Speaker 1: For me, I find it really helpful. And that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of where most of what I write comes
Speaker 1: from is from a place of anger. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: get upset about something and then I'll say I need
Speaker 1: to like write about it. Like a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: what I'll be thinking is why isn't everyone screaming about
Speaker 1: this all the time? And then I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: because maybe people don't know, And so then I feel
Speaker 1: like it's my responsibility to try to make something that
Speaker 1: people will look at and then come and join me in,
Speaker 1: you know, please join me in the scream fest. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine,
Speaker 1: author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're
Speaker 1: Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, writer and illustrator Aubrey
Speaker 1: Hirsch joins us to talk about well, a lot of things.
Speaker 1: She joins us to talk about anger and trauma and
Speaker 1: gender it's like the greatest modern hits of outrage on
Speaker 1: today's show. But mostly she joins us to talk about art,
Speaker 1: specifically the ways that storytelling helps us band together and
Speaker 1: work towards the world we all want. This is a
Speaker 1: good one. Friends. Coming up right after this first break
Speaker 1: before we get started, one quick note. While we cover
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
Speaker 1: this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
Speaker 1: a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
Speaker 1: to your work. And one more note hereafter with Megan.
Speaker 1: Divine is currently on break between seasons. We'll be back
Speaker 1: before you know it with a whole new season with
Speaker 1: even more incredible guests. In the meantime, here's one of
Speaker 1: our most loved episodes we'll season. So. I first consciously
Speaker 1: encountered Aubrey Hirsch's work in her essay on surviving gun
Speaker 1: violence that was in Roxane Gay's newsletter The Audacity. I
Speaker 1: say consciously because I'd seen Aubrey's work before, and I
Speaker 1: bet you have to. From her comics on reproductive rights
Speaker 1: to her essays on breastfeeding in public, Aubrey's work distills
Speaker 1: complex issues down to a few emotionally powerful frames. As
Speaker 1: you'll hear her say in this conversation, using the medium
Speaker 1: of comics allows her to bring social issues to life
Speaker 1: in a way that feels more immediate, more visceral, and
Speaker 1: honestly more human than news stories or sound bites or
Speaker 1: statistics can usually do. Aubrey Hirsch is the author of
Speaker 1: Why We Never Talk About Sugar, a collection of short stories,
Speaker 1: and This will be his Legacy, a flash fiction chatbook.
Speaker 1: Her stories and essays and comics have appeared widely in
Speaker 1: print and online in places like American Short Fiction, Vox Time,
Speaker 1: The New York Times, The Rumpus, and in the New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling anthology Not That Bad. In today's
Speaker 1: episode of Hereafter, we talk outrage about the state of
Speaker 1: the world and the powers of activism and storytelling to
Speaker 1: help bind us together in the service of the world
Speaker 1: we actually want. Aubrey, welcome to the show. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad to have you here. So I saw your gun
Speaker 1: Violent Survivor essay and basically stalked you after that because honestly,
Speaker 1: people know that I will I will cry at least
Speaker 1: once in every episode. But like that essay was the
Speaker 1: first time I saw my experience of being a trauma
Speaker 1: survivor reflected, like the way that surviving something life threatening
Speaker 1: and terrifying, the way that that lives in a person
Speaker 1: out in the world. So thank you for that. You're
Speaker 1: so welcome, Thank you for having me, And what a
Speaker 1: nice thing to say. Thank you. It really means a
Speaker 1: wat to me. That was a very very challenging essay
Speaker 1: to write, and I have heard from many people who
Speaker 1: have said something similar, and it just it feels so good,
Speaker 1: you know, after you work so hard on something, to
Speaker 1: hear that it means something, even to one person, really
Speaker 1: just makes it worth it. So thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: You have worked everywhere, including one comment called Medicine's Women
Speaker 1: Problem about being ignored and misdiagnosed for years with significant
Speaker 1: health issues. You've covered reproductive restrictions and misogyny and harassment
Speaker 1: and the me too movements. So so much of your
Speaker 1: work has this unifying theme of telling the truth about
Speaker 1: really shitty things, really difficult things. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: your work is really also about telling the truth about
Speaker 1: things as a way to I'm totally editorializing here, but
Speaker 1: like to upset the social order, right, like to kick
Speaker 1: things over and to start talking about things that we
Speaker 1: really need to be talking about. So you're an illustrator
Speaker 1: and obviously a fantastic writer, But what is it about
Speaker 1: that combination of narrative and imagery, specifically for talking about
Speaker 1: these kinds of issues. What does illustration let you do that,
Speaker 1: Maybe writing alone doesn't. Yeah, it's such a good question.
