WEBVTT - Susan Cain 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.960 I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.559 Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:15.400 about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together, 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.200 we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.840 of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday, or 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:27.880 join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast. 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.440 Susan Caine is the author of Quiet, The Power of 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.600 Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.159 eight years on the New York Times bestseller List. Susan's 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.519 Ted Talk has been viewed over forty million times. Lincoln 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.199 named her the top six influencer in the world, just 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.720 behind Richard Branson and Melinda Gates, who has also been 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.640 a What's Her Story guest. Her new masterpiece, Bitter Sweet, 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:56.800 How Sorrow and Longing Makes Us Whole, is out this week. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:06.200 Using your first book, Quiet became an international phenomenon. What 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.640 was it like choosing a topic for this book. I 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.200 don't think I choose my topic so much. I think 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:16.920 my topics are just a deep part of me, and 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.240 I think for me, writing is a little bit like 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.640 I I just thought of this metaphor just the other day. 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.080 I think it's a little bit like having a message 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.920 that I really want to communicate and sending the message 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.319 out in a bottle, you know, and I'm like working 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.120 on the message for years and years and not really 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:36.560 knowing if it's going to make it to the other shore, 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.400 meaning not knowing at first whether other people are going 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.720 to resonate with it or not. But it just feels 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:45.920 very deeply important and true, and so I do it. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.080 So like with Quiet, it took me. I mean, when 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.560 I first started working on Quiet, I thought that I 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:56.000 was working on a very idiosyncratic project that would be 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:57.920 kind of marginal. I had no idea that it was 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.040 going to touch the gigantic nerve that it did. And 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.680 now it's been really interesting with Bitter Sweet, where I'm 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:07.720 talking about the creativity and the connection and the other 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.880 powers that come from embracing the more bitter sweet side 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:15.239 of life. I'm getting the same kinds of messages from 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.840 readers that I got from Quiet. It's almost like the 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:23.360 same language of feeling permission to be themselves, feeling seen, 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:30.040 feeling understood, validating a way of existence, like understanding um 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:31.959 something about themselves that they had never been able to 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.600 put into words before. So it's kind of like there's 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.600 an uncanny similarity, I would say, But all of it 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:42.280 comes from that message in a bottle type of of 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.560 idea selection. I guess I noticed on your Twitter profile 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:47.640 you have a quote that's a C. S. Lewis quote, 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:50.000 and you wrote looking for the place where all the 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.839 beauty came from? Have you always been someone like when 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:55.600 you were a child, where you someone who was kind 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:57.919 of looking at the bigger picture or finding the magic 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:01.679 or asking those questions. Yeah, honestly, I really was. I 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.919 remember a very distinct memory. I think I was four 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.600 years old and suddenly being hit by the question of 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.200 what on earth are we all doing here? Like what 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.160 is this all about? Why are we here? How should 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.160 we be living? And I just I don't think I've 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.080 ever stopped asking that question that I feel like I'm 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:22.639 asking it almost every minute of my day. What did 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:24.639 you do with that when you were seven? I mean, 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.040 when I was little, I was just asking it. I 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.480 don't know that I did that much with it, but 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.160 I guess I've just always been thinking in those terms. 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:35.200 But you know, when when you're reading and writing as 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.680 a kid, because I was doing both a lot, Like 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.640 that's always been my orientation, you know, you're much more 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:44.440 interested just in stories and telling stories and writing stories. 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:46.600 So that's what it was. Um. It was really when 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.160 I was older that these questions that have been swirling 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.200 around in my mind all that time took shape in 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.840 writing nonfiction and writing about ideas. And you know the 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.400 quote that I have on my Twitter handle about looking 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.560 for the place where all the beauty comes from, that 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.960 that idea is really at the heart of this new book, 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:12.400 Bitter Sweet that I've written, because to me, the essence 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.560 of bitter Sweetness really is this state that I believe 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.800 all humans come into the world with, where you know, 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.440 you come into this world crying, right, and there is 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:25.760 a sense, no matter how happy a life that you're living, 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:30.279 there's there's a sense that we all belong in a 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:35.520 more perfect and beautiful world from which we've been banished. 