Speaker 1: And if you don't want the spoiler, then turn off
Speaker 1: the podcast now. My parents sat me down and told
Speaker 1: me that.
Speaker 2: Please get on that.
Speaker 1: For Kerry Washington, I am not a fantasy. You want
Speaker 1: me earn me Behind the mask of these characters, I
Speaker 1: actually started being able to express more of my truth.
Speaker 1: My characters became this safe space for me to both
Speaker 1: hide behind but also secretly reveal myself.
Speaker 2: Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite
Speaker 2: you to join this community to hear more interviews that
Speaker 2: will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All
Speaker 2: I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
Speaker 2: I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments,
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Speaker 2: It means the world to me.
Speaker 1: The best selling authoring host.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast On Purpose with
Speaker 2: Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. I'm
Speaker 2: so grateful that you lend me your ears every single day,
Speaker 2: every single week, some of you multiple times a day,
Speaker 2: multiple times a week. It means the world to me
Speaker 2: that you show up here because you know this is
Speaker 2: a place of happiness, healthiness, and healing, and I try
Speaker 2: and have conversations here with individuals who are happy to
Speaker 2: be open, be vulnerable, to share the journey that they've
Speaker 2: been on. Some of it's full of successes and also failures.
Speaker 2: Some of it's full of identity reflections and introspection, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it goes into what the experience growing
Speaker 2: up and how that's different from where they are now.
Speaker 2: My goal is to get as close to the human
Speaker 2: experience as possible so that each one of you who's
Speaker 2: listening and watching feels seen, feels heard, feels understood, and
Speaker 2: maybe you can find a bit of yourself and these
Speaker 2: stories so that you can think about how you're going
Speaker 2: to make that next decision, that next choice, that next conversation,
Speaker 2: or that next interaction in your life. Today's guest is
Speaker 2: someone that I met very recently, but we started talking
Speaker 2: a couple of months ago, and from the moment I
Speaker 2: spoke to her on the phone, her voice carried the
Speaker 2: energy of her presence, and then when I got to
Speaker 2: meet her in person just a few days ago, it
Speaker 2: was like meeting someone who just oozes positive, good, sincere,
Speaker 2: genuine energy. I really mean that. I felt it from
Speaker 2: the moment I connected with her, and so I'm so
Speaker 2: excited today to introduce you, of course to someone who
Speaker 2: doesn't need an introduction, but Kerry Washington and any. Award
Speaker 2: winning SAG and Golden Globe nominated actor, director, producer, and activist.
Speaker 2: Kerry Washington has received widespread recognition for her role as
Speaker 2: Olivia Pope on ABC's hit trama Scandal. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Kerry launched her production company, Simpson Street, whose projects include
Speaker 2: HBO's Confirmation, Netflix's American son Emmy Award winning ABC special
Speaker 2: Live in front of a studio audience, The Fight, and
Speaker 2: HU Lose Little Fires Everywhere. In twenty twenty two, Kerry
Speaker 2: starred in digital interviews series Street You Grew Up on
Speaker 2: YouTube which I just got to be a guest and
Speaker 2: I'm so excited, and scripted podcast The Prophecy with Audible.
Speaker 2: And now today we're talking about Kerry's new book, her
Speaker 2: memoir Thicker Than Water. I've had the fortune of having
Speaker 2: this book for the last couple of months and I
Speaker 2: cannot wait for you to read it. I highly recommend
Speaker 2: you go and grab it right now. Please, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show. Kerry Washington, Hi, Carrie, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: What an introduction.
Speaker 2: Well, you had to live it all, you had to
Speaker 2: do it all.
Speaker 1: I'm so honored to be here. I feel like I've
Speaker 1: heard you do that introduction for so many guests on
Speaker 1: the show. I'm like, he's talking about me now.
Speaker 2: I mean it. It's just you know. The reason I
Speaker 2: do it and I think it's so important is I
Speaker 2: think when you're living it, you often forget it.
Speaker 1: It's so true and it goes so fast.
Speaker 2: And I think that you're recognizable for so many different
Speaker 2: things and so many incredible parts of your career and
Speaker 2: your activism, your production, your acting. And I'm glad that
Speaker 2: today we get to know the human behind all of
Speaker 2: that which we do in this memoir so deeply, and
Speaker 2: I want to dive straight in. I want to ask
Speaker 2: you a question. What would you say is a childed
Speaker 2: memory that stands out to you in that it defines
Speaker 2: a lot of who you are today?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, what a great question. I feel like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them in here, but one. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of pride about being the first girl
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood to play all Sharks under Which is
Speaker 1: that game? We played at the pool in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know. I think I come from a
Speaker 1: line of really brave women. You know, when I think
Speaker 1: about my grandmother being an immigrant and coming to this
Speaker 1: country from Jamaica, and you know, being a young woman
Speaker 1: looking at that statue of liberty and what it must
Speaker 1: have meant for her to take on that adventure. And
Speaker 1: I think about my mom and you know, the career
Speaker 1: that she built, and you know, the education that she pursued,
Speaker 1: and the risks that she took, even you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of what I talk about in the book and
Speaker 1: how she how I came to be in the world.
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, being a little girl
Speaker 1: who was like willing to be one of the sharks,
Speaker 1: you know, willing to play with the guys, willing to
Speaker 1: jump into the deep end and challenge myself and be
Speaker 1: one of the big kids and not be limited by
Speaker 1: my gender or my age, or by the fear of
Speaker 1: what the game was or the depths of the water.
Speaker 1: I think that says a lot about kind of how
Speaker 1: I've lived my life, that willingness to swim in the
Speaker 1: deep end.
Speaker 2: You know. Wow, Yeah, what do you think gave the
Speaker 2: women who came before you, that courage, that strength, because
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of the conversation around that
Speaker 2: has of course developed more recently, sadly. But you see
Speaker 2: these women who just always had this strength and resilience
Speaker 2: and power despite it not being given to them or
Speaker 2: opportunities not being shown to them. What do you think
Speaker 2: brought them through all of that.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I think in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: like for women of color and Black women in particular,
Speaker 1: we haven't had the you know, dare I say, privilege
Speaker 1: of being like damsels in distress. No one was saving us,
Speaker 1: no one was rescuing us. As Black women, particularly, you know,
Speaker 1: with the diaspora and the history of slavery, We've always
Speaker 1: been working women. We've always been resilient and strong out
Speaker 1: of necessity, and I think there's something about that that
Speaker 1: lives deep in my genetics, deep in my family history.
Speaker 1: I think we talk a lot about generational trauma, and
Speaker 1: there's definitely some of that in my story and some
Speaker 1: of it I talk about, But there's also generational courage
Speaker 1: and strength, and I think it's important for me to
Speaker 1: embrace both, to see both as being part of who
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's almost like in a general sense, one
Speaker 2: can't live without the other.
Speaker 1: That's right, And they kind of give birth to each
Speaker 1: other a little bit too, right, Like the trauma causes
Speaker 1: strength and that it's you become a survivor and then
Speaker 1: you apply that wisdom. And I know that's true for me.
Speaker 1: That you know, there's things I know that I am
Speaker 1: who I am because of the things that I've had
Speaker 1: to walk through. You know, I am as much who
Speaker 1: I am because of all the extra hugs and love
Speaker 1: and encouragement I got and because of the adversity. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all, it's all part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so beautiful to hear it like that too,
Speaker 2: to look at it as non binary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. It's funny. When I
Speaker 1: was coming here to talk to you, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so different for me because I'm used to
Speaker 1: doing interviews to talk about like a television show or
Speaker 1: a movie, and I know, like I know what that
Speaker 1: narrative is and I know what I'm selling, right, But
Speaker 1: this is like I'm not really selling anything. I'm really
Speaker 1: sharing and I don't have like an agenda for like
Speaker 1: a piece of content. I'm really just like offering myself,
Speaker 1: and so it's different. It's a very different process and
Speaker 1: experience for me because I'm not translating my experience into
Speaker 1: a character's journey like I'm the I'm the character. So
Speaker 1: I bring that up to say, I've been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about the fact that there's a lot of complexity
Speaker 1: and it's not binary. There's a lot of gray area.
Speaker 1: There's not like there's no clear villain and there are
Speaker 1: no clear heroes. And it's real life, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I think i'm in talking about the book, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to get really comfortable talking about those kind
Speaker 1: of complexities because it's just not it's just not simple.
Speaker 1: Nobody's life is simple.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think you do a really wonderful job
Speaker 2: in the book elegantly and you know, gently share it
Speaker 2: with everyone, the complexities of it. And what I did
Speaker 2: is I have a few lines from the book that
Speaker 2: really stood out to me, and I'd love to discuss those.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, of course, let me let me get comfortable
Speaker 1: him and take my shoes off.
Speaker 2: Ye's comfortables you like.
Speaker 1: You want to do it the book.
Speaker 2: I always find that the words that someone chooses and
Speaker 2: the vocabulary they have and the language they used to
Speaker 2: define experiences. And of course I want everyone to know
Speaker 2: that we're only skimming the surface of what's in the
Speaker 2: book or all the details in the book, and I
Speaker 2: highly recommend you you turn to the book for more
Speaker 2: of the context. But I think this will give people
Speaker 2: a glimpse into the kind of places you go to
Speaker 2: and you allow yourself to go to. So one of
Speaker 2: the things that stood out to me in the book,
Speaker 2: and I'm reading here only to make sure I don't misquote,
Speaker 2: so you talk about how you suffered from panic attacks
Speaker 2: at age seven, and in your words, you say, I
Speaker 2: would force myself to try to have good thoughts. And
Speaker 2: I was just thinking, did you know what a panic
Speaker 2: attack was at seven? Were you aware? What did it
Speaker 2: feel like? And why did you try to say good thoughts?
Speaker 2: Like why was that dissolution and all those thoughts?
Speaker 1: No, I didn't know. I didn't have the language when
Speaker 1: I was seven that it was a panic attack. It
Speaker 1: was later in life, in my early twenties, when I
Speaker 1: started having panic attacks again that I recognized that this
Speaker 1: was something that's been with me for a long time,
Speaker 1: on and off through the years, and I realized I
Speaker 1: had been having them since I was that little kid,
Speaker 1: and it felt like dread pulsing through my body, Like
Speaker 1: I know, I described it as like this whirling, like
Speaker 1: a spinning, like a rhythm I couldn't control, like a
Speaker 1: rising heat, like a clenching in my throat, a fear
Speaker 1: that felt like it was small enough to be in
Speaker 1: every little cell, but big enough to drown in, you know.
Speaker 1: And I just like, as I say that to you,
Speaker 1: I have so much love for that little girl lying
Speaker 1: in that bed, without the language to describe it as
Speaker 1: I'm describing it to you, but still having to hold
Speaker 1: space for the experience of it, the good thoughts, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I sort of I think I describe it
Speaker 1: that way in that moment as good thoughts because I
Speaker 1: was seven and there was good and bad right. There
Speaker 1: wasn't the nuance of like this is an opportunity or that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It just was like like this feels bad, right, Like
Speaker 1: this feels really bad, and I want to feel good.
Speaker 1: And I didn't, you know, I didn't know Louise Hay
Speaker 1: at that time. I didn't I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: didn't know about affirmations, but I just would I knew
Speaker 1: the sound of music. I knew the that you could
Speaker 1: like think about your favorite things and maybe feel all right,
Speaker 1: And so I just tried to think about things that
Speaker 1: made me happy, things that brought me joy or a
Speaker 1: sense of peace, and I would try to kind of
Speaker 1: shut out the panic and make the volume of the
Speaker 1: good things louder in my head.
Speaker 2: And at seven, where were those negative or bad thoughts
Speaker 2: coming from? Like, where was that panic coming from? What
Speaker 2: was the source of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of it was, you know,
Speaker 1: I talk about hearing my parents arguing in the other room,
Speaker 1: but in general, there was this this sense of it's
Speaker 1: a big word, and I'm going to say it and
Speaker 1: then contextualize it. I think I felt unsafe. I was
Speaker 1: safe in a lot of ways, and I was very loved.
