Speaker 1: Cancer Straight Talk is a podcast for memorial Sloan Kettering
Speaker 1: Cancer Center where hosts doctor Diane Reedy Lagunas has intimate
Speaker 1: conversations with patients and experts about topics like dating and sex,
Speaker 1: exercise and diet, the power of gratitude, and more. I
Speaker 1: love being her guest back in April. Listen to Cancer
Speaker 1: Straight Talk. You'll learn so much. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty
Speaker 1: Kuric and this is next question. Melissa Ethridge has written
Speaker 1: not one, but two memoirs, and her new one is
Speaker 1: called Talking to My Angels and Wow, so much has
Speaker 1: happened between forty when she wrote her first one and
Speaker 1: sixty plus two. She talked with me about a definitive
Speaker 1: spiritual experience thanks to what she calls a hero dose
Speaker 1: of cannabis. Wow sounds intense. That really separated her life
Speaker 1: into before and after. Now on the other side, Melissa
Speaker 1: finds herself happier and I think, more centered than ever,
Speaker 1: and she'll walk us through how she found that piece.
Speaker 1: But she also has an amazing capacity to learn from
Speaker 1: the not so peaceful events in her life. And of
Speaker 1: course music is the thrumbing through line underpinning everything in
Speaker 1: her life. So there's a little of that in this
Speaker 1: interview as well. Hope you all enjoy my conversation with
Speaker 1: Melissa Ethriche. Melissa, Gosh, we have so much to talk
Speaker 1: about because you have so much going on, But one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons you're here is to talk about
Speaker 1: your new memoir, which is your second memoir. How can
Speaker 1: you possibly write too.
Speaker 2: Well when you write one at the age of forty.
Speaker 2: At forty, you think, oh my gosh, I've lived so
Speaker 2: much life. But then when you turn sixty, you're like,
Speaker 2: I was just getting started, you know, because so much
Speaker 2: happens from in my life. So much happened from forty
Speaker 2: to sixty that really makes up so much more of
Speaker 2: what I am now. And you know, the first part
Speaker 2: was just kind of the history, you know, the growing
Speaker 2: up and how did I, you know, make it and
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, and this one is how did
Speaker 2: I survive? You know?
Speaker 1: In fact, I know that your first memoir was called
Speaker 1: The Truth Is, and that was, as you mentioned, released
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, so twenty two years ago.
Speaker 1: And you say you've come around to a different kind
Speaker 1: of understanding in the second part of life. So let's
Speaker 1: start there, specifically with what happened to you one summer
Speaker 1: night back in two thousand and three, You say that
Speaker 1: you had an experience that jump started I guess the
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening for you. So what happened, Melissa? Is everything
Speaker 1: sort of in your life before this and after it?
Speaker 1: Do you use it to delen ate your life in
Speaker 1: some ways?
Speaker 2: Yes? And because it was so close to my cancer diagnosis,
Speaker 2: both of those things, one right after the other, is
Speaker 2: what really divides my early life and then the rest
Speaker 2: of my life. And now now that again, now that
Speaker 2: I'm in my sixties, I think that all of us
Speaker 2: sort of have a spirit awakening, you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: a soul awakening. And all of us that I think
Speaker 2: up to, you know, up till your forties, you're you know,
Speaker 2: working and trying to make it, and you're physically, you know,
Speaker 2: action oriented. And then you complete some journeys, you actually
Speaker 2: get some places and you start realizing, wait, it's not
Speaker 2: really about the thing or the the place. It's about
Speaker 2: the feeling and it's all the all the interesting things
Speaker 2: that happened to me along the way. It's the journey.
Speaker 2: And so how I lived my life, how I thought
Speaker 2: of my life really changed and my awakening came through
Speaker 2: plant spirit and it doesn't doesn't or plant medicine, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't. You know, it's different for everyone. This that's
Speaker 2: not the only way. There's all kinds of ways people
Speaker 2: can can have an awakening in their life. And mind
Speaker 2: just happened to be through an unintentional heroic dose of cannabis,
Speaker 2: and it was it was, you know, mind shattering to me.
Speaker 1: In fact, it really kind of set you off on
Speaker 1: this kind of psychedelic journey, if you will. You say,
Speaker 1: I then received a kind of download of information and
Speaker 1: the arrival of a new understanding. And that understanding, well,
Speaker 1: you tell me what was that understanding?
Speaker 2: A lot of people talk about how it feels like
Speaker 2: a download of information. It feels it's it's very uh.
Speaker 2: That's a common description of a moment. Sometimes it happens
Speaker 2: when a near death experience or or something will sort
Speaker 2: of put this off. But the understanding is it's so
Speaker 2: it's so hard to describe because it's I tell people
Speaker 2: it cannot be taught, it can only be learned. And
Speaker 2: you know, words don't teach, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 2: Sound it, Okay, it is it's an understanding of a
Speaker 2: of a certain oneness of humanity, of a of a
Speaker 2: common a commonality between everyone, where uh, you know, you
Speaker 2: can say we I mean, I could say it's it's
Speaker 2: all love, and that's a really simple thing to say,
Speaker 2: but to me, that is the truth. It's all everything
Speaker 2: is love, and everything is made up of love, and
Speaker 2: love is what I described the the particles. You can
Speaker 2: you can go into a quantum physics and they're saying
Speaker 2: the same thing. They're just saying it scientifically. I'm saying
Speaker 2: it from a more spiritual, sort of esoteric way. Everyone's
Speaker 2: made up of the same particles and how they're put
Speaker 2: together is up to us in our minds. Our minds
Speaker 2: are so much more powerful than we know, and you
Speaker 2: can find it. There's a lot of teachings, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of modern day teaching, so this and
Speaker 2: a lot of uh, you know, ancient teachings that sort
Speaker 2: of speak to the very same thing.
Speaker 1: How did it change you, Melissa? I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: all about love and we're all kind of connected and
Speaker 1: particles and all the things you just described change, did
Speaker 1: it change you as a person? Did it make you
Speaker 1: relate to other people differently? Did it make you less angry.
Speaker 1: I mean, how does that manifest itself in daily behavior?
Speaker 1: And can I get me some of that cannabis?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, well new York it's legal now. So although
Speaker 2: California makes the best lead, but it changed me and
Speaker 2: my relationship to me. And that's the That's the first
Speaker 2: and really most important relationship is how I'm what I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about me, how I'm connect to me, meaning that
Speaker 2: inner being that we have, that that that thing that
Speaker 2: we say is either you know, critiquing us or or
Speaker 2: you know, all those things in our mind that we
Speaker 2: walk with every day. That relationship changes. You stop blaming
Speaker 2: things outside of you, when you no longer take the
Speaker 2: manifested world personally, when you don't think something or someone's
Speaker 2: after you, when you realize, oh, I'm I'm creating this
Speaker 2: myself every day, and I have a choice how I'm
Speaker 2: going to respond to it. Am I just going somebody
Speaker 2: pushes me, Am I just going to push back and
Speaker 2: then you create that energy. Or if someone pushes me,
Speaker 2: am I going to see it more through an eye
Speaker 2: of love and go, Wow, that person must really be
Speaker 2: having a bad day. And I, you know, I'm really
Speaker 2: grateful that I'm not having a bad day and I'm grateful,
Speaker 2: and you just sort of channel your thought into more appreciation,
Speaker 2: more gratitude. You know, you hear these things all the time.
