Speaker 1: These are in me. These are so intensively in me.
Speaker 1: I police myself, and as I came to understand, I
Speaker 1: police other women because culture. Culture is contagious. It has
Speaker 1: long tails, it is long teeth, and it is in us,
Speaker 1: and we pass it on to each other like a virus.
Speaker 2: This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, best
Speaker 2: selling author Elise Lunan on the price women pay to
Speaker 2: be good, how these seven deadly sins might be keeping
Speaker 2: you from making friends, and why we don't allow men
Speaker 2: to be sad, settle in everybody. All of that and
Speaker 2: a whole lot more coming up right after this first break.
Speaker 2: Before we get started, one quick note, Well, we cover
Speaker 2: a lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together.
Speaker 2: This show is not a substitute for skilled support with
Speaker 2: the licensed mental health provider or a professional supervision related
Speaker 2: to your work. Hi, friends, This week it is all
Speaker 2: about these seven deadly sins. Sort of, it's sort of
Speaker 2: about the seven deadly sins, but really it's about the
Speaker 2: things we long for, things like love and connection and
Speaker 2: success and rest, among other things. Alise Lunan's best selling
Speaker 2: book on Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins, and
Speaker 2: the Price Women Pay to be Good. She explores the
Speaker 2: ideas we've all inherited about how we are supposed to
Speaker 2: behave regardless of gender, and what we're supposed to want,
Speaker 2: or more precisely, what we're not supposed to want. Now,
Speaker 2: before you think that this episode is just going to
Speaker 2: be really heady theoretical conversations, it's actually quite personal. Alisa
Speaker 2: and I talk about envy and competition and who is
Speaker 2: allowed to be at the top of the success ladder.
Speaker 2: We also get to talk about why women are often
Speaker 2: seen as fundamentally caddy, which is a really cool conversation.
Speaker 2: We talk about our fears of being judged as too needy,
Speaker 2: too loud, too full of ourselves, and how all of
Speaker 2: that stuff keeps us from making friends. I told you,
Speaker 2: it gets really personal. We also get into the lost
Speaker 2: sin of sadness, which is a fascinating concept that I
Speaker 2: didn't know about. Somebody who I kind of pride myself
Speaker 2: on knowing all things sadness no idea about the relationship
Speaker 2: between sadness and the Seven Deadly Sins. So we get
Speaker 2: into that lost sin of sadness and what that means
Speaker 2: for men and boys. Now, whether the Seven Deadly Sins
Speaker 2: have been part of your religious tradition or not, they're
Speaker 2: part of our inherited, internalized cultural traditions, so they affect everybody.
Speaker 2: You'll leave this conversation with a new perspective and hopefully
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about your own true desires and
Speaker 2: what stands in the way of the life that you
Speaker 2: long for. In addition to her New York Times bestseller
Speaker 2: On Our Best Behavior, Elise Lunan has and for Oprah magazine,
Speaker 2: l Decorps, other media outlets, and she's the host of
Speaker 2: the super cool podcast Pulling the Thread. So if you're
Speaker 2: interested in these sort of conversations about complex interrelated issues,
Speaker 2: check out Pulling the Thread. Because who she is our people,
Speaker 2: Elise is smart and insightful and thoughtful and kind, and
Speaker 2: I think you're going to love her and this conversation.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it. My conversation with Elise Lunan
Speaker 2: and the Price we pay to be good Ellis. I
Speaker 2: am so thrilled to have you here. It will surprise
Speaker 2: no one that we have been chatting forever before we
Speaker 2: officially get rolling that.
Speaker 1: Was supposed to be a secret.
Speaker 2: Sh don't tell anyone that Megan really loves to talk
Speaker 2: to all of her friend guests. Anyway, I was telling
Speaker 2: you before we got rolling that I had a really
Speaker 2: hard time narrowing down the things that I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to you about, because the intersection of the things
Speaker 2: that fascinate you and the things that fascinate me is
Speaker 2: largely a circle. So there are a million places we
Speaker 2: could begin, but because your book is the sort of
Speaker 2: the anchor for so many of those things, I want
Speaker 2: to start there and then we'll move on beyond that.
Speaker 2: So to get everybody on the same page, could you
Speaker 2: introduce us to the Seven Deadly sins and the human
Speaker 2: needs and desires that are sort of the opposite sides
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, because I had to be reminded of what
Speaker 1: the seven Deadly Sins were when I as I was
Speaker 1: coming into this idea and trying to understand this code
Speaker 1: of goodness and how it's come to circumscribe the lives
Speaker 1: of women, and ultimately I came to the Seven Deadly Sins,
Speaker 1: which reads like a punch card of all of the
Speaker 1: human instincts, appetites, and desires, that we have been programmed
Speaker 1: to deny. So they are slaw, pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust,
Speaker 1: and anger. And then and we can get an to
Speaker 1: the history or not. But originally before these were the
Speaker 1: cardinal vices, they were never in the Bible. They were
Speaker 1: called eight demonic thoughts, and the eighth with sadness, and
Speaker 1: it fell off the list. I write about it in
Speaker 1: the book, as you know. But those are these deadly vices,
Speaker 1: things to be avoided. And this isn't a book that's
Speaker 1: like a stunty let's just go and spend a year
Speaker 1: being lustful and greedy and gluttonous. This is about reconciliation
Speaker 1: and balance. And in our quest for this externally adjudicated
Speaker 1: idea of goodness, what it is to be a good woman,
Speaker 1: A woman who needs no rest, has no appetite, has
Speaker 1: no wants, has no desires, is never upset that in
Speaker 1: this quest to sort of achieve this golden ring of
Speaker 1: goodness and our patriarchal society, we spend all of our
Speaker 1: energy denying all of these instincts that make us human
Speaker 1: and denying the very facts of what it is to
Speaker 1: be alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that You're like This isn't just a
Speaker 2: book about go indulge your lust for the next year, Like,
Speaker 2: it's not that. It's more of a let's look under
Speaker 2: the hood of these things, and why are there rules
Speaker 2: for how to behave? And why are their rules around
Speaker 2: not being hungry? And why are their rules around not
Speaker 2: wanting things in your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And exactly that these rules, And this is the thing
Speaker 1: that what I really wanted to express in this book
Speaker 1: is that this is about cultural programming. This is about
Speaker 1: internalized patriarchy and internalized misogyny. And much like internalized racism,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily subscribe. You're not consciously choosing. You're not
Speaker 1: saying like, I abide, I abide.
Speaker 2: Like but this you didn't check off the terms and
Speaker 2: the terms and conditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, terms and conditions exactly. You know. I was
Speaker 1: raised in a largely secular, very progressive, alternative family. I
Speaker 1: have a feminist husband, et cetera, et cetera. These are
Speaker 1: in me. These are so intensively in me. I police myself,
Speaker 1: and as I came to understand, I police other women
Speaker 1: because culture. Culture is contagious, It has long tails, it
Speaker 1: is long teeth, and it is in us and we
Speaker 1: pass it on to each other like.
Speaker 2: A virus, not even thinking about it. And I think,
Speaker 2: like we'll use an example here. I love that you
Speaker 2: brought up like I police it in myself and I
Speaker 2: police it in other people. There's something you said about
Speaker 2: like it's like an internal cattle proud like reminding me
Speaker 2: of my place, right. And I think a really good
Speaker 2: example of how this shows up because I think that
Speaker 2: people can hear this and be like, I don't get
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. Right when you see you're scrolling
Speaker 2: through your Instagram feed and when you see some women
Speaker 2: being proud of themselves or being really confident in being
Speaker 2: out there and really expressing themselves, like, there is a
Speaker 2: part of you that like is like, who the hell
Speaker 2: does she think she is? Like? Or how like what
Speaker 2: is she doing wearing that? Like? Ooh, right, that's what
Speaker 2: we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is the projection of like all of that
Speaker 1: badness that we are our quote unquote badness that we
Speaker 1: are suppressing. And yeah, I talk about the cattle proplem.
