Speaker 1: Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
Speaker 1: I'm admitting it totally. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you
Speaker 1: don't keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you truly and well it's all that's if you
Speaker 1: can shine as you're going to death, you can shine
Speaker 1: as you go in from middle Lange, right, Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: why not start now? I'm going to enjoy my life.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, I'm just a little
Speaker 1: particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just aspect or aspects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm
Speaker 1: Alli Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I
Speaker 1: can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers
Speaker 1: and getting dirty. Okay, well, this episode is about beating
Speaker 1: back COVID depression. I'm digging into how we can bring
Speaker 1: more fun, creativity and connection into our everyday lives. Listen, guys,
Speaker 1: it's been two years and in an unprecedented time, a
Speaker 1: global pandemic, and I think the stress of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I think what's been going on politically and even in
Speaker 1: our own personal lives has put us in this kind
Speaker 1: of malaise bubble. And so this podcast is about how
Speaker 1: we get through this COVID nineteen depression, how we have hope,
Speaker 1: and how we learned to play more. I'm curious to
Speaker 1: know if people had hobbies during this time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I ate a lot of ice cream and watched
Speaker 1: a lot of streaming. But then I kind of, after
Speaker 1: about six months, realized that it is the creativity that
Speaker 1: was kind of lifting me up out of my sofa,
Speaker 1: and I started doing little things like making Valentine's cards
Speaker 1: from scratch, writing letters. I started writing a book, and
Speaker 1: I realized that these little creative things were life preservers
Speaker 1: in this pandemic world we were living in, and they
Speaker 1: helped me get through it. And I do think that
Speaker 1: there is real data we're going to find with having
Speaker 1: fun and finding creative outlets and finding connection, particularly in
Speaker 1: an uncertain world. And I have two very esteemed guests
Speaker 1: today to discuss this. Eve Rodsky has a Harvard train
Speaker 1: background in organizational management. She explores the cross section between
Speaker 1: the science of creativity, productivity, and resilience. Eve is a
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author of fair Play, a gamified
Speaker 1: life management system, and the upcoming follow up, Find Your
Speaker 1: Unicorn Space, Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too Busy World?
Speaker 1: And Dr Aditi new Rootcar Dr. A. Dt new Car
Speaker 1: is a physician at Harvard Medical School and a medical
Speaker 1: correspondent with an expertise and stressed resilience, burnout, and mental
Speaker 1: health during the COVID nineteen pandemic and beyond. Her work
Speaker 1: has been featured in The Wall Street Journals and and
Speaker 1: Oprah Magazine in the Washington Post. She appears on air
Speaker 1: as a medical commentator for MSNBC and NBC News and
Speaker 1: writes a column for Forbes, and Together they co host
Speaker 1: Time Out, a fair play podcast. Hello Eve and ad
Speaker 1: I am so glad you guys are here, because everybody
Speaker 1: I know is depressed. It's been two years. I used
Speaker 1: to be an extrovert, I used to be social, I
Speaker 1: used to be flitter out in the world, and now
Speaker 1: I don't like leaving our apartment. I find that a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends are kind of in this steady,
Speaker 1: low grade depression, and we got to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get out of it. Well, Ali, I'll just say,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you for having us my pleasure
Speaker 1: fix the problems we spent a lot of time thinking
Speaker 1: about these things. And really, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: either of us necessarily thought we would spend our life
Speaker 1: speaking about protecting our time and stress and resilience. But
Speaker 1: I would say in the past ten years, I interviewed
Speaker 1: people in seventeen countries and I said, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about your home life right now? This is before
Speaker 1: the pandemic. And there's one word that came up the
Speaker 1: most in my word cloud um, that was drowning. And
Speaker 1: then if I asked people to unpack what that word
Speaker 1: meant to them, Ali it was overwhelmed plus boredom. Is
Speaker 1: this predominantly women that are saying this or both men
Speaker 1: and women? It was men and women. But I would
Speaker 1: say I spoke probably at this point two thirds of
Speaker 1: my interviews, I'd say, or more are women. And I said,
Speaker 1: in seventeen countries. And this idea of overwhelmed and boredom
Speaker 1: is a really deadly combination. This idea that we literally
Speaker 1: can't find a minute in our day to do anything,
Speaker 1: but that every single thing we do is too important
Speaker 1: to cast it aside, so there's literally no time left
Speaker 1: for ourselves. That's the combination we're trying to address today.
Speaker 1: I also found when I speak to my girlfriends, everything
Speaker 1: feels and this is pre COVID too, very transactional. Life
Speaker 1: is just lots of transactions. Everybody felt like my life
Speaker 1: is just about like paying bills and getting this and
Speaker 1: getting through the day and what's tomorrow. And then this
Speaker 1: global pandemic hit and it was sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm doing that now, but I'm losing my kind of
Speaker 1: happiness and I'm even losing my sense of resilience because
Speaker 1: I can't take this anymore, you know. And then you
Speaker 1: have the warring about maths and you just go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I you know, I'm just I'll rewatch succession again.
Speaker 1: I came, you know what I mean. It's like the
Speaker 1: pandemic was like a slap in the drowning face a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know. It is that we are living
Speaker 1: through the perfect storm. Alle We like you said, tensions
Speaker 1: are high prior to the pandemic, and now we're entering
Speaker 1: year three and in doctor speak, it's like we've gone
Speaker 1: from an acute condition to a chronic one and we
Speaker 1: need that cognitive shift. But we weren't prepared for that.