Speaker 2: You know they're all la la, but the truthful, truthfully,
Speaker 2: if you practice these things on a real practical level,
Speaker 2: they can make a real, big, large difference in your life.
Speaker 1: Do you ever slip up? Do you ever want to
Speaker 1: push that person back? I mean, I'm fascinated by this.
Speaker 1: How do you discipline yourself or how do you get
Speaker 1: yourself in the mindset every day that I am going
Speaker 1: to see things through a prism of love. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to seek understanding and I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 1: not going to have this short fuse or I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna take ill of people, all the things that bring
Speaker 1: out the worst in us.
Speaker 2: Well, first I realized it's an understanding. That this is
Speaker 2: not sort of like a college degree where you get
Speaker 2: there and you're there that you know and you have
Speaker 2: it forever and ever. This it's a practice. It's like yoga.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, you start yoga, you can barely
Speaker 2: bend over, and then after a while you can bend.
Speaker 2: But there's no end to yoga. There's nobody that finishes
Speaker 2: yoga and I've done it, and that's it. Now I'm
Speaker 2: yogi or something that that that you It's just a
Speaker 2: practice you do every day and this is the same thing.
Speaker 2: And there are little little things that you can do
Speaker 2: that helps you because by the time you get something
Speaker 2: from someone in the outside world, the momentum that you've
Speaker 2: had going during the day is one of oh, this
Speaker 2: is a bad day, I'm having a bad Oh you know,
Speaker 2: Oh I stubbed my toe. Oh now it's you know,
Speaker 2: and things grow. That momentum grows, and if somebody pushes you,
Speaker 2: you bet I'm going to shove them back at that
Speaker 2: point because I've let it grow. You you go back
Speaker 2: to the your beginning of your day and the very
Speaker 2: moment you wake up. If you can just find something
Speaker 2: in that moment to be grateful for, for just you know,
Speaker 2: just a half a minute, then that can grow a
Speaker 2: little bit more and you might you might get ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty minutes before you read an email and it sends
Speaker 2: you back into a bad place. But the more well
Speaker 2: you've heard the you know, the better it gets. The
Speaker 2: better it gets because it's it's it is a it's
Speaker 2: it's I'm sure you've also heard of the law of attraction.
Speaker 2: This is sort of what it's. This is on is
Speaker 2: you get what you're going to put out, So it's
Speaker 2: up to you. I realize I can't change anyone or anything,
Speaker 2: and once you give that up, then you're just working
Speaker 2: on yourself. Going all I can do is work on
Speaker 2: the way I feel, and I can be pointed towards happiness.
Speaker 2: So it's just it's just a practice every day, and
Speaker 2: you don't. Yeah, there are times I had a horrible
Speaker 2: day yesterday my show last night. I'm glad you weren't there.
Speaker 2: It wasn't it wasn't horrible, but for me it was.
Speaker 2: You know, ah, this happened, I said, the drums fell over,
Speaker 2: this sort of thing. You know, it's just that kind
Speaker 2: of day. I was having that day. Today I'm not,
Speaker 2: I'm speaking to you. I'm having a much better day.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a great show tonight.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems like you let things roll off your
Speaker 1: back too a lot more, and you don't let things
Speaker 1: fester and you kind of release them out into the
Speaker 1: universe because it doesn't help to hold it in. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great book Don Miguel Rui's a lot
Speaker 2: of people know this book. The four agreements and the
Speaker 2: real simple You don't take things personally. You don't assume.
Speaker 2: You do the best you can, and you are impeccable
Speaker 2: with your word. And those four things go very deeply.
Speaker 2: If you read the book and see it's a very
Speaker 2: short book and it's really just amazing, and you just
Speaker 2: the less you take personally in the world or assume.
Speaker 2: I used to always assume I knew what everyone was thinking,
Speaker 2: and I was going to make everything in the room
Speaker 2: okay before I got there, before anybody else could say anything.
Speaker 2: You really have to let that go. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of wasted energy.
Speaker 1: I'd interviewed Jada Pinkett Smith. She wrote a memo more
Speaker 1: called Worthy, and she talks about a similar spiritual awakening,
Speaker 1: which was interesting, and you both write about your experiences
Speaker 1: with ayahuasca, and I'm curious what that journey was like
Speaker 1: for you. I do know friends who have done this.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to do something like that, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: first of all, do you have to do it in
Speaker 1: those really hot tents and everything.
Speaker 2: New? I actually did it in my home, so.
Speaker 1: Okay, because a lot of people, you know, what do
Speaker 1: they do that in those sweat lodges And that just
Speaker 1: sounds that sounds miserable to me.
Speaker 2: And no, no, first off, to really sort of listen
Speaker 2: to yourself. And there's people that are like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: give me that you know, and we'll go and do it.
Speaker 2: And there's people I've met many people have come up
Speaker 2: and go and set the exact thing. I'm just afraid
Speaker 2: because it is it is a very different experience. And
Speaker 2: I would not advise someone to just, oh, just go
Speaker 2: to ayahuasca because it's gonna rock your world. It's it
Speaker 2: is not something to do recreationally. It's not fun if
Speaker 2: you are in a place. And like I said, this
Speaker 2: is not for everyone. This is some people come to there.
Speaker 2: It just just go through life very easily. And I
Speaker 2: mean we have things that happen, we lose people, and
Speaker 2: you understand, life is full of loss and and everything,
Speaker 2: and it's I would suggest it for anyone who's who
Speaker 2: is having a very hard time, like it's very good
Speaker 2: for drug abuse, it's very good for people who are
Speaker 2: having hard time letting go of grief or something. If
Speaker 2: you're really searching, this is a great answer and you know,
Speaker 2: it suits people and some people it doesn't. Myself, I
Speaker 2: was searching, I was looking. I was I had already
Speaker 2: had this unintentional, huge journey, and I wasn't as afraid
Speaker 2: of it anymore. It does help help people. It helped
Speaker 2: me get over my sense of fear of death, and
Speaker 2: sometimes the fear of death can really rule a person's life.
Speaker 2: And when you go on an ayahuasca journey and ceremony,
Speaker 2: you realize that we are not our bodies, we are
Speaker 2: eternal beings inside here. And our bodies, yeah, they're going
Speaker 2: to expire someday because they're just meat suits. But we
Speaker 2: are eternal. And when you kind of feel, when you
Speaker 2: get the sense of our eternalness, then it's that's a
Speaker 2: gift because you live your life differently.
Speaker 1: I've heard people tell me what they experienced when they
Speaker 1: did ayahuasca or whatever, and I'm curious, what was it like?
Speaker 1: Can you just tell me, like what it was like
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Well, it was in a house. It was with a
Speaker 2: shaman who had been in Peru for twenty years, who
Speaker 2: was taught by the original shamans down there, who had
Speaker 2: been passed from generation to generation. And you know, for
Speaker 2: thousands of years. It's an ancient medicine that they boil
Speaker 2: down from a vine and a leaf, and the vine
Speaker 2: has the DMT in it, which is what all of us,
Speaker 2: every living thing has DMT in it. It's sort of
Speaker 2: the it's been called the spirit molecule. And the vine
Speaker 2: that they brew it up with has the enzyme that
Speaker 2: helps our own body. If we were to just take
Speaker 2: the vine, our own enzymes would block the DMT from
Speaker 2: doing anything and it would go through us. But the
Speaker 2: vine suppresses our own body's enzyme and allows the DMT
Speaker 2: to interact with our own DMT that's in our pineal
Speaker 2: gland back in the back of our head. And that
Speaker 2: is the only times that it occurs naturally that we
Speaker 2: know of, is at birth and at death. So this
Speaker 2: is released, and you, your spirit, not your body, but
Speaker 2: your spirit goes on. Your soul goes to that place
Speaker 2: of oneness where we all come from, that the non physical,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, you are. You know
Speaker 2: that you're still in a house, in a room. You
Speaker 2: understand you don't go anywhere, but you also understand that
Speaker 2: your mind, your understanding of it, is all different. You're
Speaker 2: disconnected from your body. You often you throw up, you purge,
Speaker 2: not so much the other stuff, but sometimes that happens,
Speaker 2: and then again there's a feeling of a download. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of visuals that are different with with with
Speaker 2: different people. Some people visualize actual spirit, they see large beings,
Speaker 2: they see things that it can be fearful. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: sort of depends on the person mind. I've had bad
Speaker 2: what I would call a bad experience, but it was
Speaker 2: a very learning experience.
