Speaker 1: I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's
Speaker 1: Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show
Speaker 1: about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders
Speaker 1: of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday, or
Speaker 1: join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast.
Speaker 1: Susan Caine is the author of Quiet, The Power of
Speaker 1: Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent
Speaker 1: eight years on the New York Times bestseller List. Susan's
Speaker 1: Ted Talk has been viewed over forty million times. Lincoln
Speaker 1: named her the top six influencer in the world, just
Speaker 1: behind Richard Branson and Melinda Gates, who has also been
Speaker 1: a What's Her Story guest. Her new masterpiece, Bitter Sweet,
Speaker 1: How Sorrow and Longing Makes Us Whole, is out this week.
Speaker 1: Using your first book, Quiet became an international phenomenon. What
Speaker 1: was it like choosing a topic for this book. I
Speaker 1: don't think I choose my topic so much. I think
Speaker 1: my topics are just a deep part of me, and
Speaker 1: I think for me, writing is a little bit like
Speaker 1: I I just thought of this metaphor just the other day.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little bit like having a message
Speaker 1: that I really want to communicate and sending the message
Speaker 1: out in a bottle, you know, and I'm like working
Speaker 1: on the message for years and years and not really
Speaker 1: knowing if it's going to make it to the other shore,
Speaker 1: meaning not knowing at first whether other people are going
Speaker 1: to resonate with it or not. But it just feels
Speaker 1: very deeply important and true, and so I do it.
Speaker 1: So like with Quiet, it took me. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I first started working on Quiet, I thought that I
Speaker 1: was working on a very idiosyncratic project that would be
Speaker 1: kind of marginal. I had no idea that it was
Speaker 1: going to touch the gigantic nerve that it did. And
Speaker 1: now it's been really interesting with Bitter Sweet, where I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the creativity and the connection and the other
Speaker 1: powers that come from embracing the more bitter sweet side
Speaker 1: of life. I'm getting the same kinds of messages from
Speaker 1: readers that I got from Quiet. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: same language of feeling permission to be themselves, feeling seen,
Speaker 1: feeling understood, validating a way of existence, like understanding um
Speaker 1: something about themselves that they had never been able to
Speaker 1: put into words before. So it's kind of like there's
Speaker 1: an uncanny similarity, I would say, But all of it
Speaker 1: comes from that message in a bottle type of of
Speaker 1: idea selection. I guess I noticed on your Twitter profile
Speaker 1: you have a quote that's a C. S. Lewis quote,
Speaker 1: and you wrote looking for the place where all the
Speaker 1: beauty came from? Have you always been someone like when
Speaker 1: you were a child, where you someone who was kind
Speaker 1: of looking at the bigger picture or finding the magic
Speaker 1: or asking those questions. Yeah, honestly, I really was. I
Speaker 1: remember a very distinct memory. I think I was four
Speaker 1: years old and suddenly being hit by the question of
Speaker 1: what on earth are we all doing here? Like what
Speaker 1: is this all about? Why are we here? How should
Speaker 1: we be living? And I just I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever stopped asking that question that I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: asking it almost every minute of my day. What did
Speaker 1: you do with that when you were seven? I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was little, I was just asking it. I
Speaker 1: don't know that I did that much with it, but
Speaker 1: I guess I've just always been thinking in those terms.
Speaker 1: But you know, when when you're reading and writing as
Speaker 1: a kid, because I was doing both a lot, Like
Speaker 1: that's always been my orientation, you know, you're much more
Speaker 1: interested just in stories and telling stories and writing stories.
