Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 2: and speaker.
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
Speaker 3: and course creator. We are two working parents who love
Speaker 3: our careers and our families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 2: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
Speaker 2: from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds, This says Laura. This
Speaker 2: episode is airing in mid March of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: I am going to be interviewing Emily P. Freeman about
Speaker 2: her new book How to Walk into a Room, which
Speaker 2: is not really about how to walk into our room.
Speaker 1: It's about knowing when.
Speaker 2: It is time to move on from one chapter of
Speaker 2: life to another. And so this book is a lot
Speaker 2: about endings, and so it's an interesting question because we
Speaker 2: don't always know that something is ending, and I think
Speaker 2: people in general don't handle endings necessarily as well as
Speaker 2: we could, or as mindfully as we could, and so
Speaker 2: that's a topic we talk about.
Speaker 1: A lot in this interview.
Speaker 2: So Sarah, have you had a last time for something
Speaker 2: that you didn't actually know was an ending at the time.
Speaker 3: I would say a lot of the stuff I did
Speaker 3: towards the end of my program director journey through a
Speaker 3: lot of last times that I may not have really
Speaker 3: like thought about we're going to be last times, not
Speaker 3: that the end was so abrupt. I guess maybe I
Speaker 3: did maybe have some awareness, but I didn't really think
Speaker 3: of the poignancy of what that really meant, like the
Speaker 3: last time I interviewed candidates, or the last time I
Speaker 3: ran a faculty meeting or something like that. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's interesting. I don't think I'm someone who does super
Speaker 3: well with endings in general. I don't mind moving on
Speaker 3: to things, and I'm certainly I don't shy away from
Speaker 3: quitting things that are working. I feel like that's actually
Speaker 3: a strength of mind. But when it comes to ceremoniously
Speaker 3: like acknowledging the closing of something, I think it's something
Speaker 3: I need to work on. So I'm excited for this interview.
Speaker 3: What about you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about a couple indings that I
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily know were endings at the time. My parents
Speaker 2: had you know, I lived with them in South be
Speaker 2: In Indiana for a couple of years, and then they
Speaker 2: were there for about twenty years after I left, and
Speaker 2: I went to go stay in their house with them
Speaker 2: one night and a couple of years ago, and it
Speaker 2: turned out then a couple of months after that that
Speaker 2: they decided to sell the house and retire and move
Speaker 2: out to the East Coast. So that was certainly the
Speaker 2: last time I will ever be in that house. I mean,
Speaker 2: I may not wind up in South Bend, Indiana for
Speaker 2: any particular reason. I mean, there's no real reason to
Speaker 2: go there if they are not there, and it's not
Speaker 2: the kind of place you just wind up necessarily passing through.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of crazy to think too that I
Speaker 2: might who knows if I'll ever be there again, but
Speaker 2: certainly I will probably not be in that house that
Speaker 2: I spent a great many nights in in the course
Speaker 2: of my life. Where else to thinking of this? So
Speaker 2: sometimes you think things are the end and they're not
Speaker 2: than they are. And then with nursing babies, So if
Speaker 2: anyone I don't know, some people have read my newsletters
Speaker 2: for a long long time, and I had mentioned something
Speaker 2: about it being a last time for I thought in
Speaker 2: it was probably March or April of twenty sixteen. Then
Speaker 2: baby Alex, who was you know, about fifteen months at
Speaker 2: the time, is the last time I've been nursing a baby.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, that's the end of a chapter
Speaker 2: of my life. But of course, haha. Then we decided
Speaker 2: to have another baby, so is in it for several
Speaker 2: more years since it turns out that this particular baby
Speaker 2: was way into it, so that took longer to end
Speaker 2: that journey than I thought. But there has, in fact
Speaker 2: now been a last time for nursing a baby.
Speaker 1: It's about that time. It's definitely time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And sometimes it's true you don't know when the
Speaker 3: end is going to be. And reflecting back on that,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I knew my last time with Cameron
Speaker 3: was giving me my last time because he was my
Speaker 3: child who like just one day was like I'm not
Speaker 3: doing this, Like you don't know that's coming necessarily. Maybe
Speaker 3: there are some signs and that can be really heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: But then at the same time, maybe it's better not
Speaker 3: to know that it's the last time, because again, I
Speaker 3: don't like endings, so maybe that's.
Speaker 1: A good thing. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I had
Speaker 1: more of a sense of that.
Speaker 2: Finally, with this the fifth baby is like, okay, the
Speaker 2: last time for various things with babyhood. But you know
Speaker 2: the thing about having five kids, as you're probably ready
Speaker 2: by the end of the fifth kid to have that
Speaker 2: be the last time you potty train a child, for instance,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of a thankless task. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 2: hear what Emily has to say about endings and how
Speaker 2: we can be a little bit more mindful about them.
Speaker 2: So Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Emily P.
Speaker 2: Freeman to the program. So, Emily, could you introduce yourself
Speaker 2: to our listeners.