Speaker 1: Do you see things that happened in your life, do
Speaker 1: you kind of reconcile with hurts or traumas or relationships
Speaker 1: that have gone wrong.
Speaker 2: It is not a review in your mind, No, it
Speaker 2: is a way of understanding that those things were necessary
Speaker 2: to be who you are. And you come out of
Speaker 2: it and you go, oh, I'm not going to hold
Speaker 2: onto those traumas anymore. Those traumas don't affect me anymore
Speaker 2: because I'm grateful they were a part of my life
Speaker 2: that helped me ask for more so that I could
Speaker 2: bring that in so that I could bring better into
Speaker 2: my life. An understanding I got through all this is
Speaker 2: that we live in a dualistic world. There's good and bad,
Speaker 2: there's light and dark. There's up and down. Everything has
Speaker 2: an opposite. There's wanted and the lack of it. And
Speaker 2: every time we want something, we also bring that lack
Speaker 2: of it with us. There will always be rich and poor.
Speaker 2: There will always be that, because you can't be one
Speaker 2: without the other. And to then inside be okay with that,
Speaker 2: to understand that that is how this existence is and
Speaker 2: outside of this reality is a oneness, is a fairness,
Speaker 2: is a is pure joy. And so you go, oh,
Speaker 2: the only way I can, the only way we were
Speaker 2: are are here to create and move what we call
Speaker 2: the us here on the bleeding edge of creation is
Speaker 2: to experience this light and dark. So there's there's a
Speaker 2: kind of an understanding. You don't you don't work anything out.
Speaker 2: It's not here to you know, work it out, and
Speaker 2: what's good or bad that that it's all oneness. It's
Speaker 2: all that sort of yin and yang symbol. That's the
Speaker 2: reason that that symbol is is is it's you get
Speaker 2: the whole by having both the light and the dark.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, I mean it does. I just
Speaker 1: think I'm not that deep.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you don't have to be you really don't know.
Speaker 2: This is not something that everyone has to be this.
Speaker 2: This is what it took for me to be that way,
Speaker 2: to need to find peace. You find your piece the
Speaker 2: way you do, and a lot of us, especially women,
Speaker 2: a lot of us don't have to Our left brains
Speaker 2: don't have to read it all and figure it all out.
Speaker 2: Our right brains just know it instinctively. It's you know,
Speaker 2: that's the intuitive part. And you've seen enough of the world,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, and talk to enough people to kind of understand.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you don't have a false thought about celebrity.
Speaker 2: You understand the people are people, and so there's probably
Speaker 2: you probably don't need that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 3: we'll hear from Melissa on how her spiritual progress has
Speaker 3: affected her relationships.
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Speaker 1: from Memorial Sloan Cattering Cancer Center with MSK oncologist doctor
Speaker 1: Diane Reedy Lagunis. I was a guest, and we had
Speaker 1: a totally candid conversation about my family's experiences with cancer,
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Speaker 3: We're back with Alyssa Athriage.
Speaker 1: Would you say you're now a much happier person, Melissa?
Speaker 1: Do you feel settled and happy because you have been
Speaker 1: through a lot. You've had a lot of turmoil in
Speaker 1: your life, you lost your son, you had a very
Speaker 1: distant mom. It made me so sad about what you
Speaker 1: wrote about your mom. I'm going to read this. You
Speaker 1: described your dad as a nice guy and fun parent,
Speaker 1: but your mom seemed pretty unhappy and you were determined
Speaker 1: not to be like her. And you write as I
Speaker 1: grew up, what became clear was my mother's lack of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for her life. She didn't want anything more than
Speaker 1: to go through the motions of work, to come home,
Speaker 1: get dinner on the table, with a sigh and very
Speaker 1: little eye contact, and then get lost inside one of
Speaker 1: her many classics books that transported her out of her life.
Speaker 1: When I pull from my memories, I see my mother
Speaker 1: sitting in her favorite living room chair, angle down toward
Speaker 1: her book, a glass of something at her side. I
Speaker 1: love this line by the way that I'm about to read.
Speaker 1: The tableau carries with it an untouchable and loneeness, an
Speaker 1: image bringing into high relief the signal radiating off of
Speaker 1: her telling me she didn't want to be approached or interrupted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, And you know what, I'm grateful,
Speaker 2: I truly am because of that. I was sent on
Speaker 2: a journey of looking for that comfort outside of myself.
Speaker 2: I went through some heavy relationships because of that, because
Speaker 2: I wanted that person to fill that up, but not
Speaker 2: until I realized it's up to me to fill that
Speaker 2: part of me up, to love me. And then once
Speaker 2: I once I could do that, once I started doing
Speaker 2: then I have a relationship now where I don't need
Speaker 2: that person to do that. And it's the most loving
Speaker 2: relationship I've ever had because we both are coming from
Speaker 2: a place of nurturing ourselves. And I know that I'm
Speaker 2: more available to my children. And because of that, because
Speaker 2: I don't have that.
Speaker 1: Do you understand your mom better today?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh yes?
Speaker 1: And what made her that way? Do you think, Melissa?
Speaker 2: Well can you? I mean, I don't know about your mother,
Speaker 2: but remember them growing up in the thirties and forties
Speaker 2: and fifties, and they come of age in the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties. And my mother was extremely intelligent. She really was.
Speaker 2: She started as a as a secretary just to make
Speaker 2: extra money because my father was a teacher and unfortunately
Speaker 2: we don't pay our teachers here, and so she started
Speaker 2: making extra money. And it was the time when computers
Speaker 2: were just being made, and she was hired by Booz Allen,
Speaker 2: the financial company or whatever it was in Kansas City,
Speaker 2: and she was one hundred percent hidden figures. They sent
Speaker 2: her in because she could understand how to program the
Speaker 2: She used to tell me when computers were as big
Speaker 2: as whole rooms and she would she would do that
Speaker 2: and she got really good.
Speaker 1: I remember that. I remember seeing those ads. Remember they
Speaker 1: were just like wall to wall, big massive things.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so she could understand it. And she was
Speaker 2: hired by the army base that we had Levenworth and
Speaker 2: fort Levenworth, and they hired her and she started. She
Speaker 2: worked in wargames and scenarios, and she would do all
Speaker 2: these computer computations and the generals would take them and
Speaker 2: take all the credit, and she would get paid half
Speaker 2: of what everyone else was paying. And I don't know
Speaker 2: how else she was treated, but she was just angry
Speaker 2: the whole time because she got no credit and no
Speaker 2: money for what she did. And yeah, I'd be a
Speaker 2: little cranky too at the end of the day, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I do understand. I understand that women back
Speaker 2: then were highly underused, underappreciated, and you know she was.