Speaker 1: This is something that I kind of discovered as I
Speaker 1: was working my way into comics, is that I think
Speaker 1: comics are a fantastic medium for discussing difficult things. I
Speaker 1: think part of it is sort of like I like
Speaker 1: to call it, like the spoonful of sugar effect, where
Speaker 1: if you're writing about something that's really difficult and maybe heavy,
Speaker 1: maybe challenging, but there are pictures to look at, it
Speaker 1: can feel like a bit more accessible. It can offer
Speaker 1: people kind of a way into it. You see a comic,
Speaker 1: you recognize a visual form. You know this is not
Speaker 1: going to take a ton of your time. You're not
Speaker 1: going to have to sit with this for too long.
Speaker 1: And also you know there's things to look at. What
Speaker 1: comics allows me to do when I'm talking about social issues,
Speaker 1: especially is to take statistics and kind of like bring
Speaker 1: them to life because within the piece you can have
Speaker 1: like infographics, and it's just it's sometimes it's more impactful
Speaker 1: to see what one fifth looks like than to just
Speaker 1: read that number, or you know, read one fifth, but
Speaker 1: rather like to see it in a pie chart, to
Speaker 1: see it in a graph, I think just gives people
Speaker 1: a different way to access the material, and it can
Speaker 1: make things like that hit harder. We're such visual creatures, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is the way that we get a lot
Speaker 1: of our information. Like, you can pack a lot more
Speaker 1: information into an image than you can in words, right,
Speaker 1: And there's an immediacy to that. And I think also
Speaker 1: like that immediacy is how we feel things, especially the
Speaker 1: topics that you usually talk about. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, people will see something it'll resonate
Speaker 1: with them. And I think because of things like Instagram,
Speaker 1: because of how text messaging works, we're so likely to
Speaker 1: be sharing pictures with each other that it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier for people to send like a panel of a
Speaker 1: comic than they would, say, like a paragraph from a
Speaker 1: news story. And then you know, it just helps more
Speaker 1: people get their eyes on in can raise awareness about
Speaker 1: like a whole slew of problems in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's going to read a whole paragraph, right, It's not
Speaker 1: shareable from a graphic perspective. And it's also like the
Speaker 1: full catastrophe is just it's so overwhelming, the sheer amount
Speaker 1: of atrocities and things to be outraged about and things
Speaker 1: to talk about like that. Overwhelm is so intense and
Speaker 1: no one's going to read all of that stuff, but
Speaker 1: you make a comic and it opens different doors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right for me. I find it really helpful.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge part of where most of what
Speaker 1: I write comes from is from a place of anger.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll get upset about something, and then I'll say,
Speaker 1: I need to like write about it. Like a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, what I'll be thinking is, why isn't
Speaker 1: everyone screaming about this all the time? And then I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's because maybe people don't know, And so
Speaker 1: then I feel like it's my responsibility to try to
Speaker 1: make something that people will look at and then come
Speaker 1: and join me in, you know, please join me in
Speaker 1: the scream fest. Yes. Yeah. And then when I know
Speaker 1: I'm onto something is when during the process of rees searching,
Speaker 1: I become more angry, you know, like I thought I
Speaker 1: understood the scope of the problem, but in fact I
Speaker 1: did not. It's a lot worse than I thought. And
Speaker 1: then that's really that's a powerful moment for me and
Speaker 1: my process is when I get when I start getting
Speaker 1: more angry then it makes me more excited about the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm working on, and it really does kind
Speaker 1: of help neutralize my terrible feelings when I can feel
Speaker 1: like I'm doing something. Tell me more about that relationship
Speaker 1: between rage and creation and that last element that you
Speaker 1: just put in there, that it actually makes you feel
Speaker 1: less overwhelmed by the terrible things tapping into that. I
Speaker 1: think you said anger and I said rage, but I
Speaker 1: mean either one. I'm going to go with rage. It's
Speaker 1: you know, we're at a moment in the world right now,
Speaker 1: especially with all of the attacks on reproductive rights that
Speaker 1: are that are going on, where I find myself often
Speaker 1: like sitting around thinking what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: And I feel very helpless. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: feel like that because I know that to be fucked
Speaker 1: is a spectrum and we can be more fucked than
Speaker 1: we are now or less fucked. It's not a buyinary
Speaker 1: and I want us to move in the right direction
Speaker 1: and I want to be a part of that movement.
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, you know, I'll read
Speaker 1: a new story about a woman who is right now,
Speaker 1: you know, bleeding in a hospital in Texas because they
Speaker 1: won't terminate her very dangerous pregnancy, and that makes me
Speaker 1: feel awful because even if we can move in the
Speaker 1: right direction, it's not going to help her. You know,
Speaker 1: it's too late for her. And every day it's too
Speaker 1: late for somebody new whose life is being seriously damaged
Speaker 1: or ruined by these terrible attacks on our freedoms. And
Speaker 1: I think there are moments when I find that really paralyzing,
Speaker 1: and there are moments where I think, Wow, what am
Speaker 1: I doing? You know, I'm like making my dumb comics.