Speaker 4: I would love to. It's so great to be here
Speaker 4: with you today. Well, I am joining you from North Carolina,
Speaker 4: where I live with my husband John. We've been together
Speaker 4: twenty two years and we have three kids, twins who
Speaker 4: are twenty one seventeen, so we've lived the whole life
Speaker 4: together of navigating. We've almost made it through the teen years,
Speaker 4: which has been great. But I'm an author, I'm a
Speaker 4: podcast host. I have a podcast called The Next Right Thing,
Speaker 4: where I help people who experience decision fatigue and chronic
Speaker 4: hesitation discern their next right thing. In faith, work in.
Speaker 2: Life awesome, awesome, And so of course we're here talking
Speaker 2: about Emily's new book which is called How to Walk.
Speaker 1: Into a Room.
Speaker 2: But we are not literally walking into any rooms with
Speaker 2: you know, Pizaz or anything like that. It's more of
Speaker 2: an allegorical sort of thing. So maybe you can explain
Speaker 2: explain the metaphor for us.
Speaker 4: Sure, I had a nine year old say, well that's easy. Watch,
Speaker 4: I'll do it right now, I can open the door.
Speaker 4: Watch get me doing it, which I love that, you know.
Speaker 4: The idea really is that if life were a house,
Speaker 4: then every room holds a story. And I think we
Speaker 4: all understand what it's like to walk into a literal
Speaker 4: room and feel like, yeah, this is a room where
Speaker 4: I belong, This is my room, this is my place.
Speaker 4: We also understand the physical feeling of walking into a
Speaker 4: room where you're like, this is not my place. I
Speaker 4: do not belong here. But really, the question that I'm
Speaker 4: positing in this book is the question of what do
Speaker 4: you do when a room that you're in is no
Speaker 4: longer a room where you belong? What do I do
Speaker 4: when I'm having to discern, oh, this was my place
Speaker 4: vocationally or connection wise or friend group wise or volunteer
Speaker 4: work wise, and then you begin to realize, oh, something
Speaker 4: has shifted either in the room, in the people around me,
Speaker 4: or in myself, and I need to discern, Okay, what
Speaker 4: do I do? How do I leave this place? Is
Speaker 4: it time to leave this place? And what am I
Speaker 4: going to do next? So, because that's where I have
Speaker 4: found in conversations with people about decision making, where we
Speaker 4: feel the most stuck is when we're considering leaving a space,
Speaker 4: especially one that we either fought really hard to get
Speaker 4: to or means a whole lot to us.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, I find this concept of endings fascinating
Speaker 2: because everyone knows there's a beginning to something. I mean,
Speaker 2: you start something, you come up with new ideas, you
Speaker 2: plunge into things. But everything also has an end, right, Like,
Speaker 2: everything is going to end at some point, whether it's
Speaker 2: that eternal weekly staff meeting, like there's going to be
Speaker 2: a Tuesday where there isn't a staff meeting, or probably
Speaker 2: before that, a time you were not leading it or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, but there's going to be a Tuesday
Speaker 2: without it. Right, you know, there's an end to absolutely,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, do people really think about that?
Speaker 2: I mean, as you study decision making, I mean, do
Speaker 2: people go into most things knowing there is going to
Speaker 2: be an end or even thinking about that.
Speaker 4: It's such a great point because I think we often
Speaker 4: think when something ends, we're surprised by it. We feel
Speaker 4: like we have made wrong choices. We feel like maybe
Speaker 4: I've wasted my time and maybe I'm doing something wrong
Speaker 4: or I've done something wrong, when in reality, things ending
Speaker 4: is the normal, healthy human rhythm of life. But because
Speaker 4: we expect that if I'm doing if I've made the
Speaker 4: right choice to begin with, and if I'm doing the
Speaker 4: right things in the room, then nothing will ever change.
Speaker 4: And I think that's the thing that we need to
Speaker 4: shift our narrative about, because the reality is, for one thing,
Speaker 4: just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have
Speaker 4: to do it forever. And I think sometimes we think like, oh,
Speaker 4: but I went to college for this job and I
Speaker 4: am really good at it, and people would kill to
Speaker 4: have this position, So who am I. We start to
Speaker 4: have like labels on ourselves, like I must be selfish,
Speaker 4: I must be an idiot, I must not know what
Speaker 4: I'm doing. If I'm considering walking away from this thing
Speaker 4: or considering trying something new where I have to God
Speaker 4: forbid be a beginner again. And so I think a
Speaker 4: big part of our work is to begin to change
Speaker 4: our narrative about what it means to be successful, what
Speaker 4: it means that this place worked for me. Because the
Speaker 4: reality is, if you were in a job for five
Speaker 4: ten years and you start to sense a change, it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean you wasted five or ten years of your life.
Speaker 4: It means you lived those five or ten years and
Speaker 4: now something has changed and it's time to do something else.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't have to mean something about me as
Speaker 4: a human person. It doesn't have to be an identity thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because I guess that's the that falls in.