Speaker 1: And here's an easy example in the chapter on sloth,
Speaker 1: which I don't I think every single woman can relate to.
Speaker 1: I really don't know any women who are lazy or
Speaker 1: leading particularly RESTful lives I write about. You know how
Speaker 1: my husband pointed out to me that in the twelve
Speaker 1: years that we've been married, I've never been able to
Speaker 1: sit and watch a TV show with him for more
Speaker 1: than twenty minutes before I am up. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get my computer, I am starting some laundry, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go do some dishes, anything. I'm going to do anything,
Speaker 1: because I feel so uncomfortable not being productive. And what
Speaker 1: the aha for me is, you know, we can look
Speaker 1: at all the social science about the disparities between men
Speaker 1: and women in the workforce in terms of who's putting
Speaker 1: in more sort of carrying hours, or who's putting in
Speaker 1: more hours in general, certainly at home, right all of
Speaker 1: the science, the only time that men fathers in same
Speaker 1: sex marriages outstripped mothers is when the mother is the
Speaker 1: sole breadwinner. And even then I think she might do
Speaker 1: more housework. I can't remember. It's sunning and sad, but
Speaker 1: this is what I writing this book made me understand.
Speaker 1: I had so much rage against my husband because of
Speaker 1: course these disparities exist in our relationship as well. We're
Speaker 1: not special. And then I had to realize as I
Speaker 1: was writing the book, like he's not actually demanding, asking
Speaker 1: or even wanting me to make dinner five nights a week,
Speaker 1: and like polish our floors. This is me. These are
Speaker 1: my own internal standards about what it is to be
Speaker 1: a good woman, a good mother, and a good partner.
Speaker 1: And they are insidious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really are. And I love the questioning of like,
Speaker 2: wait a second, why am I doing this? Is this
Speaker 2: an external demand? Is this an unspoken expectation? Because sometimes
Speaker 2: that's in there as well. Yeah, but also like just
Speaker 2: that taking that step outside of things and going why
Speaker 2: am I doing this? What makes me feel like I
Speaker 2: have to do this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Just that space of being curious about where it comes from.
Speaker 2: I think this is the special magic of your book
Speaker 2: is that it gets people to make that space to
Speaker 2: be curious. Right, Yeah, do these things live in me?
Speaker 2: And if they do, where do I see them showing up?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And most likely they do, because you know, as
Speaker 1: a progressive woman who's interested, like you in social justice
Speaker 1: and a more equitable world. What I also found is
Speaker 1: that I would be having conversations, sometimes great conversations sort
Speaker 1: of on my podcast or previous jobs about the world
Speaker 1: and we would be talking about the patriarchy and talking
Speaker 1: about it as an it in a day and a
Speaker 1: la la la la la. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, like, what is it? Is it? Oz?
Speaker 1: Who is behind the curtain? Isn't Mitch McConnell, you know?
Speaker 1: And I could sort of in my own life identify
Speaker 1: patriarchal men. Certainly I could definitely identify patriarchal women. And
Speaker 1: yet in my own experience, despite like and then obviously
Speaker 1: there are sort of the big cultural misogynistic men, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and women, but I couldn't find it in my own life. Again,
Speaker 1: to that point that I made about my husband, I
Speaker 1: would look at the male bosses I've had, I would,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't find. I couldn't source in a way
Speaker 1: that explained to me the chasm for women between where
Speaker 1: we are and where we should be. And then when
Speaker 1: you look at all the social science research, it's quite
Speaker 1: clear that women are as hard on other women, if
Speaker 1: not harder significantly than men. Because we'll say things like well,
Speaker 1: I just I expect more from women, again relying on
Speaker 1: this cultural idea of quote unquote goodness and these ideas
Speaker 1: of what it is to achieve that which is typically
Speaker 1: out of anyone's reach, doesn't allow for anyone's humanity, anyone's learning.
Speaker 1: We certainly see this in the way that we cancel
Speaker 1: each other, destroy each other, criticize each other with very
Speaker 1: little generosity typically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, that lack of generosity.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of the interviews that you've been
Speaker 2: doing are focused on the envy chapter, so we're not
Speaker 2: going to spend a lot of time in that, but
Speaker 2: I think we want to bring that in here for
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: It's important because it's so it's for women unfortunately, right.
Speaker 2: Like the whole like you're too big, you're too loud,
Speaker 2: you're paid too well, all of this stuff, and we
Speaker 2: want to cut that down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is it's the beginning the Gateway Sin. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because the Gateway Sin.
Speaker 2: Is that what you just said?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said, it's the Gateway Sin. It's really where
Speaker 1: I started the book and was wondering if this wasn't
Speaker 1: sort of all of it before, all of this idea
Speaker 1: of all of the reasons that women are so hard
Speaker 1: on other women, and then I sort of looked at
Speaker 1: it contextually and was like, where did it come from?
Speaker 1: What is it. Oh, it's a sin. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, this is the house, like
Speaker 1: envy might be one of the might be the closet
Speaker 1: in the master bedroom, but then they all live in
Speaker 1: this this house, this structure for women that's quite oppressive,
Speaker 1: but envy. It started with this conversation with Lori Gottlieb,
Speaker 1: who you are probably friends with as well, and a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist who wrote, maybe you should talk to someone, and
Speaker 1: she said she tells her clients to pay attention to
Speaker 1: their envy because it tells them what they want. And
Speaker 1: I just like, for whatever reason, it was a small moment,
Speaker 1: but I just couldn't get out of my head and
Speaker 1: thought about it for six months, nine months before I
Speaker 1: started even working on the proposal for the book, running
Speaker 1: through it, running through it in my daily interactions, because
Speaker 1: I realized that I envy felt so gross to me,
Speaker 1: so bad that I refused to acknowledge it, and so
Speaker 1: I had to wonder where I was projecting it. And
Speaker 1: then this what I could infer is that I was
Speaker 1: projecting it on the people who were inspiring my envy,
Speaker 1: and I was deprecating them to make myself feel better.
Speaker 1: So it was that I don't like her. She rubs
Speaker 1: me the wrong way. Who does she think she is?
Speaker 1: I didn't think her book was that good. I don't
Speaker 1: know why people are so into it. Whatever form, we
Speaker 1: can all recognize. And this again, the book is about
Speaker 1: sort of culture versus nature. This is one of those
Speaker 1: things about women that culturally we've been told that's just
Speaker 1: who you are. You're all catty, bitch. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you're all bitches. You're all stabbing each other in the back.
Speaker 1: We can talk about anger and how we're conditioned for
Speaker 1: covert aggression and whispering and backstabbing in alliance building because
Speaker 1: we're not allowed to be overtly angry or aggressive. But
Speaker 1: I resist that. But that's the sort of conversation. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's just how women are that keeps us stuck in
Speaker 1: these cycles. And when I actually looked at it, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, right, these women who are tormentors quote
Speaker 1: unquote mentors are pushing on a dream that I have
Speaker 1: for myself. They are shining a light, they are full
Speaker 1: of information. They are doing something that I want to do,
Speaker 1: or they have something that I want to have. And
Speaker 1: this is my soul knocking and saying, do the thing.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Do the thing. So it's an
Speaker 1: amazing information that transition from E. Gross, I'm gonna diminish
Speaker 1: you because your light makes me feel bad versus oh wow,
Speaker 1: like I want to understand what you're doing? How are
Speaker 1: you doing this? How can I do this too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something in our longings in that. Yes, right,
Speaker 2: there's something so deep in our longings, like the things
Speaker 2: that you get into those like white hot rages of
Speaker 2: how dare she? But her book isn't that good? And
Speaker 2: like I started this and like all of this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this stuff that comes out of really a feeling of
Speaker 2: there is something here that I want that I don't
Speaker 2: feel like I'm being given, or that you know, this
Speaker 2: isn't fair, or he's there, here is something I'm longing for.