Speaker 1: So that's what it was. Um. It was really when
Speaker 1: I was older that these questions that have been swirling
Speaker 1: around in my mind all that time took shape in
Speaker 1: writing nonfiction and writing about ideas. And you know the
Speaker 1: quote that I have on my Twitter handle about looking
Speaker 1: for the place where all the beauty comes from, that
Speaker 1: that idea is really at the heart of this new book,
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet that I've written, because to me, the essence
Speaker 1: of bitter Sweetness really is this state that I believe
Speaker 1: all humans come into the world with, where you know,
Speaker 1: you come into this world crying, right, and there is
Speaker 1: a sense, no matter how happy a life that you're living,
Speaker 1: there's there's a sense that we all belong in a
Speaker 1: more perfect and beautiful world from which we've been banished.
Speaker 1: And and you see that idea expressed in all of
Speaker 1: our religions, you know, the longing for the garden of Eden,
Speaker 1: and the longing for Mecca, and the longing for Zion,
Speaker 1: the longing for the beloved of the soul, the longing
Speaker 1: for somewhere over the rainbow. In secular terms, we see
Speaker 1: this all over the place. And I believe that when
Speaker 1: we have those moments where you see something so beautiful
Speaker 1: that it brings tears your eyes, that the tears are
Speaker 1: coming because it's triggering that longing. It's like you're seeing
Speaker 1: a glimpse of that world that we all long for.
Speaker 1: And that's part of why we love art the way
Speaker 1: we do, because it's it's a it's a manifestation of that.
Speaker 1: The way you talk about longing and bitter sweet moments,
Speaker 1: I think that it's something that everyone can relate to,
Speaker 1: no matter your personality in your own life, What is
Speaker 1: the relationship between love and longing? I guess I'm a
Speaker 1: hopeless romantic in a certain way, and also grew up
Speaker 1: on the same diet that everybody else did of watching
Speaker 1: you know, kind of romantic Happily ever after films and
Speaker 1: all that kind of thing, and I think it took
Speaker 1: me a while to understand like the true nature of
Speaker 1: love relationships with friends also, but especially romantic love reallyation
Speaker 1: ships that you you could say in a way that
Speaker 1: that we kind of have to learn to live outside
Speaker 1: the garden of Eden in a way, you know, like
Speaker 1: with your friends, Let's say you start realizing, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: like I'm dreadfully imperfect and my friends are too, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to love them in spite of that. And
Speaker 1: with romantic relationships, you know, there's a feeling when you
Speaker 1: first enter one, especially like a deep and meaningful one.
Speaker 1: There's a feeling, especially for the first few months, where
Speaker 1: you kind of feel like, you know, this is it,
Speaker 1: Like I I found the garden of Eden and we
Speaker 1: found it together, and then you start to understand, well, actually,
Speaker 1: my partner is not perfect. I'm not perfect and like
Speaker 1: and until you understand that that's the nature of reality,
Speaker 1: you can feel like, Okay, I better go to the
Speaker 1: next relationship because maybe that one will deliver me to Eden.
Speaker 1: Like you're not thinking that in so many words, obviously,
Speaker 1: but that's what we're experiencing. So I would say like
Speaker 1: the growing up process for me really was a matter
Speaker 1: of understanding kind of the difference between what's wonderful in
Speaker 1: our day to day lives and the state of you know, perfection, truth, beauty,
Speaker 1: unconditional pure love that we long for, and to understand
Speaker 1: that those two things can exist side by side. Early on,
Speaker 1: you learned that you weren't making partner after many years
Speaker 1: of working your butt off in your law firm, And
Speaker 1: that also coincided with the end of a relationship. And
Speaker 1: it seems like that explosion of sorts changed a lot
Speaker 1: of things for you. It changed so many things for me. UM.
Speaker 1: So I went into what I called a state of
Speaker 1: freefall at that point, because I suddenly I knew kind
Speaker 1: of instinctively, I probably wasn't going back to law. So
Speaker 1: I had no career, suddenly no love. I was no
Speaker 1: longer living in the same apartment that I had moved
Speaker 1: out of the heartment when I ended this relationship. Um.