Speaker 1: I'm like drawing my little pictures, and it all feels
Speaker 1: very useless. But then the only way out is through.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to do but to do the work. And
Speaker 1: then when I sit down and I do it, I
Speaker 1: almost always feel better, you know, just by the process
Speaker 1: of making something. Getting people to feel angry with me
Speaker 1: makes me feel less alone, less helpless, makes me feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a whole team of us. We're all going to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, we're all trying. And then hearing
Speaker 1: from people who say this thing meant something to me,
Speaker 1: or I sent this to my partner, I sent this
Speaker 1: to my mother, I sent this to my uncle, you know,
Speaker 1: I put this on Facebook, it makes me feel better,
Speaker 1: you know, like it makes me feel like at least
Speaker 1: I'm doing something. And it's not going to help that
Speaker 1: person that's in Texas right now, but maybe it will
Speaker 1: help somebody think a different way. Maybe it will help
Speaker 1: fire somebody up to vote who wasn't going to, or
Speaker 1: reach out and do some campaigning, or donate to an
Speaker 1: abortion fund, you know, or whatever the thing is that's
Speaker 1: going to help us get out of this mess. That
Speaker 1: maybe it will do something, And that's my hope. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love the sort of unifying force of rage.
Speaker 1: That's something that you write about a lot about how
Speaker 1: historically and currently kind of always like women's anger is
Speaker 1: not okay, right, Telling the truth about these things is
Speaker 1: not okay. Showing anger is not okay. What's one of
Speaker 1: the things that pisses me off the most about everything
Speaker 1: that's happening is that we aren't supposed to be angry
Speaker 1: about it. And we also don't recognize all of this
Speaker 1: as loss as a grief issue, right, that there is
Speaker 1: grief and loss and anger involved in so much of
Speaker 1: everything that's been unfolding. Always, I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to whitewatch things and be like it used to be better.
Speaker 1: Well not for everybody, but you know, especially these last
Speaker 1: several years and just the explosion ofice and violence and
Speaker 1: backpedaling of basic human rights. The ways that loss, grief, anger,
Speaker 1: and gender all come together as something that's really a
Speaker 1: thread through a lot of your work. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: connections there is something I've been thinking a lot about too,
Speaker 1: especially like with anger, because women, we get socialized to
Speaker 1: de escalate. That's our job, you know, in the face
Speaker 1: of anger, in the face of outrage, we're there to
Speaker 1: put the brakes on that and like slow things down
Speaker 1: and calm things down. And I think it does us
Speaker 1: a disservice because anger, as much as we're taught to
Speaker 1: repress it, ignore it, that it's negative, that it's somehow bad,
Speaker 1: it's there for a reason. You know, it's there because
Speaker 1: if something's gone wrong, you need to get angry before
Speaker 1: you can address injustice. And the fact that women get
Speaker 1: socialized to suppress their anger is part I think of
Speaker 1: the reason why so much injustice can be done to us,
Speaker 1: because you know, everybody tells us, you know, be quiet,
Speaker 1: calm down, don't be hysterical, and we hear that all
Speaker 1: of our lives it's impossible not to internalize it on
Speaker 1: some level. So what we've got is storytelling and rage
Speaker 1: and banding together and for me, you know, really tapping
Speaker 1: into not only the anger, but the loss and the
Speaker 1: compassion in there. And compassion is such a word that
Speaker 1: gets screwed around with so much, and I think it
Speaker 1: also gets weaponized, like have some compassion and understanding for
Speaker 1: over here and the other like no wrong use of
Speaker 1: the word etymological badness. I wish that the people who
Speaker 1: are creating so much arbitrary suffering would understand the suffering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that empathy gap is like the biggest source
Speaker 1: of injustice in this country. You know that the fact
Speaker 1: that so many you know, Republican can be against gay
Speaker 1: marriage until their kid is gay and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, it doesn't require empathy because it
Speaker 1: directly affects them and it changes their tune. If there
Speaker 1: was a way that we could make this directly affect
Speaker 1: every single person, I don't think we would have a problem.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you can't have empathy for other things
Speaker 1: that you know aren't directly affecting you, but are directly
Speaker 1: affecting other people, it's very difficult to have conversations with
Speaker 1: people like that. Yeah, you're purposely shutting down your relatedness
Speaker 1: to others, your ability to see yourself in other people's experience.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I mean we do that because we're afraid
Speaker 1: of those feelings. Right. I don't want to know what
Speaker 1: it's like to be this person because then I have
Speaker 1: to feel that, right, you know, for me, everything comes
Speaker 1: back to our aversion to feeling and our aversion to grief, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to see the people we care about suffer, right,
Speaker 1: And that includes refusing to see the suffering of others
Speaker 1: because that would tap us into our own humanity, and
Speaker 1: those emotions are too big for us to really take
Speaker 1: in and really handle. Very generous perspective, Yeah, some days
Speaker 1: I get to be generous while also holding white hot
Speaker 1: rage in the other hand, you know, And it's just
Speaker 1: for me, this is part of rage. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: we have so demonized emotion and we're so afraid of
Speaker 1: emotion and feeling with each other. There are real world
Speaker 1: consequences for a refusal to acknowledge the frailty of being
Speaker 1: alive and how things can change in an instant, in
Speaker 1: less and until we get better at allowing the tenderness
Speaker 1: of being human. Nothing is really going to change because
Speaker 1: we refuse to feel with each other, and because we
Speaker 1: squash down anger and grief and loss, we can't access
Speaker 1: that ability to feel with each other and make laws
Speaker 1: and communities that are actually human centered and kind. And
Speaker 1: you know, you said it much more succinctly and much
Speaker 1: better than I just rambled through. But until we can
Speaker 1: feel with each other, we're not going to have the
Speaker 1: kind of just connected society that some of us dream of.