Speaker 2: And can I recode my understanding of that spark of envy,
Speaker 2: that spark of she's not all that? Can I recode
Speaker 2: that for myself to I like that you say my
Speaker 2: soul is knocking here. It's like the doorbell of your
Speaker 2: desires is getting wrong right.
Speaker 1: Swing it's literally early calling. Yeah, and it can sound
Speaker 1: like an annoying ring, but when you are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that is my calling saying step into this, like stop it,
Speaker 1: step forward, do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, even just articulate your longings, right, because one
Speaker 2: of the things you talk about in the book is
Speaker 2: like it's not always obvious, but like we are in
Speaker 2: so many ways conditioned out of our longings, conditioned out
Speaker 2: of desire for anything.
Speaker 1: Sure, yes, I mean, do you know what you want today? Right?
Speaker 2: Like? I mean, I that might not be the most
Speaker 2: fair question for me, as a relentless self investigator and
Speaker 2: a therapist who's used to asking those questions, because I
Speaker 2: may not know what I want, but I know that
Speaker 2: I want, right, So that may not be the I
Speaker 2: may not be the fairest person for that question, but
Speaker 2: I think recognizing that there are things that I long
Speaker 2: for that I see other people appear to have. I
Speaker 2: don't know what's true under the hood, but they appear
Speaker 2: to have it. And all of my reactions to the
Speaker 2: reflection of somebody who has something I long for, like
Speaker 2: they're all valid and they're all information, and sometimes somebody's
Speaker 2: success or whatever in whatever realm pisses me off so
Speaker 2: much that it identifies a longing for me that I
Speaker 2: didn't know I had. Yeah, right, So I guess my
Speaker 2: very long winded answer. There is I know a lot
Speaker 2: of what I want, but there's a lot that I'm
Speaker 2: not aware of that is probably acting under the surface
Speaker 2: in things.
Speaker 1: And those tones because what I think people will find
Speaker 1: because you can reverse engineer I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: wanted even though it was so obvious. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like hello, but you can reverse engineer it. You know.
Speaker 1: I've had this conversation sort of with friends on where
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't really know what I want to do,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, we'll see who's driving you crazy. This
Speaker 1: is not to say, like Marjorie Taylor Green is driving
Speaker 1: you crazy because she's doing harmful.
Speaker 2: Behavior that we're not talking about that kind of r you.
Speaker 1: Can identify if you can identify the problematic behavior, it's
Speaker 1: not envy, but it's this when you have sort of
Speaker 1: that like this person the very essence irritates me. Something
Speaker 1: is there's information there, but you can reverse engineer it.
Speaker 1: You know, who's sort of like who's irking you because
Speaker 1: maybe you feel like they're in your lane somehow, and
Speaker 1: then move towards that and just get curious because I
Speaker 1: think what happens is we're so ashamed of these bad feelings.
Speaker 1: We don't let them come up. We don't diagnose them,
Speaker 1: we don't allow them. That's the other great revelation for
Speaker 1: me was just sitting with a discomfort and being like,
Speaker 1: what's happening in my body? Why is this person?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Why am I agitated? Why am I irritated? What's happening?
Speaker 1: Let's just like be present doing that self inquiry for
Speaker 1: a minute two minutes, and then you're like, ah, okay,
Speaker 1: rather know it feels worse in this quest for goodness
Speaker 1: deprecating someone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, then you're just stuck in it like that
Speaker 2: is that's the seventh level of hell right there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: We've been talking with a Last Lunan, author of the
Speaker 2: New York Times best selling book On Our Best Behavior.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to it. I love the permission giving
Speaker 2: in there to be curious about the emotions and the
Speaker 2: sensations and the thoughts that are arising, right Like, that's
Speaker 2: good medicine in there, because it's not like, notice this
Speaker 2: stuff and then heap some judgment on yourself for coveting
Speaker 2: what somebody else has, right Like, no, like it's not
Speaker 2: we're not talking about judgment for being covetous. We're talking
Speaker 2: about information has arrived and can you be.
Speaker 1: Cremation has arrived? Yeah, And there's always cultural context. What
Speaker 1: I loved about writing this book is that the sins
Speaker 1: like they also crash into each other. So envy is
Speaker 1: very closely related to greed and this idea of scarcity
Speaker 1: that is so dominant in women's lives, particularly around opportunity,
Speaker 1: this sort of tokenism, tokenism that because this person has it,
Speaker 1: it means I can't. There's only ever one woman, yes, right,
Speaker 1: so in order to have it, I had to destroy her,
Speaker 1: to throne her, rather than saying, okay, she has it,
Speaker 1: therefore I can have it to move over men, like
Speaker 1: we're going to take over more space.
Speaker 2: That is a conversation, really fascinating detail that I had
Speaker 2: not thought of. I've been thinking a lot about that
Speaker 2: competition for resources, right, Like if they have success, it
Speaker 2: means less for me. It's like that, Like it's like pie,
Speaker 2: right Like if you have it, I don't get any
Speaker 2: But I hadn't thought of it, like there is only
Speaker 2: ever allowed to be one successful woman in the room
Speaker 2: because all of the other spots are taken by men.
Speaker 2: Fascinating layer to that interesting in just it's very in
Speaker 2: our conscience consciousness that there's really like there's some box
Speaker 2: to check, there's a quota.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's real. I'm not saying that it's not
Speaker 1: a real event. And particularly in business, however, instead of saying, okay,
Speaker 1: then I'll let's just maintain that quota and I'll replace
Speaker 1: her in myself and guard against other women, it is
Speaker 1: a function of questioning that foundational idea and saying no,
Speaker 1: she's saying, and I'm joining, and the requirement for women
Speaker 1: because I think so often we're like we perceive men
Speaker 1: as the ones to whom we as the other and
Speaker 1: then but really we're like sort of doing this in
Speaker 1: fighting while maintaining the status quo and sort of giving
Speaker 1: face to this idea that we're supporting other women, but
Speaker 1: like the evidence isn't quite there, but we really need
Speaker 1: to do that because we are not only half the population,
Speaker 1: if not more. I don't know the latest demographic stats,
Speaker 1: but many of us are primary breadwinners. There's just no
Speaker 1: other real accounting for the discrepancy other than like, let's
Speaker 1: get behind each other. I think that's our greatest hope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get behind each other.
Speaker 2: I love that it's a little bit of a sidebar here,
Speaker 2: but I think that this is something that I've been
Speaker 2: seeing happen in different social justice or activist communities in
Speaker 2: issues right, like how dare you care about this over
Speaker 2: here while the forests are burning? How dare you care
Speaker 2: about this while this is happening? And when I watch
Speaker 2: that unfolding in the world, and when I watch for
Speaker 2: that impulse in myself, it's like, we need all of
Speaker 2: these things, Like we don't need to be infighting against
Speaker 2: each other, Like can we look at each other and say,
Speaker 2: you're holding down the fort on gun violence. I am
Speaker 2: working over here on transjustice, and we need all of
Speaker 2: us and we are all united against the common enemy
Speaker 2: of violence, apathy and ignorance. And instead we're fighting over
Speaker 2: the scraps that are left over from those who are
Speaker 2: running the apathy and ignorance machine.
Speaker 1: And we fight over our perfection in all of these
Speaker 1: different spheres in a way that is so deeply unhelpful.
Speaker 1: And watching the left and people who are like ninety
Speaker 1: percent aligned, eighty percent aligned, you know it goes to
Speaker 1: Loretta Ross, who I love, and her sort of calling
Speaker 1: in culture rather than calling out and Essentially, she's like,
Speaker 1: I'll work with anyone who's at least like ten percent
Speaker 1: aligned with me. There's certain people, you know, the people
Speaker 1: who stay who stormed the capitol. She's like, they're never
Speaker 1: going to be my people. But like, there is so
Speaker 1: much common ground, but the way that we sort of
Speaker 1: persecute each other for imperfect speech or just not having
Speaker 1: it all right all the time makes it too terrifying,
Speaker 1: I think for so many of us to participate, and
Speaker 1: then gives excuses again, easy excuses for people to say
Speaker 1: I'm out opting out, like I don't want to engage.