Speaker 1: We were prepared for a pandemic sprint we thought a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, maybe a few months the summer, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be out of this. And here we are
Speaker 1: in year three. So this is a real cognitive leap
Speaker 1: that we haven't been able to make. And pandemics, even
Speaker 1: I talk about this a lot, pandemics really stoke our
Speaker 1: primal fears and it is a fear of survival for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word. Right, we are very adept
Speaker 1: at stress, and stress can be a really adaptive response
Speaker 1: to in an acute situation. We're very good, our brains
Speaker 1: are great for that. But when it becomes chronic, that's
Speaker 1: when things like burnout, anxiety, depression, and all of these
Speaker 1: mental health conditions, which are at a record high right now,
Speaker 1: that's when they set in. So it's not you or
Speaker 1: me or Eve. It is a collective issue because it's
Speaker 1: not us. It's our biology and it's that biology of
Speaker 1: stress that continues to be pushed against its limit now
Speaker 1: entering year three. Well, so let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: I think at the beginning of the pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was all fear based. You know, we
Speaker 1: all freaked out and we were you know, windexing or
Speaker 1: bananas or whatever, it is you were doing. And there
Speaker 1: was a real, you know, talk about survival mode. It
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, how do I not die?
Speaker 1: And I got COVID very early on, which you know,
Speaker 1: of course I remember that this is scared the ship
Speaker 1: out of my family. And George had very different symptoms.
Speaker 1: Remember he was asymptomatic, and of course I was Laura
Speaker 1: from Little Women. But um, you know which I said
Speaker 1: to him, I said, this is reason enough to get divorced,
Speaker 1: the fact that you have no symptoms and I've been
Speaker 1: in a room for three weeks of fever. But there
Speaker 1: was that kind of fight or flight panic we all had.
Speaker 1: And then it was a little bit like, okay, enough,
Speaker 1: already this is going on way too long. And I
Speaker 1: feel like now after you know, a macron has dissipated
Speaker 1: a little bit, that fear of death has gone, and
Speaker 1: now it's just well, you know, we're okay, but this
Speaker 1: just key. I have to wear my mask and I
Speaker 1: have to keep getting tested. But you know, and I
Speaker 1: think that's where the malaise and the depression come in.
Speaker 1: This middle ground is hard for a lot of people
Speaker 1: to chart. I I found, well, I'll just say that
Speaker 1: Adam Grant called it languishing, right, this idea that we're languishing,
Speaker 1: And so I did, and I started to think about, well,
Speaker 1: what's the opposite of languishing. And we've been talking a
Speaker 1: lot about the word flourishing, right, this idea of how
Speaker 1: do you flourish? And one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: start to flourish again is really to understand that daily
Speaker 1: flourishing is associated with creativity. Daily flourishing is not going
Speaker 1: to be solved anymore with a walk around the block
Speaker 1: or even getting back to whatever normal was dally flourishing.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to get there by having a
Speaker 1: drink with a friend. Ali, Like you said, I'm an extrovert.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to get out either. But it's
Speaker 1: this idea that we have to become interested in our
Speaker 1: own lives again and what does that look like? Well,
Speaker 1: especially for women, I think that's so hard because our
Speaker 1: time is our most valuable currency, especially in a capitalist patriarchy,
Speaker 1: and we've been taught to give it away to literally
Speaker 1: everybody else. One time, journal studies said women have been
Speaker 1: interrupted every three minutes and forty two seconds on average
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. When you don't have the ability to
Speaker 1: pay attention. Then the stress just exacerbates. And so what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be interested in your own life again? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, we can't tell you what
Speaker 1: it is for you, but we can tell you how
Speaker 1: to find it. I mean, for Ali, you know this podcast,
Speaker 1: it's important. You know, whether you make a dollar from
Speaker 1: it or billion dollars for you know, it's important. It
Speaker 1: means you're in a flow sta pay them. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: let's let you have the time away so you know,
Speaker 1: mommy's on. I see your headphones on. Right, the idea
Speaker 1: of not being interrupted, But it really requires three things.
Speaker 1: It requires the ability to pay attention, sustained attention for
Speaker 1: something that you love to do, and it requires actually
Speaker 1: physical and mental space. This just reminded me that pre COVID,
Speaker 1: for my birthday every year, I used to go away
Speaker 1: by myself. Yes, you know, and my at the beginning,
Speaker 1: my husband George was like, this is very odd, and
Speaker 1: my girlfriends were like, you're going away alone. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I am going away alone. And I would go away
Speaker 1: for a long weekend and I would, you know, walk
Speaker 1: on the beach or hike in the mountain or wherever
Speaker 1: I was, and I would read, and I would think
Speaker 1: I realized I didn't give myself any time to think
Speaker 1: about anything, like what do I think about the death penalty?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like do I even like
Speaker 1: these sneakers? Did I just buy them? Because I was
Speaker 1: told like just just I got to really, you know,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better sentence or to be a
Speaker 1: little cringe e. It was like I had a weekend
Speaker 1: with myself, and I found not being able to do
Speaker 1: that even during COVID was really hard for me because
Speaker 1: I haven't had any time to reboot, to unplug any
Speaker 1: of that. And I I think that's part of the
Speaker 1: depression of getting a little bit lost in this time
Speaker 1: where I've got kids and dogs and a husband and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, I got to clean the vegetables, I
Speaker 1: got a vacuum. I gotta, you know, make sure everyone's happy.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot, and I think women always give
Speaker 1: themselves up first. We need that space. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: so much to say about that. You know what's interesting is, first,
Speaker 1: the reason that we are at this spot right now
Speaker 1: in year three's because we've had no recovery. So we
Speaker 1: went through that hyper vigilance and that state of acute anxiety,
Speaker 1: and what's supposed to happen after acute anxiety is a
Speaker 1: period of recovery, and we have never gotten that areod
Speaker 1: of like big side, deep breath, recalibration, out of fire,
Speaker 1: flight back to arrest, and digest state. I mean biologically,
Speaker 1: we just went from active, Oh my god, are we
Speaker 1: going to die? To know it's this low grade thing
Speaker 1: that never goes away. We function well when there's an end.