Speaker 2: You know, we need to be better about dealing with me.
Speaker 2: Called the chosen endings in life. You know that you
Speaker 2: talk about how there are anticipated endings. I mean, you
Speaker 2: kind of hope your kids will graduate from high school
Speaker 2: at some point and go on to whatever the next
Speaker 2: thing is for them. There's the forced endings, which seem
Speaker 2: unfortunate sometimes but it happens, you know, you lose a
Speaker 2: job or whatever else. It's you know, these things happen.
Speaker 2: It's the chosen endings that are the complicated ones.
Speaker 4: They're the ones where we have to decide to stay
Speaker 4: or go, and sometimes we would rather someone else decide
Speaker 4: it for us. Unfortunately, we can't most of the time
Speaker 4: delegate our decision making when it comes to our own lives.
Speaker 4: We thankfully have choice, but sometimes that makes it complicated
Speaker 4: because we want to make so desperately. We want to
Speaker 4: make the right one, and we're afraid we're going to
Speaker 4: mess it all up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I've ever heard that from people like a
Speaker 2: They were actually kind of relieved to be laid off
Speaker 2: or whatever it is that you know, because they were
Speaker 2: on their way out, but this made the decision for them.
Speaker 2: In your book, you talk about the fact that you
Speaker 2: moved a lot as a kid, and I wonder if
Speaker 2: that has contributed to your sense of understanding that things
Speaker 2: end in a way that I think some people don't.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you say that, because I don't know that
Speaker 4: I have fully put that together, but I think you
Speaker 4: might be right. My dad was in a We moved
Speaker 4: a lot when I was a kid. He was a
Speaker 4: disc jockey on the radio, which is so funny. People like, oh,
Speaker 4: was you were you in the military. It was your
Speaker 4: dad in the military. No, he was in radio, but
Speaker 4: it did.
Speaker 1: You had to go as often for radio we did
Speaker 1: the military.
Speaker 4: And you move around, and so I do think that
Speaker 4: afforded me a worldview that understood that if you want
Speaker 4: to make friends here, you better do it quickly because
Speaker 4: this isn't going to last forever. And in some ways
Speaker 4: that's really sad to think of. But in another way,
Speaker 4: it was a character building exercise as a kid that
Speaker 4: I didn't even know because I got to meet a
Speaker 4: lot of different people and I got to learn that
Speaker 4: this thing can be good for as long as it's good,
Speaker 4: and also if it's terrible, it won't last forever. And
Speaker 4: so I think I've experienced that as a kid. I
Speaker 4: would not have articulated it that way. In contrast, my
Speaker 4: husband John, he was born in, grew up in, and
Speaker 4: we still live in his hometown. So when we talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, there have been times in when you have
Speaker 4: twenty years together, there's times when you think about, like
Speaker 4: what if we were to move or go to this
Speaker 4: other place. We haven't done it yet. We've moved houses,
Speaker 4: but not towns, and our conversation is really different. His
Speaker 4: way of thinking about making a change is different than mine.
Speaker 4: I see such value now, like being in one place
Speaker 4: and having roots and our kids are in one place.
Speaker 4: He sort of has more of like whoa would it
Speaker 4: be like to be someplace else? And I think it's
Speaker 4: really important to recognize and to know about ourselves what
Speaker 4: our own narratives of staying and leaving are, because they're
Speaker 4: going to inform all of the decisions we make.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
Speaker 2: then we'll be back talking about some specific endings that
Speaker 2: have happened in your life that maybe you can share
Speaker 2: how you made those decisions. Well, I am back interviewing
Speaker 2: Emily P. Freeman, who is the author of the brand
Speaker 2: new book how to Walk into a Room Again, not
Speaker 2: literally walking into a room, We hope you figured that
Speaker 2: out a few years ago, but how we make decisions
Speaker 2: about making big changes in our lives, and particularly as
Speaker 2: we're talking about today, how we know whether.
Speaker 1: To end things.
Speaker 2: Earlier, you mentioned if you're in a room that you've
Speaker 2: perhaps fought for, or helped create, or anything like that,
Speaker 2: it can be particularly challenging to figure out that it
Speaker 2: might be time to end things. And you talk about
Speaker 2: two experiences that you have had with ending things that
Speaker 2: I'd like to talk on both of them. One was
Speaker 2: ending your involvement in a business that you had helped start,
Speaker 2: So maybe you can talk a little bit about that
Speaker 2: and what led to your decision to end there and
Speaker 2: how you made that choice.
Speaker 4: We started this business seven eight years ago, and it
Speaker 4: was an online company for writers to help writers kind
Speaker 4: of figure out that they had a voice and to
Speaker 4: maybe if they wanted to get published, to help them
Speaker 4: understand what that looks like. And so it was all
Speaker 4: about balancing the art of writing the business of publishing.