Speaker 2: She was absolutely part of that.
Speaker 1: You also write about your older sister Jenny. Yeah, gosh, Melissa.
Speaker 2: It's well, look, there are people that have had worse lives,
Speaker 2: you know than me.
Speaker 1: No, no, I know that, but this was this was
Speaker 1: like she sexually abused you. Yeah, from the age of
Speaker 1: six or seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about seven or eight, I think, and till
Speaker 2: about when I was twelve and went no, stop, you know,
Speaker 2: and and it's you know, you know, that's again no
Speaker 2: fun as a as a kid, and you kind of
Speaker 2: it can mess you up a little bit. But I'm
Speaker 2: again I'm not going to be, you know, tethered to that.
Speaker 2: I freed myself from that. I I went on from that.
Speaker 2: It became you know that that's so far distant from
Speaker 2: me that it's almost funny talking about it, you know,
Speaker 2: and her life. She was just miserable. She just had
Speaker 2: a miserable life, and you know, still kind of is.
Speaker 2: But we you know, I don't, we don't talk. We
Speaker 2: just it's just a fine understanding that, you know, we
Speaker 2: just were two people that happened to be in the
Speaker 2: same family together.
Speaker 1: How strange, though, you know, I haven't heard of a
Speaker 1: sister really sexually abusing another sister that often. Is that unusual?
Speaker 2: No, yeah, I think it is. I think she was
Speaker 2: being sexually abused somehow, not from my parents, but somehow
Speaker 2: in the in the family system. I think it was happening.
Speaker 2: I don't know where. I long time ago. I tried
Speaker 2: to talk to her about it, and it was just
Speaker 2: she was just kind of disconnected from it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I think it was happening to her because children act
Speaker 2: out what's happening to them, so you know, there you go.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems to me that music sort of
Speaker 1: was your lifeline I mean, you're an incredible lyricist and
Speaker 1: obviously musician, but I have to believe that all these
Speaker 1: traumas and all these kind of feeling unlove by your mother,
Speaker 1: all these things fed into your music, oh as well
Speaker 1: as your relationship with your father, because you write about
Speaker 1: music being the communication between the two of you. So
Speaker 1: can you just talk about that a little bit, Melissa,
Speaker 1: and how that music fed your soul at a time
Speaker 1: where your soul needed feeding so much.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, when you're in a situation that is not
Speaker 2: feeding you, not giving you the energy you're looking for,
Speaker 2: you're going to go. I always call it the kids
Speaker 2: go where it's warm. They just naturally are going to
Speaker 2: go there. My father was very warm, He was very fun,
Speaker 2: He was understanding, was he wasn't the smartest guy, but
Speaker 2: he was clever, and he loved music. He didn't play music,
Speaker 2: but he loved it. He played the records all the time,
Speaker 2: and the radio was on, and so it filled my
Speaker 2: life and it lifted sort of the heaviness that was
Speaker 2: in our house. You know, you grew up in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies, and yeah, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: us we just it was like we're just supposed to
Speaker 2: pretend everything's okay, and you're like, yeah, but my sister
Speaker 2: is really losing it here. But you're all pretending that
Speaker 2: everything's okay, and that sort of messes you up for
Speaker 2: that tension that can build. Music released it, and I
Speaker 2: would love nothing more than to grab my guitar and
Speaker 2: go into a room by myself and play. That made
Speaker 2: me very happy. It pushed all of that. I didn't
Speaker 2: have to worry about any of that outside of me,
Speaker 2: and it just grew from there. My father he was
Speaker 2: never one to say, oh, Melissa, you're really good, You're
Speaker 2: going to be big, you know. He never said anything
Speaker 2: like that. He just never said you can't do it.
Speaker 2: He was like, oh, you need a ride, I'll take
Speaker 2: you there. I will take you here, I will I
Speaker 2: will do that. He was available, and just that availability
Speaker 2: enabled me to grow my musical career.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to picture you as a young girl sitting
Speaker 1: on your bean back chair listening to your dad put
Speaker 1: record after record on the turntable, and I'm wondering what
Speaker 1: kind of music he played.
Speaker 2: He loved Neil Diamond, so he loved he loved singer songwriters,
Speaker 2: which really, you know, affected me I listened to a
Speaker 2: lot of Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond. I
Speaker 2: remember him playing me one of Neil Diamond's albums and
Speaker 2: he Neil Diamond covered a song by Randy Newman. It
Speaker 2: was called I Think It's going to rain today, beautiful song,
Speaker 2: and he one of the lines was Scarecrow's dressed in
Speaker 2: the latest styles, broken smiles, that chase love away, human
Speaker 2: kindness is overflowing, and I think It's going to rain today,
Speaker 2: And he said, you see how he writes that, and
Speaker 2: you know he's he's describing, you know, metaphors and things
Speaker 2: and how they work to me and how you know,
Speaker 2: he's talking about people walking down the street and human
Speaker 2: kindness is overflowing. Isn't is an overstatement? It's it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's And he's showing me how to write and what
Speaker 2: moves people in the mind when you're writing. And I'm
Speaker 2: so grateful for that. It was like a class in songwriting.
Speaker 1: Was your dad telling you that or were you just
Speaker 1: learning this from Neil Diamond and the other artists your
Speaker 1: dad loved well.
Speaker 2: He would he would just play me a line and go, gosh,
Speaker 2: isn't that great? I knew that he would love it,
Speaker 2: and so I would pick it apart and go, oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, what is it that's so great about this?
Speaker 2: And I would listen to them.
Speaker 1: Oh, how cool. Yeah. So that was obviously incredibly formative
Speaker 1: for you as a songwriter, and you realized after a
Speaker 1: talent show when you're eleven years old, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a famous musician.
Speaker 2: We yes from Kansas, a woman rockstar. There is none,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Take us back to that Talent show and what you
Speaker 1: played and how it clicked.
Speaker 2: I can't wait for you to come see the Broadway
Speaker 2: show because this is you know, some of these parts
Speaker 2: you know play in the show. I actually talk about
Speaker 2: the guy who put the Talent show together. He was
Speaker 2: from like Philadelphia, it was just passing through. He's sort
Speaker 2: of like the music man kind of guy. He was
Speaker 2: a ventriloquist and he you know, this is nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two or something or seventy.
Speaker 1: Three, sounds like Professor Harold Hill.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and put he took all the things from the
Speaker 2: Talent Show, all the acts, and he made a variety
Speaker 2: show and we would go around to old folks homes
Speaker 2: and the prisons in Leavenworth, you know, in prisons.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we would play for real audiences, and I'm
Speaker 2: twelve years old thinking this is awesome, you know. And
Speaker 2: it gave me a chance to play in front of people,
Speaker 2: to start writing songs and consider, you know, oh, I've
Speaker 2: got to write this for our next thing. And from
Speaker 2: there I found a band that was playing around town
Speaker 2: and my whole career just grew from there.
Speaker 1: And did you just sort of were you a natural
Speaker 1: born singer? Did people say, wow, Melissa, You've got an
Speaker 1: incredible I mean, your voice is so unique and so special.
Speaker 1: Did people say wow this you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: particular sound. And I know you say that you've always
Speaker 1: wanted to sing like Carol King, And I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you do have similarities I think in your voices.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I listened to Tapestry a lot because she was
Speaker 2: a singer songwriter. And actually Tapestry was the first album
Speaker 2: that my father ever got for just for me on Christmas.