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.240 And and you see that idea expressed in all of 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:41.880 our religions, you know, the longing for the garden of Eden, 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:44.960 and the longing for Mecca, and the longing for Zion, 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.480 the longing for the beloved of the soul, the longing 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.440 for somewhere over the rainbow. In secular terms, we see 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.400 this all over the place. And I believe that when 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.280 we have those moments where you see something so beautiful 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:02.200 that it brings tears your eyes, that the tears are 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.760 coming because it's triggering that longing. It's like you're seeing 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.000 a glimpse of that world that we all long for. 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:11.520 And that's part of why we love art the way 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.800 we do, because it's it's a it's a manifestation of that. 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.480 The way you talk about longing and bitter sweet moments, 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.279 I think that it's something that everyone can relate to, 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:28.080 no matter your personality in your own life, What is 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:32.560 the relationship between love and longing? I guess I'm a 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:38.520 hopeless romantic in a certain way, and also grew up 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.560 on the same diet that everybody else did of watching 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:47.839 you know, kind of romantic Happily ever after films and 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.440 all that kind of thing, and I think it took 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.720 me a while to understand like the true nature of 0:05:55.000 --> 0:06:00.200 love relationships with friends also, but especially romantic love reallyation 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.080 ships that you you could say in a way that 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.800 that we kind of have to learn to live outside 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.000 the garden of Eden in a way, you know, like 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.680 with your friends, Let's say you start realizing, oh my gosh, 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:14.919 like I'm dreadfully imperfect and my friends are too, and 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:16.880 I'm going to love them in spite of that. And 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.800 with romantic relationships, you know, there's a feeling when you 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.440 first enter one, especially like a deep and meaningful one. 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:27.560 There's a feeling, especially for the first few months, where 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:29.920 you kind of feel like, you know, this is it, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.919 Like I I found the garden of Eden and we 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:37.320 found it together, and then you start to understand, well, actually, 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:39.760 my partner is not perfect. I'm not perfect and like 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:44.240 and until you understand that that's the nature of reality, 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:46.440 you can feel like, Okay, I better go to the 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.440 next relationship because maybe that one will deliver me to Eden. 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:52.920 Like you're not thinking that in so many words, obviously, 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:57.160 but that's what we're experiencing. So I would say like 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:01.800 the growing up process for me really was a matter 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:06.159 of understanding kind of the difference between what's wonderful in 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:12.160 our day to day lives and the state of you know, perfection, truth, beauty, 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:16.200 unconditional pure love that we long for, and to understand 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.400 that those two things can exist side by side. Early on, 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:24.160 you learned that you weren't making partner after many years 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.679 of working your butt off in your law firm, And 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:31.880 that also coincided with the end of a relationship. And 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:36.640 it seems like that explosion of sorts changed a lot 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.960 of things for you. It changed so many things for me. UM. 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.120 So I went into what I called a state of 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:48.840 freefall at that point, because I suddenly I knew kind 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.440 of instinctively, I probably wasn't going back to law. So 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.640 I had no career, suddenly no love. I was no 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.560 longer living in the same apartment that I had moved 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.640 out of the heartment when I ended this relationship. Um. 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.600 That had always felt wrong, and so I was kind 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.600 of floating around. And I fell into a relationship with 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:16.320 a guy who who was not fully available, not fully 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.640 the right person, but he was a musician and a 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.000 lyricist and a lit up kind of person, and it 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:27.120 became a kind of obsessive love of the kind I 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.760 guess everybody has to go through at one point or another. 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.920 But it's they're they're quite painful, I think, those relationships, 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:37.880 and and no matter what I did, I couldn't shake it. 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:42.440 Until one day I sat down with a friend of mine, Naomi, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.120 who had been patiently listening to me regale her with 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.760 stories of the object of this obsession, and and Naomie 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.640 said to me, you know, if you're this obsessed with somebody, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.840 it's because they represent something that you're longing for. So 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.040 what are you longing for? Like, what's really at the 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.959 heart of this? And it really was one of these blinding, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.520 you know, skills fall from your eyes kinds of movements, 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:12.400 because I instantly knew that that he represented the world 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.200 of writing and music and art that I had always 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:17.640 wanted to be a part of. In the first place. 