Speaker 1: We were you know, I was provided for materially. I
Speaker 1: was wanted, I was appreciated, I was encouraged. But I
Speaker 1: also knew, as I talk about in the memoir, that
Speaker 1: there were things, there was information that was being kept
Speaker 1: from me. I didn't know it consciously, but unconsciously I
Speaker 1: felt like like I wasn't being given the full truth,
Speaker 1: and that created in me this like a sense of
Speaker 1: distrust and of longing for wholeness, like something felt incomplete
Speaker 1: and unhold, it's not It's probably not the right way
Speaker 1: to say it, but so I think the panic was
Speaker 1: me trying to navigate the fear of like, what don't
Speaker 1: I know? I don't even know what I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just know I don't have everything I need to
Speaker 1: feel safe.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad you gave that context, because I think
Speaker 2: that today when we hear the word unsafe, we think
Speaker 2: it means physically right, and we think it means materially. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's so interesting that those things can be taken
Speaker 2: care of and you still feel an internal unease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, a disease like it was an emotion. I
Speaker 1: wasn't emotionally safe. I knew that that's that's that's what
Speaker 1: I knew somewhere deep down, and I didn't have a
Speaker 1: way to confirm it, and I didn't even have a
Speaker 1: way to ask about it. It just was this feeling,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know if I should trust the feeling, right,
Speaker 1: because everyone was saying it's all good, everything's fine. So
Speaker 1: I think that maybe a lot of the panic was
Speaker 1: that I was, from early on being asked to disconnect
Speaker 1: from my own sense of knowing. You know, I was
Speaker 1: being taught from the moment I got to this planet,
Speaker 1: from the moment that I was born, I was being
Speaker 1: taught that I had to act as if the lie
Speaker 1: was true, the lie of who my family was and
Speaker 1: how we came to be. So I didn't really I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know, but
Speaker 1: I knew I didn't know something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so interesting, right, I think that so
Speaker 2: many of us feel that way, that our feelings when
Speaker 2: we were younger were not validated or acknowledged, and we
Speaker 2: weren't trained to do that, if anything, like in yours,
Speaker 2: we were taught to reject or abandon, deny, and then
Speaker 2: they don't just go away because of that. They often
Speaker 2: come back in the future and we'll get to that,
Speaker 2: but they come back in so many different ways in
Speaker 2: our lives when you abandon your own truth. Yeah, at
Speaker 2: the beginning of your life, and it's did you ever
Speaker 2: feel that you were able to reconnect What helped you
Speaker 2: reconnect with that sense of knowing again in the future internally? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I feel like that's something that you can remember
Speaker 2: having knowing and then you can remember how you let
Speaker 2: it go. Most people I speak to feel like they
Speaker 2: never felt like they knew. And I don't think it's
Speaker 2: because they never knew. It's because they let it go
Speaker 2: of it so early that we forgot that we knew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, it does. I don't remember. I don't
Speaker 1: remember knowing and then not knowing, but I remember learning
Speaker 1: that it was more important to play along then to
Speaker 1: fight for what I thought I knew. And then it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, it's the script that matters. It's like
Speaker 1: this performance of this perfect family, like that's the priority,
Speaker 1: and their feelings are more important than mine. Whoever the
Speaker 1: day is. And then the day was like lots of
Speaker 1: different people throughout my life. But I think one of
Speaker 1: the first things, one of the first tools that helped
Speaker 1: to bring me back to myself was yoga. It was
Speaker 1: like the first, one of the first times that I
Speaker 1: remember being still in my body in Shivasna at the
Speaker 1: end of that first yoga class that I took in
Speaker 1: high school and weeping because I felt really like present
Speaker 1: in my body, like I wasn't trying to escape or
Speaker 1: deny or quiet or I was just like fully present
Speaker 1: in my body and it was terrifying because I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is okay. It was different
Speaker 1: from how I was taught to be, not like didactically taught,
Speaker 1: but it was different from how I learned to be
Speaker 1: to survive emotionally.
Speaker 2: How did that feeling transpire in other areas of your life,
Speaker 2: that desire of like I'm going to perform, I'm going
Speaker 2: to put up what people need me to do. Like,
Speaker 2: did you find that manifesting in other areas of your
Speaker 2: life or were you able to kind of go No,
Speaker 2: that was just with my family, And.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I got really I got really lucky
Speaker 1: because I found a career where I could perform, where
Speaker 1: I could like this superpower that I had to kind
Speaker 1: of shape shift and be whoever you needed me to be.
Speaker 1: I started knowing how to do that in an audition
Speaker 1: room and on a set and on a stage, and
Speaker 1: I realized there actually was this place in life where
Speaker 1: performing was the true goal and it was okay to
Speaker 1: want to be somebody other than myself and to want
Speaker 1: to step away from my truth to another person's truth.
Speaker 1: Like that actually led me to a really exciting, adventurous,
Speaker 1: abundant life. And then this weird thing happened where behind
Speaker 1: the mask of these characters, I actually started being able
Speaker 1: to express more of my truth. Right Like, in my
Speaker 1: life with my family at home, I couldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: angry or express fear or insecurity. But if I was
Speaker 1: playing a character, I could have all of those big,
Speaker 1: intense feelings and it wasn't threatening to anyone. It was
Speaker 1: actually rewarded. So my characters became like this safe space
Speaker 1: for me to both hide behind but also secretly reveal myself.
Speaker 2: It's incredible how like something so stressful and uncomfortable turns
Speaker 2: into a talent but also a healing Yes.
Speaker 1: Right, it's really I'm so grateful that that acting led
Speaker 1: me to be able to have more emotion vocabulary, more
Speaker 1: willingness to actually feel my feelings and express them. And
Speaker 1: I'm even grateful. I mean, it was how I stumbled
Speaker 1: upon acting is that, you know, my mother is a
Speaker 1: very stoic She's so elegant and like she's really somebody
Speaker 1: who is not very expressive of her emotions because she's
Speaker 1: she operates from here and is very dignified and stoic,
Speaker 1: and so you know, because God has an enormous sense
Speaker 1: of humor, she had this child, and I was just
Speaker 1: like a walking id, just like feelings all over the place.
Speaker 1: And God bless her because she's an educator. Rather than
Speaker 1: just say like, stop having feelings, she was like, you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to this children's theater company because I imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, she was thinking, I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do with all these feelings. You know as well as
Speaker 1: I know my mother. She was kind of like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with you, but they'll know
Speaker 1: what to do with you. And so she the amazing
Speaker 1: educator that she is, she led me to spaces where
Speaker 1: I could be expressive and energetic and emotional and she
Speaker 1: could applaud from over here and not have to wrangle. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah. And it's what I find so interesting when
Speaker 2: I was reading the book too, is just recently I
Speaker 2: saw that you mentioned how you have always been trying
Speaker 2: to get away from acting there, yes, and that these
Speaker 2: amazing opportunities keep coming your way. Explain that to us,
Speaker 2: because I think what I love about this is kind
Speaker 2: of what we're talking about since the beginning of this interview,
Speaker 2: which is this texture and this complexity, which what appears
Speaker 2: to be a paradox, Yeah, but actually that's the human
Speaker 2: experience where you're like, I had this pain, acting was
Speaker 2: healing me, but now acting something I've been trying to
Speaker 2: move away from, but it's okay that that. So walk
Speaker 2: me through the depths of that or the texture behind
Speaker 2: that of like, why is it something that, despite it
Speaker 2: being so healing and powerful and a safe space to
Speaker 2: feel all of this, does it not feel like a
Speaker 2: forever home.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm super interested to hear what you think about this,
Speaker 1: because some of this is the tension between the pure
Speaker 1: art and craft of the work, the creative craft of
Speaker 1: acting and storytelling and narrative. And I love that work.
Speaker 1: I always love that work, even when it's really really hard.
Speaker 1: I feel like, what a privilege, what a gift. It
Speaker 1: feels like a true calling. I don't always love the
Speaker 1: business stuff, you know. I don't always love the rejection
Speaker 1: and the competition and the how hard it is to
Speaker 1: get something off the ground I get something produced and
Speaker 1: get something greenlit, or like, I don't always love I
Speaker 1: love the making of it. I don't always love the
Speaker 1: vulnerability of when it hits the airwaves and like the
Speaker 1: criticism and the ratings and the reviews and so that
Speaker 1: it's like the when I want to leave is when
Speaker 1: it feels like the business parts of it, the kind
Speaker 1: of worldly material parts of it, become too expensive to
Speaker 1: my soul. It just feels like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to navigate all that stuff, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go find something else. It's like that great, you know,
Speaker 1: the the Winston Churchill Brene Brown quote about like being
Speaker 1: in the ring and you know what it is to
Speaker 1: be in the ring, and that's that beautiful vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, I don't want to be in the ring,
Speaker 1: like you know what, God like you can have the
Speaker 1: ring like I'm good. I think I want to be
Speaker 1: an observer and like, you know, be booing from the
Speaker 1: crowd for once. Like not really, I'm not a very
Speaker 1: generous viewer usually, but sometimes it's that It's like, sometimes
Speaker 1: the vulnerability on the business side feels like too much.
Speaker 1: Not the vulnerability on stage, not the vulnerability in front
Speaker 1: of the camera, but the the stuff outside of the
Speaker 1: creative craft. So that's when when that stuff feels like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's taking over and I'm spending more time thinking about
Speaker 1: how to win than I am about how to create.
Speaker 1: Then I feel like I'm gonna go do something else,
Speaker 1: something that feels purer, like teaching kids, or teaching yoga
Speaker 1: or you know something, all the other things I've tried
Speaker 1: to do. And then and then inevitably, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: read and right when like I remember, I had I mean,
Speaker 1: I really did not have money to burn. It was
Speaker 1: early in my career, and I was like, I'm done,
Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm done. I'm done. And I signed up
Speaker 1: for a yoga teacher training. I got certified to teach
Speaker 1: yoga when I was living in India, but this I
Speaker 1: didn't have a certification in the States, and so I
Speaker 1: signed up for this very fanciege of a yoga in
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, and so I was going to do
Speaker 1: their teacher training. I just made my last payment and
Speaker 1: then I read the script for Rey, and I was like, holy,
Speaker 1: I have to do this movie. So that's what That's
Speaker 1: what happens always is I get to the edge of
Speaker 1: like eh, and then something beautiful calls me in, something
Speaker 1: that feels like it's worth the work of the material
Speaker 1: off the bs, the or just like the adulting, like
Speaker 1: all that, you know, all that stuff, it's worth that
Speaker 1: to be able to go back to that play and
Speaker 1: that creativity and that that stuff where I feel like
Speaker 1: my soul gets to be of service in a narrative.
Speaker 2: I think you're speaking the language of every true artist
Speaker 2: and creative who feels that in a way that they
Speaker 2: may not even have tried to push as far as
Speaker 2: you have. Like you're someone who's achieved the peak of
Speaker 2: your creative endeavors, right, You've made incredible box office films
Speaker 2: like TV, like you've you've won in that sense in
Speaker 2: your arty sort of and I mean in the in
Speaker 2: the external material, like in the sense of like you're someone.
Speaker 1: Who's but you see what I mean. Like when I
Speaker 1: say sort of, it's because like there are awards I
Speaker 1: haven't won. There are awards I haven't been nominated for.
Speaker 1: There are like certain people who've made more money at
Speaker 1: the box office the whole different records, Like and that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of the part of what I do
Speaker 1: that I don't love. I remember, in acting to you're
Speaker 1: saying to me once, no matter what he does, Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise is never gonna be Tom Hanks. He's never gonna
Speaker 1: have like three years in a row back to back
Speaker 1: Oscar nominations. He's never gonna have that, like he can
Speaker 1: have born on the fourth of July, but he's not
Speaker 1: gonna be He's not gonna have Tom Hanks's career. And
Speaker 1: guess what, no matter what Tom Hanks does, he's never
Speaker 1: gonna have Tom Cruise's career. He's never gonna have back
Speaker 1: to back mission Impossibles and like hold all the box
Speaker 1: off records and thirty years later be able to make
Speaker 1: another Top Gun and have it be the nominator for
Speaker 1: a Best Picture. Like they have different careers, but neither
Speaker 1: is less valid, Like they're both winning. They've both won.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the challenge for me is like
Speaker 1: how to accept that this journey, my journey, is the journey.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to look like anybody else's, It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to measure up according to anybody else's standard. And
Speaker 1: I think for a long time because I wasn't comfortable
Speaker 1: with myself, because I didn't really know my story, and
Speaker 1: so I wasn't really living my story. I always like
Speaker 1: I was the co star in somebody else's story, whether
Speaker 1: it's at work or at home or whatever. That writing
Speaker 1: this memoir was a little bit about like I got
Speaker 1: that missing puzzle piece that helped me put myself at
Speaker 1: the center of my story, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: I want to do the work to write that. I
Speaker 1: want to do the work to know what it feels
Speaker 1: like to center myself so that I can make sure
Speaker 1: that in this lifetime, I'm living my story and not
Speaker 1: chasing somebody else's.
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Speaker 2: you use the code on purpose. Wow, you're speedinger. Everyone's
Speaker 2: soul right now. Everything you're saying, I'm like, it's and
Speaker 2: it shows right. I think when we feel like we
Speaker 2: can really understand someone we don't know, or someone we
Speaker 2: haven't spent a lot of time with, it means that
Speaker 2: they understand themselves, because you know, when you're just at.
Speaker 1: That like humanity, that like naked truth of just what
Speaker 1: it means to be human.
Speaker 2: Exactly Like I'm listening to you, going, Wow, I think
Speaker 2: everything you just said, Like, I think every creative person
Speaker 2: I know has expressed some part of that to me.
Speaker 2: I think there's parts of me that have grappled with that.
Speaker 2: If you if you don't mind, I'd love to offer
Speaker 2: you what you asked for earlier. And you were saying
Speaker 2: you have to hear my thoughts.