Speaker 1: It's really beautiful. Actually, yeah, you're listening to Hereafter with me,
Speaker 1: Megan Divine and this week's guest illustrator Aubrey Hirsch. As
Speaker 1: we rejoin this conversation, Aubrey and I are discussing her
Speaker 1: essay on Surviving gun violence. Now we're going to link
Speaker 1: to that essay in the show notes so you can
Speaker 1: read it, and please, really really do go read it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't exaggerating at the top of the show when
Speaker 1: I said it was the first time I saw my
Speaker 1: own experience reflected in somebody else's story. There's something I
Speaker 1: don't know, just amazingly powerful about the way Aubrey describes
Speaker 1: the ways that trauma and memory live in your body
Speaker 1: and mind. So let's get back to our conversation. But
Speaker 1: I did just want to remind you to go read
Speaker 1: that essay once you're finished listening to the show. Your
Speaker 1: gun violence survivor essay isn't illustrated. Is there a difference
Speaker 1: for you between the things you typically create and illustrate
Speaker 1: and that particular piece. Yeah, it's interesting because so I
Speaker 1: write a monthly comic for Rosan Gay's newsletter, The Audacity,
Speaker 1: And when I sat down to write that piece, I
Speaker 1: intended to make it comic, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I will try to make a comic about my
Speaker 1: experience with PTSD. So I sat down and I started
Speaker 1: to do my script, which is usually how I start
Speaker 1: with just the text, and usually I I overwrite it
Speaker 1: and then pare it down. But I was like, what
Speaker 1: would have been twelve panels in? And I felt like
Speaker 1: I wasn't even anywhere near anything that I wanted to say.
Speaker 1: And the more I thought on it, the more I
Speaker 1: felt like this was going to need to be much
Speaker 1: longer than a comic. You know, the text I could
Speaker 1: put into a comic. So I texted directs and and
Speaker 1: said what if instead of a comic, I didn't say
Speaker 1: star and she was like, great, I love it, go
Speaker 1: for it. And so then I sat down to try
Speaker 1: to write it. And it was a tough piece to
Speaker 1: write because there was a lot that I wanted to
Speaker 1: say and a lot that I wanted to get across.
Speaker 1: That was really difficult for me to do. But I
Speaker 1: think I needed that the room. I don't think I
Speaker 1: could have done that in a much more compressed space.
Speaker 1: I tried, but I couldn't. You have to follow where
Speaker 1: the story wants to go, right, And one of the
Speaker 1: things about telling the truth about trauma and about violence
Speaker 1: is that we always try to shrink those stories. I
Speaker 1: want people to go read it, so obviously I'm going
Speaker 1: to link the wrap out of it everywhere. But the
Speaker 1: repetition in that piece is one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes it so powerful, Right that each iteration comes with
Speaker 1: a slightly larger lens, right, And that is the way
Speaker 1: that trauma lives in the body. That was the last
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that, because that was really the
Speaker 1: last piece of the puzzle to fall into place for me.