Speaker 1: That had always felt wrong, and so I was kind
Speaker 1: of floating around. And I fell into a relationship with
Speaker 1: a guy who who was not fully available, not fully
Speaker 1: the right person, but he was a musician and a
Speaker 1: lyricist and a lit up kind of person, and it
Speaker 1: became a kind of obsessive love of the kind I
Speaker 1: guess everybody has to go through at one point or another.
Speaker 1: But it's they're they're quite painful, I think, those relationships,
Speaker 1: and and no matter what I did, I couldn't shake it.
Speaker 1: Until one day I sat down with a friend of mine, Naomi,
Speaker 1: who had been patiently listening to me regale her with
Speaker 1: stories of the object of this obsession, and and Naomie
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, if you're this obsessed with somebody,
Speaker 1: it's because they represent something that you're longing for. So
Speaker 1: what are you longing for? Like, what's really at the
Speaker 1: heart of this? And it really was one of these blinding,
Speaker 1: you know, skills fall from your eyes kinds of movements,
Speaker 1: because I instantly knew that that he represented the world
Speaker 1: of writing and music and art that I had always
Speaker 1: wanted to be a part of. In the first place.
Speaker 1: I was never meant to be a lawyer. He was
Speaker 1: kind of like an emissary from that more perfect and
Speaker 1: beautiful world that I longed for. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I saw that, the obsession melted away, almost cinematically, it
Speaker 1: was like it was gone, and and I started really
Speaker 1: writing for real and have never looked back since. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I would say to anybody listening, you know,
Speaker 1: if you find yourself beset by some kind of deep
Speaker 1: and existential longing, I would really examine it and and
Speaker 1: try to ask yourself, like, what does it really mean?
Speaker 1: Beyond what it appears to me you may not be
Speaker 1: longing for a person or for the house. Do you
Speaker 1: think you're longing for or whatever it is it may
Speaker 1: be it represents something else to you at the time
Speaker 1: when you figure this out. Was it scary, Well, it
Speaker 1: would have been scary, But I I did everything with
Speaker 1: a big backup plan, I would say. I mean so,
Speaker 1: first of all, even though I knew deep down I
Speaker 1: probably wasn't going back. I did interview for a few
Speaker 1: in house positions and things like that, and I just
Speaker 1: couldn't bring myself to go in that direction. So what
Speaker 1: I did I decided I really wanted to make writing
Speaker 1: the center of my life. Um I signed up for
Speaker 1: this class and creative nonfiction writing. I knew the night
Speaker 1: of that first class, I felt so deeply that I
Speaker 1: had found my home and my center and that's what
Speaker 1: I wanted to be doing. But truly, I did not
Speaker 1: ever think I could make a living from writing. Like
Speaker 1: I said to myself, if you published something by the
Speaker 1: time you're seventy five, that's the goal. So I didn't
Speaker 1: think writing was going to be the thing. So what
Speaker 1: I did is I set up a little freelance business
Speaker 1: teaching people negotiation skills, especially to women, because negotiation was
Speaker 1: not something I had felt came naturally to me, but
Speaker 1: I had studied it a lot in law school and
Speaker 1: as a lawyer, so I felt like I could help
Speaker 1: other people for whom it didn't seem to come naturally,
Speaker 1: and so that was how I was paying the bills.
Speaker 1: So that made it less scary. And I always say
Speaker 1: to people, you know, like, there's such a message in
Speaker 1: our culture that you know that if you truly have
Speaker 1: a passion for the business you want to start or
Speaker 1: the art you want to create or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: you should be willing to check everything in the service
Speaker 1: of that passion and take the big risk. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the worst advice ever, because first of all,
Speaker 1: you may fail, and that's okay, but it's not okay
Speaker 1: if if you have no backup plan. But also you
Speaker 1: can't even really mentally focus on your business or your
Speaker 1: art or whatever if you're so anxious about not being
Speaker 1: able to pay the bills. So I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in the plan b and doing things, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the less glamorous but more practical way. Then you
Speaker 1: met your now husband, and there's something about your relationship
Speaker 1: with him. That's really remarkable that you learned on just
Speaker 1: the second date when I met my now husband Ken.