Speaker 1: That's why marathons or marathons, because we know that there
Speaker 1: is a finish line and we can get there, but
Speaker 1: that finish line just keeps moving and moving. So this
Speaker 1: is why we're just you know, all of us are
Speaker 1: running on fumes. And even I coincidentally, Ali just spoke
Speaker 1: today about this idea of creating a space and really
Speaker 1: carving out a physical space. I used to do the same.
Speaker 1: I used to go away in Boston to a hotel
Speaker 1: room for two nights when it just got too much,
Speaker 1: and my husband would always joke and say, what's the deal.
Speaker 1: You're going to meet someone like what's going on? What's
Speaker 1: his name? Yeah? And I'd say, no, you don't get it.
Speaker 1: It's like the greatest joy to sit in a robe
Speaker 1: for two days, order room service, not talk to anyone.
Speaker 1: And so then that was our deal. And then he'd say, like,
Speaker 1: go for it. What a gift that is because you
Speaker 1: just get time to yourself. We haven't gotten that opportunity
Speaker 1: right now. And our brains, you know, especially because we
Speaker 1: as women but also men, but but women. We are
Speaker 1: multidimensional beings, were spouses, where mothers, were workers, were friends,
Speaker 1: and to do all of those roles, well, we need
Speaker 1: spaces to do them in. We are now confined. We
Speaker 1: are confined to one space, our home, one little room
Speaker 1: where we're supposed to do everything and all of it well,
Speaker 1: held to the same standards. Our brains do not work
Speaker 1: that way. We function best when we are in different spaces,
Speaker 1: you know, without getting too scientific. When we are in
Speaker 1: resilient mode, let's say pre pandemic, we are governed by
Speaker 1: an area called the prefrontal cortex, which is like right
Speaker 1: behind the forehead. This is what is memory, organizational planning,
Speaker 1: cognitive functions, higher complex cognitive functions under stress. So since
Speaker 1: two now, we are being governed by the amygdal out
Speaker 1: that is our stress response. We call that the lizard brain.
Speaker 1: It's the part of the brain that has not evolved.
Speaker 1: So whether it's a tiger in the forest, caveman time,
Speaker 1: or a metaphorical tiger that we experience now, we had
Speaker 1: that same acute stress response, and that going on for
Speaker 1: year one, two and three can cause lots of problems
Speaker 1: like sleep fragmentation, elevated cortisol which causes weight gain, inability
Speaker 1: to concentrate, inability to feel productive, all of the challenges
Speaker 1: that we're having in our relationships because we're seeing these
Speaker 1: people every day. That wasn't how life was designed. To
Speaker 1: live with your spouse, work with your spouse, have breakfast, lunch,
Speaker 1: and dinner with your spouse, and then all of the
Speaker 1: parenting and the schooling that we're doing with our children.
Speaker 1: So it's a pressure a cooker situation. And what even
Speaker 1: I explore in our podcast is that ability to be
Speaker 1: able to have that respite. I think if it as
Speaker 1: like a tea kettle were trying to change the temperature,
Speaker 1: that the temperature can't change. These are external factors, the
Speaker 1: pandemic and all of these other factors. But we can
Speaker 1: open up that lever to blow off the steam to
Speaker 1: have that therapeutic release. And so that is what we
Speaker 1: are really talking about that idea of releasing the steam
Speaker 1: even in the midst of a pandemic and that pressure
Speaker 1: cooker situation. I want to release some steam. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I know a lot of people that got
Speaker 1: divorced during this period because there was no releasing of
Speaker 1: the steam or anything. Yeah, and it's time for a
Speaker 1: short break. Great, let's get back to it. So when
Speaker 1: you think about the space at home, I am fortunate
Speaker 1: enough that I have a few different spaces that I
Speaker 1: can go to that I can claim my own, and
Speaker 1: my kids can claim their own. And I think about
Speaker 1: women all the time, like single mothers who have a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids who don't have space. What do you
Speaker 1: say to them? You can't tell them like, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you go meditate in the car? You know, I
Speaker 1: wonder about women that don't have the luxury of space
Speaker 1: in terms of cubic feet. It's actually very, very hard
Speaker 1: to be a single parent in America. So I think
Speaker 1: about my mother a lot. Who is that we were
Speaker 1: a small apartment in the Lower East Side, single mother
Speaker 1: and all the single mothers that I spoke to in
Speaker 1: seventeen countries for my research, And what we realize is
Speaker 1: that we need to fight for the bigger solutions. But
Speaker 1: also you can take these small steps of agency in
Speaker 1: your own life. And the first step is that you
Speaker 1: don't need to be all things to all people at
Speaker 1: all times. It's okay to be unavailable from your roles.