Speaker 1: I wrote like five full drafts of that essay top
Speaker 1: to bottom, and every time I wrote it, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is just not it's not doing the thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, until I started focusing on the paragraph
Speaker 1: where I talk about how the experience of trauma is
Speaker 1: actually quite boring and why that is is because you
Speaker 1: have to keep doing the same thing over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. And then as I was trying to
Speaker 1: work that into language, I thought, Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: I need to do. I need to make the essay
Speaker 1: do the thing and just you're just gonna hear me
Speaker 1: say it over and over and over again, and here's
Speaker 1: what's happened, and then hoping that the time that you
Speaker 1: spend with me in the essay gives you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a glimpse of like what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in the head of a trauma survivor Yeah, the
Speaker 1: repetition of that both as like a creative writing device
Speaker 1: and making the reader feel it. And this is something
Speaker 1: that we really don't talk about, not just in gun violence,
Speaker 1: but in the way that life altering, life changing loss
Speaker 1: of whatever sort lives in you. And it honestly, it
Speaker 1: really is boring, so boring, it really really is, And
Speaker 1: it's this engine that just keeps chugging. Yeah, it's just exhausting.
Speaker 1: It's boring, and it wears you out, you know, it
Speaker 1: wears you out. It wears out you know, whenever anytime
Speaker 1: I have to say to my partner, like, can I
Speaker 1: talk to you again about the time I was health
Speaker 1: hostage at a point, I feel I'm myself. I'm so
Speaker 1: annoyed with me, you know, and he's great, but I
Speaker 1: feel bored and annoyed because I know he knows he's
Speaker 1: heard the story before. But like, the telling is the cure.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to do it. You have to
Speaker 1: get in there with it when your body tells you
Speaker 1: that it's time, and so you're going to drag in
Speaker 1: whoever it is, you know, your therapist, your partner, your
Speaker 1: best friend, your roommate, whoever is the person who's going
Speaker 1: to be there for you in those moments, and then
Speaker 1: you know you're dragging them into the boringness of it
Speaker 1: all too. I love this. I think we're kind of
Speaker 1: precious about trauma, right, Like you can't call it boring,
Speaker 1: you can't laugh about it, Like it is this very
Speaker 1: serious thing, and it's such a serious thing that you
Speaker 1: have to be able to tell the truth about it.
Speaker 1: And part of the truth is it's repetitive. The reach
Speaker 1: of trauma is very long, very long. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: after a time, there's nothing creative about it. There's nothing
Speaker 1: generative about it. There's nothing that's entered hating about it.
Speaker 1: It's just about the work, you know, and it working
Speaker 1: on your trauma, surviving your trauma, processing your trauma, healing.
Speaker 1: It just becomes like brushing your teeth. It's boring, but
Speaker 1: you have to do it. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: do it all the time because your teeth are going
Speaker 1: to grow new plaque, you know. And the same thing
Speaker 1: with your brain. Your brain is still going to tell
Speaker 1: your body something's wrong. You've got to keep doing it
Speaker 1: over and over again, even when it's not interesting or
Speaker 1: exciting or new anymore. Yeah. And the relationship with the
Speaker 1: story also changes, right as you change, and new experiences
Speaker 1: come in and your new outrages come into it. One
Speaker 1: of the big pieces of that essay is how all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, I mean, you and I just spent
Speaker 1: a while talking about feeling with each other, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that essay is about every new act of
Speaker 1: gun violence that hits the headlines brings you back to
Speaker 1: I know what that feeling is. I don't know that
Speaker 1: person's experience because I'm not them and I'm not in
Speaker 1: that same thing. I know what after feels like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what after feels like. You know, every time
Speaker 1: these things happen, people on Twitter are making calls for empathy,
Speaker 1: you know, to say, like, how can we be letting
Speaker 1: this happen? How can we let seven think about it?
Speaker 1: You know, here as a child on the floor terrified
Speaker 1: because there's a man with a gun standing two feet away,
Speaker 1: pot think about what that feels like. And you know,
Speaker 1: and like I don't have to, you know, well, then
Speaker 1: I can't stop thinking about it. You know. It's this
Speaker 1: constant state of retraumatization because every day there's some new
Speaker 1: terrifying gun violence thing happening, and there's people, you know,
Speaker 1: shouting at you on Twitter to put yourself in their place.
Speaker 1: And obviously they mean well, and they're good reasons to
Speaker 1: do it, but for people who are survivors of gun violence,
Speaker 1: it's quite triggering and it does make me think about it,
Speaker 1: you know. And when I hear people interviewed on the news,
Speaker 1: I see the shaking, I hear the terror in their voice,
Speaker 1: and it reminds me of hearing my own terrified voice
Speaker 1: and being surprised by the sound, like, Oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: know my voice could sound like that. It just it's
Speaker 1: all the little things, you know, that that can kind
Speaker 1: of like yank you back into a moment. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: time is nothing right to the nervous system and to
Speaker 1: the body, you can go back to that moment so easily.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is the work of therapy
Speaker 1: and storytelling, right to get to a point where when
Speaker 1: your body and your nervous system responds to new stimulus,
Speaker 1: a new shooting, a new tweet yelling at you to
Speaker 1: think about this person or put yourself in their shoes.