Speaker 4: But it started out, as sometimes these things do, as
Speaker 4: a hobby. It was sort of like a side thing.
Speaker 4: We made a little money, but over time, specifically during
Speaker 4: the COVID years, that hobby grew into a full time gig.
Speaker 4: And it was surprising. It was a gift. But before
Speaker 4: I knew it, this thing that I had started on
Speaker 4: the side and was really happy about and loved and enjoyed,
Speaker 4: and there were hard parts about it, but as all
Speaker 4: things go, but now it became kind of front and center,
Speaker 4: and I went from sort of being like a creative
Speaker 4: and being able to express myself as a writer to
Speaker 4: helping other people express themselves as writers to then managing
Speaker 4: a team who could help the people. So I went
Speaker 4: from sort of being the maker to being more of
Speaker 4: a manager. And I don't know if you've read Paul
Speaker 4: Graham's essay about maker time and manager time, but I
Speaker 4: recognized very quickly that manager time is not the way
Speaker 4: I roll, and so that was a big contributor to
Speaker 4: me understanding and recognizing, like, my days are probably numbered
Speaker 4: in this type of business. But much like you know
Speaker 4: I talk about in endings all the time, we really
Speaker 4: want for our endings to line up with like it's
Speaker 4: time to go and I feel ready, And those are
Speaker 4: wonderful times when that happens. But the reality is most
Speaker 4: of us live in the gap in between, which is
Speaker 4: I'm ready to go, but it's not time. And that's
Speaker 4: where I found myself with this business decision. And there
Speaker 4: were lots of things involved, but the bottom line is
Speaker 4: I was ready to go about three years before I
Speaker 4: was able to go, and so there was a a
Speaker 4: lot of things that had to happen in those three years.
Speaker 4: It was a wonderful character building time of learning patience.
Speaker 4: If the opposite is true for you, where it's time
Speaker 4: to go, but you're not ready. That can be a
Speaker 4: great time to build courage where you're having to step
Speaker 4: forward into something even though you don't feel ready at all.
Speaker 4: And so I ended up about a year or so ago,
Speaker 4: sold my shares in that company and was able to
Speaker 4: end end things there. And it was bittersweet. There were
Speaker 4: hard parts that I was glad to leave behind, but
Speaker 4: there were really lovely parts and lovely people that I
Speaker 4: was sad to leave behind. But again, it doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that I chose wrong or that it was wrong to
Speaker 4: go into that business. It was just there was a
Speaker 4: time for it, and then that time came to an end.
Speaker 2: Well. I like how you have that rubric there that
Speaker 2: it's like you can be ready, but the change is
Speaker 2: not ready to happen. Right. It could also be that
Speaker 2: people are ready for you to move on and you
Speaker 2: are not quite ready.
Speaker 1: For that as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wonder how you can discern if it's,
Speaker 2: you know, if you are pushing things for it, if
Speaker 2: it's that it's not ready, or that something like the
Speaker 2: is going on, you know that where maybe you're just
Speaker 2: procrastinating on pushing this forward.
Speaker 4: Right, listen, procrastination as a whole. Could we write a
Speaker 4: whole book about that. We could. We could, But I
Speaker 4: think there are some questions that you can ask yourself.
Speaker 4: I mean, when I was considering not only that the
Speaker 4: business space, but other spaces in my life, if is
Speaker 4: it time for me to make a change? And how
Speaker 4: can I know for sure? And a few questions I
Speaker 4: asked myself were one, are there corners, sections, people, or
Speaker 4: parts of this room that I'm avoiding? In other words,
Speaker 4: am I hesitant to turn the lights all the way on?
Speaker 4: Are there things that I'm like turning a blind eye
Speaker 4: to that I don't want to look at? And what
Speaker 4: would happen if I did look directly at them? That's
Speaker 4: one piece of information. Another one asking myself, is anyone
Speaker 4: or anything missing from this room? And if so, who
Speaker 4: or what? And recognizing that doesn't mean that if there
Speaker 4: are people missing or things missing, you got to get
Speaker 4: out of there. No, it's just a bit of information
Speaker 4: to recognize who belongs here, who doesn't belong here, who
Speaker 4: has already left this space, who's walking into this space?
Speaker 4: And these are more pieces of information. A final question
Speaker 4: you can ask yourself when you're thinking about the rooms
Speaker 4: of your life if it might be time or not
Speaker 4: is to what extent can I be myself here? And
Speaker 4: this can be true not just for a job or
Speaker 4: a faith community you're a part of, or a volunteer position.
