way that I
Speaker 1: get at things more than any other way by writing
Speaker 1: things down. I think there's neuroscience behind that that, especially
Speaker 1: writing Longhand you're able to sort of tap into some
Speaker 1: things even that you can't iping I think there's real science,
Speaker 1: not even like poets science of science. That's funny. Do
Speaker 1: you have a daily disciplined writing like just free flowing practice. No,
Speaker 1: I have a When something comes to me, I write
Speaker 1: it down, or if I'm on deadline, I make myself
Speaker 1: do it right practice. But I will say I feel
Speaker 1: better when I'm doing it. So it's just like running
Speaker 1: or meditating or really anything else. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a gift I can give myself. And if I don't
Speaker 1: do it for a few days, I feel cranky, you know,
Speaker 1: like I feel the lack of that. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can relate to the thought that comes up in me
Speaker 1: when you say that as like emotionally kind of constipated
Speaker 1: or mentally consulated, you know, Like I definitely I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a gift I can give myself. So I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily do it in a really structured way every day,
Speaker 1: but I'm so pleased when I know I have a
Speaker 1: chunk of time. You know, if I know I've got
Speaker 1: two or three hours and I don't have anything else
Speaker 1: and nobody needs me and my emails can wait, I
Speaker 1: get giddy or I'll book myself like a couple of
Speaker 1: days in a cabin and I will just you know,
Speaker 1: I won't be on the grid and I will just
Speaker 1: be writing. And it's like I look forward to that,
Speaker 1: like you know, I did Christmas morning when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid. Like that to me is like snacks, coffee,
Speaker 1: good music and my headphones and like writing for eight
Speaker 1: hours with nobody interrupting me, even if I'm just moving
Speaker 1: a few lines around over and over again. That's a
Speaker 1: geek's good time, right there. Should we do another poem? Yes? Please? Sure?
Speaker 1: How about the Hum? Page nine? I think page eight eight,
Speaker 1: page eight and nine. You're both right. So it's funny.
Speaker 1: This poem actually has a sort of seek a reference
Speaker 1: in it to a poem from my second book that
Speaker 1: talks about bones. And so there's a line in this
Speaker 1: about years ago I thought this was coming from my bones.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a poem called White in my second
Speaker 1: book that that this is sort of like a companion
Speaker 1: poem to like fifteen years later. This is the hum.
Speaker 1: It's not a question without the mark. How do we
Speaker 1: live with trust in a world that will continue to
Speaker 1: betray us? Here my voice not lift at the end.
Speaker 1: How do we trust when we continue to be betrayed
Speaker 1: for the first time. I doubt will find our way back.
Speaker 1: But how can we not see how the terminal mark
Speaker 1: allows a question to dress as statement and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Sometimes if I am quiet and still, I can hear
Speaker 1: a small hum inside me, and clients left running years ago.
Speaker 1: I thought it was coming from my bones. The hum
Speaker 1: kept me company, and I thought, thank God for bones,
Speaker 1: for the fidelity of bones. They'll be there until the
Speaker 1: end and then some Now what how to continue? I've
Speaker 1: started calling the hum the soul today I have to
Speaker 1: hold my breath to hear it. What question does it
Speaker 1: keep not asking and not asking, never changing its pitch?
Speaker 1: How do I answer? There's so many parts of that
Speaker 1: that I love. I mean, obviously the end is just
Speaker 1: you know, I started calling the hum the soul is
Speaker 1: so beautiful? And what question does it not keep asking?
Speaker 1: But where I thought we might talk about for a
Speaker 1: minutes to kind of jump back to the beginning, which is,
Speaker 1: how do we live with trust in the world that
Speaker 1: will continue to betray us? And are we in a
Speaker 1: world that will continue to betray us? I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting question, and if so, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we live in that? What are your first thoughts. Well,
Speaker 1: you can see how the poem ends. How do I answer?
Speaker 1: So really the answer is I don't know, um, And
Speaker 1: the answer is also what choice do I have? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I suspect the world is both wolves. It's
Speaker 1: let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all the best things and all the worst things
Speaker 1: all wrapped up. Um, and sometimes they're the best worst things.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to live in it except to
Speaker 1: keep going, and you know, focus as much as I
Speaker 1: can on what's going right and not deny what's going wrong,
Speaker 1: and do my best to sort of right those things
Speaker 1: as much as I can R I, G H T.
Speaker 1: And also write them as much as I can to.
Speaker 1: You know, my poem good Bones kind of comes out
Speaker 1: of that idea too, Like I don't know how to
Speaker 1: live or how to explain this particular life to my kids.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult, so we keep going. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: the line in a World that betrays Us is interesting
Speaker 1: because it caused me to sort of like you were
Speaker 1: just saying, there's there's terror and there's beauty. You know,
Speaker 1: in Buddhism we'd say the ten thousand joys and the
Speaker 1: ten thousand sorrows. Right, it's all here. So is the
Speaker 1: world really betraying us? Or is it just doing what
Speaker 1: it does? And do we live with it a little
Speaker 1: bit more easily if we pivot out of the sense
Speaker 1: of betrayal and into a sense of the world. Is
Speaker 1: that way? You've got another poem that you know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking you might read later wild Right, which really
Speaker 1: sort of talks about this basic idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't really fault the wolf for eating
Speaker 1: the sheep, even though my sympathies with the sheep. Wolves
Speaker 1: eat cheap. It's the world, right, It is the world.