Speaker 1: All of the work that we do is so that
Speaker 1: those moments don't destroy you. Yeah. And I like to
Speaker 1: talk about it too, like it's about you got to
Speaker 1: beat the path to and from you know, you got
Speaker 1: to beat the path in because that's also your path out.
Speaker 1: And if you don't do it, and you just let
Speaker 1: it become this like crazy swamp of overgrowth, you think
Speaker 1: you're walling it off, but you're not, because sometimes you're
Speaker 1: going to get teleported back there against your will, and
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a way out. You're going
Speaker 1: to be stuck in there with everything around you that
Speaker 1: you haven't thought about and you haven't processed. But if
Speaker 1: you can make your safe routes in, that's your exit strategy. Also,
Speaker 1: you gotta do it. Yeah, you gotta do it. I
Speaker 1: mean we spend some time just now talking about what
Speaker 1: happens when you don't allow things that hurt space to
Speaker 1: hurt and space to breathe and engage with them. Like,
Speaker 1: if you don't do that, we get authoritarian angry in
Speaker 1: a bad way. People who need to outsource their pain
Speaker 1: onto others. Right, So we do this for ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: so that being reminded when the body remembers, when the
Speaker 1: nervous system remembers, that it doesn't destroy you. And also
Speaker 1: so that we don't suppress this truth so much that
Speaker 1: we destroy others. You don't get through this life without
Speaker 1: some kind of hardship and being able to talk about
Speaker 1: that and tend to yourself in that, Like that is
Speaker 1: the work. Yeah, So you sometimes teach comics. What is
Speaker 1: there about storytelling that you feel like people might find helpful?
Speaker 1: I think sometimes the personal pain and outrage at the
Speaker 1: world is so big that we're like I can't even
Speaker 1: begin so advice or anything for the power of storytelling
Speaker 1: or people who want to start messing with it. What
Speaker 1: do you get you mean, from the perspective of a storyteller,
Speaker 1: like how it can be helpful? Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, as we've been talking about this whole time,
Speaker 1: it's like communication. It's just it's everything. It's how you
Speaker 1: heal yourself, it's how you heal society. It's how you
Speaker 1: build relationships and maintain them. You know, our connections, everything
Speaker 1: we are is about community, hitting with each other and
Speaker 1: you know, hearing and listening and being able to tell
Speaker 1: your story. Being able to tell your truth in a
Speaker 1: way that other people can connect with, I think is
Speaker 1: really important. And also it's really rewarding. It's so over warding.
Speaker 1: I have this experience over and over and over again
Speaker 1: where I'll think something is so personal to me, it's
Speaker 1: so weird and dark and strange, and then I'll write
Speaker 1: about it and I will hear from so many people
Speaker 1: who will say me too, and like it. Just it
Speaker 1: feels so good to know that you're not alone. And
Speaker 1: whether you're sharing that experience with strangers or just the
Speaker 1: people who are close to you, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: just journaling for yourself to go back and revisit your
Speaker 1: your past self, if you're writing something you know for
Speaker 1: your children to have, if you're just writing something to
Speaker 1: your sister or to a wider audience, I think you can.
Speaker 1: I'll get that feeling of recognition. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you found. I did do a comic about my experience
Speaker 1: getting robbed at gunpoint called The Language of Trauma. That's
Speaker 1: about how memory and trauma work or don't work. And
Speaker 1: what I wrote about in that comic was my experience
Speaker 1: of not talking about this for so long that by
Speaker 1: the time I finally addressed it, it was like I
Speaker 1: couldn't remember it, Almost like I could remember certain things
Speaker 1: like the look of the floor tiles, I can remember
Speaker 1: the smell of the soap, but I couldn't give you,
Speaker 1: like a narrative account beginning to end of like here's
Speaker 1: what happened, you know, mancument, Here's what he said, Here's
Speaker 1: what I said, Here's what my sister said. That it
Speaker 1: was like it was just gone. And part of what
Speaker 1: made it difficult for me to talk about was that
Speaker 1: I was worried that if I talked about it, honestly
Speaker 1: that people would say, like, well, that's not trauma, Like
Speaker 1: you can't be traumatized if you don't remember the thing
Speaker 1: that happened to you, Like, that's just not how we're
Speaker 1: You're fine. It really freaked me out, But then you know,
Speaker 1: I did the research, I learned about it. I presented
Speaker 1: the comic, which is less about my experience and more
Speaker 1: about the science. But I heard from so many people
Speaker 1: telling me the same thing happened to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I tried to put it out of my head. Now
Speaker 1: I have these blank spaces, and it was really healing
Speaker 1: for them to read it, and then that was healing
Speaker 1: for me to hear. You know. It can like make
Speaker 1: this beautiful cycle good instead of bad. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: the opposite of what we think. Right you talk about