Speaker 1: He went to law school too, by the way, but
Speaker 1: he never practiced for a day in his life and
Speaker 1: he didn't take the bar even And he spent the
Speaker 1: nine nineties as a u N peacekeeper. He was basically
Speaker 1: like in all the war zones of the nineties like
Speaker 1: Rwanda and Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, Cambodia. And he came back
Speaker 1: and he wrote this really incredible memoir of his experiences.
Speaker 1: It's called Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, A True
Speaker 1: Story from Hell on Earth. It's really really great. And
Speaker 1: and so when we met, he was just publishing this
Speaker 1: book and it was a bestseller, and you know, and
Speaker 1: it was this really important work. And meanwhile I had
Speaker 1: this failed legal career and at the time, I was
Speaker 1: writing a memoir in sonnet form, because that's what I
Speaker 1: was doing. And and I came to our second date
Speaker 1: and I brought some of the sonnets with me, and
Speaker 1: and later that night he sent me this email, and um,
Speaker 1: I have it reprinted in the book. He basically wrote
Speaker 1: in this email, like in these gigantic letters, UM, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, drop everything right woman, right um. And it
Speaker 1: was just like the most amazing, amazing encouragement and expressed
Speaker 1: in his very typically exuberant fashion. And that's why it's
Speaker 1: framed in my office all these years later, and and
Speaker 1: all these years later, I would say, he's still my
Speaker 1: biggest cheering section and gets even more excited than I do,
Speaker 1: you know. And my new book Betters We came out
Speaker 1: seems to be doing really well and he's really excited
Speaker 1: and checking Amazon constantly. So it's still like that. But
Speaker 1: I also will say that part of what I teach
Speaker 1: people from all the years that I've spent working on
Speaker 1: introversion and extroversion, from my first book Quiet, is to
Speaker 1: understand that different people express enthusiasm differently. So like one
Speaker 1: of the things in our relationship is I have had
Speaker 1: to learn when something good happens for him to kind
Speaker 1: of amp up my enthusiasm or not what I feel,
Speaker 1: but the way I express it I have to amp
Speaker 1: up because I'm just naturally kind of more muted in
Speaker 1: the way I talk about things than he would be.
Speaker 1: And then he's had to learn I think that I'm
Speaker 1: never going to express it the way he would and
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that I don't care. And so I
Speaker 1: think understanding those temperamental differences between partners is really life
Speaker 1: saving for a partnership. And now quick break. You know,
Speaker 1: there are other relationships in our lives that center us
Speaker 1: in our court of who we are. And you have
Speaker 1: a complicated relationship with your mother, how does that impact
Speaker 1: your life, your work, your parenting, know, all of those things. Basically,
Speaker 1: my mother and I, you know, like I had a
Speaker 1: kind of garden of Eden to use that word again,
Speaker 1: a garden of Eden childhood of like a really really
Speaker 1: deep and loving relationship with my mother, and then adolescence
Speaker 1: hit us with gale force winds. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: very common for many mothers and daughters in adolescence. But
Speaker 1: our situation was, you know, imagine the typical times a
Speaker 1: hundred and so after that, there was a deep way
Speaker 1: in which our relationship seemed never to be the same
Speaker 1: again until a kind of storybook ending that I wrote
Speaker 1: about in her later years. But all those years where
Speaker 1: it seemed never to be the same again, it was
Speaker 1: like my life was really doing so well in so
Speaker 1: many ways, and yet I had this thing. It was
Speaker 1: like this um it was like a grief that I
Speaker 1: had never mourned. So I couldn't even speak about my
Speaker 1: mother without crying. Like if you said to me, where
Speaker 1: did your mother grow up? And I and my answer