Speaker 1: That self talk is really really important. The batting back
Speaker 1: of guilt and shame. Literally, even the ritual of listening
Speaker 1: to a podcast for five minutes on their way to work,
Speaker 1: baking a pie for a friend. These things that are
Speaker 1: communal are really really important for single parents who've been
Speaker 1: taught that they can do it all and they can't.
Speaker 1: So what I would say, it's the connection to the
Speaker 1: community that has been the most important for single parents. Curiosity, connection,
Speaker 1: and completion are three really important things for creativity, but
Speaker 1: that middle part that connection is very very important. So
Speaker 1: one single parent I spoke to recently, I met her
Speaker 1: through another woman who does this of women who have celiac,
Speaker 1: who also fake treats for other celiacs that taste as
Speaker 1: good as gluten filled pastries. And her reason for being
Speaker 1: right now is this idea that I can make a
Speaker 1: pastry that tastes good for my community, so there's something
Speaker 1: small for them. A sweet treat during the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: I thought that was really beautiful. So I would say
Speaker 1: it's really about this connection to a wider community that
Speaker 1: we've all said that is it nice to have, but
Speaker 1: it's a must have, especially in a country that has
Speaker 1: no social safety net, no paid leave, no universal child care,
Speaker 1: no health insurance, that's not tied to our jobs, and
Speaker 1: is losing all sense of community none our country as
Speaker 1: a whole. Yeah yeah, none, yeah, And that's it. And
Speaker 1: the beauty of this sharing Celiac treats with your community
Speaker 1: is that some of the people you're going to share
Speaker 1: with or maybe people you've never met before. I would
Speaker 1: say writing my second book, I've connected to people on
Speaker 1: their creativity, like my new friend David in Texas, who
Speaker 1: took up bull writing in his sixties. I will say that, Ali,
Speaker 1: I probably never would have spoken to David in Texas,
Speaker 1: the bull Rider, if it wasn't for the community. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have met you. So sometimes when you just
Speaker 1: take that first step into a creative life, you don't
Speaker 1: really know where it's going to lead you. But I
Speaker 1: will tell you that a creative life is a connected life,
Speaker 1: and that's one that absolutely we need right now. You know,
Speaker 1: the great irony of this pandemic is that we all
Speaker 1: feel alone, isolated, and unable to cope. But if you
Speaker 1: were to knock on your neighbor's store, they are going
Speaker 1: through the exact same thing. So we are having an
Speaker 1: individual experience of trauma isolation, and yet it's this surreal
Speaker 1: collective experience. And what's been so fascinating in therapeutic terms
Speaker 1: as a doctor, we call it the group effect. It's
Speaker 1: this concept in medicine of why group therapy is so important.
Speaker 1: It's because when you go through a difficult experience that
Speaker 1: challenges you and really forces you to grow, and you
Speaker 1: meet with people who have had that same difficult experience.
Speaker 1: When you share your experience with others, it validates and
Speaker 1: normalizes the experience for you, and that has a direct
Speaker 1: impact on your stress response in your biology. Yes, so absolutely,
Speaker 1: this universal theme of having literally no no space is
Speaker 1: it's happening, and especially because during the pandemic, not only
Speaker 1: were women interrupted every three minutes and forty two seconds,
Speaker 1: so there's actually no mental space, but women's unpaid labor
Speaker 1: increased by Jesus, so there was no actual respite because
Speaker 1: your physical space is being occupied by homeschooling, homework, possibly
Speaker 1: trying to you know, fit in work, and there watching
Speaker 1: Toddler's dealing with aging and ailing parents. My sister in
Speaker 1: law lives in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with my
Speaker 1: younger brother and they have three kids, one of them
Speaker 1: on the spectrum, and all were being home schooled, but
Speaker 1: you know, in different ways. My brother is a teacher,
Speaker 1: so he was home, and you know, my sister in
Speaker 1: law had these three kids who were scared, anxious, have
Speaker 1: their own issues. We're trying to do school work. You know,
Speaker 1: she was like, I can't do sixth grade math. And
Speaker 1: I just thought, my god, this poor woman, how is
Speaker 1: she getting through? And of course she would cry, and
Speaker 1: I just thought, this is women all over the globe
Speaker 1: right now, all over the globe. The husbands, for some reason,
Speaker 1: we're saying they take precedence because you know, their job,
Speaker 1: and the women were trying to talk to their bosses
Speaker 1: under the kitchen sink while they're nursing. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest problem with the home is that, um, it presents
Speaker 1: very small. We think we're fighting about who's bringing home
Speaker 1: the blueberries. We think we're the only ones fighting over
Speaker 1: whose turnatives to homeschool our child in sixth grade math.
Speaker 1: Or you know one woman that every time my partner
Speaker 1: forgets to put the laundry in the dryer, I dumped
Speaker 1: the clothes on his pillow. You know. So we think
Speaker 1: we're having these micro fights, but actually this is a
Speaker 1: such a systemic issue. And so I think if we're
Speaker 1: here just to say you're not alone. It is so
Speaker 1: hard to be a working parent in this country. And
Speaker 1: if anything, the silver lining of this pandemic can do anything,
Speaker 1: it's one thing. It's returned us to our value, used
Speaker 1: to what's most important in our lives. I mean, why
Speaker 1: don't we do holiday cards in elfh and the shelf, Like,
Speaker 1: let's retire all these things that other people told us
Speaker 1: we had to do and return to the things that
Speaker 1: we care about. And number two, recognize that we have
Speaker 1: to change things in this country. But the first thing
Speaker 1: is the awareness. We're finally aware that this is not
Speaker 1: sustainable anymore, especially for women. We cannot live like this
Speaker 1: anymore on the backs of the unpaid labor of women.