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:19.760 I was never meant to be a lawyer. He was 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.160 kind of like an emissary from that more perfect and 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:26.200 beautiful world that I longed for. And as soon as 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:31.680 I saw that, the obsession melted away, almost cinematically, it 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.240 was like it was gone, and and I started really 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:41.800 writing for real and have never looked back since. So, um, yeah, 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:43.640 I guess I would say to anybody listening, you know, 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.600 if you find yourself beset by some kind of deep 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:50.920 and existential longing, I would really examine it and and 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:52.840 try to ask yourself, like, what does it really mean? 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.480 Beyond what it appears to me you may not be 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:57.600 longing for a person or for the house. Do you 0:09:57.600 --> 0:09:59.720 think you're longing for or whatever it is it may 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.720 be it represents something else to you at the time 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.560 when you figure this out. Was it scary, Well, it 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.520 would have been scary, But I I did everything with 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:12.840 a big backup plan, I would say. I mean so, 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.280 first of all, even though I knew deep down I 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:17.640 probably wasn't going back. I did interview for a few 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.040 in house positions and things like that, and I just 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:24.040 couldn't bring myself to go in that direction. So what 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.920 I did I decided I really wanted to make writing 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.360 the center of my life. Um I signed up for 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.199 this class and creative nonfiction writing. I knew the night 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.560 of that first class, I felt so deeply that I 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:38.760 had found my home and my center and that's what 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.560 I wanted to be doing. But truly, I did not 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.240 ever think I could make a living from writing. Like 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.120 I said to myself, if you published something by the 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.240 time you're seventy five, that's the goal. So I didn't 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.440 think writing was going to be the thing. So what 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.360 I did is I set up a little freelance business 0:10:55.400 --> 0:11:00.920 teaching people negotiation skills, especially to women, because negotiation was 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.440 not something I had felt came naturally to me, but 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:05.360 I had studied it a lot in law school and 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.400 as a lawyer, so I felt like I could help 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.400 other people for whom it didn't seem to come naturally, 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:13.319 and so that was how I was paying the bills. 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.200 So that made it less scary. And I always say 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.480 to people, you know, like, there's such a message in 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.240 our culture that you know that if you truly have 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.240 a passion for the business you want to start or 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:29.400 the art you want to create or whatever, you know, 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.480 you should be willing to check everything in the service 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:34.840 of that passion and take the big risk. And I 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:39.000 think that's the worst advice ever, because first of all, 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.400 you may fail, and that's okay, but it's not okay 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.680 if if you have no backup plan. But also you 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.959 can't even really mentally focus on your business or your 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.840 art or whatever if you're so anxious about not being 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:57.360 able to pay the bills. So I'm a big believer 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:00.520 in the plan b and doing things, you know, kind 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.560 of the less glamorous but more practical way. Then you 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:09.800 met your now husband, and there's something about your relationship 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.079 with him. That's really remarkable that you learned on just 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.319 the second date when I met my now husband Ken. 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:19.800 He went to law school too, by the way, but 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:21.920 he never practiced for a day in his life and 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.200 he didn't take the bar even And he spent the 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.199 nine nineties as a u N peacekeeper. He was basically 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.480 like in all the war zones of the nineties like 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:41.360 Rwanda and Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, Cambodia. And he came back 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:47.679 and he wrote this really incredible memoir of his experiences. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.800 It's called Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, A True 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:55.680 Story from Hell on Earth. It's really really great. And 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.439 and so when we met, he was just publishing this 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.760 book and it was a bestseller, and you know, and 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:07.240 it was this really important work. And meanwhile I had 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.400 this failed legal career and at the time, I was 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.360 writing a memoir in sonnet form, because that's what I 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.640 was doing. And and I came to our second date 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:22.800 and I brought some of the sonnets with me, and 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.880 and later that night he sent me this email, and um, 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.920 I have it reprinted in the book. He basically wrote 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.480 in this email, like in these gigantic letters, UM, holy 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.880 sh it, drop everything right woman, right um. And it 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:42.960 was just like the most amazing, amazing encouragement and expressed 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:46.760 in his very typically exuberant fashion. And that's why it's 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.440 framed in my office all these years later, and and 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.840 all these years later, I would say, he's still my 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.520 biggest cheering section and gets even more excited than I do, 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:00.760 you know. And my new book Betters We came out 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.240 seems to be doing really well and he's really excited 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:07.760 and checking Amazon constantly. So it's still like that. But 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.959 I also will say that part of what I teach 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.480 people from all the years that I've spent working on 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.760 introversion and extroversion, from my first book Quiet, is to 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:23.960 understand that different people express enthusiasm differently. So like one 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:27.160 of the things in our relationship is I have had 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:31.840 to learn when something good happens for him to kind 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:35.440 of amp up my enthusiasm or not what I feel, 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:37.120 but the way I express it I have to amp 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.440 up because I'm just naturally kind of more muted in 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:42.960 the way I talk about things than he would be. 