Speaker 4: It can also be true in a relationship. So, for example,
Speaker 4: do you have to change yourself to such a degree
Speaker 4: that you don't even recognize yourself in order to inhabit
Speaker 4: this room? Or if people who know and love you
Speaker 4: show up when you're with this person or in this space,
Speaker 4: would they recognize you? Would they see a version of
Speaker 4: you that they know and can support and get behind,
Speaker 4: or are they like, are you feeling like you're constantly
Speaker 4: having to censor yourself or edit yourself or muffle your
Speaker 4: own ideas or opinions? Those are just the more you
Speaker 4: answer and look at some of those questions, And there's
Speaker 4: ten of them that I share that are good to
Speaker 4: think about. That can give you again, it's not a
Speaker 4: yes or no, but it can give you some arrows
Speaker 4: to know that you're moving in a direction of either
Speaker 4: walking towards the door or maybe staying in this space,
Speaker 4: but maybe making some changes along the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what do you mean about that? That you
Speaker 2: should yield to the arrows rather than obsessing over answers.
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is that maybe you don't have
Speaker 2: to make a decision about ending or not ending immediately,
Speaker 2: but there are things you can kind of pay attention
Speaker 2: to along the way.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when we recognize that we feel just sort of
Speaker 4: a general sense of stuckness or like a discomfort a
Speaker 4: lot of us, what we want to do is I
Speaker 4: feel uncomfortable, I don't like it, I need to make
Speaker 4: a change. And sometimes that's true, but I would venture
Speaker 4: to say a lot of times that's a little premature.
Speaker 4: Is that the first sign of discomfort is a time
Speaker 4: to begin to pay attention, ask yourself some questions, and
Speaker 4: to begin to look for arrows. What we want is
Speaker 4: a final answer I'm uncomfortable, solve it. What's the decision
Speaker 4: I need to make? But I would love to begin
Speaker 4: to encourage us and myself included, to slow our role
Speaker 4: a little bit and to begin to enter into what
Speaker 4: is more a process of discernment, which is, rather than
Speaker 4: looking for I have a question I need an answer yesterday,
Speaker 4: is to enter into I have a question, what is
Speaker 4: maybe an arrow to one next right thing that I
Speaker 4: can do today? And I might not know the final
Speaker 4: answer I might have to follow three, five, ten arrows
Speaker 4: before I get to my final decision. But to know
Speaker 4: that's a healthy process of decision making. And when you
Speaker 4: make your decisions that way, if you're afforded the time
Speaker 4: to do it, when you make that decision, you do
Speaker 4: it more wholeheartedly. You do it from a place of
Speaker 4: more confidence, so that five months from now, if things
Speaker 4: are really hard again, you're not wondering, like so much,
Speaker 4: did I make the wrong decisions? Like No, I took
Speaker 4: my time and I did what I could, and I
Speaker 4: I followed the arrows the best I knew how So
Speaker 4: it can give you confidence not just for now, but
Speaker 4: for later too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to make sure that you're ending the right thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think when we get upset sometimes and
Speaker 2: feel stuck, we might think that everything in life needs
Speaker 2: to change, or the most obvious thing needs to change,
Speaker 2: as opposed to I don't know something else that you
Speaker 2: haven't even thought of. So with that, I wonder if
Speaker 2: you could talk a little bit about the other change
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, the ending that was a church you
Speaker 2: helped found, so that you and your husband helped start
Speaker 2: a church, and then you decided at some point along
Speaker 2: the way that you needed to leave that. It sounds
Speaker 2: like that was even more fraught for you than the
Speaker 2: business decision.
Speaker 4: It was, well, we didn't actually help start the church,
Speaker 4: but we were a part of the church when they
Speaker 4: were moving into a new building, and so we were
Speaker 4: kind of really a part of getting that going. And
Speaker 4: it was a real community thing, you know, joining in
Speaker 4: it was our place, you know, and I think we
Speaker 4: all understand what it's like to be part of a
Speaker 4: community where you walk in and most people know who
Speaker 4: you are, your kids have grown up there. If you're sick,
Speaker 4: people bring you meals.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's a place where we spent our time, where we
Speaker 4: gave money and when it was appropriate to do so,
Speaker 4: and where we just generally enjoyed being. And you know,
Speaker 4: when that's connected to something deeply rooted in you, like
Speaker 4: your faith, then that's even another layer of connection in
Speaker 4: a space. And so this was a space that we
Speaker 4: felt really close to and was a really meaningful place
Speaker 4: for us. But as these things go, this was not
Speaker 4: an overnight decision. You know, this was a place that
Speaker 4: we loved, but also there were questions that we had
Speaker 4: there and looking back, you know, it was maybe a
Speaker 4: two or three year process really of asking ourselves questions
Speaker 4: like are the stakes too high for us to stay?
Speaker 4: And sort of once the stakes of for us staying
Speaker 4: felt like they outweighed the risk of leaving, that's when
Speaker 4: we decided to kindly finally make that change. But again,
Speaker 4: that was one that was following a lot of arrows
Speaker 4: on the way out because the stakes were so high,
Speaker 4: because we were so rooted in this community. And that
Speaker 4: is not a lighthearted decision that we made. And it's one, honestly,
Speaker 4: four years later, that we're still wrestling with, not whether
Speaker 4: or not we made the right choice. I believe that
Speaker 4: we did for us at the time, but just wrestling
Speaker 4: to find and look for what does it look like
Speaker 4: to find community? Now? What does it look like to
Speaker 4: belong to a new faith community? And we're doing that slowly,
Speaker 4: but man, it's that process is a lot slower than
Speaker 4: I would prefer, honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like we have to understand that
Speaker 2: with endings, with decisions, there's going to be some regret
Speaker 2: either way.