Speaker 1: This isn't safe, so we have to like I mean,
Speaker 1: this gets into the anger chapter, but there's like multiple
Speaker 1: calls here. One is internally we each need to develop
Speaker 1: the ability to withstand criticism because what I you know,
Speaker 1: the book is about how women are conditioned for these
Speaker 1: this external idea of goodness, men are conditioned for power.
Speaker 1: But it gets too at this idea that the most
Speaker 1: harmful thing you can do to a woman is destroy
Speaker 1: her reputation, and we do this by calling her a
Speaker 1: bad person, unkind, toxic, a bad mother, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: There are million adjectives. Everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: That's enough to make a female founder or anyone just disappear.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, a man can do anything. He can go
Speaker 1: to Jay clearly and if yeah, exactly, and if he
Speaker 1: we still perceive him as powerful, we will still revere
Speaker 1: him and take him seriously. But for so many women,
Speaker 1: there's no recovery from reputational damage. It's very very not
Speaker 1: I want to say odd, it's very sad, but it's
Speaker 1: completely understandable.
Speaker 2: It's understandable, and it's predictable.
Speaker 1: Yes, but we have to be like bringing that to
Speaker 1: the front of our consciousness, both in terms of ignoring
Speaker 1: ourselves to those attacks, to say no, I'm not going away. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm here to learn. I'm sure I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get it right, I'm gonna be I'm just gonna stay
Speaker 1: and be present, regardless of what you might say or think.
Speaker 1: So it requires a certain durability, particularly for white women
Speaker 1: like you and me, but it also requires grace, generosity.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, oh, come on, friends, and to
Speaker 1: go back to your original point. This like the ability
Speaker 1: to run a relay not a sprint, and that we
Speaker 1: all we all have different gifts, we are all differently abled,
Speaker 1: differently privileged, et cetera. We all all have those sort
Speaker 1: of special spikes and that's what needs to come out
Speaker 1: of each of us. And you're different than I am,
Speaker 1: and that's.
Speaker 2: What we're here to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yes, like I'm going to go and work
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 2: You work on this.
Speaker 1: It is as you know more than I do. It's
Speaker 1: like the collective grief and overwhelmed of today's moment beyond
Speaker 1: what's happening in our personal lives. We can't divide and conquer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're screwed. There's no way of taking all of this
Speaker 1: on ourselves, right.
Speaker 2: It has to be a collaborative movement, which means looking
Speaker 2: at all of the ways that we have internalized and
Speaker 2: learned competition and to fear judgment. So I want to
Speaker 2: bring this back down into the more intimate sphere here.
Speaker 2: We know that I'm a big fan of all of
Speaker 2: these concepts and these practices in the world of making
Speaker 2: the world a better place for everybody. But I think
Speaker 2: that sometimes we can lose the intimacy of this that
Speaker 2: we're not just talking about You're not just talking about
Speaker 2: I'm not just talking about these bigger issues. The seven
Speaker 2: deadly's the things that women have learned about being good.
Speaker 2: These are things that impact our intimate daily lives. So
Speaker 2: there's you mentioned it at the top. Here, there's a
Speaker 2: whole section towards the end of the book on grief
Speaker 2: and sodness. But to my reading, there is grief and
Speaker 2: loss in every single chapter of this book. And here's
Speaker 2: the example that I want to pull out. I have
Speaker 2: it marked as coming from the Pride chapter, but it
Speaker 2: might not be, so you correct me. But in one
Speaker 2: of those chapters you wrote, I have to wonder how
Speaker 2: many times this has kept me from trying to make friends,
Speaker 2: or more specifically, to put myself in any sort of
Speaker 2: situation where I could be rejected by other women. This
Speaker 2: is the personal, intimate part of this giant collective issue
Speaker 2: that we were just talking about, that competition between women.
Speaker 2: This is something that actually affects us on a very
Speaker 2: deep intimate level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. I don't know what chapter that is,
Speaker 1: but it could be in any of the chapters, right,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it could have It could be because essentially
Speaker 1: every chapter in regard, depending on what the particular sin
Speaker 1: or vice is, is about extending ourselves into the world
Speaker 1: more fully and the risk slapping that might invariably come
Speaker 1: as we're shamed for being too greedy, too gluttonous, too lustful,
Speaker 1: whatever it may.
Speaker 2: Be, right, too full of ourselves, too proud, too proud,
Speaker 2: too good.
Speaker 1: Too proud to put ourselves out there, and how isolating
Speaker 1: that is. And we were talking, you know, before the show,
Speaker 1: but about our the weird synchronicities of what you studied
Speaker 1: and the setup for the book. And I wrote this chapter,
Speaker 1: which we debated keeping. I'm so glad that we kept it.
Speaker 1: It's the most academic but it's really not that hard,
Speaker 1: so everyone listening can most certainly get through it. But
Speaker 1: it's about the history of patriarchy because as mentioned, like
Speaker 1: I didn't, I had just sort of assumed it was
Speaker 1: this foregone conclusion and that it had always been this way.
Speaker 1: And so I learned a lot. I read deeply, and
Speaker 1: you know, go to the bibliography and notes of you
Speaker 1: who want a deep dive alongside me about how this
Speaker 1: came to be. But I talk in that chapter a
Speaker 1: fair amount sort of about how we went from this
Speaker 1: affiliative partnership style way of living, which most anthropologists archaeologists
Speaker 1: agree is more or less the standard which makes so
Speaker 1: much sense. I know that there's a lot of talk about, oh,
Speaker 1: we were matriarchal. It's like, no, there's no evidence of
Speaker 1: a dominance, hierarchical oppression based. It's funny to think about
Speaker 1: cultural system with women at the top. There were matrilineal cultures, etc.
Speaker 1: But effectively it was affiliative and partnership style and we
Speaker 1: were all doing everything together. We were just existing, surviving, thriving,
Speaker 1: alo parenting. Women were hunting, men were hunting, men were foraging,
Speaker 1: women were foraging, people were gathering, planting, all sorts of
Speaker 1: creative forms of culture in society. And it really wasn't
Speaker 1: until it's a longer history lesson we can leave it
Speaker 1: for the book. But as part of patriarchy in this
Speaker 1: idea of sort of God the father and the man
Speaker 1: of the house and organizing these nuclear households, which in
Speaker 1: its first formation included enslaved women and children, and women
Speaker 1: of various social degrees and typically designated by whether they
Speaker 1: were sexually available to multiple men or only one, and
Speaker 1: by available that's like a very generous word of essentially
Speaker 1: their level of enslavement. But women prior to that did
Speaker 1: life together. And then you see sort of increasing is
Speaker 1: isolation and siloing of women away from other women, organized
Speaker 1: under men, and so we've been really torn apart. And
Speaker 1: I write about the witch hunts, not at great length,
Speaker 1: but that's you know, it's so interesting because we think
Speaker 1: about the Salem witch trials and they still hunt our
Speaker 1: imaginations here in America. And I think thirty people died,
Speaker 1: not to say that they weren't terrible, but in Europe
Speaker 1: the witch craze went on for centuries, trees, centuries, and
Speaker 1: we don't know, we'll never quite know the exact number
Speaker 1: of people, but it's about one hundred thousand, primarily women
Speaker 1: who were hunted, tortured, killed. It was a gender side.