Speaker 1: Well, Yes, both as a coach, but also as somebody
Speaker 1: who because I feel like I'm here, I should get
Speaker 1: free coaching, but also as somebody who who is navigating
Speaker 1: the combination of the material world and the spiritual world
Speaker 1: and you know, living in both of those spaces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so from a from a coaching or even spiritual
Speaker 2: perspective too, because all my coaching is of that type.
Speaker 2: So the Sanskrit word for this is dharma, and dharma
Speaker 2: very loosely can be put to purpose. But really what
Speaker 2: dharma is is almost like an inherent calling that you
Speaker 2: can't separate from yourself. It is so in deep alignment
Speaker 2: and centered with who you are at the core that
Speaker 2: even if you try and push it away, it just
Speaker 2: keeps pulling you back. No matter what that is. And
Speaker 2: that isn't an activity like It isn't a title like
Speaker 2: I think today we think of like purpose or passion
Speaker 2: as a job or a like CEO.
Speaker 1: Is not a dharmae.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly CEO or actor or actress or podcaster or
Speaker 2: author is that's not your dharma. It's like, you're an
Speaker 2: artist who expresses yourself through many different ways. You've written
Speaker 2: an amazing memoir, You've done TV, you produce, you tell stories,
Speaker 2: you know, you have a you have two interview shows, podcasting,
Speaker 2: scripted like those are just mediums. And but what I'm
Speaker 2: getting to is that there's a part of you where
Speaker 2: performance and the expression of emotion through performance is so
Speaker 2: core to what helps you heal and live and breath
Speaker 2: in whatever way it is. It doesn't always have to
Speaker 2: be in a TV or a film. There's some part
Speaker 2: of you that loves to express and loves to feel
Speaker 2: in that way, and you can probably define it better
Speaker 2: than me. And what I've found is that we're always
Speaker 2: trying to escape that because usually in the same way
Speaker 2: as you're saying, because of the business aspects that make
Speaker 2: it seem dirtier, murkier, less pure, because it comes from
Speaker 2: such a pure place. It's not coming from the place
Speaker 2: of wanting to win, right, it's not coming from the
Speaker 2: place of wanting to be the best. It's coming from
Speaker 2: the place of like service service. Yeah, this just needs
Speaker 2: to get out. And that's something that I've found that
Speaker 2: it's really hard to shake that because it's almost like God,
Speaker 2: the universe wants you to use that in the service
Speaker 2: of others. And so I've rarely found so I've not
Speaker 2: found anyone I think that's been able to extract their
Speaker 2: durma from themselves because it is inextractable. Like it's it's
Speaker 2: it's you, and it's.
Speaker 1: What your spiritual identity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's your It's almost like what would be considered
Speaker 2: your spiritual offering in the material world. It's what connects
Speaker 2: you to that spiritual world in the material world because
Speaker 2: without it, and again, by the way, this is not it.
Speaker 2: I'm just calling it out. This is specific to carry
Speaker 2: and this is different for everyone. If you did give
Speaker 2: that up and you went off and tried all the
Speaker 2: other things, which you've obviously tried, so you already know this,
Speaker 2: I don't even need to tell you. You can try it.
Speaker 2: And it's not that that isn't fulfilling. It's just that
Speaker 2: there's this thing that just keeps pulling you back.
Speaker 1: The boyfriend you can't quear, boyfriend, you can't quear. That's
Speaker 1: my drama.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for me it might be some sort
Speaker 1: of there's something about the expression of emotional truth. It
Speaker 1: feels like my dharma is connected to holding space for
Speaker 1: emotional vulnerability or emotional truth. And I think in some
Speaker 1: ways that's why I grew up in a family where
Speaker 1: truth was kept from me, because it's like I developed
Speaker 1: like a heat seeking missile for like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: find the truth. I'm going to know what it looks like.
Speaker 1: If I can't express it here, I have to express
Speaker 1: it here. It was like it was kept from me
Speaker 1: so that I would learn to cultivate it and honor
Speaker 1: it and hold space for it. And I like I
Speaker 1: think about even when I'm working as a director, often
Speaker 1: my note to an actor in a scene is like,
Speaker 1: I just I don't believe you yet, right, Like I
Speaker 1: want to believe you more. And I think there's something
Speaker 1: about like I survived a childhood where I learned what
Speaker 1: truth doesn't look like, and so I'm really aware of
Speaker 1: what it does look like now, and I it's it's
Speaker 1: so important to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's no, that's so powerful. And it's it's almost
Speaker 2: like that that's the acceptance that you know, even I've
Speaker 2: had to make like I think for me it was
Speaker 2: on a very deep level, the business or the systematic
Speaker 2: approach to art, which you have to take if you
Speaker 2: want your work to scale or you want your work.
Speaker 2: Like you're saying the discipline, the discipline of it, or
Speaker 2: the business the business of it. As you're saying the
Speaker 2: parts that we don't enjoy, like there is actually what,
Speaker 2: at least from a very Eastern spiritual perspective, would be
Speaker 2: like that's the stuff that purifies you of the ego
Speaker 2: that comes from art.
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, of course, of course it's I mean it's
Speaker 1: funny because then when you say it, it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is what you learn in the ashram, right, Like
Speaker 1: this is what you learn in a yoga practice that like,
Speaker 1: you don't get to have the transcendent moment at the
Speaker 1: end of practice city and meditation until you do the
Speaker 1: twenty sun salutations, Like they get you there, they open
Speaker 1: you up, they they get you closer. It's that it
Speaker 1: is the discipline that makes room for the the goodness.
Speaker 1: If we just like woke up out of bed and
Speaker 1: were immediately transcendent without any discipline, we probably I would
Speaker 1: probably be a pretty horrible person to be around. I'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm amazing, everything comes so easily for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or the opposite, where we end up in complete
Speaker 2: like dullness and ruin, where we're like it doesn't work
Speaker 2: and I can't do anything and I and it's it's
Speaker 2: either all. And I've find that when you have to
Speaker 2: reflect on the competitive aspect and purify that desire to
Speaker 2: be competitive, it gets you closer to your truth when
Speaker 2: you have to sit in it and go I don't
Speaker 2: care if I'm not Tom Cruise. I'm happy being Tom Hanks.
Speaker 2: I don't care if I'm not Tom Hanks. I'm happy
Speaker 2: being Tom Cruise. That is the purification of getting you
Speaker 2: closer to your truth. Whereas if you never had to
Speaker 2: do that activity, you almost could live in ignorance, and
Speaker 2: ignorance is bliss. Well, if that makes sense. Again, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I agree with how it's all done or run.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that's how I think you're trying to operate
Speaker 2: as a as a warrior on a war field, as
Speaker 2: you know, like you're relishing the battle of it because
Speaker 2: you notice that the battle is actually forcing you to
Speaker 2: go more inward, because if you lived it outwardly, it's
Speaker 2: just too much. Yeah, if that makes any sense. It
Speaker 2: does anyway, So we got lost of that. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 2: I really appreciate where we're going with this conversation because
Speaker 2: I do think that that I think all of us
Speaker 2: are caught within that battle for the truth and our
Speaker 2: own lives and our own truth in different ways. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was interesting to me because I'm also picking out
Speaker 2: things that I think a lot of our community and
Speaker 2: audience can be. So there's one thing that said, being
Speaker 2: busy is one of the ways I create a sense
Speaker 2: of safety and control during times when I feel there
Speaker 2: is none. Whenever that I was like, wow, the amount
Speaker 2: of people that I.
Speaker 1: Know to every workahol account there.
Speaker 2: Litually and it's hard to even become aware of that
Speaker 2: because there's joy in that and the how have you
Speaker 2: allowed yourself to become less busy? Have you allowed yourself
Speaker 2: to become less busy or what has that awareness led to?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I do. I feel like it was this was
Speaker 1: the period that I wrote this book. You know what
Speaker 1: happened was about five years ago. My parents gave me
Speaker 1: some new information, Yeah, about kind of about me and
Speaker 1: our family and how I came to be, and it
Speaker 1: that new information kind of turned my world upside down.
Speaker 1: And it came at a really interesting time in my
Speaker 1: life because I was just ending seven seasons on this
Speaker 1: like crazy successful hit show playing an iconic character, and
Speaker 1: I was in many ways asking like who am I now?
Speaker 1: But I did have this fantasy that when that show ended,
Speaker 1: I would suddenly have a lot of free time because
Speaker 1: that show I was filming sixteen hours a day, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, nine ten months out of the year,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, within the life of that show,
Speaker 1: I got married and had two children, and now I
Speaker 1: had three children, and my husband came with one, and
Speaker 1: it was just like there was no downtime, and I thought,
Speaker 1: when the show ends, I'll have some downtime. And I remember,
Speaker 1: like a year after the show ending, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I might be the problem. Like I don't think the
Speaker 1: show is the problem, because I still have no downtime
Speaker 1: and I am not the number one on the call
Speaker 1: sheet of a hit primetime drama. But I was fine
Speaker 1: other ways to fill my time and still finding moments
Speaker 1: where I was feeling overwhelmed and overworked. And so I
Speaker 1: really started to think about how I if I was
Speaker 1: the problem, if I was the common denominator. If I
Speaker 1: was the issue, then how could I also maybe be
Speaker 1: the solution? And I think the truth is, I do
Speaker 1: love to be busy, but I'm trying to check the
Speaker 1: intention of what that busyness is about, so making sure
Speaker 1: that I'm not saying yes to things because i just
Speaker 1: want to be in a constant state of cortisol spikes
Speaker 1: and you know, not getting enough sleep and just feeling
Speaker 1: like I'm on a hamster wheel because then I don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with some other stuff. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: have the yeses come from purpose and passion and to
Speaker 1: have more nose to say no more often so that
Speaker 1: there's room to say yes for things that make me
Speaker 1: feel not busy, but driven and generous and like I'm contributing,
Speaker 1: you know, not just accomplishing, but really contributing, giving of myself.
Speaker 2: And I think that that feels like a tough, tough
Speaker 2: thing to do when you've been such a high performing
Speaker 2: person for a long long time and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you have to reevaluate what performance means yeah, and
Speaker 2: what high performance.
Speaker 1: Means yes, and even start to redefine what success means right,
Speaker 1: Like I think it's like we say that these corporations,
Speaker 1: like your success can't just be about the bottom line,
Speaker 1: Like are you also thinking about diversity and inclusion? Are
Speaker 1: you also thinking about the environment in your bottom you know,
Speaker 1: and your definition of success? And I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do that personally also, like think about success
Speaker 1: in the material world, but factor into that success. My
Speaker 1: life is a wife, my life is a mother, my
Speaker 1: life as a daughter, And I think that too was
Speaker 1: part of what made me want to write the book,
Speaker 1: was to kind of be able to have the narrative
Speaker 1: of my life really reflect on all of it. Because
Speaker 1: when I sold a book Idea a few rite when
Speaker 1: the show ended, I sold this book Idea that was like,
Speaker 1: here are the ten things I learned about life from
Speaker 1: this character. And my parents had just given me this
Speaker 1: information about myself. But I was like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to deal with that. I'm going to go sell this
Speaker 1: other book Idea. And that felt like a book I
Speaker 1: could write because it was not really about me. It
Speaker 1: was about the character and it was like very sticky,
Speaker 1: cute life lessons kind of a book. But every time
Speaker 1: I sat down to write that didn't feel honest. It
Speaker 1: was like I have this new information, I have this
Speaker 1: new curiosity, I have this new awareness, and if I'm
Speaker 1: going to write something about myself, then it has to
Speaker 1: be that. And I was like, well, I'm not writing that.
Speaker 1: So I tried to give the money back to the
Speaker 1: publisher and was like, I'm definitely not writing that. But
Speaker 1: eventually I did. Eventually I was like, what if I
Speaker 1: just try to write that? If I try to write
Speaker 1: what the story is not just in terms of the
Speaker 1: movies and the TV shows and the even not just
Speaker 1: the activism and the leadership, but really like what it
Speaker 1: might mean to feel like a successful human, like somebody
Speaker 1: who's living in truth.
Speaker 2: You know, do you want to share and I know
Speaker 2: the book goes into this in depth. Do you want
Speaker 2: to share because you've referred to it a few times? Yeah,
Speaker 2: the news that you received forty three Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: obviously you talk about it at length in a book,
Speaker 2: but I'd love to give that to people so that
Speaker 2: they have a context.
Speaker 1: Yes, And if you don't want the spoiler, then turn
Speaker 1: off the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the moment, it's a reveal.
Speaker 1: If you don't want it, yeah.
Speaker 2: And that's and I recommend that too, Like, yeah, don't
Speaker 2: if you don't want to go over the next, skip
Speaker 2: over the next minutes.
Speaker 1: As a fan, I know that, like you have those
Speaker 1: time cads at the bottom, So just skip to the next.
Speaker 2: We'll put that on the time came skip now if yes? Okay.