Speaker 1: So maybe without judgment for what the world is like,
Speaker 1: we just learned to live with what is and try
Speaker 1: not to control it too much with our our thoughts
Speaker 1: or our actions. But yeah, I mean, please, even just
Speaker 1: watching nature documentaries and the wolf comes and and drags
Speaker 1: down a sheep and you think, oh my gosh, where
Speaker 1: they go for the young and the herd of whatever
Speaker 1: animal it is, because they're the weakest. And it's always
Speaker 1: you know, sitting there with my kid and my kids like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, that's terrible, and I think, well, but
Speaker 1: the wolf is also a living creature who's trying to survive,
Speaker 1: and maybe they've got a den of you know, baby wolves,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to make milk for those baby
Speaker 1: wolves unless they're getting protein of their own. So these
Speaker 1: are all these difficult choices. This is survival. This is
Speaker 1: the way that it is. It's not always pretty, but
Speaker 1: this is just the way that it is. So I
Speaker 1: like that idea that maybe the answer is the world
Speaker 1: is not betraying us. This is the world like we're
Speaker 1: living in it. It is what it is. I hate
Speaker 1: when people say that it is what it is. I know,
Speaker 1: but I know, I know. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: a natural compassion arises in us that says, like we
Speaker 1: want it to be different, and and that doesn't feel wrong.
Speaker 1: It feels as natural to me as anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I wish it could be different. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wish it could be different, or the choices we make
Speaker 1: in our own lives to make it as different as
Speaker 1: we can. You know, I don't eat animals, so I
Speaker 1: don't have to feel bad about it. And that's the
Speaker 1: only reason. You know, it's not for health. I'll eat,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll eat anything that's really terrible for me.
Speaker 1: But my empathy won't allow me to eat animals, or
Speaker 1: you know, even just the way that I the way
Speaker 1: that I am with others, Like I think, how can
Speaker 1: we sort of carry that compassion into a world that
Speaker 1: sometimes seems indifferent to it? Right? But I mean, we're
Speaker 1: building this thing from scratch. Every day. We're making the world.
Speaker 1: It's not separate from us. The world we live in
Speaker 1: is not something that's being done to us, right, It's
Speaker 1: something we're making every day. So how do we make it?
Speaker 1: And what choices can we make individually, even though they
Speaker 1: seem small and sometimes insignificant, to make this day more
Speaker 1: livable than yesterday for ourselves or two people who are
Speaker 1: close to us, or too frankly, for people we don't
Speaker 1: even know. It seems like that's a shift that has
Speaker 1: happened inside of you you talk about. I don't know
Speaker 1: if these are the exact words you use, or if
Speaker 1: just the sentiment is what I got, But like being
Speaker 1: a recovering pessimists kind of like that you you know,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a choice that you continue to
Speaker 1: cultivate some degree to look for either the hope or
Speaker 1: the I don't know, optimism. I don't know what words
Speaker 1: you might use there. But if both are out there,
Speaker 1: both the animal that's eaten, you know, and also the
Speaker 1: one that has to eat. Like if both are out there,
Speaker 1: for us to choose where we place our attention, you know,
Speaker 1: to hold both and also then nurture where we place
Speaker 1: our attention. The line and the hum that struck me
Speaker 1: was I can hear a small hum inside me and
Speaker 1: appliance left running. I think about the inner critic is
Speaker 1: often the appliance left running in the low hum that's
Speaker 1: in the background that I don't even notice until I
Speaker 1: notice it, and then I realized it's been there and
Speaker 1: coloring things for a while. And I'm struck as as
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the two of you talk and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this, I'm struck by you know, I can
Speaker 1: choose to cultivate a different appliance running in the background,
Speaker 1: like I would love another hume, and I actually can
Speaker 1: have one, not overnight, you know, but by little choices
Speaker 1: and by cultivating and attention on different things. You know
Speaker 1: that that's possible, and I want that. I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's where the sort of patients
Speaker 1: and responding to things comes in. If I can feel
Speaker 1: myself sort of vibrating at a kind of high frequency.
Speaker 1: Like that's how I describe it to myself. If I
Speaker 1: have a lot of nervous energy, if I feel agitated,
Speaker 1: it's not a great time for me to take action
Speaker 1: in my life, like to respond to an email, to
Speaker 1: try to write something, to like help my kid with homework.
Speaker 1: It's really not a great time for me to take action,
Speaker 1: especially with others, if I am feeling that kind of
Speaker 1: like nervous, high pitched wavelength in me. And so how
Speaker 1: do I find a new pitch, Like how do I
Speaker 1: bring myself down to like a lower register emotionally? And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for all of us that's different.