Speaker 1: You know what's so interesting is that the statistics are bleak.
Speaker 1: Seventy of the workforce say that this has been the
Speaker 1: most stressful time of their entire professional career. Sixty plus
Speaker 1: percent of people note at least one feature of burnout,
Speaker 1: and seventy say that COVID is most likely the culprit.
Speaker 1: So we're using the pandemic. You know, you hear it
Speaker 1: all the time. It's a public health crisis, it's a
Speaker 1: public health emergency, but on top of that, it is
Speaker 1: an occupational health crisis, it's a family structure crisis, and
Speaker 1: it's a parenting crisis. So in many ways it really
Speaker 1: speaks to all of our societal ills and in thinking
Speaker 1: through how do we get out of this, how can
Speaker 1: we make it better? You've mentioned that the silver lining
Speaker 1: for her is returning to our values. For me, the
Speaker 1: silver lining of this pandemic is that finally in the workplace,
Speaker 1: in the home, we are finally understanding that mental health
Speaker 1: is the shadow pandemic. As a physician, I've known this
Speaker 1: for a long long time, right, Like, these statistics are
Speaker 1: definitely worse now than they have been. But we've always
Speaker 1: had a mental health crisis. We've always had that sense
Speaker 1: of overwhelmed depression, anxiety, mood disorders, insomnia. But over the
Speaker 1: past couple of years, there's been a tripling in prescriptions
Speaker 1: written for these conditions. But these stress related conditions have
Speaker 1: always been there. You know, there's this one statistic sixty
Speaker 1: eight percent of all primary care visits have some sort
Speaker 1: of stress related component. It's been happening for a long time.
Speaker 1: It is much worse now, at least now we're recognizing
Speaker 1: it and bringing it to light. I now don't know
Speaker 1: any teenage or that isn't suffering from anxiety, whether they're
Speaker 1: medicated or not, or their self medicating with pot or
Speaker 1: something else. I feel like there's a whole generation of
Speaker 1: kids right now who need help. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that was interesting about researching creativity as a solution,
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of being interested in your own life,
Speaker 1: not just creativity with the paintbrush, but this idea that
Speaker 1: this flow state activities that make us come alive are
Speaker 1: a way to return us to the things that we
Speaker 1: remember about ourselves, the same way Ali, you're your retreat,
Speaker 1: your ability to think, like you said, to ask yourselves,
Speaker 1: why did I buy these sneakers to make decisions for ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because I went really pretty deep into
Speaker 1: positive psychology as I was researching my second book, And
Speaker 1: what's been fascinating about positive psychology, this how to be
Speaker 1: Happy movement, There's been lots of books. The happiness has
Speaker 1: become its own industry. What happened was that there became
Speaker 1: this really strange reagul era individualism, like I have to
Speaker 1: do this alone, and that's sort of been co opted
Speaker 1: by the happiness movement, sort of like as one woman said,
Speaker 1: I've gratitude journal myself to death that somehow that that's
Speaker 1: the way out of this, right And the truth is,
Speaker 1: it just isn't. The more we say I want to
Speaker 1: be happy, or you say to your kids, I wish
Speaker 1: you happiness, it's actually the really the wrong way to
Speaker 1: look at things. So if you put happiness in this place,
Speaker 1: this is what I found, and it's actually been really
Speaker 1: helpful to me to understand that if we're happy all
Speaker 1: the time right now, we'd be literal sociopaths, right um.
Speaker 1: But the true definition of mental health is having the
Speaker 1: appropriate emotion at the appropriate time and the ability and
Speaker 1: strength to weather it. And what I find so fascinating
Speaker 1: about that is We're gonna have a lot of difficult
Speaker 1: emotions right now, but it's the ability and strength to
Speaker 1: weather how do you do that. You can do it
Speaker 1: through hedonistic adaptations, which is, you know, for me, emotional eating,
Speaker 1: smoking weed like you said, binge, watching TV, doom, scrolling
Speaker 1: check check check. That is happiness, right, that's happiness without meaning.
Speaker 1: And then if you look at meeting without happiness, meeting
Speaker 1: without happiness is associated with caregiving. But when do you
Speaker 1: actually get meaning and happiness combined? That's the ability and
Speaker 1: strength to weather this thing, and so many of us,
Speaker 1: or at least in my research, so many people said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have those experiences anymore. I may have those
Speaker 1: happy without meaning experiences. I may have meaning without happiness,
Speaker 1: which is my caregiving, But when am I actually having
Speaker 1: that time from meaning and happiness to explode, whether that's
Speaker 1: crocheting and your crocheting class, baking a pie and sharing
Speaker 1: with a neighbor, hip hop dance like I've been doing,
Speaker 1: whatever it is for you, those we have to bring
Speaker 1: those back and we have to equate it with the
Speaker 1: same priorities that we give to breathing. Literally, So I
Speaker 1: think about a lot of people I know during COVID.