Speaker 1: I listened to that album eight trillion.
Speaker 2: Times, Yes, over and over.
Speaker 1: You must have been in like fourth or fifth grade
Speaker 1: when it came out, maybe fourth, because I think it
Speaker 1: came out when I was in seventh grade that I'm
Speaker 1: four years older than you.
Speaker 2: Are, right, Yeah, so it was that time, and you know,
Speaker 2: the music that was out there just delicious.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're traveling around Kansas, you're performing, do people say, wow, girl,
Speaker 1: you know you've got it.
Speaker 2: When I was in a choir, I was in a
Speaker 2: church choir first, and would sing. The choir director would
Speaker 2: put me in the back row because my voice was
Speaker 2: so strange and I shouldn't have been like a tenor
Speaker 2: or a baritone singing with the boys. But they weren't
Speaker 2: going to do that with me, you know. And later
Speaker 2: as I as I started singing in bands, I was told, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, I like your voice because I was able
Speaker 2: to sing kind of popular songs. But when I was
Speaker 2: in school and stuff, people were kind of like, what's
Speaker 2: that voice? It sort of stood out, and it was
Speaker 2: not a pleasant standing out.
Speaker 1: Well, it's so different, I think, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of raspy and strong, and you know, I think of
Speaker 1: people like Janice Joplin, right, and Carol King with this
Speaker 1: very unique sound.
Speaker 2: Everyone kind of assumed that I drank a lot of
Speaker 2: whiskey and smoked a lot of cigarettes, and I didn't.
Speaker 2: I was in those places where people were doing that,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I just my father. The one thing,
Speaker 2: the only thing he ever really told me, is kind
Speaker 2: of a a not a critique but advice. He was like,
Speaker 2: don't sing through your nose. He used to say that,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know quite what he meant. So I
Speaker 2: kept pushing all my sound into my chest, you know,
Speaker 2: and everything was really big so that I wouldn't sing
Speaker 2: through my nose. And so I think that I sort
Speaker 2: of trained my voice to be this kind of large sound.
Speaker 1: You write about in the book Dealing with Your Sexuality,
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes I think about, and again, because
Speaker 1: we're contemporaries, what it was like for gay people when
Speaker 1: we were little kids, and I grew up in Virginia,
Speaker 1: you're in Kansas, and how much has changed now, And
Speaker 1: it's just remarkable to me, how much I hope, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if you agree with me, how much
Speaker 1: progress has been made, how much more acceptance there is,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I remember my gym teacher thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: miss miss Beats and Miss so and so live in
Speaker 1: the same house, Like what's that about? But we never
Speaker 1: kind of even you know, I remember my dad talking
Speaker 1: about somebody he worked with who he thought was gay.
Speaker 1: And I don't think my dad even used the word gay,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how he described him. But
Speaker 1: it was so so secretive and such a subculture, and
Speaker 1: it must have been really hard. I mean, how hard
Speaker 1: was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? How hard was it? Yeah? To go through adolescence.
Speaker 2: And there there was a knowing that started happening around
Speaker 2: eighth or ninth grade, when all my girlfriends were ah,
Speaker 2: isn't Bobby so cute? Isn't Mark so cute? And I'd go,
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, what do you mean? And
Speaker 2: and and then I would like watch you know, the
Speaker 2: Bionic Woman and go, oh, isn't Listening Wagoner so beautiful?
Speaker 2: You know, there's something like that, you know, And and
Speaker 2: and then I started feeling this way about maybe certain
Speaker 2: girls in school, and I'd go, well, that's you know,
Speaker 2: what's what's that? And then I remember, in about eighth grade,
Speaker 2: is someone in in gym class or something going oh,
Speaker 2: she's a lezie. I was like, what's a what's a lezie?
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Oh, that's a girl that likes other girls.
Speaker 2: And I went, oh, there's there's something wrong with this, oh,
Speaker 2: this is and and the first thing, you know, when
Speaker 2: the first say you.
Speaker 1: Hear they weren't talking about you.
Speaker 2: They were doing somebody else. Yeah who was not you know,
Speaker 2: they were just calling somebody names. And you realize, oh,
Speaker 2: there's this. This is a bad thing, this is a
Speaker 2: this is a thing that you call somebody else. And
Speaker 2: then and then you have that deep sinking feeling, Oh
Speaker 2: maybe that's me, Maybe I am and And you know,
Speaker 2: you go through high school. I tried, I had a
Speaker 2: boyfriend and tried, and was I like this guy as
Speaker 2: a person. But there's I just I feel nothing else.
Speaker 2: I feel nothing else after that, and then the first
Speaker 2: time I ever kissed a girl, you know, it just
Speaker 2: blew my mind. And you just realize that, you know,
Speaker 2: even though it wasn't spoken about, it was not in
Speaker 2: popular culture, there was nothing. The first thing I ever
Speaker 2: saw was the Billy Jean King and the trouble she
Speaker 2: got into. That was the first thing I ever saw
Speaker 2: in the newspapers. And I remember standing there looking at
Speaker 2: it thinking, oh, you get in trouble when when this happens?
Speaker 2: And so you you know, you keep it to yourself.
Speaker 2: This is a this is a deep, dark seeker because
Speaker 2: you're going to and then once you kind of turned eighteen,
Speaker 2: the first thing you think is, I got to get
Speaker 2: it out of this small town and go to a
Speaker 2: bigger city where there's more of us that gather. And
Speaker 2: that's why the bars used to be such a safe place,
Speaker 2: because you know, you could go there, you could meet
Speaker 2: other people, and community was very important. Then then in
Speaker 2: the eighties, when when AIDS came, those communities became politically active.
Speaker 2: We realized we were dying and nobody cared and it
Speaker 2: really affected us. And some of the smartest and strongest
Speaker 2: of our leaders got together. And those are the people
Speaker 2: that I knew back in the late eighties and early
Speaker 2: nineties that when I finally said, look, this is who
Speaker 2: I am and I came out and started talking about it,
Speaker 2: I was already very educated, and I had been within
Speaker 2: this community for ten years and had learned the importance
Speaker 2: of people seeing someone gay. And I still to this
Speaker 2: day people will come to me and say, you know,
Speaker 2: you got me through my childhood. You were the only
Speaker 2: other person I knew that was gay, And it means
Speaker 2: so much to me to see artists now who just
Speaker 2: are gay and it doesn't matter this is a part
Speaker 2: of who they are and it's okay, and that this
Speaker 2: just brings me so much joy. And all the other
Speaker 2: mishigosh that's going on in our politics is just they
Speaker 2: of division, and no matter what, we are definitely definitely
Speaker 2: getting better. It's getting better.
Speaker 1: You talk about a relationship you had, You're first with
Speaker 1: the woman Jane, the colonel's daughter. You call her and
Speaker 1: you say that this set up a pattern for you
Speaker 1: that would repeat itself in future relationships. What happened with
Speaker 1: Jane and how did it keep manifesting itself over and
Speaker 1: over again?