Speaker 1: So so my parents sat me down and told me
Speaker 1: that that my dad is not my biological father, that
Speaker 1: I was from a sperm donor. And this was shocking
Speaker 1: to me and also not right, like it was that
Speaker 1: thing of like I was shocked because it was not
Speaker 1: the story I had been told and not the story
Speaker 1: we had been living. But also it made so much
Speaker 1: sense to me because there had been this sense of
Speaker 1: like I felt like I didn't know myself, and I
Speaker 1: felt a disconnect with my parents, and I felt a
Speaker 1: disconnect with myself, and I never knew what to ascribe
Speaker 1: that to. I never knew why. And suddenly it was
Speaker 1: like the pieces all fell into place. It was actually
Speaker 1: like it was like there had been this beautiful puzzle
Speaker 1: on the wall of our home that had this one
Speaker 1: wrong piece in it, but it was close enough that
Speaker 1: everybody just pretended that the painting was perfect, and everybody
Speaker 1: was like, it's gorgeous, it's beautiful. If you got close enough,
Speaker 1: you could see that there was a missing puzzle piece.
Speaker 1: But since we all ignored, we all kind of forgot
Speaker 1: about it. And when my parents told me, it was
Speaker 1: like somebody finally took that wrong puzzle piece that had
Speaker 1: been like jammed into place and pulled it out, and
Speaker 1: we got to all be honest about like that piece
Speaker 1: was wrong. And we don't even know what the missing
Speaker 1: piece is because I don't know who the donor is.
Speaker 1: But at least now the honest the painting is honest,
Speaker 1: and I can maybe try to find that missing puzzle piece.
Speaker 1: But even just to know that the painting now is
Speaker 1: honest felt like a gift.
Speaker 2: And why did they wait till forty three? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was younger than forty three, even I was like,
Speaker 1: I was, yeah, like forty one.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean my dad, if he had his brothers would
Speaker 1: have never told me, which is in many ways like
Speaker 1: infuriating but also so beautiful because to my dad I
Speaker 1: am his and he is mine, and there's no point
Speaker 1: in acknowledging any other truth. I mean, even to today,
Speaker 1: he acknowledges it. He's had to come to terms with it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter. And in a really beautiful way,
Speaker 1: like I am his and he is mine. He is
Speaker 1: my dad, he will always be my dad. But if
Speaker 1: he had his choice, we would You and I would
Speaker 1: not be having this conversation, This book would not be
Speaker 1: written like this would be We would just be living
Speaker 1: in this other reality that which is you know I'm
Speaker 1: his and that we belong to each other, which is true.
Speaker 1: It's just there's more complexity, right, there's more nuance. It's
Speaker 1: not a binary. It happens to be that like, yes,
Speaker 1: we belong to each other, and there is this other
Speaker 1: figure that is fifty percent of my genetics. They waited
Speaker 1: to tell me. My mom said that she was going
Speaker 1: to write a note for me and leave it in
Speaker 1: a safe deposit box so that eventually, when they were gone,
Speaker 1: I would have this truth. I'm so glad that that's
Speaker 1: not what happened. I also wonder like when she was
Speaker 1: going to do that, because at the point that we
Speaker 1: were having this conversation, she had had cancer three times
Speaker 1: and was like knocking on eighty So I was like,
Speaker 1: exactly when was this note going to happen? Right? So
Speaker 1: think I think it was hard. I think they didn't
Speaker 1: intend to be duplicitous. Or they weren't trying to lie
Speaker 1: to me. I think they It happened at a time.
Speaker 1: I mean, my parents were way ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1: There were no you know, when I was conceived in
Speaker 1: seventy seven, seventy six, there were no sperm banks. This
Speaker 1: was not something that people did. It was like a
Speaker 1: highly experimental, very secretive thing. There was no frozen sperm.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it was all very very
Speaker 1: cutting edge, and they were innovators and ahead of their
Speaker 1: time and risk takers, and nobody knew that forty years
Speaker 1: later you'd be able to take a DNA test and
Speaker 1: know where you come from. It just was like, this
Speaker 1: is a secret we will take to our graves. There's
Speaker 1: no point in telling her. We need to keep our
Speaker 1: family unit together and we don't need to upset her,
Speaker 1: and we don't need to embarrass our family. And they
Speaker 1: eventually told me because I was going to do a show.
Speaker 1: Skip Gates has a show on PBS called Finding Your
Speaker 1: Roots where they research your family background and they do
Speaker 1: it a lot through recordkeeping and census reports, but they
Speaker 1: also do DNA tests, And so I told my parents
Speaker 1: I was going to do the show, and they were
Speaker 1: really excited, and then I handed them one of these
Speaker 1: commercial DNA kits and my dad started having panic attacks,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what's happening? And so eventually they
Speaker 1: had to tell me why they didn't want to do
Speaker 1: the show and what the truth of our family histor
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, how have you trained yourself to be able
Speaker 2: to I love what you said Earlier you were like,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have told me if it wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: for this, but you would have found it infuriating but
Speaker 2: also the most sweet and beautiful thing. And how have
Speaker 2: you allowed yourself to accept two things existing at the
Speaker 2: same time. Because there's a beautiful statement by f. Scott
Speaker 2: Fitzgerald where he says that the paraphrase version is that,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the greatest skills or talents of
Speaker 2: the human mind is the ability to hold two seemingly
Speaker 2: opposite ideas and allow them to coexist. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 2: such a I feel like that's the art that's missing
Speaker 2: in the world today, the ability to accept that something
Speaker 2: can be painful and beautiful, something can be true and
Speaker 2: untrue in certain ways. That and it feels like even
Speaker 2: though you were like looking for this truth and this
Speaker 2: puzzle piece, and you have every reason because you've known
Speaker 2: it for your whole like it's so deep, like you
Speaker 2: make it look so elegant, but inside your heart from
Speaker 2: what you struggle. It's such a struggle to be like
Speaker 2: what is this one?
Speaker 1: What is wrong with me? And what's wrong with my life?
Speaker 1: And what is the secret?
Speaker 2: And yeah, and then you find it, but then you
Speaker 2: still go. You have the grace to say, I understand,
Speaker 2: like he is he is me and I am his,
Speaker 2: like that beautiful statement that you just repeated twice there.
Speaker 2: I'm just what has allowed you? How have you developed
Speaker 2: that ability to let two truths coexist?
Speaker 1: I don't know where it comes. It comes throughout the book.
Speaker 1: I see it interesting. I don't know where it was born.
Speaker 1: I mean I do know. I think maybe one of
Speaker 1: the first places that I started to think about it
Speaker 1: consciously again weirdly, was in my yoga practice, right, because
Speaker 1: you learn in yoga practice that you must have this
Speaker 1: combination of being steady and strong but also flexible and yielding.
Speaker 1: That that's the very practice of yoga only works if
Speaker 1: you can tap into the surrender of each pose, combined
Speaker 1: with the commitment and strength for each pose. So That's
Speaker 1: one of the places where I think I started to
Speaker 1: learn what that feels like in my body and think
Speaker 1: about it. But you know, as I'm sitting here, even
Speaker 1: just my commitment to say and to help my dad say,
Speaker 1: it's okay for me to have two energies in my
Speaker 1: life that represent father, right like that this donor this stranger.
Speaker 1: I have no idea who this person is. There's a
Speaker 1: whole team of people on the search, but I don't
Speaker 1: know who this donor is. That that, but that person
Speaker 1: because of the amount of genetic material that they've poured
Speaker 1: into me and therefore all kind of coding, that person
Speaker 1: represents some of the father energy in my story and
Speaker 1: in my life. But my dad is my dad, right
Speaker 1: like he's also he represents the father energy in my life.
Speaker 1: He is the man who raised me and he has
Speaker 1: loved me like a father, and he is also father.
Speaker 1: So you know, even just like there's no way for
Speaker 1: me to live my life without embracing those truths. It
Speaker 1: just is the fact of my life. Maybe there's something
Speaker 1: about also like giving myself to these characters and like
Speaker 1: any one time having to be like one hundred percent
Speaker 1: that character and also one hundred percent me that dance
Speaker 1: between like losing myself and coming back to myself and
Speaker 1: having space to be carry but also Olivia or whoever
Speaker 1: that might be part of it too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I do I know that at times I've seen
Speaker 1: this as a weakness, that I that I'm not more
Speaker 1: decisive or more have more critical thinking skills. But I
Speaker 1: do think it's it is just a part of me
Speaker 1: that I hold on to multiple truths.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would say that my humble observation, just from
Speaker 2: our conversation and reading your work, is that your quest
Speaker 2: for the truth has actually ended in finding truths.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, right, right, because that's right right, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm finally able to tell my truth. But
Speaker 1: there's also this awareness as I sit across from my
Speaker 1: parents that like, this is not the book they would
Speaker 1: have written, and their book is no less true. It's
Speaker 1: just that's their truth and this is mine. Yeah. That's oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like that core of just being it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's something beautiful in seeing you find
Speaker 2: your truths and being like, oh, there's actually so many
Speaker 2: more and there's so many versions, and that almost is
Speaker 2: more comforting and kind of reassuring that the version you
Speaker 2: have is not untrue. As you were saying earlier. At
Speaker 2: the beginning, you were like, I was taught to abandon
Speaker 2: my truth. That's right because again someone had said this
Speaker 2: is the truth.
Speaker 1: It's right because the other truths were too threatening. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I talk in the book about how when my parents
Speaker 1: told me, you know, I had spent my whole life
Speaker 1: saying I love you to my dad, and it was true.
Speaker 1: I loved my dad before this revelation. But when I
Speaker 1: got this information, in that moment, I understood that this
Speaker 1: was an opportunity for a different kind of love between us,
Speaker 1: because he had only heard me say I love you
Speaker 1: on the condition of a lie up until that point.
Speaker 1: Up until that point, every time I said I love you,
Speaker 1: it was passing through this veil of pretending. And so
Speaker 1: there was a part of his unconscious that was made
Speaker 1: to believe because she thinks I am her biological father,
Speaker 1: she loves me. And once I had this truth, I
Speaker 1: knew I now have the opportunity to show my father
Speaker 1: what it feels like to actually be loved unconditionally. From
Speaker 1: this point on, every time I say I love you,
Speaker 1: it's despite this truth that you thought was too horrible
Speaker 1: to bear.
Speaker 2: That just that.
Speaker 1: It felt like such an opportunity for healing. You know,
Speaker 1: for us to be in the messy truth and still
Speaker 1: say I love you is so much better than to
Speaker 1: be in the pretending and to be loved, because when
Speaker 1: you're pretending and you're loved, then you're loved for your pretense.
Speaker 1: You're not loved for your humanity.
Speaker 2: And you can just imagine what that felt like to him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's had Wow that everyone's just going to replay that
Speaker 2: part again and again and again because no, that's the party,
Speaker 2: no spoilers in that part, just listen because that is
Speaker 2: such a that is such a beautiful point gerry, like
Speaker 2: that is that is so powerful.
Speaker 1: What we all deserve, It's like we it's what we
Speaker 1: all crave, I think is to be able to like
Speaker 1: be our true selves and for that version of us
Speaker 1: to be loved, not the version where we put on
Speaker 1: the fancy clothes or it's like me at my most naked,
Speaker 1: most honest, most vulnerable. If I'm still loved, then then
Speaker 1: that's real love. If I have to work or to
Speaker 1: deserve the love, then it's it's not based on me
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you said in the book before we got
Speaker 2: onto that I was going to read these parts where
Speaker 2: you talked about when I started talking about my family
Speaker 2: and therapy for the first time in college, my concerns
Speaker 2: and complaints were exclusively about my dad, and you talk
Speaker 2: about how different we were, how often we disconnected, and
Speaker 2: you said, like many eighteen year olds, I thought I
Speaker 2: knew everything and my dad do nothing, which is so true.
Speaker 2: And then you go on to say, even as a
Speaker 2: young child, I felt that I was never who my
Speaker 2: dad needed me to be. I knew he really wanted
Speaker 2: a son and that they weren't having any more children.
Speaker 2: I got the sense that I could soften the blow
Speaker 2: somehow by being a daughter, was prettier or smarter, or
Speaker 2: braver or more successful. But even that didn't work. What
Speaker 2: do you think that wasn't working? What's that part? Like?