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:45.800 And then he's had to learn I think that I'm 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.720 never going to express it the way he would and 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.080 that doesn't mean that I don't care. And so I 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:57.360 think understanding those temperamental differences between partners is really life 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:03.000 saving for a partnership. And now quick break. You know, 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.640 there are other relationships in our lives that center us 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:07.880 in our court of who we are. And you have 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:13.000 a complicated relationship with your mother, how does that impact 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:17.640 your life, your work, your parenting, know, all of those things. Basically, 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.160 my mother and I, you know, like I had a 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.680 kind of garden of Eden to use that word again, 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.160 a garden of Eden childhood of like a really really 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:31.640 deep and loving relationship with my mother, and then adolescence 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:36.240 hit us with gale force winds. And I guess that's 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:39.040 very common for many mothers and daughters in adolescence. But 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.800 our situation was, you know, imagine the typical times a 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:49.440 hundred and so after that, there was a deep way 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:53.000 in which our relationship seemed never to be the same 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.520 again until a kind of storybook ending that I wrote 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.680 about in her later years. But all those years where 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.120 it seemed never to be the same again, it was 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:09.080 like my life was really doing so well in so 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:11.480 many ways, and yet I had this thing. It was 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.320 like this um it was like a grief that I 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.320 had never mourned. So I couldn't even speak about my 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:19.280 mother without crying. Like if you said to me, where 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.960 did your mother grow up? And I and my answer 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.280 would have been my mother grew up in Brooklyn. I 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.920 couldn't say those simple words without crying because I couldn't 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.280 speak of her without crying, because that's how intense the 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.560 loss of that, that primary, most fundamental love was. You know, 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.520 like I guess, the first love relationship you have, the 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:42.840 most intense one, it becomes symbolic of all love for 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.440 a while. And so that's what it was like for me, 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.520 and I think that's part of what led to me 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:51.720 exploring all the ideas and bitter sweet of like what 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.800 because we all are going to lose love at some point, 0:16:55.160 --> 0:17:00.280 whether it's through a relationship ending or bereave mint or worse, 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:02.520 or you know, there's a thousand different ways that it 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.040 can happen, And how do we face that? What do 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:07.399 we do with that? And the thing that I really 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.040 did learn over time, because I I really did come 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.479 to a place of let's say ninety eight or nine, 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.920 healing from it, I think, but I really did come 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:21.119 to a place of understanding that that really love is 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.600 the essence, and love exists in infinite forms. So you 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:31.040 can lose one particular love relationship and whether you get 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:32.840 it back again later as I did with my mother 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.240 or not, love itself has a way of returning in 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:39.040 many different forms. And that's what I that's what I 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.240 really came to understand. You had so much guilt wrapped 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.000 up in the relationship with your mother, and um you 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.639 blamed yourself for so much of it for so long. 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.080 What role does guilt play in your life today? I 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:58.480 would say guilt is still my Achilles heal emotionally because 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:02.359 that was the mechanism of what went wrong. I guess 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:07.800 in this most formative relationship. Still today, when something goes wrong, 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:13.040 I will immediately assume that I did something wrong or 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.119 or somebody you know. If I'm in a conflict with 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:19.400 someone and the other person is, you know, saying you've 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:22.440 done such and such, like I I automatically assume that's right. 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.439 Times ten. That's my first emotional place that I go to. 