Speaker 1: would have been my mother grew up in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 1: couldn't say those simple words without crying because I couldn't
Speaker 1: speak of her without crying, because that's how intense the
Speaker 1: loss of that, that primary, most fundamental love was. You know,
Speaker 1: like I guess, the first love relationship you have, the
Speaker 1: most intense one, it becomes symbolic of all love for
Speaker 1: a while. And so that's what it was like for me,
Speaker 1: and I think that's part of what led to me
Speaker 1: exploring all the ideas and bitter sweet of like what
Speaker 1: because we all are going to lose love at some point,
Speaker 1: whether it's through a relationship ending or bereave mint or worse,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's a thousand different ways that it
Speaker 1: can happen, And how do we face that? What do
Speaker 1: we do with that? And the thing that I really
Speaker 1: did learn over time, because I I really did come
Speaker 1: to a place of let's say ninety eight or nine,
Speaker 1: healing from it, I think, but I really did come
Speaker 1: to a place of understanding that that really love is
Speaker 1: the essence, and love exists in infinite forms. So you
Speaker 1: can lose one particular love relationship and whether you get
Speaker 1: it back again later as I did with my mother
Speaker 1: or not, love itself has a way of returning in
Speaker 1: many different forms. And that's what I that's what I
Speaker 1: really came to understand. You had so much guilt wrapped
Speaker 1: up in the relationship with your mother, and um you
Speaker 1: blamed yourself for so much of it for so long.
Speaker 1: What role does guilt play in your life today? I
Speaker 1: would say guilt is still my Achilles heal emotionally because
Speaker 1: that was the mechanism of what went wrong. I guess
Speaker 1: in this most formative relationship. Still today, when something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: I will immediately assume that I did something wrong or
Speaker 1: or somebody you know. If I'm in a conflict with
Speaker 1: someone and the other person is, you know, saying you've
Speaker 1: done such and such, like I I automatically assume that's right.
Speaker 1: Times ten. That's my first emotional place that I go to.
Speaker 1: Because I have thought about this a lot and worked
Speaker 1: on this a lot, I can often remove myself from
Speaker 1: that place and then come to a place that sees
Speaker 1: things a little more clearly. But I do think that
Speaker 1: for all of us, whatever is the primary mechanism of
Speaker 1: like an emotional issue that we had early in life,
Speaker 1: that does become a kind of Achilles heel for life
Speaker 1: or a sort of siren song for life, and that
Speaker 1: you can work through it, but it's always going to
Speaker 1: be there underlying, and so you just you have to
Speaker 1: be aware of that and aware of those and in
Speaker 1: seas and yourself. But I will I will say, like
Speaker 1: you asked me about my relationship with my children, I've
Speaker 1: been like really thrilled to see that. I think I've
Speaker 1: replicated none of it with my children. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: they would agree with that statement. You know, my my
Speaker 1: boys are teenagers now, we still get along famously. And
Speaker 1: the difficulty that my mother had during my adolescence when
Speaker 1: I started to separate as an adult, I'm not experiencing it.
Speaker 1: I I truly don't feel it. So therefore I don't
Speaker 1: think any of those dynamics are getting replicated. And I
Speaker 1: will say that I swore to myself when I was
Speaker 1: a teenager and I saw how much trouble my mother
Speaker 1: was having with me growing into an independence, I swear
Speaker 1: to myself that I would have a fulfilling and meaningful
Speaker 1: career because I've always felt that my mother wouldn't have
Speaker 1: struggled and suffered the way she did if she had
Speaker 1: had that. So I do think that's helped me a lot.
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about parenting in your book and
Speaker 1: how we try to parents the sadness out of our children.