Speaker 1: I think what I was picking up and interpreting as
Speaker 1: me not being enough was really the disconnect between us
Speaker 1: caused by lack of truth. There was always like a moat,
Speaker 1: an emotional moat, between who I was and who my
Speaker 1: parents were. Like I would watch my mother interact with
Speaker 1: girlfriends of mine friends, I would being home from school,
Speaker 1: and people would tell my mother everything. People were so
Speaker 1: close to my parents, and I always felt like there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of arm's length, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I thought that must be me. It
Speaker 1: must be that I'm not good enough or pretty enough,
Speaker 1: or successful enough, or thin enough or whatever it is
Speaker 1: accomplished enough. And so I thought, maybe if I'm better,
Speaker 1: if I do more, if I accomplish more, if I'm busier,
Speaker 1: then maybe I'll be able to cross the moat. But
Speaker 1: the moat had nothing to do with me. The moat
Speaker 1: was their own protection. Because you know, I realize now
Speaker 1: in hindsight, I would say, like so many people are
Speaker 1: like best friends with their mothers, They talk to their
Speaker 1: mothers every day, my mother could never afford to be
Speaker 1: best friends with me because there was a secret that
Speaker 1: she was never going to reveal to me. You can't
Speaker 1: be intimate best friends with somebody who your fundamental truth
Speaker 1: of who they are. You're keeping that from them. So
Speaker 1: I was interpreting this emotional distance as being my fault,
Speaker 1: as being me not being good enough, But really it
Speaker 1: had to do with them trying to manage the relationship
Speaker 1: so that they could protect me from something that they
Speaker 1: thought I wouldn't be able to handle or just that
Speaker 1: would kind of destroy my sense of self or our
Speaker 1: sense of family. So it was this loving act on
Speaker 1: their part of trying to keep me okay and keep
Speaker 1: our family okay. But it did cause this break and
Speaker 1: this schism between us and I just I thought I
Speaker 1: could fix it. I thought if I could be better,
Speaker 1: I could fix it. And it was in learning the
Speaker 1: truth of this revelation that I was able to say, like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm okay, I'm enough. It wasn't about me. And now
Speaker 1: now I talk to my parents every day, like now
Speaker 1: it's a different The greatest gift of these few years
Speaker 1: and even writing this book is that I am so
Speaker 1: much closer to my parents than I have ever been before,
Speaker 1: because now there's nothing to hide from each other, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to there's nothing we're trying to protect each other
Speaker 1: from anymore. There's no more performance, there's no more pretending,
Speaker 1: and so now the intimacy is so real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's almost like you want that for everyone,
Speaker 2: but you know how hard it is, it works.
Speaker 1: It was it was you know, we went into family
Speaker 1: therapy for a while. Yeah, all four of us, my parents,
Speaker 1: my husband and I we would we like unpacked a
Speaker 1: lot of this together, and to be on the other
Speaker 1: side of that, it's extraordinary, you know. I talk in
Speaker 1: the book about how during the pandemic my mom was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with cancer again and this time around, how I
Speaker 1: was able to be present for her and with her
Speaker 1: because there was no longer in arm's length, there was
Speaker 1: no longer this moat between us. It was the greatest
Speaker 1: gift to really be able to feel like I now
Speaker 1: in this moment when we're faced with mortality, like I
Speaker 1: really know her and she really knows me, and I
Speaker 1: know myself now. To bring myself to this relationship fully,
Speaker 1: it just it was the greatest gift.
Speaker 2: And it must feels now that if you are to
Speaker 2: continue playing roles and performances, that you know who you
Speaker 2: are already, so you couldn't lose yourself in a role.
Speaker 1: Or Yeah, I think they'll be. I'm excited I've had
Speaker 1: I've taken on different characters since getting this information, and
Speaker 1: it feels like I'm able to go deeper. It feels
Speaker 1: like I'm able to bring more of myself and my truth.
Speaker 1: I'm more connected to myself, and it's been it's allowed
Speaker 1: me to really have a deeper level of emotional truth.
Speaker 1: That's what I think about when I watch certain performances.
Speaker 1: You know, in the last five years, I think I'm
Speaker 1: able to bring more courage, more more personal knowing, more
Speaker 1: vulnerability because I'm not operating out of fear anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: not looking to these characters to fix me or to
Speaker 1: teach me about myself. I'm actually able to devote myself
Speaker 1: to them fully. And I've thought a lot about It's
Speaker 1: so funny because when you're interviewing, you'll see eventually, when
Speaker 1: you're interviewing for all these schools with your kids, they'll
Speaker 1: ask you like how the kid was born, or like
Speaker 1: the circumstances of their birth. Like to enter into like
Speaker 1: a preschool, You're like, what are you talking about? And
Speaker 1: why is that any of your business? They're here to
Speaker 1: learn their ABC's right. But there's so much imprinting that
Speaker 1: happens to us in utero, and I do think it's
Speaker 1: so powerful for us to go back and uncover the
Speaker 1: story of who we are and how we came to be.
Speaker 1: It's why you know street you grew up on. It's
Speaker 1: like that, like what is your once upon a time
Speaker 1: and I thought about it a lot in thinking about
Speaker 1: my story, because I think I've thought, like, how afraid
Speaker 1: my mother must have been here. This woman was like
Speaker 1: carrying a baby that she had no idea. She had
Speaker 1: no idea where the sperm came from. Back then, there
Speaker 1: was no fancy catalog to tell you what college they
Speaker 1: went to or what, like nothing. The two things they
Speaker 1: said to her doctor were like, we'd love him to
Speaker 1: be healthy, and we'd love him to be black, because
Speaker 1: if he was black, then they wouldn't have to tell people.
Speaker 1: It could remain a secret. But she must have been terrified,
Speaker 1: and she knew also, like as she was carrying me,
Speaker 1: she began carrying a secret that she was going to
Speaker 1: carry for four decades. And so I was like, my
Speaker 1: twin was shame, Like I was in utero with shame.
Speaker 1: We were growing together like in this pact of secrecy.
Speaker 1: And she literally never told a soul my parents, she's
Speaker 1: she has four sisters. She just told them this year,
Speaker 1: this spring. She never told her best friend. She never
Speaker 1: told anyone. They are literally telling people now because they're like, listen,
Speaker 1: this book is coming out, and I want you to
Speaker 1: hear this thing from me, so that fear and shame
Speaker 1: that was growing inside her. That was the soup that
Speaker 1: I was stewing in, you know that I was cooking in.
Speaker 1: And I think we get born with those with that
Speaker 1: identity and we get to navigate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, thank you for sharing that part too,
Speaker 2: because it makes sense with when you said you wish
Speaker 2: you were not an only child and your parents responded,
Speaker 2: you were long wished for a child. You are not
Speaker 2: easy to conceive, and like that idea of just it's
Speaker 2: that beauty if they wanted you so bad.
Speaker 1: Even when I joke about my dad's you know, his
Speaker 1: unwillingness to deal with the truth of how I came
Speaker 1: to be right, Like, it's so beautiful, not just because
Speaker 1: it's a testament of how much he loves me. But
Speaker 1: when my parents sat down across from that doctor, they said,
Speaker 1: you have two options. Looking at my dad's firm, you
Speaker 1: have two options. You can either adopt or you can
Speaker 1: try this new thing, artificial insummination. Right, And it was
Speaker 1: my dad's ego, It was their desire to keep a
Speaker 1: secret that made them che artificial insemination over adoption. So
Speaker 1: if my parents hadn't had that ego, if my dad
Speaker 1: hadn't been navigating his pride, I literally wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1: There'd be some lucky kid who would have been adopted
Speaker 1: by them and raised by this beautiful couple and all
Speaker 1: the stuff they were navigating. But it was actually their
Speaker 1: pride and secrecy that put me on this earth. So
Speaker 1: I have to be grateful for it. I have to
Speaker 1: be grateful for their stuff, their you know, the the
Speaker 1: emotional stuff that they're navigating, because it was my pathway
Speaker 1: to being on this planet.
Speaker 2: Well, I find that I said this to you when
Speaker 2: we met the other day, when we did the street
Speaker 2: you grew up on, which I really felt was such
Speaker 2: a gift. And if anyone who's listening or watching, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you wretch you already, but if you haven't, go
Speaker 2: and subscribed to Carrie's YouTube show, because I found it
Speaker 2: to be such a gift to go back there. You've
Speaker 2: written a memoir now, so you've come back. Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: never written one, but I find that of going back
Speaker 2: there like you reminded me of so many things that
Speaker 2: I completely forgot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so fun to watch you have these
Speaker 1: revelations about where you come from.
Speaker 2: So many things that you just your memory is such
Speaker 2: a fascinating thing in and of itself. But I said
Speaker 2: this to you that day when I saw you, and
Speaker 2: I'm repeating it now because I want my I said
Speaker 2: it offline to you, but I want my community to
Speaker 2: hear it. I found your take on your challenges so
Speaker 2: refreshing and unique because you'd be valid in just being upset,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing wrong with that, And if it was
Speaker 2: someone else who was I it's so valid. But then
Speaker 2: when you hear someone who's seeing it from multiple perspectives,
Speaker 2: And there was also this the most challenging part of
Speaker 2: this book to read was when you talked about the
Speaker 2: encounters you were having while you were sleeping, and even
Speaker 2: in this and I'll let you explain it, but even
Speaker 2: when I was reading through that, I was just like,
Speaker 2: how I always carry even explaining this, with so much
Speaker 2: compassion and so much grace, And I was like, you
Speaker 2: just have this capacity to hold pain and compassion at
Speaker 2: the same time. And I think that that is so rare,
Speaker 2: and I just want to acknowledge it and honor it.
Speaker 2: That's not a weakness at all. I think it's really powerful,
Speaker 2: like to be able to do that. And when I
Speaker 2: was reading that, I was just you were blowing my mind.
Speaker 2: I was just like, how is a human? I really
Speaker 2: find that? You know, you read about people who've gone
Speaker 2: through some of the most horrific things in the world
Speaker 2: and they live that way, and then yeah, I was
Speaker 2: in awe of reading that, honestly.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I think when I'm as I'm listening to,
Speaker 1: I think the danger for me has always been in
Speaker 1: not having the anger part right right that That's It's funny.
Speaker 1: It's like the compassion comes more easily, Weirdly. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's the people pleasing or the being an
Speaker 1: only child or whatever it is. The maybe it's being
Speaker 1: an artist, but the compassion part comes first. The journey
Speaker 1: for me has been allowing myself to have the anger,
Speaker 1: allowing myself to create healthy boundaries for myself, to allow
Speaker 1: for the pain and the grief at times, and then
Speaker 1: to still make room for the compassion. That's what I felt, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be able to like hold space for both. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it is selfish. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be a person who operates from toxicity. You know,
Speaker 1: when I'm carrying when I'm only operating from resentment, it's
Speaker 1: poisoned for me to hold space for loving myself and
Speaker 1: loving other people in all of our imperfection is for
Speaker 1: me what feels doable. It actually helps me have more
Speaker 1: grace for myself when I'm able to have grace for
Speaker 1: other people. And I talk about that pemicial idea of
Speaker 1: like the person that causes you the most pain, that's
Speaker 1: the person that sat with you in heaven before you
Speaker 1: came to earth and said, like, I love you so much,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the one that hurts you, that
Speaker 1: forces you to grow. I love you so much, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be your enemy that teaches you what love
Speaker 1: looks like. And I think, I think we are really
Speaker 1: really all doing the best we can. And when I'm
Speaker 1: not able to have compassion, my life is like this hose, right,
Speaker 1: and the emotions are coming through the hose. If I
Speaker 1: choke the hose from compassion for somebody else, I choke
Speaker 1: it from myself too, And I just I want to
Speaker 1: let it run free. I want to let the goodness
Speaker 1: go through so that I'm able to give it to
Speaker 1: myself and others because we're all really just doing the
Speaker 1: best we can. And that looks like a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways for a lot of different people, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that in my compassion and forgivesness that I
Speaker 1: have to engage with everybody all the time, right, Like
Speaker 1: having healthy boundaries is also important, but I want to
Speaker 1: I always want to leave myself open to grace because
Speaker 1: I need it for me too.
Speaker 2: I love that idea of how when we're choking a
Speaker 2: life or someone else with compassion, you're actually blocking it
Speaker 2: from yourself. That's and that's what I meant. It was
Speaker 2: not a naive compassion I was reading of. It wasn't
Speaker 2: a It didn't come across as a people pleasing or
Speaker 2: oh I'm just protecting and you know, it didn't. It
Speaker 2: didn't feel like that. It just really felt like a
Speaker 2: realized version of that, and that's even harder.
Speaker 1: I think some of that, too, honestly comes from the acting,
Speaker 1: because you're taught early on that you to play a character.
Speaker 1: You can't judge your character, like when you're playing a
Speaker 1: bad guy, you can't think of it as a bad guy.
Speaker 1: It's some of my favorite stories and my favorite narratives
Speaker 1: are these like origin stories for the villains, you know,
Speaker 1: like Kruella and the Joker, like these these. I love
Speaker 1: that because I feel like it's really true that hurt people,
Speaker 1: hurt people, and villains come from somewhere, And so as
Speaker 1: an actor, you learn that when you're playing a character
Speaker 1: who does something awful, you better figure out why. You
Speaker 1: better figure out what it is that caused this person
Speaker 1: to make those choices, because it's not going to be
Speaker 1: real if you don't do that, you're just going to
Speaker 1: be like some arch stereotype of a bad guy. If
Speaker 1: you want to be a human being who's doing something awful,
Speaker 1: figure out the why, what's at stake, What is that
Speaker 1: person afraid of, what is that person needing, what is
Speaker 1: that person longing for? How was that person abused? And
Speaker 1: so I've I've had to learn compassion even just for
Speaker 1: my characters. Or maybe I'm drawn to playing complicated characters
Speaker 1: because I really love to cultivate compassion. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely a part of kind of the culture
Speaker 1: of how I approach my life and my work.