Speaker 1: I mean, so if you're hoping for a regret free decision,
Speaker 1: you should probably rethink that.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's an excellent point.
Speaker 2: So you're going to write either way, it's always going
Speaker 2: to be hard. Although one thing I found fascinating and
Speaker 2: when you're in the process of this discernment, figuring out,
Speaker 2: you know, following the errors do I say, do I.
Speaker 1: Go, you began writing haiku.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the important of sort of regular
Speaker 2: daily rituals as you are trying to make decisions about
Speaker 2: your life.
Speaker 4: Rituals can be so kind. I grew up in a
Speaker 4: self inflicted kind of rigorous way of life, like kind
Speaker 4: of gave myself rules and if I didn't follow them,
Speaker 4: I felt terrible about it. But that's not really what
Speaker 4: I mean by ritual here. Really, it's just any type
Speaker 4: of rhythm that you can engage that helps you be
Speaker 4: more fully yourself. And sometimes, you know, some of the things,
Speaker 4: especially in endings, when things end, some of the things
Speaker 4: that we reach for that used to be familiar and
Speaker 4: felt right. When something ends, some of our rituals and
Speaker 4: rhythms changed too, and the things that maybe used to
Speaker 4: feel right and that we used to enjoy, maybe they
Speaker 4: don't feel so right anymore, maybe they don't feel like us.
Speaker 4: And I just want to say that out loud, because
Speaker 4: I think that's normal and good and when that happens,
Speaker 4: if that happens, maybe it could be helpful to experiment
Speaker 4: playfully with do rituals and rhythms and so one that
Speaker 4: I did. You know, for me, I found it to
Speaker 4: be hard. You know, prayer is a big part of
Speaker 4: my life, but I found the way I used to
Speaker 4: pray to be really different than the way that I
Speaker 4: was wanting to engage that practice, and so instead I
Speaker 4: started to write haiku. Now let me just be clear, Laura.
Speaker 4: It was not like the traditional Japanese good God, it's
Speaker 4: not good, but it was like what you learn in
Speaker 4: like middle school or so seven syllable five And I
Speaker 4: did it, and you know, I would put an and
Speaker 4: or something in there to kind of make it work,
Speaker 4: which is not what you're supposed to do. But you
Speaker 4: know what, it was not for publishing. It was just
Speaker 4: for me. It was just to kind of continue to
Speaker 4: engage my own practice of expressing myself when long form
Speaker 4: journaling was not accessible to me anymore at that time.
Speaker 4: Just my brain wasn't working that way. But five seven
Speaker 4: five I could do that, and I did. And let
Speaker 4: me tell you, I mean I probably wrote one hundred
Speaker 4: of them during that season of life, just you know,
Speaker 4: going through and some of them, you know, when you
Speaker 4: write a hundred, a few of them are good, most
Speaker 4: of them are terrible. But I found it to be
Speaker 4: a really just a way to may not take myself
Speaker 4: so seriously during that time that was difficult. And now
Speaker 4: I have I have a one hundred high coud ap.
Speaker 2: Prove it, yeah, which you can do what you wish with.
Speaker 2: At this point, well, I wanted to revisit one point
Speaker 2: that you made it earlier, just that the ending does
Speaker 2: not define the story that you're quote from the book.
Speaker 2: So maybe you could just elaborate a little bit more
Speaker 2: on that that just because something ended doesn't mean it
Speaker 2: was the wrong thing, or that it was bad or.
Speaker 1: Anything like that. It just ended.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes this is most clear in something like
Speaker 4: job loss or maybe even a breakup, where you're like,
Speaker 4: that was a terrible ending, like that, just it just
Speaker 4: did not go the way I thought it would go.
Speaker 4: It did not end the way I hoped it would end.
Speaker 4: A lot of times we imagine the final episode of
Speaker 4: our favorite sitcom and we think that's how my ending's
Speaker 4: gonna go. It's gonna be a movie ending, and it
Speaker 4: never almost never is. If you get it, cheers to you,
Speaker 4: but most of us don't. I think the temptation, though,
Speaker 4: is to paint the entire experience with the same hues
Speaker 4: that happened at the end. And the reality is we
Speaker 4: are whole people who live whole lives, and we can
Speaker 4: appreciate the gifts of the experience even if it ended terribly.