Speaker 1: It is crazy to think about when you think about
Speaker 1: the intergenerational trauma of being suspicious for your sex, turning
Speaker 1: on your friends, turning on your mother, turning on your
Speaker 1: daughter to save yourself. So obviously, here in America, we understand,
Speaker 1: or some of us understand, the intergenerational trauma of racism,
Speaker 1: of colonialism, of genocide on First peoples, and it still
Speaker 1: is in our land. It's in our shadow, it's in
Speaker 1: the energetic patterns of our lives. We get that, but
Speaker 1: this is big too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we were chatting about it just a tiny
Speaker 2: bit before we got rolling. But that was my entire
Speaker 2: undergrad and half of my grad school was looking at
Speaker 2: the European witch trials and the pitting of women against
Speaker 2: other women and the weaponizing of women's relationships and that
Speaker 2: like releases book everybody and check out the bibliography because
Speaker 2: it is fascinating and horrifying. But I think our point
Speaker 2: here is that this competition between women, this desire to
Speaker 2: be good, to not have any pride, to not be lazy,
Speaker 2: to not want things, to not have desires, to not
Speaker 2: think too highly of yourself so that you don't get
Speaker 2: bigger than your breches or whatever like that is all manufactured.
Speaker 2: Is our point here that that is not an intrinsic
Speaker 2: trait that belongs to to women or belongs to any gender.
Speaker 2: It is something that was manufactured a long time ago.
Speaker 2: And I think the work here, what's so powerful about
Speaker 2: your book is that you turn on the rest of
Speaker 2: the lights in the room and you say, these things
Speaker 2: that you may not recognize you've absorbed, have impacted your
Speaker 2: life in so many ways, your current life, your friendships,
Speaker 2: your relationships, what you think is possible in your world,
Speaker 2: what you think is possible for the future, Like, so
Speaker 2: much of that has been guided by something that has
Speaker 2: become invisible but is very powerful. And can you start
Speaker 2: to look for that and look for the ways that
Speaker 2: these largely unspoken rules have kept you in a life
Speaker 2: that doesn't serve you, or that keeps you from what
Speaker 2: you most long for. So we go back to that
Speaker 2: quote that I pulled of yours, Like, I wonder how
Speaker 2: many times this has kept me from trying to make
Speaker 2: friends or kept me from being in any sort of
Speaker 2: situation where I might be rejected? Right, Like, we've got
Speaker 2: an epidemic of loneliness in this culture. Could this be
Speaker 2: part of that? We long so strongly for connection and
Speaker 2: to be seen, and we are terrified of being seen
Speaker 2: because most of what we think will get, especially from
Speaker 2: the women around us, is judgment and rejection and will
Speaker 2: be ostracized, which means we'll be alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that spells death, social death.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I write the beginning about the work of
Speaker 1: Ashley Montague, who is this visionary anthropologist, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, we should really call our ancestors gatherer hunters,
Speaker 1: not hunter gatherers. He wrote this book in the fifties
Speaker 1: called the natural superiority of women, because you know, he
Speaker 1: was like it bears out, like you look at the
Speaker 1: durability of women, the IQ tests of girls. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been outperforming boys and men in school for a century.
Speaker 1: So I love men. I have two little boys. Not
Speaker 1: to upset everyone, but I do think men are more,
Speaker 1: in many ways more injured by the patriarchy than women.
Speaker 1: There definitely it's victims too, But he writes about Ashley
Speaker 1: Montague writes about this idea of first nature and second nature,
Speaker 1: and first nature is who we are, sort of instinctively
Speaker 1: and naturally. I guess it's hard to find language to
Speaker 1: describe this idea of first nature. It's just who we are.
Speaker 1: And then second nature is culture, it's who the stories
Speaker 1: we tell about who we are. This happens to men
Speaker 1: as well, But the real crime against women is the
Speaker 1: ways in which we're told that our first nature is
Speaker 1: really our second nature, and that a woman is more caring,
Speaker 1: more kind, more nurturing, et cetera. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: these aren't all qualities that women possess, but we can
Speaker 1: be many other things too, and men can be very
Speaker 1: caring nurturing, creative, loving. You know, I write a fair
Speaker 1: amount in the book about the divine masculine and the
Speaker 1: divine feminine, and I think that we're at the point
Speaker 1: where we're ready to really understand what that means, and
Speaker 1: that we each contain masculine and feminine energy ideally imbalanced quotients.
Speaker 1: But I tend to be more in my masculine than
Speaker 1: in my feminine. You do too, Okay, So I mean
Speaker 1: not to go in totally a million different directions, but
Speaker 1: this is what the in some ways, what the contemporary
Speaker 1: trans movement is calling us to, yeah, is actually there's
Speaker 1: another more powerful element at play which is not attached
Speaker 1: to gender.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Divine masculine is not a quality of men, and divine
Speaker 1: feminine is not a quality of women. It is not gender.
Speaker 2: Ironically, Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Elise,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to tell you about something special.
Speaker 2: I assume that a lot of you know about my
Speaker 2: book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The full title
Speaker 2: of that book is it's okay that You're not okay
Speaker 2: meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn't understand,
Speaker 2: And it's that last part that's relevant here. If you
Speaker 2: haven't read the book, or you read it but you
Speaker 2: skipped over that first section where I get into the
Speaker 2: deep historical roots of grief avoidance. This is your encouragement
Speaker 2: to go read that section. Alisea and I have been
Speaker 2: talking about the ideas we've inherited as a culture and
Speaker 2: how they influence us in powerful and often unrealized ways.
Speaker 2: The cultural programming that we've inherited around grief is especially complicated.
Speaker 2: So pick up It's Okay that You're not okay where
Speaker 2: you get your books, or check the links in the
Speaker 2: show notes to get your copy, and dive into that
Speaker 2: turn on those lights around what makes grief so scary
Speaker 2: for us. It's right there in the book. All right,
Speaker 2: back to another fascinating conversation about the hidden reasons behind
Speaker 2: human behavior with a least lunin. You know what this
Speaker 2: reminds me of is Gina Rossea was on the show
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and.
Speaker 1: I love Gina.
Speaker 2: She's so good. I love her so much. And she said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not going to speak for the whole
Speaker 2: trans community, but we would love to stop talking about gender. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: because this isn't it? Right, Like, the whole reason we
Speaker 2: have to talk about gender is because gender is an issue,
Speaker 2: because our ideas are around what is allowed and what
Speaker 2: is not allowed are like so heavily gendered. But like
Speaker 2: we're out here trying to just like be life, and
Speaker 2: well gender is like.
Speaker 1: The least, it's the least interesting. It's like, yeah, your bits,
Speaker 1: like it's not interesting. It's naturally it's not at all.
Speaker 2: Oh, but we're making it that way, so it's it's interesting,
Speaker 2: Like we you know, we're doing this sort of contract
Speaker 2: expand back and forth here in our conversation from like
Speaker 2: the personal and the intimate and out to the cultural
Speaker 2: and back. There's something for me in when you start
Speaker 2: to look at this stuff, when you start to go, oh,
Speaker 2: there has there have been some invisible forces that have
Speaker 2: made me make certain choices in my life that now
Speaker 2: looking back, I wish I had known this sooner. I
Speaker 2: know that you've said that you learned a lot in
Speaker 2: the process of researching this book and writing this book.
Speaker 2: Was there grief involved for you at any point in
Speaker 2: like recognizing the way that those internalized structures I don't
Speaker 2: want to say prevented things, but like that again going
Speaker 2: back to that line of yours that I pulled, Like,
Speaker 2: there are so many relationships that I kept myself from
Speaker 2: and now that I know what I know, I wish
Speaker 2: I had known it earlier and to how do I
Speaker 2: not do this moving forward? So is there a grief
Speaker 2: for you at all in those lights getting turned on?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean the whole book. I mean, in some
Speaker 1: ways it was really fun to write, but it was
Speaker 1: a very heavy and hard experience. And you know, you
Speaker 1: participated in these types of projects. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: therapy around each of these ideas and the ways in
Speaker 1: which I could tell I had limited my own life
Speaker 1: or judged other people, or you know, potentially perpetuated harm
Speaker 1: culturally by abiding. You know, I think about that in
Speaker 1: the context of gluttony for example, certainly. And yes, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of grief, some more heavy than others.