Speaker 2: It sounds that you're you're such a seeker of the
Speaker 2: truth in spiritually in your life and you work what
Speaker 2: is it that you're seeking now at this point in
Speaker 2: your life, Like, what is it that you're trying to learn?
Speaker 2: Or be curious about.
Speaker 1: I think this next little chapter, which is like beginning
Speaker 1: right now, I'm learning to be in my truth publicly
Speaker 1: and to see what that feels like and what impact
Speaker 1: it has on me and my family. Because it's so
Speaker 1: new for me. I've been so private, as you know,
Speaker 1: a person in the public eye. I've really not talked
Speaker 1: a lot about myself. So I'm really trying to be
Speaker 1: curious about what this experience feels like and how it
Speaker 1: changes me. I'm curious about who my donor is, so
Speaker 1: that's it feels like another part of the quest. But
Speaker 1: I'm also aware that that lack of information also feels
Speaker 1: like information, like the fact that they universe hasn't given
Speaker 1: me this answer of like this is who he is?
Speaker 1: This is It feels like an invitation to move into
Speaker 1: deeper relationship with the family I come from, my family
Speaker 1: of origin, right like that I have this new kind
Speaker 1: of truth with my parents, a different kind of truth
Speaker 1: with my kids, like telling my kids about you know,
Speaker 1: my parents and how I came to be all of that,
Speaker 1: but also into a deeper relationship with like like a
Speaker 1: spirit father, you know, like father time, like the archetype
Speaker 1: of father, like a heavenly Father like to lean into
Speaker 1: my connection to a higher power as bringing me those
Speaker 1: fatherly things, that sense of belonging and safety and being
Speaker 1: cared for that I'm I'm interested in this opportunity to
Speaker 1: cultivate that in my spirit world because I don't have
Speaker 1: it in the material world. I have it, but I
Speaker 1: don't have it fully. I have these you know. I
Speaker 1: have my Dad who was incredible and wonderful, and I
Speaker 1: have this mystery Donor. So I have father energy, but
Speaker 1: there's a deeper security that I can seek, I think
Speaker 1: in my spiritual practice.
Speaker 2: So beautiful, What was your intention in your career to
Speaker 2: be Was it intentional to be private? And what are
Speaker 2: you hoping that the public aspect that you said you
Speaker 2: were seeking to figure out? How it's what was the
Speaker 2: intention behind going in that direction.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it feels accidental. I mean, really, I've
Speaker 1: always I decided at a certain point in my career
Speaker 1: I had been in a very public relationship. It was
Speaker 1: very public engagement, and when that ended, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to give this much information
Speaker 1: to the press ever again. And my husband and I
Speaker 1: were of the same feeling when we met. We were
Speaker 1: very private the whole time we were dating. When we
Speaker 1: got married, people were like, what, Like we didn't even
Speaker 1: know they knew each other, like very And this was
Speaker 1: at the height of both of our careers. He was
Speaker 1: like on the cover of Sports Illustrated and I was
Speaker 1: on this hit show, and we wound up somehow having
Speaker 1: this very secret, private courting and marriage. It was so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I remember when I called my parents to tell them
Speaker 1: I was pregnant. They were like, so you'll tell people
Speaker 1: like when the kids in college, like they were. I
Speaker 1: was like, probably so. It just it has felt like
Speaker 1: a way to protect the people that matter most to me.
Speaker 1: But my parents have always been a part of my
Speaker 1: public identity because you know, I don't I didn't need
Speaker 1: to protect my relationship with my parents, and they're not children,
Speaker 1: you know. I keep my kids off social media because
Speaker 1: I feel like they should make decisions about how they
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of ways to do it.
Speaker 1: There's no right or wrong, but for us, I feel
Speaker 1: like my kids should be of an age where they
Speaker 1: know how they want to enter that social media space.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make those decisions for them, but
Speaker 1: my parents are old enough to make those decisions. So
Speaker 1: I kind of started posting more with my parents because
Speaker 1: I was like, I got to post something, right, So
Speaker 1: I would post my dog and post my parents, and
Speaker 1: I was doing these dad jokes with my dad, and
Speaker 1: my dad became a bit of a celebrity on my Instagram.
Speaker 1: And so then when I got this information, I was
Speaker 1: suddenly like, oh, I am complicit now in a lie
Speaker 1: because I'm out here perpetuating this truth that's not my
Speaker 1: whole truth. And so suddenly I was like, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to keep a secret the way my parents had
Speaker 1: kept a secret, because I don't feel like there's anything
Speaker 1: shameful about this. I don't feel like there's any reason
Speaker 1: to not talk about it. So part of the telling
Speaker 1: of the story was like, this is a way for
Speaker 1: me to be corrective and just not feel like I'm
Speaker 1: perpetuating a lie that I didn't even know I was
Speaker 1: lying when I was doing it. But now I want
Speaker 1: to just be transparent, so we'll see. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's very new for me to be this open, but
Speaker 1: I guess I also just there's a saying that we're
Speaker 1: as sick as our secrets, and I want to offer
Speaker 1: healing to my parents and to our relationship by not
Speaker 1: having it be in the dark, by speaking the truth
Speaker 1: of our journey and of my journey in particular. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's been really wonderful about as I've
Speaker 1: shared the book with people is that people immediately tell
Speaker 1: me their family secrets, like immediately. It's so funny, and
Speaker 1: so I've realized, like all families have them, and people
Speaker 1: feel less alone when they read the book because this
Speaker 1: person who has been so private and I really have
Speaker 1: kind of maintained a certain level of Hollywood, like this
Speaker 1: is who I am, and I'll let you in only
Speaker 1: this much, and to let people in more, to allow
Speaker 1: that level of vulnerability helps me feel less alone. But
Speaker 1: I think also is helping readers feel less alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that for sure. And I love that
Speaker 2: that's what's happening as a response to the book, because
Speaker 2: how beautiful it would it be if every friend who
Speaker 2: picks up this book and shares it with their friend
Speaker 2: is now able to open up about something that they've
Speaker 2: been holding on.
Speaker 1: To let go of shame and to let go of secrets.
Speaker 1: And that's what I want for people to And also
Speaker 1: I think it's important to see to see where we
Speaker 1: are as a family, right to know that we're closer
Speaker 1: than ever, that this revelation actually wasn't the fracturing of
Speaker 1: my family, that it actually was the birth of our
Speaker 1: true intimacy and closeness with each other. And for me,
Speaker 1: like a real beginning of a sense of like I
Speaker 1: don't have to hide. I can now really do and
Speaker 1: be anything.
Speaker 2: So empowering to hear that, Yeah, it's very.
Speaker 1: Liberating, very liberating, liberating. Yeah, I think that's part of
Speaker 1: it too, is like if people find out that this
Speaker 1: is the real deal of how I came to be
Speaker 1: in the story of my family, I wanted to own
Speaker 1: the narrative. I didn't want anybody else to be able
Speaker 1: to tell my story. I wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: tell my own story, to claim it and to have it,
Speaker 1: to know that it was mine, that it is mine.
Speaker 1: I'm still living it. This is definitely like Act one,
Speaker 1: there's more to do and B, but it's mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's this beautiful line that you say you're talking
Speaker 2: to a therapist about it, and then you explain it,
Speaker 2: and it says, when you teach a person to believe
Speaker 2: that their internal truth is a lie, you take from
Speaker 2: them the very thing that is most important to each
Speaker 2: of us, our ability to know and trust ourselves. And
Speaker 2: I can only imagine how much you trust yourself now
Speaker 2: so much more.
Speaker 1: It's true that I guess that's why I keep saying
Speaker 1: like I'm so curious about who I'll be on the
Speaker 1: other side of this chapter, like once this is out there,
Speaker 1: because I do feel like I trust myself more now,
Speaker 1: I understand myself more, I try myself. I feel stronger,
Speaker 1: I feel liberated. I feel like I have more capacity
Speaker 1: for compassion, more capacity to love myself, more understanding of myself,
Speaker 1: more capacity to understand and love my parents, and therefore
Speaker 1: more capacity to understand and love friends and other family
Speaker 1: members and my kids. If we are as sick as
Speaker 1: our secrets, then I am getting healthier and healthier every day,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm grateful for that because I want
Speaker 1: to offer that to my kids and to myself and
Speaker 1: to my parents. We deserve that, you know. That's what
Speaker 1: this community is about. It's about health and happiness. And
Speaker 1: that's like to be able to know that truth can
Speaker 1: lead to that, because sometimes the truth seems so scary.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's not that my parents were being mean. They were afraid,
Speaker 1: but that you can walk through that fear toward a
Speaker 1: deeper healing in truth is really what I want people
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 2: Can I ask a practical question, basically what you just said,
Speaker 2: how did you talk about this to your kids? Because
Speaker 2: I can imagine that that's scary because it's a lot
Speaker 2: for them. Yeah, they're still young.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it's a lot. It's a lot
Speaker 1: less scary for them because my kids have grown up
Speaker 1: in a world where half of their friends are born
Speaker 1: from surrogate moms or donor eggs or donor sperm or
Speaker 1: like they have friends with two dads, friends with two moms,
Speaker 1: Like they're not up against some of the like constricting
Speaker 1: conservative ideas of who families are and how they come
Speaker 1: to be that my parents were battling forty years ago,
Speaker 1: forty plus years ago. So it's a different conversation with
Speaker 1: my kids. It's kind of much more normal. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm just like ahead of the curve. But it's also
Speaker 1: very different. Like the conversation we had with our seventeen
Speaker 1: year old was very different than the conversation with my
Speaker 1: six year old, right, like super different. And that's part
Speaker 1: of it is I and in general, and when it
Speaker 1: comes to this kind of like advanced information, we try
Speaker 1: to be led by their questions, offer them a little
Speaker 1: bit of information, and then ask them what questions they have,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to overwhelm them with information, but
Speaker 1: I always want them to know that they can ask
Speaker 1: me anything, anything, anything, anything, There's no bad answers, no
Speaker 1: wrong answers, nothing you can't ask, and that the door's
Speaker 1: always open, so you know, like my seventeen year old
Speaker 1: had more questions, my six year old had zero questions.
Speaker 1: My nine year old had a couple of questions and
Speaker 1: then was onto the next thing. But they for them,
Speaker 1: it's not a huge deal. And also it's not a
Speaker 1: huge deal because fundamentally, my dad is my dad. Like
Speaker 1: that's the big thing is that nothing has changed. There
Speaker 1: there's more information and I'm going to learn more about
Speaker 1: who I am, and therefore they're going to learn more
Speaker 1: about who they are. But the bottom line is my
Speaker 1: dad is my dad and that's not changing, So they
Speaker 1: have that security.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's beautiful, Kerrie. We end every on
Speaker 2: Purpose episode with a final five. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 2: ask you before we do that, is there anything I
Speaker 2: haven't asked you about that's on your heart, that's on
Speaker 2: your mind, that you really want to share, that you
Speaker 2: want to dive into, that you want to talk about
Speaker 2: that we haven't covered today for whatever reason, And so
Speaker 2: I just want to give you the floor and ask
Speaker 2: you if there's anything that you've really wanted to share
Speaker 2: that doesn't have to.
Speaker 1: Be Was it surprising to you how much time I
Speaker 1: spent in India?
Speaker 2: Yes, we should talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, I.
Speaker 2: Had no idea, uh huh. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: You've definitely been private because I feel like India is
Speaker 2: such a big part of my work and my heart
Speaker 2: and my spiritual home that I love when people have
Speaker 2: spent time in India.
Speaker 1: It's such a special place. Yeah, it lives so deeply
Speaker 1: in me. I really want to go back, and I
Speaker 1: want to bring my family, and even my husband is like,
Speaker 1: I have to go because it's so much a part
Speaker 1: of you. I do feel like, you know, when I
Speaker 1: talk about the street I grew up on, it's Pugsley
Speaker 1: Avenue in the Bronx. But I also feel like Carola
Speaker 1: raised me. You know, it was the first place I
Speaker 1: lived when I left the cocoon of college, right when
Speaker 1: I was really into like college is over, You're like
Speaker 1: for real and adult. Now you're on your own. And
Speaker 1: I walked into that in India, which is like the
Speaker 1: most magical of places. So I'm really really grateful for
Speaker 1: that place and I hope that I can spend more
Speaker 1: time there.
Speaker 2: How many times have you been back only that the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would love to go back. Do you
Speaker 1: go back often?
Speaker 2: I go back every year? You do?
Speaker 1: And where are you?
Speaker 2: So I'll go to the ushroom that I spent time in,
Speaker 2: which is in Mumbai, and then two hours outside of Mumbai.
Speaker 1: How long do you stay there?