Speaker 4: We just can, and I think sometimes we have to,
Speaker 4: and that's looking at the experience as a whole. We
Speaker 4: may not be able to do that right away, and
Speaker 4: I think that's important to notice, is that if you
Speaker 4: have a terrible breakup, it just might have to be
Speaker 4: terrible for a while, and that person has to be
Speaker 4: a villain. But over time, I think we might understand
Speaker 4: that none of us are all hero or all villain
Speaker 4: and to help us become more wholeheartedly who we are.
Speaker 4: I think it's good to reflect on our experiences for
Speaker 4: what they were, both the beautiful and the difficult. But
Speaker 4: the ending doesn't get to hijack the narrative. The ending
Speaker 4: is a plot point, it's not the whole story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, that's good to now, I mean, especially with
Speaker 2: things like relationship and people who have kids together, for instance.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the relationship hadn't happened, you wouldn't have
Speaker 2: these kids. But the relationship ended, it happened. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to accept that good things can happen despite
Speaker 2: maybe something not going well at the end. Well, speaking
Speaker 2: of endings, we're coming up on the end of ours.
Speaker 2: We always end our interviews with a love of the week,
Speaker 2: so this is something that we are enjoying right now.
Speaker 2: And since I'll go first, so you can think of
Speaker 2: something to be you know, pop culture, food, book, whatever.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to go with given that you're talking
Speaker 1: about haiku poetry rules.
Speaker 2: I mean, longtime listeners know I'm writing a sonnet a week,
Speaker 2: you know, two lines a day, so fourteen lines in
Speaker 2: the course of a week, and been doing this for
Speaker 2: a while.
Speaker 1: But what the reason I like it is the rules.
Speaker 2: Make you think about it. But then it makes if
Speaker 2: you could stick with the rules, it's like at least
Speaker 2: kind of decent, right because it's done the rules, Whereas
Speaker 2: if it's total free form, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: more variability. I mean, it could be great, could also
Speaker 2: be awful. So I like poetry rules, so I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of the haikup rules, even if we're not
Speaker 2: doing the proper like Japanese walk off to think of
Speaker 2: the thing that you know you're not saying that's off
Speaker 2: there in the distance.
Speaker 1: How about you? What are you loving this week?
Speaker 4: Well? You ask this on the day after I just
Speaker 4: finished speaking of the end of a series. I just
Speaker 4: finished watching Ugly Betty. Okay, didn't see that coming, did you?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 4: I did not, but I missed it when it came
Speaker 4: out originally, And so I just watched the series and
Speaker 4: it's just such a delightful show. America Ferreira stars in it,
Speaker 4: and she's wonderful.
Speaker 1: She's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's so great. And so I was like, I
Speaker 4: should watch that series, and I did, and I just
Speaker 4: finished it and I'm nostalgic about it because it's over.
Speaker 1: There are no more, but there are no episodes coming out.
Speaker 1: It really is truly over.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, now you just need to find the next thing, right,
Speaker 2: That's what I need, the next right thing, exactly right?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: And why don't you tell our listeners where they can
Speaker 2: find you?
Speaker 4: Oh, you can find almost everything at Emilypfreeman dot com.
Speaker 4: It's my name. I also have the next writing podcast
Speaker 4: we drop every Tuesday, and then on subsec I'm the
Speaker 4: sole Minimalist.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, we'll be sure to check that out. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us, Emily.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, Well we are back.
Speaker 2: I was interviewing Emily P. Freeman about her book How
Speaker 2: to Walk Into a Room. So, Sarah, this question, I
Speaker 2: guess start for you, and I guess for me too.
Speaker 2: This listener writes, can you share what it was like
Speaker 2: coming back from an injury? So Sarah had a leg
Speaker 2: injury this fall that precluded her running for a couple months,
Speaker 2: but then she has now been back and as readers
Speaker 2: and listeners know, she recently got a lifetime pr in
Speaker 2: the half marathon, which is pretty awesome to do that
Speaker 2: in your forties.
Speaker 1: Many of us do not.
Speaker 2: Get faster over time, so Sarah has defied time in
Speaker 2: all sorts of ways. So we want to hear a
Speaker 2: little bit about how she came back from that. And
Speaker 2: he thought she had about that, and then the listener
Speaker 2: asked how my back was doing. So I'll give a
Speaker 2: one minute thing about that later, but let's hear about you, Sarah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was, I mean It was a rough couple
Speaker 3: months there for listeners. I talked about it, but it
Speaker 3: was a very unfortunate incident with me not putting my
Speaker 3: car into park properly and then basically getting my leg
Speaker 3: kind of like a crush injury underneath the door of
Speaker 3: the car. Not a lot of fun, extensive bruising. I
Speaker 3: thought I had torn my meniscus, but I didn't, so
Speaker 3: there was There was actually no like.
Speaker 1: Bad structural damage.
Speaker 3: It was just eight ton of like crazy amounts of
Speaker 3: hematoma soft tissue damage like in my leg, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't run for a while. It took me a really
Speaker 3: long time to agree to that. I think trying to
Speaker 3: make it work and then I would like fall and
Speaker 3: make things worse, and was finally like, Okay, this isn't happening.