Speaker 1: You know, Sloth, which is the first chapter in the book,
Speaker 1: is just so accessible and so easy for me. That
Speaker 1: was more raged contending with my anger, but anger speaking
Speaker 1: of very much was about accessing grief. And you know,
Speaker 1: I write about a year as a therapist. You know
Speaker 1: that angers off and secondary to grief, shame, fear. So
Speaker 1: I definitely, definitely in the process of even acknowledging that
Speaker 1: I had anger, which was a big step for me
Speaker 1: opening that door and saying, yeah, I'm pissed. I think
Speaker 1: so many of us think we can hire mind our
Speaker 1: anger or we're calm. You know, we would never, we would.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got it. We're under control here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of grief. Not to mention that I
Speaker 1: write about grief, although in a more direct way, but
Speaker 1: I would say too that grief is what brought me
Speaker 1: to even write this book. And similar to you, my
Speaker 1: husband's brother, I mean not my husband, My brother's husband
Speaker 1: died in his sleep when he was thirty nine of
Speaker 1: a rare, undiagnosed heart condition. Although it's in a way
Speaker 1: a blessing that he was never diagnosed, because it's not
Speaker 1: a disease. With any treatment or cure, it would not
Speaker 1: have been He in some ways had a beautiful death,
Speaker 1: even though it was so tragic. But Peter dying in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen just completely changed my life in that way
Speaker 1: that the real bottoming out can. Peter he was my
Speaker 1: brother's husband. They met their first week of college. I
Speaker 1: met him when I was fifteen years old. In many
Speaker 1: ways he functioned more as my brother than my brother.
Speaker 1: He's the one who would you know, drive me to
Speaker 1: the airport and call me every day. And he's also
Speaker 1: one of those people who had twenty people who thought
Speaker 1: they were his best friend. Speaking of competition, funeral competition,
Speaker 1: who gets to be who really deserves to grieve, who
Speaker 1: gets to be the most sad? But anyway, his death
Speaker 1: really put me in touch with the universe. It just
Speaker 1: it just recontextualized everything for me, including oh my god,
Speaker 1: what do I want? Like this is short? Yes, this
Speaker 1: is this is short, and certainly no day can be
Speaker 1: taken for granted and your life changes can change immediately
Speaker 1: for the better or for the worse. So his death
Speaker 1: gave me access to a much deeper part of myself.
Speaker 1: And it sucks, right life like you just can't you can't,
Speaker 1: don't really live until the hard things start happening. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's not entirely fair, but.
Speaker 2: That is sometimes accurate but not required.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, okay, yeah, thank you for that correction. But
Speaker 1: it just it just adds a different texture to your life, right,
Speaker 1: And for me at least, it was very recontextualizing, and
Speaker 1: I'd say the grief was present. It's still present because
Speaker 1: of course I also refused to you know, in no
Speaker 1: way do I want to say to women like, buy
Speaker 1: my book and you will be free. And I've done it,
Speaker 1: You've done it, You're you just read that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all you need. But there's there's something in there,
Speaker 2: right of like when you start messing around with what
Speaker 2: does it mean to be human? What does it mean
Speaker 2: to be in relationship with yourself and with others? What
Speaker 2: does it mean to wake up to your life because
Speaker 2: whatever happens, right, what does it mean to wake up
Speaker 2: to your life and go, wait a second, this is
Speaker 2: not this is all over so fast. This is not
Speaker 2: the way I want to spend this time. Right, It
Speaker 2: kind of starts going against all of those like scriptive,
Speaker 2: do these five steps and be free, all of this stuff,
Speaker 2: and so it's this, it's this interesting middle ground of
Speaker 2: how do we.
Speaker 3: As authors, as teachers, as creators create the space the
Speaker 3: structure for people to ask questions of themselves and then
Speaker 3: go in search of their own responses maybe not answers, right, Like,
Speaker 3: how do we do both things? How do we share
Speaker 3: what we know in such a way that lets other
Speaker 3: people use our path to question their own path, but
Speaker 3: not provide answers for that.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's funny. At first I sort of pitched this
Speaker 1: book as a more academic, more abstract, clinical read, you know,
Speaker 1: and then my editor with a little bit of memoir,
Speaker 1: and it's still it's not like memoir dominated by any sense.
Speaker 1: But my editor was like, not so fast, Like you
Speaker 1: have to be present. You need to walk everyone through
Speaker 1: this and bring yourself closer to all of these sins
Speaker 1: and guide us through this material. And it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that people, And there's something to that, you know, not
Speaker 1: only it's like vulnerable is such an overase word, but
Speaker 1: modeling in some ways, like I'm going to go first,
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk this. I walked it, and like
Speaker 1: you can follow my path or do your own. But
Speaker 1: here's my experience of going through this.
Speaker 2: I'm grinning because I've heard this so many times this season,
Speaker 2: where people are like I had this great ted talk,
Speaker 2: I had this great book proposal, I had this great
Speaker 2: like these amazing things, and then the editor or the
Speaker 2: talk coordinator goes, you know, you have to put yourself
Speaker 2: in there, right, like you can't cut yourself out of
Speaker 2: this equation. So I love that from that perspective of
Speaker 2: people being like, hello, do not exclude yourself from humanity.
Speaker 2: Put yourself in there. But also there's something and I
Speaker 2: mentioned it sort of earlier today as we were talking,
Speaker 2: that all of these ideas, all of these concepts, they
Speaker 2: can feel out there, they can feel out of reach
Speaker 2: or not mine or just nothing. It's like, you know
Speaker 2: how we say, like we need a personal face of
Speaker 2: God because otherwise it's just undifferentiated chaos, and I can't
Speaker 2: relate to that, right, Like, there has to be there
Speaker 2: has to be a face to it. So like when
Speaker 2: you put here's how pride shows up in my life
Speaker 2: and the choices that I've made before I realized this
Speaker 2: was something bigger or more powerful or something that I needed, right,
Speaker 2: something human and healthy. Right, Like, there is a way
Speaker 2: of bringing this large conceptual thing down to the personal scale.
Speaker 2: When you say here's how it showed up for me,
Speaker 2: It's like we give people a blueprint, is a little
Speaker 2: bit more than a little bit more of a guide
Speaker 2: than I'm thinking here, but like there is a structure.
Speaker 2: Here's how I use this structure and went looking in
Speaker 2: my own life for the footprints of these seven deadlies.
Speaker 2: You can adapt this footprint to look at your own
Speaker 2: life and where has it shown up? I mean one
Speaker 2: of the things is that you know, the personal is
Speaker 2: the political is the collective? Right that this thing going
Speaker 2: back to, like judgment of other women and who does
Speaker 2: she think she is? And that competition and all of this, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know anyone who hasn't felt that right. The
Speaker 2: particular flavor of that might be different in an individual life,
Speaker 2: but the gesture of it is probably there somewhere. And
Speaker 2: if it isn't, Wow, what happened that made that different
Speaker 2: for you? And can we celebrate that? Like? I love this.
Speaker 2: I love this idea also of like this is such
Speaker 2: a tangent. I was having a conversation with somebody the
Speaker 2: other day who does not have the greatest relationship with
Speaker 2: their mother, and they're like, I don't get the people
Speaker 2: who are like my mother is my best friend and
Speaker 2: I really learned how to show up as my true
Speaker 2: self from my childhood, like all of this stuff, So like,
Speaker 2: maybe you don't have that impulsive judgment of other women,
Speaker 2: you don't feel like anybody is your competition or that
Speaker 2: you're fighting for a scarce resource. I love that for you.
Speaker 2: And what was different. What was the care and feeding
Speaker 2: that you got that allowed you to keep this right?
Speaker 2: Who is this? And how can we love on them?
Speaker 2: Because there's something in there too, there's something in the
Speaker 2: I dodged that particular messaging and here's there's something important.
Speaker 1: Although, yeah, it's funny listening to that. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: think about my editor wit who In terms of the
Speaker 1: Envy chapter, I intended it to go first. I sent
Speaker 1: it to her and she just freaked and you know,
Speaker 1: she was like, I don't agree with this. This isn't me. I,
Speaker 1: you know, like just freak out. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: just like I'll move it to the last chapter and
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend the rest of the book convincing
Speaker 1: you that this.