Speaker 1: the hard things and you bring everybody down. And the
Speaker 1: reality is when you tell the truth about your own experience,
Speaker 1: you let other people feel seen. Two. And this is
Speaker 1: really where we started as well, right, Like, when we
Speaker 1: tell the truth about our own experience, in whatever form
Speaker 1: that takes, we find community and connection, which is the
Speaker 1: opposite of sort of the good vibes only culture, which
Speaker 1: is like nobody wants to hear about your pay and like,
Speaker 1: you know, only smiley phases, happy people have friends, like
Speaker 1: all of that crap. Like the reality is or the
Speaker 1: truth here is Like telling the truth about things is
Speaker 1: the way forward, and that's how we connect, and that's
Speaker 1: how we make community, and that's how we build cultures
Speaker 1: and societies that treat each other with respect and kindness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'll hear from people all the time who will
Speaker 1: say I read this, I recognized myself, and I sent
Speaker 1: it to these people that I want to know me better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and like something like that. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's so meaningful to me, you know, just to hear that,
Speaker 1: like my experience can be a way for two people
Speaker 1: that I've never met to connect more fully. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes you feel like, oh man, that
Speaker 1: was worth it, that was worth doing the hard thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean this this fits really nicely
Speaker 1: with my usual closing question for everybody is like, knowing
Speaker 1: what you know, knowing what you've lived and what you've experienced,
Speaker 1: what does hope look like for you? And I think
Speaker 1: you started to answer that question, but let's let's do
Speaker 1: it anyway. What does hope look like for you? This
Speaker 1: is really like an important question for me to think
Speaker 1: about right now, because, as I said, I have been
Speaker 1: feeling really hopeless. Part of what hope I have is
Speaker 1: I think about, and I just wrote something about this too,
Speaker 1: how political power in our country is often like a pendulum,
Speaker 1: right And I feel very strongly that all the terrible
Speaker 1: things that are happening right now to women, to LGBTQ people,
Speaker 1: particularly trans people, is because of progress that we've made.
Speaker 1: You know, it's backlash. It's saying, oh, now you've gone
Speaker 1: too far. You know, you're you're out of your place now,
Speaker 1: and we're going to put you back in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the clothes you belong, and back
Speaker 1: in the relationship that you don't want to be in.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is we're sending you back. Now. You've come
Speaker 1: too far. And I am hopeful about the backlash to
Speaker 1: this backlash, because this backlash has been so much crueler
Speaker 1: and more devastating than I would have imagined that I
Speaker 1: feel like the stuff we're going to get on the
Speaker 1: other side is going to be amazing. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna We're gonna make the people who are making
Speaker 1: us feel this way feel this way, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to that. Yes, I love like, I love this
Speaker 1: because this is also that is a hope that I
Speaker 1: share as well. Like my functional hope is you know
Speaker 1: when people say things are getting so much worse, that
Speaker 1: they're not getting so much worse, They're getting so much
Speaker 1: more visible. Right, So a lot of the violence and
Speaker 1: oppression and everything else we're seeing has been going on
Speaker 1: for a very long time. It just could get hidden
Speaker 1: because the structures we're holding, and the structures are no
Speaker 1: longer holding. And I feel like that dissolution is very hopeful.
Speaker 1: So I love your definition of hope. Yeay, functional hope
Speaker 1: for everyone with a side of rage. Yeah, but of
Speaker 1: a sinister answer. I wish. I wish I could give
Speaker 1: you something more positive. But I don't feel like that
Speaker 1: sinister though, right Like I think, like, is that cynical
Speaker 1: or is that realistic? Like I don't find that to
Speaker 1: be sinister. I find that to be functional, Yeah, and realistic.
Speaker 1: Had just always says to me every time I will
Speaker 1: say something, she will say that's very adaptive and tell
Speaker 1: if I can wait? Is that good? Yeah? I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're telling me here? Am I being insulted?
Speaker 1: But then I've decided to just own it. And you know, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes there are things you do that they're not good
Speaker 1: or bad, they're just adaptive. There's something that you do
Speaker 1: so that you can live in your environment. And this
Speaker 1: functional hope, as you call it, this is my adaptation.
Speaker 1: This is how I live in this environment. Perfect. This
Speaker 1: is how I live in this environment and don't collapse
Speaker 1: and also don't go completely ballistic. I love this. I
Speaker 1: love this for us, and I love this for everybody.
Speaker 1: I am so glad I got to talk to you today.