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't blame it on Jane. It was the
Speaker 2: dynamics that came from my mother and my sister, that
Speaker 2: sort of you know, messed upness with them, the unavailable,
Speaker 2: the coldness, and the sort of psychoticness, you know, it combined,
Speaker 2: you know, that sort of troubled person. Oh that's attractive
Speaker 2: to me, you know, let's you know, you find yourself
Speaker 2: being attracted to sort of that situation. And so the
Speaker 2: more I as we started a conversation with the more
Speaker 2: I was looking for it outside of myself to fix
Speaker 2: the emptiness inside of me, the more I was going
Speaker 2: to get that trouble, and that was the first, you know,
Speaker 2: couple serious relationships in my life. We're looking for, Oh,
Speaker 2: I need someone who is really interesting and dark and
Speaker 2: gorgeous and beautiful because I'm not and you know these
Speaker 2: things that you think, Okay, this person is going to
Speaker 2: fill that up in me and then me the pleaser.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make the world all right for you.
Speaker 2: I you know, I held back the world for you.
Speaker 2: I did this. I'm going to do everything so that
Speaker 2: you will love me.
Speaker 1: It's just a.
Speaker 2: Really dangerous hole to dig yourself in. It will give
Speaker 2: you cancer.
Speaker 1: That well, we'll talk about that in a moment. But
Speaker 1: that's why that line in Jerry Maguire was so dangerous. Yes,
Speaker 1: and such a bad, you know, sort of way to
Speaker 1: go through life. You complete me? Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's better to say you. What would be a
Speaker 1: better word than complete?
Speaker 2: You? You delight me? You you boy. There's a word
Speaker 2: that we're both looking for. But between our.
Speaker 1: Brain I know what is that word? Wait?
Speaker 2: Wait, what is that you?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: I just thought of it too. Yes, you compliment me?
Speaker 2: Yes, right, it works together?
Speaker 1: Yes, right, well we could between the two of us,
Speaker 1: we actually came up with it. You know, I have
Speaker 1: to ask you about your relationship with Julie Cipher because
Speaker 1: you were together for more than ten years, you had
Speaker 1: two kids, bothered by of course, David Crosby pretty famously,
Speaker 1: and you split up in nineteen ninety nine, and there
Speaker 1: must have been a lot of pressure on you, Melissa,
Speaker 1: because I know breaking up with Julie made you feel
Speaker 1: like you were letting down the gate community, oh very much.
Speaker 2: So I felt like, you know, I had gone out
Speaker 2: to be this you know, famously out person with a
Speaker 2: famously you know family, being one of the first you know,
Speaker 2: out families of the gay community and it's okay to
Speaker 2: be you know, gay and have children, and back then
Speaker 2: that was really really not okay to a lot.
Speaker 1: Of right right, that was you were one of the
Speaker 1: first public gay companies and to then you were raising
Speaker 1: a family like and.
Speaker 2: Then two years later go, yeah, we're our family's broken now.
Speaker 2: It just it it hurt even more than the getting out,
Speaker 2: because the getting out was good for me. I needed
Speaker 2: to find my happiness. I was not happy. It was
Speaker 2: not a healthy relationship, so you know, that was good
Speaker 2: for me, but the feeling of shame of letting everyone
Speaker 2: down was really dark, very much.
Speaker 1: So what do you think that you were looking for
Speaker 1: her to complete? You were the same dynamics playing over
Speaker 1: with that relationship.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think one of the It's so funny because
Speaker 2: I look back now and I just think I was
Speaker 2: just so crazy and so stupid just to believe that
Speaker 2: I wasn't attractive. There's a this this neat. It came
Speaker 2: with the wanting to be, you know, famous and a
Speaker 2: rock star, and I want to be in the public eye.
Speaker 2: I want to give my music and have people listen,
Speaker 2: and then I'm going to be a very visual person,
Speaker 2: especially in the eighties and nineties when that was everything
Speaker 2: was was the cover of the magazine and how we
Speaker 2: looked and it was and music videos. Music videos were huge,
Speaker 2: and I was not a fashionable person at all. I
Speaker 2: was most comfortable in my jeans and T shirts, which
Speaker 2: I should have just stayed with. But you know, you
Speaker 2: try to please you, and you think you have to
Speaker 2: be something else than what you are to make it,
Speaker 2: and you hire someone else to do it. So, oh,
Speaker 2: if I have this really attractive, dark, gorgeous wife, then
Speaker 2: they'll think I'm attractive somehow. So that was so much
Speaker 2: a part of it, which is so shallow when I
Speaker 2: say it, it's like God, but so true. The insecurity
Speaker 2: was really there, and it tortured me for a long time.
Speaker 2: And you know, now I look back and go, I
Speaker 2: do I think I'm just so ridiculous. I think I
Speaker 2: was very attractive when I was younger, and I just
Speaker 2: never ever saw it.
Speaker 1: We just waste so much time worrying about this and
Speaker 1: comparing ourselves to other people, and it, you know, is
Speaker 1: it is such a fool's errand to be full of
Speaker 1: self loathing and to feel like you're less than. But
Speaker 1: society really pushes us to think that way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know what society values, what images we are costed
Speaker 1: by on a regular basis. So I mean, I want
Speaker 1: to say it's not necessarily your fault or my fault
Speaker 1: when I would be critical or never think I was
Speaker 1: thin enough, or you never thought you were pretty enough?
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I mean, now, yeah, I look back
Speaker 2: and know that, Oh, it was so much of it
Speaker 2: was what I was saying where I was at, and
Speaker 2: and just the lack of the kind of support either
Speaker 2: family support or you know, peer support of no, you're
Speaker 2: you know, we're all fine. And that's why I really
Speaker 2: look actually back then, Well, when I look at the
Speaker 2: younger generations, the millennials that you know, jen zd or
Speaker 2: whatever they are now, and it's like, oh no, they're
Speaker 2: they're going to be okay because there's so many different looks.
Speaker 2: There's so much there's not just this one idealized look
Speaker 2: that you know you have to be. It's it's just
Speaker 2: being who you are. Being the more individual is actually celebrated.
Speaker 1: You know. It makes me think of what David Cassidy
Speaker 1: said on his deathbed, which wasn't really about caring about
Speaker 1: his appearances, but it was about not repairing his relationships.
Speaker 1: Do you know what he said? No? What so much
Speaker 1: wasted time? That makes me so sad, But it also
Speaker 1: makes me think about things.
Speaker 2: Yes, getting back to ayahuasca, that's the sort of knowledge
Speaker 2: you come back with and you don't have to be
Speaker 2: dying because, like I said, it's the same sort of
Speaker 2: experience when you realize, oh, oh no, why did I
Speaker 2: waste all that time thinking I wasn't enough, I wasn't
Speaker 2: good enough? When those thoughts don't serve anything. If I
Speaker 2: just looked up and looked out, I could have seen,
Speaker 2: oh this is this is delicious. I can enjoy this more.
Speaker 2: We are here to enjoy things. We really are and
Speaker 2: we put ourselves through so much.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back after this shortbreak. When we come back,
Speaker 3: Melissa talks about her cancer diagnosis and what it was
Speaker 3: like undergoing treatment in the public.
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Speaker 3: We're back with Melissa Etheridge.
Speaker 1: You know I have to ask you about your breast
Speaker 1: cancer because we talked a little bit about this with
Speaker 1: Andy Cohen, which was a funny setting to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But any any setting, honestly, is an important setting, I
Speaker 1: think to get it out in the open. And you
Speaker 1: were diagnosed in two thousand and formalists, so you were
Speaker 1: just forty three years old, and I know you decided
Speaker 1: to stop chemo when you decided to perform at the Grammys.