Speaker 1: How do you think we can overcome that? It's really
Speaker 1: hard to overcome it. Um, I do think we can,
Speaker 1: but it's it's hard to overcome it. And I remember
Speaker 1: my mother in law. I'm really close with my mother
Speaker 1: in law. She's a very um she's really fun, she's
Speaker 1: very upbeat. She has sort of my my husband's very
Speaker 1: exuberant temperament. They're very similar that way. But she's also
Speaker 1: like Samantha like me. She's a huge leaky faucet. We
Speaker 1: actually joke that I should have called this book Leaky
Speaker 1: Faucet the Bitter Sweet Book. Like you know, she'll she'll
Speaker 1: tear up at the drop of a hat. So anyway,
Speaker 1: she just randomly told me right after my son was born,
Speaker 1: my first one, She's like, you know, it's really hard
Speaker 1: when your kids are upset about something. Because we know
Speaker 1: what we can handle, so we can handle our own troubles,
Speaker 1: but when it's your child's troubles, you kind of don't
Speaker 1: know exactly at first what they can handle. So not
Speaker 1: only are you experiencing it vicariously, but you're experiencing it
Speaker 1: in an amplified form. And I do think that makes
Speaker 1: it really tough as parents when our kids are crying
Speaker 1: or going through it a tough time. You know, you
Speaker 1: just feel if you're not careful, you can feel all
Speaker 1: of that as if it's filling up the whole world.
Speaker 1: But I tell this story in the book of a
Speaker 1: very small trouble that my kids went through and how
Speaker 1: normalizing sadness was so helpful. And the story is that
Speaker 1: when they were really little, we rented this house in
Speaker 1: the countryside for a week and right next to the
Speaker 1: house was a field in which lived two donkeys, and
Speaker 1: the kids fell in love with these donkeys. Their names
Speaker 1: were Lucky and Norman, and they spent all day every day,
Speaker 1: you know, feeding them carrots and it was bliss. And
Speaker 1: then came the last two days of the vacation where
Speaker 1: they start realizing that we're going to have to go
Speaker 1: home and say goodbye to the donkeys, and they start
Speaker 1: crying themselves to sleep, like they're just totally bereft, because
Speaker 1: of course that kind of goodbye to a young child
Speaker 1: signifies all goodbyes, and we don't know it. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like symbolic of mortality itself. They don't they
Speaker 1: don't know that technically, but that's what they're reacting to.
Speaker 1: And so you know what, your your kids crying at
Speaker 1: night and you're like trying to comfort them. So we're
Speaker 1: saying all these things of like, well maybe we'll come
Speaker 1: back next year and you'll see them again. Um, someone
Speaker 1: else will come and take care of the donkeys, and
Speaker 1: nothing is helping until until we say to them, you know,
Speaker 1: this is actually part of life, this sadness, and you
Speaker 1: won't feel it forever, but but you're going to feel
Speaker 1: it again. You've felt it before, you felt it, you're
Speaker 1: going to feel it again. Everybody feels it. This is
Speaker 1: part of what life is, and just know that and
Speaker 1: you'll feel better in a few days. But it was
Speaker 1: like the normalizing of the sadness was the only thing
Speaker 1: that made them stop crying. Because, especially for children who
Speaker 1: are growing up in relative comfort, they are sent the
Speaker 1: message that life is what's happening, that real life is
Speaker 1: when everything's going well, and that the moments where you're
Speaker 1: saying goodbye, or the moments of sickness or the moments
Speaker 1: of bereavement or you know, whatever it is, that those
Speaker 1: are the moments that are detours from real life. And
Speaker 1: so of course then they're going to be resisting all
Speaker 1: of that because we're not supposed to go in the detour.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you can help them see that
Speaker 1: this is all part of the experience, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: it less sad, but there's less resistance to it. Well.
Speaker 1: And then, and there's such a delicate message in your
Speaker 1: book for parents, right because it's not that you want
Speaker 1: parents to ignore their kids feelings and say, oh, crying
Speaker 1: is part of life. You know, you go go off
Speaker 1: and cry. That's kind of the opposite of what you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're saying, when they're crying, help them assign meaning to
Speaker 1: that and help them accept what the pain is. And
Speaker 1: I think that's so often as parents we do the
Speaker 1: pendulum one way or the other. We try to wipe
Speaker 1: away the tears, or we you know, ignore children. And
Speaker 1: I think it's so important to to thread that needle. Um.