Speaker 3: And I did just do nothing for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: and then I realized that I think I could bike,
Speaker 3: so we got a peloton. We rented a peloton, which
Speaker 3: is something you can do, you don't have to purchase
Speaker 3: one outright, and that actually was very helpful just to
Speaker 3: give me an outlet. So I continued to do some
Speaker 3: strength training that I felt like I was able to
Speaker 3: do and I did biking, and I really didn't run
Speaker 3: for a while. And you know, it's so funny because
Speaker 3: it felt like such a long time while it was happening,
Speaker 3: especially because I was so used to running this very steady,
Speaker 3: high mileage. It just felt like my life just felt different,
Speaker 3: and I was very unhappy about it. Once I found
Speaker 3: the biking, that was like, Okay, this actually works. This
Speaker 3: is like a really nice substitute. And now looking back,
Speaker 3: I'm like, that was such a blip, like it was nothing,
Speaker 3: because I mean it wasn't nothing. It was about two months.
Speaker 3: But by the end of December I was running really well.
Speaker 3: We had taken a trip to a Millia Island and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, I'm back, Like I just felt
Speaker 3: really good, and January was great training and I can
Speaker 3: honestly say one thing that made me so sad was
Speaker 3: I just felt like I was making this great progress
Speaker 3: around doctor over right when I got hurt. But I
Speaker 3: now feel like I'm actually even like in better speed
Speaker 3: wise shape than I was back then, So we're resilient.
Speaker 3: We can come back. And I guess the thing I
Speaker 3: would say is like, don't try to rush it, and
Speaker 3: definitely seek out the types of support that feel right,
Speaker 3: whether that's physical therapy, whether that's actual therapy, whether that's
Speaker 3: talking to friends, and just don't try to rush it,
Speaker 3: because like this idea that you're just going to like
Speaker 3: lose all your fitness in five minutes is just not true.
Speaker 1: We can come back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes we think our endings are not in fact endings,
Speaker 2: that it was not the end of her running journey.
Speaker 2: That I keep coming back to this idea that time
Speaker 2: is the secret ingredient in all sorts of things. As
Speaker 2: this is airing, I'm about two months out from when
Speaker 2: I had my back incident slash leg incident that basically
Speaker 2: left me bedbound and my pretty standard run of the
Speaker 2: mill aging person bulging discs pressing down on nerves and
Speaker 2: rendering life undoable for a while. And you know, I
Speaker 2: took my steroids and painkillers and stayed immobile pretty much
Speaker 2: until I could start moving. But it's fascinating to watch
Speaker 2: you just you do, in fact, often keep getting better
Speaker 2: just through time, right if you're not doing things to
Speaker 2: make it worse, and you're trying to slowly develop new
Speaker 2: abilities that you had before. And so I've been kind
Speaker 2: of fascinated to watch that. Although it has been very
Speaker 2: frustrating in its own way. I'm still not running. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe when this airs I will be. This is late
Speaker 2: February when we're recording it. We're in a hotel room
Speaker 2: together in Naples. Sarah ran this morning. I did not
Speaker 2: run with her, but I hope to be back to
Speaker 2: it eventually. But yeah, you just have to sort of
Speaker 2: be patient and understand that life can look a little
Speaker 2: different for a while, and that's not necessarily good or bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, I ran every day for three years for
Speaker 2: a while, and now I haven't run in months, and
Speaker 2: it's just that that's what life is like right now.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean life will be different in the future.
Speaker 1: Maybe it will be.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll be back to running all the time, or
Speaker 2: maybe I won't be. I don't know, but just sort
Speaker 2: of take it as it comes, and life keeps moving forward.
Speaker 2: And I if I think back, like in sort of
Speaker 2: two week chunks, any given day, I don't necessarily feel
Speaker 2: all that much different than the day before. But if
Speaker 2: I look back what could I do two weeks ago,
Speaker 2: and what could I do two weeks before? Then, then
Speaker 2: I see some real progress. And so that's a little
Speaker 2: bit more hardening.
Speaker 3: Yes, no, it's exciting. The uncertainty piece is hard. It's
Speaker 3: the hardest part. If you knew exactly what the path
Speaker 3: was going to look like, and if I could have
Speaker 3: told myself, oh, in January, it'll be running great, like
Speaker 3: the whole thing would have been less, less painful. But
Speaker 3: I guess you're right. Just appreciate the small progress and
Speaker 3: maybe not try not to be tied to any specific outcome.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, people don't like uncertainly. It's why we have trouble
Speaker 2: with ending. So yeah, but lots of things to think
Speaker 2: about in this episode. We will be back next week with.
Speaker 1: More and making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
Speaker 3: shoe box dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box
Speaker 3: on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
Speaker 2: has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please join
Speaker 2: us next time for more on making work and life
Speaker 2: work together.