Speaker 1: I have one friend who I actually uh talk to
Speaker 1: on my podcast because she found out during COVID that
Speaker 1: she did not have COVID, she had stage four lung cancer,
Speaker 1: and so she was forced to kind of reassess everything
Speaker 1: in her life very quickly. And I said to her,
Speaker 1: what's getting you through? And I was expecting, you know,
Speaker 1: some deep Buddhist poem and she said, I'm taking online
Speaker 1: ukulele classes. And I was like, oh, yes, okay, all right, yes,
Speaker 1: and so and more and more people have said, you know,
Speaker 1: after they went through getting high cholesterol and binge watching
Speaker 1: every show, people started to go, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to learn a different language or I'm gonna
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I should do this. And so is that?
Speaker 1: Is that what kind of what you mean about finding
Speaker 1: these creative things in one's life, whether you're good at
Speaker 1: them or not, and sort of growing them and nurturing them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we should bring you on the road with us,
Speaker 1: because you just distilled it very very beautifully good. Creativity
Speaker 1: loves constraints. This is the time we're extremely constrained, and
Speaker 1: this is the time where as we said, you know,
Speaker 1: the walk around the block is not going to do
Speaker 1: it for us. And yes, so what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: that the people who are again not happy all the time.
Speaker 1: We said, the appropriate emotion of the appropriate time, but
Speaker 1: the ability and strength to weather it. That's what we're
Speaker 1: focusing on, that umbrella because it's raining now. We're not
Speaker 1: sure the storm's ever going to stop. It's this understanding
Speaker 1: that the intersection of happiness and meaning in these pursuits
Speaker 1: and active pursuits that make people come alive is incredibly,
Speaker 1: incredibly important. And this is the thing. We say things
Speaker 1: like hobby, We say things like vanity project or passion
Speaker 1: project or side hustle. We literally use words to demean
Speaker 1: this thing we're talking about, this this space. We're going
Speaker 1: back to space. Hobby was a word that people associated
Speaker 1: with infrequency. Side hustle was a word that people associated
Speaker 1: with having to modify and make money off of the
Speaker 1: thing that they loved. Passion project sounded like you can
Speaker 1: only have one of them, one passion your whole life.
Speaker 1: So we started to think about and talk about space instead.
Speaker 1: And actually the term we use now is unicorn space,
Speaker 1: which because a lot of people use the term white space,
Speaker 1: which again when I would talk to my friends of color,
Speaker 1: they didn't love that word because a white space sounded
Speaker 1: like a place they couldn't be in right. But then
Speaker 1: this idea of a unicorn space, right, This something that
Speaker 1: that's magical and mythical but doesn't fucking exist until we
Speaker 1: can reclaim it. That's what we're talking about. It doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Unicorns may be magical, but they actually don't exist. Don't
Speaker 1: tell my five year old daughter that. So this idea
Speaker 1: that there's a unicorn space out there for you, and
Speaker 1: it could be more than one. It could be your
Speaker 1: podcast sally, it could be your crocheting group. I'd say.
Speaker 1: My favorite is my friend who was the Sam's Club
Speaker 1: cashier who's now an erotic narrator. And for her, she said,
Speaker 1: you know, my life is really hard. I have no space,
Speaker 1: we have one room, I have a toddler. My husband's
Speaker 1: an auto mechanic with praise hours. But she makes time
Speaker 1: to narrate erotic books after her son goes to bed,
Speaker 1: and she uploads it and it's her favorite part of
Speaker 1: the day, so much that she tattooed on her arm.
Speaker 1: Reading books is like breathing air. And so I said, Terrill,
Speaker 1: what was your life like before you were an audiobook narrator?
Speaker 1: And she said, well, what's the opposite of breathing air? Wow?
Speaker 1: So we're trying to retire the words hobby, side, hustle, passion,
Speaker 1: vanity project because usually they're typically associated with women, and
Speaker 1: they're associated with infrequency and nice to have, and this
Speaker 1: is a must have as we're talking about. You know,
Speaker 1: humans are meaning seeking, purpose driven creatures, and so when
Speaker 1: we are able to create meaning and purpose through difficult experiences,
Speaker 1: that's the growth mindset, right, That's when we embody the
Speaker 1: growth mindset. That's when we believe challenges make us wiser, stronger,
Speaker 1: and more adaptable. What's interesting about that idea of key
Speaker 1: donic pleasure, right, Netflix, fast cars versus another kind of happiness,
Speaker 1: which is you dimonic happiness, longer word, kind of scientific,
Speaker 1: but the science backs up you dimonic happiness, that meeting seeking,
Speaker 1: purpose driven drive that we have. You know what's interesting
Speaker 1: is you dimonic happiness has been shown to influence our
Speaker 1: immune system, so our cells down to the cellular level,
Speaker 1: our body recognizes that difference between hedonic happiness and you
Speaker 1: diamonic happiness. And so what better time than now, year
Speaker 1: three of the pandemic to really embrace that sense of
Speaker 1: you dimonic happiness? Ali, what's yours? What's your unimonic happiness.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, um, we're putting you on the spot. I
Speaker 1: have sort of different things. I'm very crafty, so, like
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of making Valentine cards is very
Speaker 1: exciting for me. And I'll do it in when nobody's home,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll put on some music and I'll
Speaker 1: have paints and you know, that kind of thing I love.