Speaker 1: Bald is a cue ball because you went through a lumpectomy,
Speaker 1: but also because you had a lot in your lymph nodes,
Speaker 1: you also needed to get chemotherapy and radiation and it
Speaker 1: took its toll. But tell me about performing at the
Speaker 1: Grammys when you were balled as a cue ball and
Speaker 1: you sang this incredible tribute to Janice Joplin.
Speaker 2: Well, it was after I had decided to stop my
Speaker 2: chemo treatment. So I'd been through a I'd just been
Speaker 2: through that spiritual thing and understanding about my body, and
Speaker 2: I thought, you know what, give me, give me a
Speaker 2: little I'm going to try to do it this one.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to really heal myself from the inside out.
Speaker 2: And I was going to walk a different path, less stress, less,
Speaker 2: self loathing, all those things. And so I really was.
Speaker 2: So I stopped. I was still doing radiation, and I
Speaker 2: went to radiation that morning of the show. I hadn't
Speaker 2: been out in public at all for three months, about
Speaker 2: three almost four months. I hadn't been out, and I
Speaker 2: I got radiation that morning. I told my radiologist and
Speaker 2: what I was doing, I'm going to be on the
Speaker 2: Grammy tonight, you know, watch me. I had no idea
Speaker 2: what the response would be. I really didn't. I was.
Speaker 2: I was backstage with my band and Josh Stone. She
Speaker 2: also sang we sang together Janis Joplin song. She sang
Speaker 2: cry Baby, and I sang Piece of My Part, and
Speaker 2: Josh was back there and she was a big fan,
Speaker 2: and she was really sweet, and I was telling her
Speaker 2: she'd never been on the Grammys, and I was doing
Speaker 2: the old veteran thing of saying, well, you know, nobody,
Speaker 2: you know, the Grammys are the worst audience to perform for.
Speaker 2: They don't they just sit there, they don't give you anything.
Speaker 2: They're all just, you know, concerned about how they look.
Speaker 1: And so if you know, don't have low expectations, have
Speaker 1: low expectations, don't think that anything's you know, going to happen.
Speaker 2: And my guitar player walks over to me and he
Speaker 2: looks at me, goes, Melissa, you don't know what you're
Speaker 2: about to do, do you? And I looked at him
Speaker 2: and went, huh, you know, what are you saying? And
Speaker 2: then once I took the stage and the reception I got,
Speaker 2: I mean, it still brings I still get choked up
Speaker 2: about it, The hugely warm reception I got singing and
Speaker 2: even though I was really weak. That was probably the
Speaker 2: weakest I've ever been when I was singing. I remember
Speaker 2: I was singing the song and thinking, wow, I got
Speaker 2: to save my energy for that scream at the end.
Speaker 2: There's the big Joplin scream I was going to do
Speaker 2: at the end, and so I just sort of stood there,
Speaker 2: which I think made the performance on camera better because
Speaker 2: they were able to just focus on me. I didn't
Speaker 2: kind of move around and stuff, and I let out
Speaker 2: the scream. I finished the song. The crowd went crazy.
Speaker 2: I was so one hundred percent wrong about the crowd right.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure Josh Stone was saying that bitch just
Speaker 1: set me up.
Speaker 2: No, Josh is beautiful. She was wonderful, was very very great.
Speaker 2: But I was like, oh, I was wrong, sorry, and
Speaker 2: I just I went home and I didn't think about it.
Speaker 2: There was no you know, there was a really social
Speaker 2: media back then, not really and so it wasn't until
Speaker 2: a couple of days later because I went home and
Speaker 2: I went to bed. I just went to sleep, and
Speaker 2: that my best friend, now my wife called me and said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, You're all over everywhere. You're all over
Speaker 2: the news. People are having discussions about you and baldness
Speaker 2: and cancer, and I was like, what what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? And it just it just blew up. And
Speaker 2: still to this day, I still get people. I met
Speaker 2: a little girl at a bookstore. She was in a
Speaker 2: wheelchair and she was bald. I'm like, oh, she's in treatment,
Speaker 2: and I just feel so much for the young ones
Speaker 2: that are going through it. And I just approached her
Speaker 2: and her father was talking to somebody and I just said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I just want to say I went through this.
Speaker 2: And the father looks down, she goes, oh, honey, remember
Speaker 2: that video I showed you. This is the woman. Ah,
Speaker 2: you know, so it's still it still touches me all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Well. It was such a memorable and the
Speaker 1: visual of it, Melissa, was just so dramatic, coupled with
Speaker 1: this voice, the powerful voice you were able to summon,
Speaker 1: probably propelled by all the love you felt in that room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of that, a lot of that.
Speaker 1: You dedicate the book to your son, Beckett, and as
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I just marvel at your resilience,
Speaker 1: but the roller coaster ride that has been your life
Speaker 1: and you lost your son, and it's so upsetting because
Speaker 1: I know, he started taking vicodin after a snowboarding accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like so many people in this country, became addicted
Speaker 1: to opioids, which is just so infuriating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his life before he started vicodin, he was he
Speaker 2: was not in a I wouldn't call him a happy individual.
Speaker 2: He was one that sort of had a hard time.
Speaker 2: He had a hard time finding happiness. And so it's
Speaker 2: that sort of personality, that sort of individual that can then, man,
Speaker 2: if you give them something that not only takes the
Speaker 2: physical pain away, but nums that that dissonance inside of them, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's gonna be addictive. And then physically if you
Speaker 2: don't take it, you're gonna feel bad. Then you're stuck.
Speaker 2: You don't have the the will well willpower, you don't
Speaker 2: have the ability, you don't have the tools at all
Speaker 2: to get out of it. And we you know, he
Speaker 2: went in and out of rehabs and the tools of
Speaker 2: just don't do it. And here's therapy to talk about
Speaker 2: all the bad things you went through. Is not really working.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's not and and that's that's why uh
Speaker 2: I started the Etharge Foundation. It it raises money to
Speaker 2: provide research into plant medicines and psychedelics that are helping
Speaker 2: with this. It's directly to help with opioid use disorder,
Speaker 2: but there's so many there's so much other research. You
Speaker 2: hear about psilocybin and cancer, you know, people that have
Speaker 2: cancer and the what is it when hospice hospice, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know helps with people that are at the end
Speaker 2: of life and.
Speaker 1: Also with PTSD, all kinds of all these.
Speaker 2: Things that it helps so much. So let's and and
Speaker 2: it's still these are still schedule one, which is saying
Speaker 2: there's no medical you know, there's no medical data that
Speaker 2: it's any good. So we are providing the research and
Speaker 2: the medical data so that we can come and change
Speaker 2: this so these things can't be available. And that that
Speaker 2: makes me feel like I'm doing something to move this forward.
Speaker 1: There are so many exciting developments in this area of research.
Speaker 1: I think we just scratched the surface, and I think
Speaker 1: it's really really fascinating and it's changing lives for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. You live streamed a concert that you
Speaker 1: called the heel Emy Concert, and in that you sang
Speaker 1: something to your son.
Speaker 2: It was you are my Sunshine, right, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: a song. I used to always sing to my kids,
Speaker 2: you know, to put you know, as lullabies when when
Speaker 2: it was time to go to bed. I would just
Speaker 2: sing a few songs to them, as one that I
Speaker 2: sang because it's such a sweet melody. But I would
Speaker 2: sing it and it would I would try not to
Speaker 2: make it so sad, because it's actually a very sad song.
Speaker 2: You know, the second verse, you know, the other night, DearS,
Speaker 2: I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms.
Speaker 2: When I woke, I was mistaken, and I hung my
Speaker 2: head and cried. It's the second version.