Speaker 2: Is this is you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then maybe a few months later she was like okay.
Speaker 1: She just had identified enough instances where she interrupted her
Speaker 1: own thought pattern to recognize it and was like, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good nuance. Anytime you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's not me at all, that has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with me, Like anytime you have an emotionally charged response
Speaker 2: to saying that is not mine, Oh babe, that is yours.
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1: You saw it, you got it.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Malchia Dewitz Cherril, who was on the
Speaker 2: show earlier, and them talking about the community in which
Speaker 2: they were raised, right, which is not to say I'm
Speaker 2: certainly not going to take their inventory for them, but
Speaker 2: not to say that they don't have that impulse to
Speaker 2: compete or whatever, but that there was something medicinal. It's
Speaker 2: like that seed culture. What is the seed culture that
Speaker 2: helped you not be in that quite as much as
Speaker 2: somebody else might be. I just think I think that
Speaker 2: there's like, if we want to start dissolving those internalized
Speaker 2: metrics for goodness and performance, are there things that we
Speaker 2: can do and things that we can practice that will
Speaker 2: help us do that, because I think if we don't
Speaker 2: start also talking about the structures how you might ask
Speaker 2: these questions, how you might work through these things or
Speaker 2: look at these things with kindness in yourself. If we
Speaker 2: don't give some of those tools, we're sort of like,
Speaker 2: here's this shitty thing that happens, you figure it out
Speaker 2: on your own, which is just putting us back into
Speaker 2: that self sufficient I cannot rest until I get this.
Speaker 2: I'm not a good person. I somehow failed somewhere because
Speaker 2: I'm a product of an inherited culture, I have to
Speaker 2: do everything in my power to get around. Do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like we can start can read
Speaker 2: a book like this and you can see it as
Speaker 2: all of the ways that you've failed, or you can
Speaker 2: read a book like this and see it as all
Speaker 2: of the inheritances that have failed to beautiful. But I
Speaker 2: think this is a really important point here is there
Speaker 2: is so much at stake personally, interpersonally, communally, culturally, globally,
Speaker 2: there's so much at stake that I think we need
Speaker 2: to be able to look at the places that the
Speaker 2: system has let us down, that we've let each other down,
Speaker 2: that we've let ourselves down, and also talk about what
Speaker 2: is the medicine that it's called for? What do we
Speaker 2: do now? Because otherwise we're like, we got a heap
Speaker 2: of problems, we have no idea what to do about it? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love that. One of the things that your book
Speaker 2: has done is it has started conversations about this, and
Speaker 2: to me, that's the medicine. How do we have conversations
Speaker 2: about what we've learned and what we've inherited and how
Speaker 2: that's held us back, and that connecting in that stuff
Speaker 2: instead of waiting to perfect it in ourselves before we
Speaker 2: talk about it, Like I feel like connecting in these conversations,
Speaker 2: curiosity for ourselves, generosity to other people. Did you read
Speaker 2: Elisa's book? How did that chapter on envy? Does that
Speaker 2: show up for you?
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many amazing books and siloed conversations
Speaker 1: about women and food, women and money, women and anger,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I wanted to show how they're all related,
Speaker 1: bring them all into a house, connect them all to
Speaker 1: a system, and create a framework in which we could
Speaker 1: identify this in ourselves and then talk about it together.
Speaker 1: And yes, like, please read my book and support my book,
Speaker 1: I would love that. But the idea, the thing that
Speaker 1: makes me most excited, is that you could go to
Speaker 1: a book club for on our best behavior and you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to have finished the book or even
Speaker 1: read much of it to be able to talk about
Speaker 1: each of these ideas fully. And that that's the sort
Speaker 1: of viral effect I wanted to create, because you know,
Speaker 1: writing this book was a very lonely experience and I
Speaker 1: was with myself processing, but then to watch it go
Speaker 1: into the world and then see how see women talk
Speaker 1: about it together and or talk to me about it.
Speaker 1: Has been as you to use your word medicinal and healing,
Speaker 1: because you can't interrupt the status quo. You can't program
Speaker 1: against culture in a silo. This is communal community work.
Speaker 1: This is bringing women back together to talk about these things,
Speaker 1: and that's how we break them. That's how we interrupt
Speaker 1: them and say not today. Can It's very Barbie maybe
Speaker 1: though when I saw the movie, I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is a much more colorful version of
Speaker 1: on our best feed. But you start to recognize the
Speaker 1: cognitive exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you start to recognize it. We don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of time to get into it, so this is
Speaker 2: more of an encouragement for people to get the book
Speaker 2: is like the last chapter of the book, this is
Speaker 2: something that I learned that the seven deadly sins were
Speaker 2: once the eight thoughts as you started opened with here together,
Speaker 2: and that those eight thoughts included sadness, but sadness was
Speaker 2: excommunicated from the list, and you wrote of all the sins,
Speaker 2: sadness feels like it should be most important. It should
Speaker 2: be the crown. And to me, of course, like my
Speaker 2: entire view of the world, is that that grief is
Speaker 2: the turning point of the world, and that the inability
Speaker 2: to explore identify name as healthy and a normal part
Speaker 2: of human being being a human being like that the
Speaker 2: repression of grief is why we have all of the
Speaker 2: problems that we have, much bigger topic y'all have heard
Speaker 2: me talk about quite a bit, but I loved this
Speaker 2: coming in at the end of this book, coming in
Speaker 2: at this exploration of all of the seven Deadly sins
Speaker 2: to say, you know, actually the crowning jewel of this
Speaker 2: is sadness.
Speaker 1: Yes, I I'm so glad that that chapter is in
Speaker 1: there because we talked about it.
Speaker 2: But I do, like you.
Speaker 1: Think that grief is how we start cleansing some of
Speaker 1: this cultural patterning and the destruction that we've reaked on
Speaker 1: the world and on each other. And we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of energy keeping our thumb on that grief, and
Speaker 1: I write about it. Obviously, sadness is not the dominion
Speaker 1: of women or men. But I also write about that
Speaker 1: chapter because I had this lingering question and this question
Speaker 1: that I thought people would wonder, and what about men?
Speaker 1: And this book isn't directed towards men, certainly, although I
Speaker 1: hope men read it because I think it would provide
Speaker 1: a lot of insight into the psychology of women and
Speaker 1: sort of that internal programming that we're pushing against. But
Speaker 1: I think that the suppression of grief, this refusal to
Speaker 1: feel our feelings, the denial of sadness, which shows up
Speaker 1: most acutely for boys and men. Certainly it's a cultural
Speaker 1: it's a cultural malady, but it is we sever boys
Speaker 1: from their feelings, or historically have I think we're getting better,
Speaker 1: but I think the primary symptom of that is toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1: And again, women can behave in toxically masculine ways, but
Speaker 1: this dominance, suppressive control. To me, that's an antidote, or
Speaker 1: perceived as an antidote to all this grief, all this feeling,
Speaker 1: all these chaos states.
Speaker 2: Yep, shut them down, shut them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can't move forward without reconciling with our grief.
Speaker 2: There's a line here that I is both enraging and
Speaker 2: I super love. You wrote that sadness was seen as
Speaker 2: the sin that is most destructive to men because it
Speaker 2: is perceived as womanly, womanly, which means weak. That line
Speaker 2: just sort of summarizes what you said. Is like we
Speaker 2: work really hard to make men and boys not appear
Speaker 2: like women. We don't want them to have feelings, we
Speaker 2: don't want them to cry, we don't want them to
Speaker 2: be quote unquote soft. It's one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: we attack gay men and attack trans men is because
Speaker 2: they're acting like women, and we hate women so much
Speaker 2: that anything that leans in that direction needs to be exterminated.