Speaker 1: Me too. This is really fun. Thank you, This is
Speaker 1: really fun. I love that we also know that we
Speaker 1: have fun talking about very difficult things. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: obviously link to a bunch of things, and I will
Speaker 1: track down that link to that other essay about memory
Speaker 1: and trauma, anything else. You want people to know where
Speaker 1: to find you, that's it. I mean, you can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. I'm at Aubrey Hirsch and on Roxangay's
Speaker 1: The Audacity once a month. Subscribe to Rock Sangay's newsletter
Speaker 1: and you get a comment from you once a month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and lots of other great stuff too. I love that thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: coming up, after the break, your questions to carry with you,
Speaker 1: and as always, all the ways you can tell me
Speaker 1: about what hope means to you. Right now, don't miss
Speaker 1: that part. Friends, We'll be right back each week. I
Speaker 1: leave you with some questions to carry with you until
Speaker 1: we meet again. I really loved this conversation with Aubrehirsch.
Speaker 1: I just I have so much fun talking to people
Speaker 1: who address the world with intensity. I guess is a
Speaker 1: good word for it. I just it feels really good
Speaker 1: to meet other people who feel similar levels of outrage
Speaker 1: at the state of the world, and people who believe
Speaker 1: in the power of art and creation to help us
Speaker 1: band together and fight for a good and just and
Speaker 1: safe world. So that's what I'm personally taking from today's show,
Speaker 1: A sense of solidarity right here where we are. That
Speaker 1: kind of solidarity feels really important to me. What are
Speaker 1: you taking from the show this week? Did anything stick
Speaker 1: with you in today's conversation? I mean, we packed a
Speaker 1: lot of topics into our time here together. What parts
Speaker 1: made you see something from a new perspective. What parts
Speaker 1: had you maybe raising your own fiston, solidarity or connection
Speaker 1: if that happened for you. I'm also really interested to hear.
Speaker 1: If any of you felt inspired to mess around with
Speaker 1: creating comics of your own, that would be awesome. I
Speaker 1: think Aubrey would like that too. Everybody's going to take
Speaker 1: something different from today's show, but I do hope you
Speaker 1: found something to hold onto. Hope really is a crowd
Speaker 1: sourced thing. As Aubrey said so many times, it's easier
Speaker 1: to move towards the world we want if we find
Speaker 1: ways to connect inside this world we have. Actually, I
Speaker 1: don't think she said that exactly, but that relationship building
Speaker 1: stuff is definitely in there in that conversation. Speaking of
Speaker 1: relationship building, everybody, be sure to check out Refugeing Grief
Speaker 1: on Instagram and here after Pod on TikTok to see
Speaker 1: video clips from today's show and leave your thoughts in
Speaker 1: the comments on those posts. Tag us in your own
Speaker 1: posts on your own social media accounts, and remember to
Speaker 1: use the hashtag here after Pod on all of the
Speaker 1: platforms so we can find you. That's the way we
Speaker 1: search for you with that hashtag here after Pod. We
Speaker 1: love to see where this show takes you. If you
Speaker 1: want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
Speaker 1: or you have a request or a question for upcoming
Speaker 1: explorations of some kind of difficult things. Give us a
Speaker 1: call at three two three six four three three seven
Speaker 1: six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it,
Speaker 1: you can find the number in the show notes or
Speaker 1: visit Megan Divine dot coo. If you'd rather send an email,
Speaker 1: you can do that too, right on the website Megan
Speaker 1: Divine dot coo. We want to hear from you. I
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. This show, this world needs
Speaker 1: your voice. Together, we can make things better even when
Speaker 1: they can't be made right. You know how most people
Speaker 1: are going to scan through their podcast app looking for
Speaker 1: something new to listen to in their going to see
Speaker 1: the show description for hereafter and think, I don't want
Speaker 1: to listen to difficult things, even if amazingly cool people
Speaker 1: are talking about them. Well, that's where you come in
Speaker 1: your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that
Speaker 1: bad in here. We talk about heavy stuff, yes, but
Speaker 1: it's in the service of making things better for everyone.
Speaker 1: So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace,
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Speaker 1: to leave a review, Subscribe to the show, download episodes,
Speaker 1: and yes, please keep on listening, want more. Hereafter. Grief
Speaker 1: education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. As
Speaker 1: my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief
Speaker 1: that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
Speaker 1: all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
Speaker 1: is an important skill for everyone, especially if you're an activist,
Speaker 1: or if you're in any of the helping professions, or honestly,
Speaker 1: if you're a human. You need those kind of skills.
Speaker 1: Find trainings, professional resources and best selling book It's Okay
Speaker 1: that You're Not Okay, plus the Guided Journal for Grief
Speaker 1: at Megan Divine dot co. Hereafter with Megan Divine is
Speaker 1: written and produced by me Meghan Divine. Executive producer is
Speaker 1: Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fosio, Logistical and social
Speaker 1: media support by Micah, and edited by Houston Tilly. Music
Speaker 1: provided by Wave Crash and Today is a backgown noise.
Speaker 1: You'd have to listen really closely for it, but the
Speaker 1: sound of Luna's two long nails clicking on the hardwood
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