Speaker 1: I also when I would go away on my little
Speaker 1: alane trips, I love to dive for shells, meaning I
Speaker 1: like to go out into the ocean and just look
Speaker 1: for shells and dive really deep down and and and
Speaker 1: I can get lost. I mean eight hours can go
Speaker 1: by and I and the reason I love it is
Speaker 1: because I'm not thinking about all the things I have
Speaker 1: to do or should do. And it's almost like a
Speaker 1: meditative stance. And then there's like a prize at the end.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the reward of the shell that I
Speaker 1: usually throw back. But you know it's been in this
Speaker 1: horrible pandemic time, I've had to find other outlets. But
Speaker 1: can I tell you what the beauty of your diving
Speaker 1: for shells example is, which I think you should calligraphy somewhere,
Speaker 1: is that when you were talking about that experience, I
Speaker 1: want to know if you could just go one level deeper,
Speaker 1: because what I heard was that there was discovery, there
Speaker 1: was wonder, there was presence. What other values doesn't bring
Speaker 1: up for you when you were diving for selves? Um,
Speaker 1: I I like the simplicity of that pursuit, right, I
Speaker 1: think that for me and um for I think women
Speaker 1: in general, because we're multitaskers, we always have in our
Speaker 1: brain eight million things we have to do, Like you're
Speaker 1: you're constantly downloading lots of incoming stuff and then again
Speaker 1: you know, add in not sleeping during COVID, And so
Speaker 1: for me, there's a peacefulness to my brain that I
Speaker 1: can't get anywhere else that I could get in the ocean,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't be far enough from normalcy or you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote my home, there's my dog, see you're directed, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Never quiet. So for me, it's that simplicity, I think.
Speaker 1: But then you know there's a competitive nature to it too,
Speaker 1: so I think there are layers to it. Well. What
Speaker 1: I think is important as a practice, though, is when
Speaker 1: we're st get home back to space, is remembering that
Speaker 1: the things you're talking about, our simplicity discovery, foraging, quiet, wonder, peacefulness,
Speaker 1: and rigor. So I don't know what you mean by
Speaker 1: peacefulness even with an obese docs and barking right behind me. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: you don't need that. But I think the idea of
Speaker 1: even putting on the wall simplicity, discovery, foraging, quiet, wonder, peacefulness,
Speaker 1: and rigor and saying you know what, this week, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to pick one of those words to focus on.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's noise canceling headphones, it's the sounds of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and it's you do that combine with your Valentine's making
Speaker 1: and saying I'm not discovering shells, but at least I
Speaker 1: have some of the quiet and the peacefulness this week.
Speaker 1: So I always think it's a fun exercise because whatever
Speaker 1: you love to do, there's a reason why you love
Speaker 1: to do that, and if you can connect to that reason,
Speaker 1: then there are other things we can do in this
Speaker 1: more limiting time that hopefully can help us connect in
Speaker 1: small ways back to those things like for example, my
Speaker 1: friends she loves to do pottery. She hasn't been going
Speaker 1: to a pottery studio because she's immune compromise, But what
Speaker 1: she did do was she went she feels more comfortable outdoors.
Speaker 1: So she's been looking in thrift sales for like a
Speaker 1: perfect bud vase and just picking a different flower to
Speaker 1: put in that bud vase to remind her that she
Speaker 1: loves pottery. And I just thought that was such a
Speaker 1: beautiful way to do something small. You know, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back, and we're back. Do you have more tricks,
Speaker 1: scientific or creative that we can do during this period
Speaker 1: of uncertainty that brings us more connectiveness to our home,
Speaker 1: to our life. Absolutely. You know what's so interesting, Ali
Speaker 1: is like you, you say, a greater sense of connectivity
Speaker 1: to our homes and our lives. But I would say,
Speaker 1: maybe first we have to think about a greater sense
Speaker 1: of connectivity to ourselves elves, because that's something that we've
Speaker 1: really lost along the way, right, because we have been
Speaker 1: serving everyone else. And so in terms of thinking through,
Speaker 1: how can we concretely, in scientific terms, have strategies in
Speaker 1: our day to day lives that improve our situation in
Speaker 1: the now in the pandemic. One of the ways we
Speaker 1: talked about just today, even I is like that phone.
Speaker 1: We often many of us instinctively we open our eyes.
Speaker 1: One eye is open and we are already scrolling, we're
Speaker 1: looking at our emails, we're looking at our social feeds.
Speaker 1: Something that immediately ignites that dopamine, serotonin and all of
Speaker 1: those neurotransmitters to go. These are not benign endeavors. They
Speaker 1: do harm to the brain, especially now when we are
Speaker 1: hyper vigilant and our fight or flight mechanisms are already
Speaker 1: on high alert. The first strategy is just right when
Speaker 1: you wake up, keep that phone far away from your nightstand,
Speaker 1: in another room, or at least far away. There's so
Speaker 1: many other strategies. One of them is idea of stop,
Speaker 1: breathe and be Many of us are on zoom meetings
Speaker 1: all day long, and so when you use this with
Speaker 1: a mindless, repetitive task that you do all day. So
Speaker 1: for you Ali, maybe it's that you're, you know, one
Speaker 1: zoom meeting to another to another, and how do you
Speaker 1: break that up when you feel like it's just this
Speaker 1: pressure cooker situation or groundhogs day. When you hit that
Speaker 1: start meeting button, it's that moment where you can do
Speaker 1: that brief reset, so you stop, bring awareness your body.
Speaker 1: Think about your breath for a second, take a deep
Speaker 1: breath in think about your posture. And when you want
Speaker 1: to have that sense of being, you focus on your
Speaker 1: feet on the floor or your body in the chair.
Speaker 1: However you want to just wait, you know, a way
Speaker 1: to recognize and and if you do that ten times
Speaker 1: a day, fifteen times a day, just that small reset,
Speaker 1: you can create a little bit more spaciousness into your
Speaker 1: daily life in the midst of that very hectic work day.