Speaker 2: I'll be there for It varies, like this time I'm
Speaker 2: going for I'm going to another pilgrimage this year in
Speaker 2: West India and that's for around a week to ten days.
Speaker 2: And then in January, I'm going back to the ushroom
Speaker 2: that I was in for like two weeks. Wow, And
Speaker 2: so it varies. Sometimes I go back for three weeks,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's been a month.
Speaker 1: And do you just like set aside that time a
Speaker 1: year ahead on your calendar?
Speaker 2: I try to, Yeah, I try to make it a
Speaker 2: time that's always in and that it's a time to
Speaker 2: completely disconnect. So I won't be on my phone. We
Speaker 2: prep content in advance so that I don't have to
Speaker 2: think about the podcast or social media. I just want
Speaker 2: to be fully disconnected.
Speaker 1: With your wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she comes with me. Yeah, and it's really fun.
Speaker 2: We love doing it together. That's a really beautiful way
Speaker 2: of just both of us getting a reset, and if anything,
Speaker 2: she makes us do it even more than I do
Speaker 2: now where she's like, you know, she loves it and
Speaker 2: it's such a We sometimes take our family, We take
Speaker 2: our parents. Yeah, it's really beautiful for them as well.
Speaker 2: We just feel like doing more spiritual things together as
Speaker 2: a family is just so deeply bonding in a different ways,
Speaker 2: so important for our connection. Yeah, we find that taking
Speaker 2: her parents and mine is a big part of it.
Speaker 1: Is it hard are you to transition in and out
Speaker 1: of Like when you get there, do you miss the
Speaker 1: secular life? And when when you're leaving, are you like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm done? Are you like, oh I wish I could
Speaker 1: stay longer.
Speaker 2: I think one of the greatest, greatest, greatest skills that
Speaker 2: Monk training gave to me was the ability to just
Speaker 2: be where I am and be okay with it and
Speaker 2: then move when it's done. And so I find that
Speaker 2: as long as I know why I am where I am,
Speaker 2: and as long as I know it's intentional, then I
Speaker 2: feel very grateful that I can wake up and just
Speaker 2: feel and where I'm meant to be. And I think
Speaker 2: that was all because of the way we were trained
Speaker 2: where you weren't nowhere was more home than anywhere else.
Speaker 2: And that's like a really interesting training because most of
Speaker 2: the time were trained to be like, no where your
Speaker 2: home is, no where your roots are. But this was
Speaker 2: almost like, well, if your roots were here, then you
Speaker 2: were always at home. That if you were aligned here,
Speaker 2: then you were always centered and ground You didn't you
Speaker 2: didn't need an external thing. Now that doesn't mean today
Speaker 2: that I don't like having I love my home here
Speaker 2: and I love feeling grounded here. And yes, do I
Speaker 2: feel more happy when I'm here than in a hotel room. Sure,
Speaker 2: But I don't feel I wake up without purpose in
Speaker 2: a hotel room if I'm there for a reason or
Speaker 2: when I was touring this year, or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: And so I think I look at purpose as my home,
Speaker 2: or at least at least as a mindset and an approach.
Speaker 2: So I feel like I can kind of switch back
Speaker 2: on and off.
Speaker 1: I've never done a book tour before. Do you have
Speaker 1: any advice for me?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited watching your book jog. I was trying
Speaker 2: to join you. My schedule is nuts, and I was
Speaker 2: it looks amazing. You've got so many amazing guests or
Speaker 2: any yore like. I can't wait to hear the conversations
Speaker 2: that come out of it and the things that other
Speaker 2: people share. You should ask every person to share a secret.
Speaker 1: Family secret, because that'd be amazing.
Speaker 2: You can't imagine the healing. But my my only advice,
Speaker 2: which I mean you've done, You've been on set for
Speaker 2: months and you've tried. I mean you don't need my advice,
Speaker 2: but for whatever it's worth, I there were two things
Speaker 2: the first and one's external. One's intern. Okay, the external
Speaker 2: is my health was my number one priority because it's
Speaker 2: so easy to for sick when you're traveling.
Speaker 1: Down Practically what did that mean?
Speaker 2: And practically that meant having a routine, even though it
Speaker 2: wasn't my routine.
Speaker 1: Here tour routine.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I slept at two am because I'd get
Speaker 2: off stage at like ten thirty. I'd do a meet
Speaker 2: and gree I'd be amped. I'd eat at midnight and
Speaker 2: then i'd sleep at two am. I'd wake up at
Speaker 2: nine am, so I'd get seven hours of sleep. I
Speaker 2: didn't go on a walk around the city that I
Speaker 2: was in with my te yeah, with my tour manager
Speaker 2: or with my team, whoever's with me. Would just go
Speaker 2: on a long walk, get like ten to twenty thousand
Speaker 2: steps sometimes, like just really get active, yeah, and be
Speaker 2: in the place, because we weren't really in a place
Speaker 2: for longer than a night. So I was like, not
Speaker 2: that I wanted to see the city, but I was like,
Speaker 2: I want to be outdoors. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: in a gym or you know, I don't want to
Speaker 2: get lost in that sit That was really great. And
Speaker 2: then I would eat breakfast at nine and then lunch
Speaker 2: at twelve, and then I wouldn't eat again and I
Speaker 2: would just I was allowing myself to just be on
Speaker 2: stage at night, and in the sense of like I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't need to achieve more because I
Speaker 2: was starting off like being on stage. We'd start a
Speaker 2: meditation at three at three pm, and then I wouldn't
Speaker 2: get off stage until ten thirty and finished till midnight.
Speaker 2: So it was just like my nine hour work day
Speaker 2: started at three pm, and so allowing myself in the morning,
Speaker 2: I don't need to rush to meetings, I don't need
Speaker 2: to be on a million phone calls. I just need
Speaker 2: to focus on being present because then I can give
Speaker 2: people the best experience and honor that experience. So it
Speaker 2: was a very like disciplined approach and really to take
Speaker 2: it all in, like, I'm sure there's going to be tears.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's going to be laughs. I'm sure people
Speaker 2: are going to want to hug you after this and
Speaker 2: share this story. And it's like I look back and
Speaker 2: I think of like when, and it's what you were
Speaker 2: saying that as your life becomes more public, there's, as
Speaker 2: you know better than anyone, there's there's scrutiny, there's criticism,
Speaker 2: there's whatever. I found that the love I got from
Speaker 2: my community when I was traveling was enough to keep
Speaker 2: me afloat for all the times and all well, it
Speaker 2: feels the well of all the other stuff that comes
Speaker 2: and goes. You get to see people's eyes, and you
Speaker 2: get to see someone look into your eyes and say
Speaker 2: this book chang change your life whatever, and people are
Speaker 2: going to say that to you, like people are gonna
Speaker 2: have their stories of what you've discovered, and just getting
Speaker 2: to hear that from people and see people say it.
Speaker 2: People have been fans of yours for so long and
Speaker 2: you've probably never heard them say in this intimate way.
Speaker 2: People have loved your characters, not you. Yeah, And so
Speaker 2: just taking it all in and allowing yourself to be
Speaker 2: present with it. So the external thing is the discipline
Speaker 2: of your health, and the internal thing is allowing yourself.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we're so aware of like ego and
Speaker 2: worrying about whatever it may be and being modest. And
Speaker 2: I was just like, you know what, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to soak up all the love, just taking all the love,
Speaker 2: Like whenever I allow myself to just really receive the love.
Speaker 2: And I need it too. I need to be nurtured
Speaker 2: by love. Yeah, why am I deflecting it or whatever?
Speaker 2: Just just take the love.
Speaker 1: Like it's so funny when you say that, because when
Speaker 1: I was reading your book, which is just like a
Speaker 1: full on study of love in all of its forms,
Speaker 1: I felt like in so many ways it was like
Speaker 1: my memoir is like your book in the wild, Like
Speaker 1: it's so many concepts that you talk about in terms
Speaker 1: of forgiveness or partnership or vulnerability, Like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: what I'm expressing of how I was grappling with that,
Speaker 1: Like if only I had had your book when I
Speaker 1: was like twelve to help me walk through life. But
Speaker 1: it's really fun to see how usable your book is,
Speaker 1: so like it it's so spot on and giving people
Speaker 1: what we need in life.
Speaker 2: That's so reassuring. Thank you. I mean that I could
Speaker 2: only dream of having it connect with a real life
Speaker 2: story as much as that, because yeah, thank you, that
Speaker 2: that means the word to me. Thank you. I really
Speaker 2: received that. That's so special. Yeah, I you know, just
Speaker 2: I mean I think that's that's kind of like the
Speaker 2: perfect match in the world where we need where it's
Speaker 2: like the we need the human story of what it
Speaker 2: really looks like because it's messy and it's uncomfortable, and
Speaker 2: then hopefully we can all extrapolate lessons from you.
Speaker 1: And get a toolbox. It's like like, if you get
Speaker 1: triggered reading this book, get Jay's book to help you
Speaker 1: grow and know.
Speaker 2: And I would say the other way around. I feel
Speaker 2: like people need to see the messiness of what it
Speaker 2: looks like. And I don't shy away from that, but
Speaker 2: I think when you read about it and you see like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is what the uncomfortable conversation looks like, It's what
Speaker 2: the revelation looks like, this is what the work looks
Speaker 2: like like. I think we need both sides because sometimes
Speaker 2: we have a romantic view of what growth looks like
Speaker 2: and what having the revelation conversation with your family looks like,
Speaker 2: and we know that that's not true, right right, And
Speaker 2: I would love to I love how much time you
Speaker 2: spent in India, for sure, I was. I was definitely
Speaker 2: a surprised What would you say? What would you say then?
Speaker 2: In that regard was like, obviously you talked about the
Speaker 2: gift of your yoga training, you talked about the gift
Speaker 2: of You've referred to it many many times. What was
Speaker 2: what was the what surprised you about India?
Speaker 1: I think the thing that was most surprising and impactful
Speaker 1: for me about India was how drenched in God everything is.
Speaker 1: You know, Like I grew up in communities where there's
Speaker 1: like a liquor store on every corner, but in India
Speaker 1: there's a an altar on every corner. There's just you know,
Speaker 1: when you walk into someone's house, there's an altar, there's
Speaker 1: a poosia room, there's a there's like you can't escape
Speaker 1: God if you wanted. The very way you say hello
Speaker 1: is like an acknowledgment of the God in each other.
Speaker 1: So that was really powerful for me in a time
Speaker 1: when I was really seeking God in my healing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I found it impossible to escape a sense
Speaker 1: of spirituality in India. And it's not an easy place, right,
Speaker 1: Like people are not It's not like everywhere you turn,
Speaker 1: everybody's comfortable and things are easy. So it is this
Speaker 1: combination of like life is hard, life is vibrant and chaotic,
Speaker 1: and like the everything's so pungent, right like the sense
Speaker 1: and the colors and the it's it's so filled with life,
Speaker 1: like real material life, and yet every single inch of
Speaker 1: that is also connected to God. And that I feel
Speaker 1: like is something that I try to live in my life,
Speaker 1: like to live life fully like out loud and big
Speaker 1: and in truth, and to go after whatever it is
Speaker 1: that the Dharma is leading you toward. But to not
Speaker 1: have it just be for self or for material all
Speaker 1: this life, to have it be about God, and with
Speaker 1: God and for God, and that it feels like that's
Speaker 1: so much of what I learned there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I don't think I don't think there's
Speaker 2: any greater gift of that's pretty spectaci.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's I'd love to show you my temper
Speaker 2: from after.
Speaker 1: I would love that.
Speaker 2: I would love that beautiful to show it to you.
Speaker 2: But no, I hope Gary, this has been a serving
Speaker 2: and an offering to your offering to the world. I
Speaker 2: really mean that, because I really believe that this book
Speaker 2: for you is not a it's not a celebrity memoir
Speaker 2: like it it's so much, it's so it's so human,
Speaker 2: and it's so it's so truth seeking, and so I
Speaker 2: really hope that this has served you and served your
Speaker 2: offering in the world. And you know, I'm excited for
Speaker 2: everyone to read it, to connect with it, to share
Speaker 2: with their families, share with their friends, and and hopefully uncovered,
Speaker 2: discover and recover from family secrets that may be holding
Speaker 2: you back in whatever way, and being able to have
Speaker 2: the grace to hold the supposed paradox with that, you know,
Speaker 2: compassionate and Amen. Amen, thank you My hope and intention
Speaker 2: for you and your book tour, and I wish you
Speaker 2: nothing but so much impact and can already see everyone
Speaker 2: smiling and the faces and their lives being impacted and
Speaker 2: changed based on the work you've done.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. It's such a privilege to
Speaker 1: be here, so grateful.
Speaker 2: I still have to ask you the final five.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, I know you.
Speaker 2: Tried to dodge them.
Speaker 1: I should have prepared, you know, I should have prepared.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I hope we got If there was anything
Speaker 2: else that you.