Speaker 1: In many ways, I think your next book could be
Speaker 1: a parenting book because there is so much there that
Speaker 1: that can be applied to parenting. And similarly, by the way,
Speaker 1: there is a book I used to give to people
Speaker 1: when they had experienced grief and and the death of
Speaker 1: a loved one. And I think that in many ways
Speaker 1: your book can now be that book because there's so
Speaker 1: much in there about grief and how to manage grief.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's so healthy the perspective you share. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because you know, it didn't start out as
Speaker 1: a book about grief, and I I don't think about
Speaker 1: as explicitly a grief book. You know, it's it started out,
Speaker 1: really is UM me trying to answer the question of
Speaker 1: why it is that so many of us have such
Speaker 1: an intense and intensely pleasurable reaction to sad music. Um,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how on earth that
Speaker 1: could possibly be. And yeah, and it kind of set
Speaker 1: me off on this quest for years, for years and years,
Speaker 1: looking at this bittersweet tradition of like all these religions
Speaker 1: and artists and writers who have been talking about this
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, about the way in which our
Speaker 1: melancholy sides are connected to our deepest creativity and our
Speaker 1: deepest communion, and you know, to a sense of of
Speaker 1: the divine. Even whether you're secular or atheist, there's there's
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter, there's some sense of longing for
Speaker 1: some higher state, and all of this is connected with melancholy.
Speaker 1: So the book started out as that inquiry, But of
Speaker 1: course you can't really look at that subject without thinking
Speaker 1: about bereavement and about how like mortality and impermanence is
Speaker 1: really at the heart of what melancolia is. Um you know,
Speaker 1: it's like an intense awareness of life's impermanence at every moment.
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Speaker 1: the w marketplace dot com. We're gonna now go to
Speaker 1: this speed round Susan, where we're going to ask you
Speaker 1: just a few questions and you can give us quick answers.
Speaker 1: What book are you reading right now? Who by Fire?
Speaker 1: Which is a book about Leonard co which just came
Speaker 1: out by the author Mattie Friedman. You know from reading
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet, I'm kind of obsessed with Leonard Cohne, and
Speaker 1: I even dedicated the book to him, especially like his
Speaker 1: the line from anthem, his song Anthem, which is there's
Speaker 1: a crack and everything that's where the light gets in.
Speaker 1: What was the last thing that made you cry? It's
Speaker 1: so funny because this happens to me so frequently that
Speaker 1: now I can't even think of one. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say, I think of tears and
Speaker 1: goose bumps in the same category goose bumps, or maybe
Speaker 1: like a slightly milder version of the same phenomenon, And
Speaker 1: I just had them about five times during this conversation.
Speaker 1: Who leaves you star struck? I mean musicians do all
Speaker 1: the time, like every single day, because there's not a
Speaker 1: day that I'm not like sitting down and listening to music,
Speaker 1: so they're constantly leaving me star struck. There's a musician
Speaker 1: name Benjamin Clementine whose song Condolence I was just listening
Speaker 1: to the other day. UM. I actually put together this
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet playlist that goes along with my book, so
Speaker 1: you can find it if you're curious, on Spotify or
Speaker 1: Apple Music. And I have that song on the playlist.