Speaker 1: Writing sometimes helps, although sometimes that can kind of get
Speaker 1: me into a weird headspace too. But like taking a
Speaker 1: long walk or running or listening to really loud music
Speaker 1: and doing something completely unrelated like cooking or laundry or
Speaker 1: something that kind of occupies that busies my brain in
Speaker 1: a way that feels sort of mindless for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, I feel like that can get me
Speaker 1: into like like a better tone doesn't feel like discord
Speaker 1: to me. You really know yourself grown in that knowledge
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of time with this person wassly
Speaker 1: can't get away from her exactly. Isn't that the funny
Speaker 1: thing about like the self? It's like we we think like, oh,
Speaker 1: I spend so much time with my closest friends and
Speaker 1: my family and my kids and whatever. It's like the
Speaker 1: one person I cannot It's like wherever you go, there
Speaker 1: you are. So you better figure out ways to live
Speaker 1: with that person first and foremost. That's why I think
Speaker 1: working on our inner voices is so valuable, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you always have them, you know. I think sometimes it's
Speaker 1: the single most important thing we can do, is can
Speaker 1: we work on a more compassionate way of relating to ourselves?
Speaker 1: Like that sometimes feels like if there was one thing
Speaker 1: that I could give to people might be that, Like
Speaker 1: can we relate more compassionately to ourselves? Because we're always
Speaker 1: relating to ourselves, you know, it's always happen j Like
Speaker 1: the self compassion is the that's the flip side of that.
Speaker 1: So how do I turn down that sort of judgment,
Speaker 1: sort of inner critic the perfectionists the should void and
Speaker 1: turn up the self compassion. I don't know that there's
Speaker 1: anything more important than that, because it colors, everything, all right,
Speaker 1: One last poem, one last poem, and we sort of
Speaker 1: already alluded to this one, but I love it, so
Speaker 1: we'll go with wild Wild. I've talked so much about
Speaker 1: loving the world without any idea how to do it,
Speaker 1: something about turning the other cheek, something something feeding the
Speaker 1: mouth that bites you. The world I'm trying to love
Speaker 1: is all teeth and need, all gray mange. But I
Speaker 1: can't resent the wolf for pulling the lamb down, even
Speaker 1: in front of his mother. I can't be moved by
Speaker 1: bleeding a limp throat. The wolf has her own crying young.
Speaker 1: I've talked so much about loving the world. Is this
Speaker 1: how it's done? I am offering the only thing I have.
Speaker 1: I'm holding out my hand, feeding myself to the hungry future.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so good. It's so powerful. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that first line really gets me. I've talked so much
Speaker 1: about loving the world without any idea how to do it.
Speaker 1: Like it's intuitive, Like I think we all know that, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the world. You know, it's it's important, it's valuable.
Speaker 1: But how sometimes how it's not always lovable? You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's like I have a poem in the book
Speaker 1: before this one in Good Bones that that talks about
Speaker 1: loving the world like a mother and being tender when
Speaker 1: it lets you down. And that's the thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: having unconditional love for the world you live in means
Speaker 1: not demanding perfection from it any more than we demand
Speaker 1: it from ourselves, taking it as it is. I think
Speaker 1: it's hard to turn your attention to the positive, turn
Speaker 1: your attention to the beautiful, without also sort of ignoring
Speaker 1: the other because it's there and it needs tended. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a perpetual tight rope that I'm walking,
Speaker 1: you know, between, Like all right, I know my natural
Speaker 1: tendency is to turn towards the negative things, and God
Speaker 1: knows their plenty of they're essentially infinite. And yet the
Speaker 1: good things are also sort of infinite, you know, they're
Speaker 1: everywhere if you look. And so, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: I want the answer like sixty of the time on
Speaker 1: the good negative you're good, right, Like I'm looking for
Speaker 1: an answer when that's the art, right, The art is
Speaker 1: how to walk that tight rope. Yeah, And the parable
Speaker 1: kind of gets at that too, write like, how do
Speaker 1: you feel something even even if you think of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, my therapist is always like, no feeling is negative,
Speaker 1: Like stop saying you had a negative feeling, you had
Speaker 1: a feeling, like, let's talk through it. So even the
Speaker 1: idea of good and bad or negative and positive are
Speaker 1: still tricky, you know. And and I think a lot
Speaker 1: about like if I'm only trying to focus on the
Speaker 1: positive and I'm not addressing that sort of more difficult,
Speaker 1: sort of gnarlier, less attractive bits of life for myself,
Speaker 1: for you know whatever, that kind of silent treatment is
Speaker 1: also a problem that turning my back on those things
Speaker 1: can't last. Like nothing ever got better by being ignored,
Speaker 1: I mean, at least not in my experience. So I
Speaker 1: don't even think it's healthy to sort of only tend
Speaker 1: to the positive, like frankly, the negative needs a little
Speaker 1: tending to. Totally totally well, Maggie, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming back on It has been a wonderful conversation
Speaker 1: to to chat with you again and hear some of
Speaker 1: your poems and yeah, I'm just real grateful you were
Speaker 1: able to be here. Yeah, thank you so much. No,
Speaker 1: thank you, guys. If what you just heard was helpful
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