Speaker 1: I know, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: It's so it's like I would only try to sing
Speaker 2: like the first verse over and over. But it was
Speaker 2: a you know, it was something I sang all the
Speaker 2: time to all of my children.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the show, Melissa Ethridge My Window, which
Speaker 1: The New York Times describes as a rock concert, splice
Speaker 1: with memoir. So what made you want to do abroad show? Melissa?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're like, I've done this, I've done that,
Speaker 1: why not go to Broadway?
Speaker 2: Well, I've deeply loved Broadway from as a child. I
Speaker 2: mean I just adored Barber Streissan and everything she did,
Speaker 2: and it sort of went from there to things like
Speaker 2: Godspell and Jesus Cresh Superstar and hair. I just love
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff, and Broadway was always this very
Speaker 2: magical place that to me was a step, let's just say,
Speaker 2: apart from sort of popular music and the way you
Speaker 2: can manipulate pop music, you can't manipulate someone standing on
Speaker 2: a stage singing to you. That's real. That's raw talent
Speaker 2: and the writing and the gathering and moving a live
Speaker 2: audience with story like that. There's just nothing else and
Speaker 2: there never will be. It's such a pure form of entertainment.
Speaker 2: And my wife and I for years, even before we
Speaker 2: were together, we were working to We were always trying
Speaker 2: to create something for television or Broadway. And when this opportunity,
Speaker 2: when I actually saw Bruce the Springsteen do his thing,
Speaker 2: I went, Okay, there's a door that now I can
Speaker 2: go in. I can say, look, Bruce did this. I
Speaker 2: want to do sort of amalgamation of what he did
Speaker 2: and a Broadway show. I want to create a rock
Speaker 2: concert memoir. It's a linear story of my songs, of me,
Speaker 2: of my life, of the book you just read, you know,
Speaker 2: it's the whole it's you know, it's that in two
Speaker 2: hours and.
Speaker 1: Must have been so fun to combine those two creative exercises,
Speaker 1: you know, writing and you're beautiful writer, which isn't a
Speaker 1: surprise when you listen to your lyrics, but you're writing
Speaker 1: and your musicality and have them marry in this production, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a pretty cool thing to be able
Speaker 1: to do. What's your favorite moment in the show.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's so many. There's so many that I didn't
Speaker 2: know would be my favorite until the audience got there
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, they're having so much fun.
Speaker 2: One is where the theater I'm in is called is
Speaker 2: circle in the square and it's almost in the round.
Speaker 2: I'm able to go into the audience, and there's a
Speaker 2: couple of times that I do that are so much fun.
Speaker 2: So when I do the song, I want to come over.
Speaker 2: It's just ridiculous. The whole audience is with me, you know,
Speaker 2: really understanding every line now a little better because I've
Speaker 2: given them the background on what's happening.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's right, and sort of the life
Speaker 1: experiences that have informed your lyrics, where you were, what
Speaker 1: you were thinking. I love stuff like that. Because I
Speaker 1: love to understand the genesis of a song and why
Speaker 1: did they write this? What was happening? And I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about it. Before we go, I know, Andy, and
Speaker 1: you and I talked about the fact that you are not,
Speaker 1: sadly in the rock and roll Hall of Fame. I
Speaker 1: hope you are at some point. You've won two Grammys,
Speaker 1: an Academy Award. Maybe you'll be up for a Tony
Speaker 1: after this Broadway show. And you said whatever, But Andy
Speaker 1: referred to Jan Wenner's quote, and I just want to
Speaker 1: read it because it's so annoying that he said this.
Speaker 1: He okay. He obviously is the founder of Rolling Stone magazine.
Speaker 1: He wrote a new book about his interviews, and he's
Speaker 1: facing criticism for saying that black and female musicians were
Speaker 1: not articulate enough to be included. In his new book,
Speaker 1: which features seven interviews with white male rock and roll icons.
Speaker 1: Winner said the many interviewed were kind of philosophers of
Speaker 1: rock and that no female musicians were quote as articulate
Speaker 1: enough on this intellectual level as the men. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking what And he even said Joni Mitchell was not
Speaker 1: a philosopher of rock and roll, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: what was he smoking when he made these insane idiotic
Speaker 1: like tone deaf and I mean even if he thinks it,
Speaker 1: the fact that he said.
Speaker 2: It, I know, and you know what, it really set
Speaker 2: me free. It really did, because I used to be
Speaker 2: a little tortured about, you know, in the nineties thinking,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I was on the cover once,
Speaker 2: but they didn't they they never gave me a favorable
Speaker 2: review except for The Awakening. That was the one album,
Speaker 2: which is like barely anybody knows about that album that
Speaker 2: I made, but they didn't even review. Yes, I am,
Speaker 2: they didn't think it was good enough to even review.
Speaker 2: And I kept taking it so personally. This was back
Speaker 2: in the days when I took it personally, and because
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone, to someone like me who followed rock and roll,
Speaker 2: followed music, that was the voice in which, you know,
Speaker 2: it told us what was good?
Speaker 1: Right, you knew you made it? I mean, there's even
Speaker 1: who wrote that song.
Speaker 2: Thote doctor Hooken, you know, the Medicine show. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: to realize, oh my god, I was trying to join
Speaker 2: this club where the men hated women in blacks, you know,
Speaker 2: and how am I wait a minute, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Do I really want to be a member of that club?
Speaker 2: Do I really want to be a member of that club?
Speaker 2: And it set me free. It's like, oh and he
Speaker 2: He also is on the founding board of the Rock
Speaker 2: and Roll Hall of Fame, which has been criticized for
Speaker 2: years over not you know, over just being of white.
Speaker 2: They kicked him off, they did, so who maybe we'll
Speaker 2: see different now, but it just, uh, it really freed
Speaker 2: me to go, Okay, right, No, I'm just I can't
Speaker 2: look again, I can't look outside of myself for that acceptance.
Speaker 2: I have to know that my music has changed lives,
Speaker 2: that it has touched people. And every time an audience
Speaker 2: comes to see me, there are people there who who
Speaker 2: love this music, who cherish it. And that's all. And
Speaker 2: that's that's that's my success and and and that really
Speaker 2: helps me sleep at night. And yeah, oh yeah, what's thinking?
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 1: I know? I keep saying before we go, But I
Speaker 1: realized I didn't ask you about the title of this
Speaker 1: new book, talking to My Angels.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the songs on my sim album is
Speaker 2: talking to My Angel and I wrote it after my
Speaker 2: father died, and my father was very close to me,
Speaker 2: so I it's about leaving say, it's about change. It's
Speaker 2: about keeping that that person, even though they're not physically
Speaker 2: with you there and being able to to draw on
Speaker 2: it and get you know, warmth and comfort from them.
Speaker 2: And so having lost my father, having lost my son,
Speaker 2: and understanding that he's in that place now of no pain,
Speaker 2: of a non physical where if I'm joyous and happy,
Speaker 2: then I can connect with him because he is too.
Speaker 2: And so it's it's it's that song, and it's it's
Speaker 2: just explaining that That's what I'm doing is talking to
Speaker 2: my angels.
Speaker 1: Well, Melissa, it's been so fun talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Ken.
Speaker 1: Thanks Melissa, thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a
Speaker 1: question for me, a subject you want us to cover,
Speaker 1: or you want to share your thoughts about how you
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Speaker 1: Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media.
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Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz and Our producers are
Speaker 1: Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music.
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