Speaker 1: Want, this amazing.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be honest with me anytime. Okay, So
Speaker 2: all right. Question one, carry what is the best advice
Speaker 2: you've ever received or had?
Speaker 1: The best advice I've ever received or heard is to pray.
Speaker 1: When I learned to pray and meditate. To me, there
Speaker 1: are sort of two sides of the same coin, you know,
Speaker 1: Like it's the talking to God and listening to God.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever in my life I'm reminded to pray,
Speaker 1: it's never a bad thing. It's always a path to
Speaker 1: goodness because it's always an act of surrender and an
Speaker 1: invitation to help. And the act of prayer for me
Speaker 1: and of meditation is really for me about picking up
Speaker 1: a tool of humility, because when I'm not making room
Speaker 1: for spiritual practice, it's like I think I'm in charge.
Speaker 1: And so the prayer helps me remember and the meditation
Speaker 1: helps me remember to be part of something greater, to
Speaker 1: not be trying to control and run everything, but to
Speaker 1: connect myself to something bigger.
Speaker 2: What a great answer. We've never had that before. In
Speaker 2: the show did how did you learn how to pray?
Speaker 2: And for anyone who struggles with prayer because they think
Speaker 2: they have to have the perfect words or they didn't
Speaker 2: know where to start, like what would you suggest for someone?
Speaker 1: It was part of My first time I ever got
Speaker 1: on my knees really to ask something greater than me
Speaker 1: for help was when I was really struggling with my
Speaker 1: eating disorder stuff which I talk about, and that was
Speaker 1: that was the first time in my life that I
Speaker 1: was like, I can't fix this, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I do not have the tools, and I don't know
Speaker 1: where to go, and I don't know what to do,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to need somebody or something to step
Speaker 1: in and help me out. That was my first experience
Speaker 1: with prayer. And then there's a really beautiful book that
Speaker 1: I think is one of the most important books that
Speaker 1: I've read in my life called The Artist Way by
Speaker 1: Julia Cameron, and that book taught me a lot about
Speaker 1: bringing spiritual practice into my creative and into my life
Speaker 1: as creative practice, but prayer through journaling, and I think
Speaker 1: there's no wrong way to pray, And honestly, my prayer
Speaker 1: looks like all different kinds of ways, Like I think,
Speaker 1: like any relationship, my relationship with spirit is always evolving
Speaker 1: and changing according to where I am. And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's like sitting on the pillow with the candle
Speaker 1: and the incense is like that's it. Just like sometimes
Speaker 1: date night is like that perfect elegant five star you're
Speaker 1: dressed up, he's in a suit. It's a hole, right, Like,
Speaker 1: Sometimes the ritual is that. And sometimes it's like I'm
Speaker 1: in my car, I'm at the red light. I'm like
Speaker 1: all right, God, like I'm gonna need you to step
Speaker 1: in and you know, take this day on. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just singing gospel music. Sometimes it's doing some
Speaker 1: sun salutation. Sometimes it's like just saying God, God, only God,
Speaker 1: one hundred and seven times in a row. Like whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it can be. It can be so many
Speaker 1: different things. Sometimes it's just swimming, but that just making
Speaker 1: room for seeking other something greater than me.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, what wonderful? Do you pray with the kids and
Speaker 2: we do at night?
Speaker 1: We do at night we do prayer requests and gratitude
Speaker 1: together as a family.
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 1: That's so special. Yeah, it is really special. It's really
Speaker 1: fun to watch the kids. It's great, you know, you
Speaker 1: never know. I mean sometimes it's like they're sometimes their
Speaker 1: gratitude is really profound. I'm grateful that a grandparent is
Speaker 1: feeling better, or I'm grateful for this family trip and
Speaker 1: time with cousins. And sometimes it's like I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: for pickles, you know what. Okay, you know that's cool.
Speaker 1: That too is God right, So like it's really it's fun.
Speaker 1: And also the prayer request, it's it's just our kind
Speaker 1: of family way of remembering to think outside yourself. And
Speaker 1: sometimes the prayer can be for yourself. I really hope
Speaker 1: my ankle feels better. I really, but it's also a
Speaker 1: way to remember to include other people in your seeking,
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love that. All right, Well that was just question one, okay,
Speaker 2: I question number two, what is the worst advice you've
Speaker 2: ever heard or received.
Speaker 1: I think about this book that I talk about in
Speaker 1: my book that I like stole from the library when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, that was called A Knew You.
Speaker 1: You missed the Yes, I missed the again and again
Speaker 1: and again and again. You know this idea that it
Speaker 1: appears in like magazines for young women, and there's this
Speaker 1: messaging out there that to be loved you must be
Speaker 1: something other than who you are. You know that to
Speaker 1: be loved you have to be prettier, and you have
Speaker 1: to know what colors are right for you, and you
Speaker 1: have to know how to sit and how to walk
Speaker 1: and how to stand. And I'm all about being having
Speaker 1: good manners and being appropriate to a situation. But the
Speaker 1: idea that you have to be on somebody other than
Speaker 1: who you are to be deserving of love is messaging
Speaker 1: that is damaging. I think it was definitely damaging for me,
Speaker 1: and I think for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's and it gets so ingrained. Yes, and
Speaker 2: it sounds so obvious, but it's it's not, and it's
Speaker 2: so subtle and so easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, even from a young age, when you
Speaker 1: hear kids saying like I need those sneakers or else,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be cool. Like it's these messages.
Speaker 1: These I think consumerism has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1: This idea that you must have that lipstick or that
Speaker 1: mas scare or that facelift or those pair of genes
Speaker 1: or whatever it is in order to be good enough.
Speaker 1: And it's just not true. It's just not true. You
Speaker 1: are lovable. And by the way, love sneakers, love lipstick,
Speaker 1: love mascaa, like, you can have those things, you can
Speaker 1: play with those things. But the idea that to do
Speaker 1: the you must do those things to be lovable, to
Speaker 1: be worthy, that's where the wrong messaging, yeah gets implanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah to quote TikTok, I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 2: this new TikTok, which I love, and it's and that
Speaker 2: the sound is telling you how to dress to impress
Speaker 2: a man.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone's like doing the opposite.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's so great, so great. Yeah, I haven't done
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 2: I should do that. Yeah someone I saw someone do
Speaker 2: it with their door to the other day. It was
Speaker 2: so cute. It's really cool. So anyway, but that that idea, definitely,
Speaker 2: I love that. Great answer all right. Question number three
Speaker 2: is how would you define your current purpose.
Speaker 1: My current purpose is to hold space for my scary
Speaker 1: truths and other people's scary truths, and to create community
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. That's really powerful. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think that's it for now.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a good one.
Speaker 1: For Q four. That's the purpose. I'll care back to
Speaker 1: love that.
Speaker 2: I love that. It's so nice to put into words, though,
Speaker 2: even to think about it, it's like, yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: I love to answer, all right. Question number four. We
Speaker 2: talked about what you're trying to learn now. Is there
Speaker 2: anything you're trying to unlearn? Is there any beliefs that
Speaker 2: you're trying to unlearn or values or ideas.
Speaker 1: I think I'm working to unlearn the belief that I
Speaker 1: am not enough, and I think I'm working to unlearn
Speaker 1: the belief that I am less important and less deserving.
Speaker 2: Where does that still come from? Where's that? Where's that hiding?
Speaker 1: I think there is. You know, when I think about
Speaker 1: the words sacrifice, and that sacrifice does come from sacred right,
Speaker 1: And I think for some reason, as an only child,
Speaker 1: as a as a young person, I understood that there
Speaker 1: was something sacred about sacrificing my own need or desire
Speaker 1: or truth, even to make space for someone else's journey.
Speaker 1: I've placed so much value on other people's sense of
Speaker 1: joy and goodness and safety that I've been willing to
Speaker 1: sacrifice my own sense of joy and goodness and safety.
Speaker 1: And I don't regret it. I think it's not wrong
Speaker 1: to care about how other people feel and want to
Speaker 1: do what's right for other people. I'm just learning to
Speaker 1: let myself be one of those people, to include myself.
Speaker 1: It's not like now I want to do whatever I
Speaker 1: want to do and to hell with whoever it hurts,
Speaker 1: but it's like I need to be as important as
Speaker 1: the other people I'm considering that I deserve that. That's
Speaker 1: new for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the greatest lessons I think I've tried
Speaker 2: to learn is that, again, the world is trying to
Speaker 2: do either raw. So some of us think the answer
Speaker 2: is just take care of yourself, who cares about what
Speaker 2: anyone else thanks? And the opposite is, well, just sacrifice,
Speaker 2: just serve, Just surrender and give yourself over to everyone.
Speaker 2: That's the greatest gift. And something that I've learned that
Speaker 2: has really helped me is that actually taking care of
Speaker 2: myself in order to serve others is the complete picture
Speaker 2: that taking care of myself is not selfish. If my
Speaker 2: intention and reasoning is so, I can go out and
Speaker 2: do more, give more, be more for others. But I
Speaker 2: can't do more, give more, and be more for others
Speaker 2: if I'm giving everyone the leftovers of.
Speaker 1: That's right, I have to give from my overflow.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And similarly, I've also learned that sometimes giving to
Speaker 1: others is a way that I can be giving to myself,
Speaker 1: because I can like my giving to others can be
Speaker 1: how I build hope and community and belonging for myself.
Speaker 1: There can be this dialogue between the two. So just
Speaker 1: to not forget myself and the equation is so important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that when you give to someone, I also
Speaker 2: notice it this way that when I give something to someone,
Speaker 2: often I feel like I'm the one doing the giving,
Speaker 2: but actually the fact that there's someone there to receive.
Speaker 1: It is such a gift.
Speaker 2: It's a gift because if there was no one for
Speaker 2: you to give your gift to, then it would feel incomplete.
Speaker 2: And so the fact that even someone has a challenge,
Speaker 2: an opportunity, a moment that you get to give something
Speaker 2: to someone, we have to see that good for ourselves
Speaker 2: as opposed to this feeling of like, oh I did
Speaker 2: this for all of.
Speaker 1: This, right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's beautiful. I love that, all right. Fifth
Speaker 2: and final question, which we asked every guest, you should
Speaker 2: have practiced carrier. But if you could create one law
Speaker 2: that everyone in the world had to follow, what would
Speaker 2: it be? Take your time? One law fantastic, A plus
Speaker 2: plus for everything got so much pressure.
Speaker 1: One law that everyone in the world had to follow.
Speaker 1: I think it would be required compassion and empathy training.
Speaker 1: When I think about all of the ills of society,
Speaker 1: all of our kind of social evils come from us
Speaker 1: not being able to care for each other. When you
Speaker 1: even when you think of like really mentally ill folks,
Speaker 1: that it that there there is I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that because some of it is biological, but there.
Speaker 1: I feel like there could be so much pain that's avoided.
Speaker 1: We could stop so much transfer generational pain and suffering.
Speaker 1: We could prevent so much abuse. If we could just
Speaker 1: give people empathy and compassion training, it would impact how
Speaker 1: we legislate, how we interact with one another, how we
Speaker 1: care for each other in society. I think we need
Speaker 1: that so badly right now in our families and our schools,
Speaker 1: and our businesses and our government bodies, we just need
Speaker 1: so much more empathy and compassion.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And there would have to be a special chapter on
Speaker 1: having it for yourself too, yes, yes, yeah, for sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Everyone. The book is called Thicker than Water. Have it
Speaker 2: right here. Kerry Washington a memoir. Make sure you go
Speaker 2: an order your copy. Will have the link in the
Speaker 2: comments and the caption, so you can go and grab
Speaker 2: your copy right now. Kerry is also going on tours
Speaker 2: if you don't have your tickets, Yeah, make sure you're
Speaker 2: going and grab your tickets to see her live. She's
Speaker 2: got phenomenal guests joining her as well, so make sure
Speaker 2: you're go and check that out. And of course, please
Speaker 2: please please tag Kerry and I with moments of this
Speaker 2: episode that resonated with you on and.
Speaker 1: We'll repost and respond.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Please let us know what really stood out to you,
Speaker 2: what you're going to practice. Maybe you've been inspired to
Speaker 2: share something with your family member, maybe to ask questions
Speaker 2: to your family as well, to understand more about your
Speaker 2: origins and where you came from and who you are,
Speaker 2: so I hope you're leaving this feeling empowered, liberated, and
Speaker 2: strengthened in your pursuit for truths. And again, I want
Speaker 2: to thank you Kerry for your generosity, your openness to
Speaker 2: share your vulnerability, and this new friendship that we're building.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited, very.
Speaker 2: Grateful for sir.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: What a treat.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with
Speaker 2: doctor Julie Smith on unblocking negative emotions and how to
Speaker 2: embrace difficult feelings. You've just got to be motivated every day,
Speaker 2: and if you're not, then what are you doing? And actually,
Speaker 2: humans don't work that way. Motivation. You have to treat
Speaker 2: it like any other emotion. Some days it will be there,
Speaker 2: some days it won't