Speaker 1: It's really beautiful. What kind of sleeper are you? I
Speaker 1: used to be an amazing, amazing sleeper, and I was
Speaker 1: very dedicated to getting my eight hours and everything. I
Speaker 1: have to say, Now that I m in my middle years,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of trouble sleeping. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure that out. Well. Luke Burns is our male perspective,
Speaker 1: and he always joins us at the end of the
Speaker 1: show with often the most important question. I really like
Speaker 1: your perspective on introverts. Um. I have a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter. I'm trying to figure out exactly where she
Speaker 1: falls in this category, but on certain days she's a
Speaker 1: certain way, so I'm just gonna leave it alone. Do
Speaker 1: you ever ask her about it? Do you ever ask
Speaker 1: her what she thinks she is? I'm trying not to
Speaker 1: leave eater. Yeah, I can see that because I'm not
Speaker 1: really good always all the time asking her questions without
Speaker 1: trying to lead her in a direction. So you have
Speaker 1: to like figure out which are the activities where your
Speaker 1: child is more likely to tell you more, Like I've
Speaker 1: noticed with my boys who are teenagers, like if we
Speaker 1: go and play catch while they're throwing the football, so
Speaker 1: there's so much more forthcoming than at any other moment.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what it is for your daughter,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's candy get her in a good mood.
Speaker 1: But lou, actually there is so much great parenting stuff
Speaker 1: in Susan's book. You know, lose right now in an
Speaker 1: interesting spot in his own life because he's his daughter
Speaker 1: has just come to live with him, and she's a teenager,
Speaker 1: and so maybe you could share some of your pearls
Speaker 1: of wisdom of parenting a teenager and gaining a teenager's
Speaker 1: trust throughout such a difficult life phase. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess my big thing is um And I don't
Speaker 1: even know if the following thing is only about teenagers.
Speaker 1: I think it's about people in general. But to really
Speaker 1: not have judgment, you know, you just want to understand
Speaker 1: you don't want to judge. And I think that if
Speaker 1: you approach a teenager that way, they're just much more
Speaker 1: likely to let you in and open up and keep
Speaker 1: their relationship healthy because you're communicating to them without even
Speaker 1: having to say it in so many words that you're
Speaker 1: just totally on their side. And then when you do
Speaker 1: have to set limits of like you know, you probably
Speaker 1: really shouldn't do such and such thing, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's in your best interest. They know that you're not
Speaker 1: coming from a place of judgment, You're not coming from
Speaker 1: a place of overreaction. You're just like reasoning it through
Speaker 1: with them. Sam, I have to say that I almost
Speaker 1: cried about seventy two times talking with Susan. I have
Speaker 1: to say that I had no idea I would relate
Speaker 1: to her book so deeply in her messages so deeply,
Speaker 1: and I really think everyone would benefit from understanding it.
Speaker 1: I think we see the world in black and white
Speaker 1: so often, right like that person is a happy person,
Speaker 1: that persons sad person, that person is a dark person,
Speaker 1: that prints is a light person, or you know that
Speaker 1: person is optimistic and that person is pessimistic, and and really,
Speaker 1: after reading her book and just listening to her in
Speaker 1: our conversation, it makes you realize that, like the ideal
Speaker 1: is to blend those things and accept all of it.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really profound takeaway to a profound message.
Speaker 1: Life is better sweet, all of it. A single day
Speaker 1: can be better sweet, and emotion can be better sweet.
Speaker 1: And I think we want everything to be happy, and
Speaker 1: it's not right, even the parts that we talked about parenting.
Speaker 1: Because my kids are a little that really resonated with
Speaker 1: me to prepare them and arm them with the fact
Speaker 1: that bitter sweet is okay, sadness is okay, longing is okay.
Speaker 1: They bring into sharp clarity the good parts, and they
Speaker 1: show that you care. And somehow we've gotten away from
Speaker 1: that as a society, that we should have those feelings
Speaker 1: and that we should embrace them and that they're okay. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's like all we do
Speaker 1: know is like push pills on people to make them happier,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's a zillion books on happiness, and
Speaker 1: it really makes you realize that what if we just
Speaker 1: accepted all of the emotions and allow people to feel more,
Speaker 1: maybe that would make them more fulfilled and happier right.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
Speaker 1: We would appreciate it if you leave her view wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with us
Speaker 1: on social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's Her
Speaker 1: Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
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Speaker 1: park Place Payments at park place Payments dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: to our producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective blue
Speaker 1: Burns h