Speaker 2: And I love that what you say here is that
Speaker 2: gag order on sadness that we enforce across the board,
Speaker 2: but really really does show up for men and boys,
Speaker 2: like the amount of energy that it takes to suppress
Speaker 2: a normal responsive sadness or grief or human empathy or feeling,
Speaker 2: like the amount of force it takes to hold that
Speaker 2: down it can only explode elsewhere. Yes, it really is
Speaker 2: in the allowing of sadness that we get the beautiful
Speaker 2: world we say we want.
Speaker 1: And you know, to quote therapist Terry Reel, who writes
Speaker 1: and so beautifully about men, we don't talk about turning
Speaker 1: girls into women, but we talk about turning boys into men.
Speaker 1: And again, to go to Ashley Montague, it's a cultural
Speaker 1: idea of what a man is is. It has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with a natural state. It is just our
Speaker 1: cultural idea of a man who is stoic, strong, and
Speaker 1: completely disconnected from himself.
Speaker 2: Oh, we have so much more to say about this,
Speaker 2: But I also we'll do another one. We'll do another one, well,
Speaker 2: like we'll do a whole Salon series. Okay, Anyway, I
Speaker 2: do want to ask you the question that I ask everybody.
Speaker 2: So much has changed for you over the last several years.
Speaker 2: We didn't even get into the wellness movement and the
Speaker 2: grief involved in leaving that, Like, we didn't even touch that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'll put it in the show notes,
Speaker 2: and you do talk about it in other places. But
Speaker 2: so much has changed for you over the last several years.
Speaker 2: So knowing what you know, living what you've lived up
Speaker 2: to this point, and living what you're living with this
Speaker 2: new book out in the world, what does hope look
Speaker 2: like for you? Does hope show up in this world
Speaker 2: for you at all?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, I am essentially an optimistic and hopeful person.
Speaker 1: And the book may be about these external ideas of
Speaker 1: goodness in a way that might seem like I'm deprecating
Speaker 1: the idea of goodness, I'm not at all. I think
Speaker 1: people are inherently good. I really believe that it's baked
Speaker 1: into who we are. I think that we can stray
Speaker 1: from that. I think that there are some people who
Speaker 1: are full of shadow. But I do believe that when
Speaker 1: we can calm people's fear, when we can relieve scarcity,
Speaker 1: that when we can put people in contact with each other,
Speaker 1: that ultimately people are good. And it's a really scary
Speaker 1: and weird time to be alive, certainly, but I am hopeful.
Speaker 1: I am optimistic, and I'm primarily hopeful because I think
Speaker 1: that women are. It's wild. Actually, when I think about
Speaker 1: how powerful women are, this isn't a new thing either.
Speaker 1: It's like we are so impressive, so incredible, and intelligent,
Speaker 1: hard working, yes, nurturing often. And so when I think
Speaker 1: about the potential of women getting on side with each other,
Speaker 1: of starting to allow that they are, that we're all
Speaker 1: good and bad. You know, we're human, contain multitudes, We
Speaker 1: contain multitudes, We're full of shadow. There are certainly going
Speaker 1: to be moments that we regret and every single day.
Speaker 1: This isn't about perfection that if we can get on
Speaker 1: side with each other. We are boxers who have been
Speaker 1: training at high altitude and I just think that the
Speaker 1: world could rapidly start to change and evolve. I really
Speaker 1: do put us in, not into the elon Mark Zuckerberg cage, bye,
Speaker 1: thank you, but put us in.
Speaker 2: I love that image of we are boxers that have
Speaker 2: been training at altitude and just how strong we are.
Speaker 2: Watch out, watch out? All right, So obviously we are
Speaker 2: going to link to the book in the show notes
Speaker 2: and to your website. Is there anything else you want
Speaker 2: people to know about you or the bok thread pulling?
Speaker 2: Lay it on us? What's pulling the thread?
Speaker 1: About pulling the thread? Forty five minute conversations with cultural luminaries,
Speaker 1: you will have to come on about big questions of
Speaker 1: the day, and you know, similar to you, I'm interested
Speaker 1: and just understanding the world.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we will link to that in show notes too.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here. Everybody, stay tuned.
Speaker 2: I will be back with your questions to carry with
Speaker 2: you after this break, and I promise I will not
Speaker 2: load you with all of the questions that came up
Speaker 2: for me each week. I leave you with some questions
Speaker 2: to carry with you until we meet again. Okay, Before
Speaker 2: the break, I promised that I would not bombard you
Speaker 2: with every single one of the questions and the ideas
Speaker 2: that came to me during this conversation with Elise. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of questions and ideas that came to me.
Speaker 2: The show that you listened to is like just under
Speaker 2: an hour, but Elise and I talked together for almost
Speaker 2: two hours, so I got a lot of thoughts in
Speaker 2: my head. Is basically what I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 2: For our purposes, I'm going to stick with one thing.
Speaker 2: These conversations can feel really theoretical, really out there, away
Speaker 2: from the life that you're actually living. I love that
Speaker 2: Elise had to be pushed a little bit in the
Speaker 2: writing process to bring herself into her own book, and
Speaker 2: she gave us a way to ask ourselves things like
Speaker 2: how does envy show up in my life? How does
Speaker 2: the fear of being seen as lazy keep me from
Speaker 2: letting myself rest? These are such powerful questions and they
Speaker 2: can lead to real transformation in how we live our
Speaker 2: daily lives. I also love that she gives us a
Speaker 2: way to question the cultural narratives, right to turn on
Speaker 2: the light and look at that cultural messaging, especially the
Speaker 2: messaging that says that having desire is a bad thing.
Speaker 2: You deserve love, connection, success, rest, all of these desires
Speaker 2: that we have actually been conditioned to silence. I love
Speaker 2: that Elisa's work gives us the space to question those
Speaker 2: things that we've inherited and to start asking ourselves how
Speaker 2: the silencing of our own human desires has kept us
Speaker 2: from getting the things that we deserve, and then gives
Speaker 2: us the space to wonder about what to do differently
Speaker 2: with the information that we learn. This stuff isn't just theoretical.
Speaker 2: I can get lost in that sometimes, like my brain
Speaker 2: goes into all of the patterns and all the systems
Speaker 2: and all the ways that things interrelate. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, we do these things so that
Speaker 2: we can take them into ourselves and ask ourselves better
Speaker 2: questions about who we are and what we want. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's stuck with you? In this conversation? Everybody's going to
Speaker 2: take something different from today's show, But I do hope
Speaker 2: you found something to hold on to. I would love
Speaker 2: to hear what's coming up for you. What you found,
Speaker 2: the questions you might ask yourself, the questions you might
Speaker 2: ask of the people in your communities and the people
Speaker 2: you care about. If you want to tell me how
Speaker 2: today's show felt for you, or you have thoughts on
Speaker 2: what we covered, let me know. Leaving a review of
Speaker 2: this episode on your favorite podcast app is a good
Speaker 2: way to let me know and let others know the
Speaker 2: ways that this show is making you think, or feel
Speaker 2: or relate.
Speaker 1: Eight.
Speaker 2: You can also tag at Refuge and Grief on all
Speaker 2: of the social platforms so that I can hear how
Speaker 2: this conversation affected you. Follow the show at It's Okay
Speaker 2: Pod on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to
Speaker 2: see video clips from the show, and use the hashtag
Speaker 2: It's Okay Pod on all the platforms to keep the
Speaker 2: conversations going. None of us are entirely okay, and it's
Speaker 2: time we start talking about that together. It's okay that
Speaker 2: You're not okay. You're in good company. That is it
Speaker 2: for this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe to the show,
Speaker 2: leave a review, Get your own conversations started by sharing
Speaker 2: this episode with your community. This one especially is really
Speaker 2: a good conversation starter. Follow the show on your favorite
Speaker 2: platforms so you do not miss an episode. It's Okay
Speaker 2: that You're not Okay. The podcast is written and produced
Speaker 2: by me Megan Devine Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
Speaker 2: produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, with logistical and social media support
Speaker 2: from Micah. Post production and editing by Houston Tilly, Music
Speaker 2: provided by Wave Crush, and today's background noise provided by
Speaker 2: the dog very quietly snoring at my feet