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.200 Because I have thought about this a lot and worked 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.200 on this a lot, I can often remove myself from 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.240 that place and then come to a place that sees 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.560 things a little more clearly. But I do think that 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.520 for all of us, whatever is the primary mechanism of 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.119 like an emotional issue that we had early in life, 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.160 that does become a kind of Achilles heel for life 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.679 or a sort of siren song for life, and that 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.000 you can work through it, but it's always going to 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.600 be there underlying, and so you just you have to 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:00.199 be aware of that and aware of those and in 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.159 seas and yourself. But I will I will say, like 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.880 you asked me about my relationship with my children, I've 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:10.320 been like really thrilled to see that. I think I've 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.719 replicated none of it with my children. I'm pretty sure 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:14.840 they would agree with that statement. You know, my my 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.840 boys are teenagers now, we still get along famously. And 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:25.600 the difficulty that my mother had during my adolescence when 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:29.760 I started to separate as an adult, I'm not experiencing it. 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.280 I I truly don't feel it. So therefore I don't 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.960 think any of those dynamics are getting replicated. And I 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.920 will say that I swore to myself when I was 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.960 a teenager and I saw how much trouble my mother 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:48.600 was having with me growing into an independence, I swear 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.880 to myself that I would have a fulfilling and meaningful 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.840 career because I've always felt that my mother wouldn't have 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.560 struggled and suffered the way she did if she had 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.640 had that. So I do think that's helped me a lot. 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.840 You talk a lot about parenting in your book and 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:10.880 how we try to parents the sadness out of our children. 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.240 How do you think we can overcome that? It's really 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.640 hard to overcome it. Um, I do think we can, 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.360 but it's it's hard to overcome it. And I remember 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:22.960 my mother in law. I'm really close with my mother 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.080 in law. She's a very um she's really fun, she's 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.879 very upbeat. She has sort of my my husband's very 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.480 exuberant temperament. They're very similar that way. But she's also 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:37.199 like Samantha like me. She's a huge leaky faucet. We 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.480 actually joke that I should have called this book Leaky 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.280 Faucet the Bitter Sweet Book. Like you know, she'll she'll 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:44.719 tear up at the drop of a hat. So anyway, 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.880 she just randomly told me right after my son was born, 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:51.160 my first one, She's like, you know, it's really hard 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:59.399 when your kids are upset about something. Because we know 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.320 what we can handle, so we can handle our own troubles, 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.720 but when it's your child's troubles, you kind of don't 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:09.800 know exactly at first what they can handle. So not 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:13.080 only are you experiencing it vicariously, but you're experiencing it 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:17.640 in an amplified form. And I do think that makes 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.119 it really tough as parents when our kids are crying 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.840 or going through it a tough time. You know, you 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:29.200 just feel if you're not careful, you can feel all 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:31.320 of that as if it's filling up the whole world. 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.560 But I tell this story in the book of a 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.800 very small trouble that my kids went through and how 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.760 normalizing sadness was so helpful. And the story is that 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.359 when they were really little, we rented this house in 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.520 the countryside for a week and right next to the 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.879 house was a field in which lived two donkeys, and 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:58.200 the kids fell in love with these donkeys. Their names 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.240 were Lucky and Norman, and they spent all day every day, 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.560 you know, feeding them carrots and it was bliss. And 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.760 then came the last two days of the vacation where 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:10.399 they start realizing that we're going to have to go 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.760 home and say goodbye to the donkeys, and they start 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:18.320 crying themselves to sleep, like they're just totally bereft, because 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.919 of course that kind of goodbye to a young child 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:25.800 signifies all goodbyes, and we don't know it. It's it's 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.080 kind of like symbolic of mortality itself. They don't they 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.399 don't know that technically, but that's what they're reacting to. 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:35.160 And so you know what, your your kids crying at 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:38.120 night and you're like trying to comfort them. So we're 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:40.800 saying all these things of like, well maybe we'll come 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.800 back next year and you'll see them again. Um, someone 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:45.760 else will come and take care of the donkeys, and 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:50.040 nothing is helping until until we say to them, you know, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:54.320 this is actually part of life, this sadness, and you 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:58.600 won't feel it forever, but but you're going to feel 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.080 it again. You've felt it before, you felt it, you're 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.879 going to feel it again. Everybody feels it. This is 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:06.800 part of what life is, and just know that and 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:08.960 you'll feel better in a few days. But it was 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:14.479 like the normalizing of the sadness was the only thing 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:18.560 that made them stop crying. Because, especially for children who 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:23.199 are growing up in relative comfort, they are sent the 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:29.879 message that life is what's happening, that real life is 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:33.080 when everything's going well, and that the moments where you're 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:35.760 saying goodbye, or the moments of sickness or the moments 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:37.960