Speaker 1: You know that pressure cooking. I'm it that we've talked
Speaker 1: about with parenting and working and all of the things
Speaker 1: that are happening in that little room. Another really concrete
Speaker 1: way is to set up a fake commute. So many
Speaker 1: of us used to commute. We do very well with
Speaker 1: commuting because our brains like compartmentalization, We like structure. That's
Speaker 1: how our brains are wired. Right now, we are multidimensional
Speaker 1: beings in a unidimensional space. We're doing everything in one
Speaker 1: space and that's not natural. It's not normal, and it's
Speaker 1: certainly not good for our brains. So faking and commute,
Speaker 1: go for a walk around the block, get that little
Speaker 1: brain space of like, oh now I'm out of that
Speaker 1: parent mode and I'm heading into work mode. You know.
Speaker 1: Eve talks a lot about rituals, and I love the
Speaker 1: concept of rituals. I called that fake commute a book
Speaker 1: end to my day. So I start my day like that,
Speaker 1: I end my day like that. Even though I'm working
Speaker 1: from home. I love the fake commute because again, the
Speaker 1: space becomes so small when you're in it for so
Speaker 1: long long that even if, like you said, a walk
Speaker 1: around the block. I mean, I have dogs, as you heard,
Speaker 1: and they require walks because they need to relieve themselves.
Speaker 1: But during COVID, they are my fake commute, and they
Speaker 1: are my you know, ritual eve because I have to
Speaker 1: take them out three times a day, and so that
Speaker 1: does kind of make me feel like the morning commute
Speaker 1: my lunch break, and then the end of the day
Speaker 1: commute is because I got to walk these dogs. Perfect.
Speaker 1: It's already built in. I will up level that too,
Speaker 1: because and I'll shout out to essential workers, because we
Speaker 1: obviously know that there are many people who are you
Speaker 1: still working out of the home. And I remember one
Speaker 1: nurse in Texas recently said to me that what she's
Speaker 1: done is she's been taking a picture in nature. She
Speaker 1: works in a hospital which is very industrial. She said,
Speaker 1: the fluorescent lights really get to her team, So they
Speaker 1: all commune with nature in a very easy ritual that
Speaker 1: you can pair with with her commute. So what she
Speaker 1: does is she stops on the way to work, she
Speaker 1: takes some picture of nature. She says birds are her favorite,
Speaker 1: but if she can't spot a bird, she'll do a
Speaker 1: flower or something on the road. She takes one picture
Speaker 1: during her lunch break and one picture on her way home,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the week, her team
Speaker 1: shares what they do in nature. Yeah. Wow, So maybe
Speaker 1: you could do that in your walk. Take a picture, Ali,
Speaker 1: I would see what you see. I'll do all of it.
Speaker 1: Why don't you forage for shells in the city? I will.
Speaker 1: I will look for conck shells in Central Park, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the metaphorical shell, of course. I actually sometimes
Speaker 1: look for old tennis balls or balls that have been lost,
Speaker 1: you know, keeps me focused. Take a picture of that, right,
Speaker 1: take a picture of lost items. I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be so cool to see. Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of lost items in Central Park, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this, what are three things
Speaker 1: that you both through this process and everything you've been
Speaker 1: learning and researching. Three things in your own lives that
Speaker 1: you're letting go that you realize during COVID, like I
Speaker 1: don't need this, Okay, these are the three things. And
Speaker 1: I talked about this actually in my second book because
Speaker 1: they were also very important things for other people. I'm
Speaker 1: letting go of the belief that I have to be
Speaker 1: available to everybody at all times. So I'm giving myself
Speaker 1: a permission to be unavailable for my roles as parents, parents,
Speaker 1: and our partner and her professional I am burning guilt
Speaker 1: and shame, and to do that, I have to often
Speaker 1: reframe it as I feel guilty because I didn't put
Speaker 1: down into bed. Two. I made the decision not to
Speaker 1: put on into bed because I wanted to go forge
Speaker 1: for shells in such a park after it was dark.
Speaker 1: Everyone's doing it, and I would say, I'm sick of
Speaker 1: not asking for what I need. So a permission to
Speaker 1: actually ask for what I need in advance, to block
Speaker 1: out times in my calendar to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't want to live an overwhelmed and board life
Speaker 1: seth and I don't think you do either, So like,
Speaker 1: let's find some time where we both can like come
Speaker 1: alive alone, and then we're gonna be much better for
Speaker 1: each other. So how can we show for that? Okay, good,
Speaker 1: I love that. What about you? The first thing that
Speaker 1: I have really given up is this idea that I
Speaker 1: am an expert all the time, because with COVID things
Speaker 1: are perpetually changing, the idea of resilience and mental health
Speaker 1: and stress and burn out, all of these things that
Speaker 1: I do have that expertise in. I am also a living,
Speaker 1: breathing example of that experience now, and so that is
Speaker 1: new and different, and so I'm letting go of that
Speaker 1: in the best way possible. The second thing that I'm
Speaker 1: letting go of is, like you, Ali, I too used
Speaker 1: to take lots of trips and travel to so many
Speaker 1: different places. Miami was my winter escape patch. And I
Speaker 1: have unvaccinated miners at home, so I can't do that
Speaker 1: right now, and so I have had to create that
Speaker 1: sense of escape in my daily life, in the drudgery
Speaker 1: of cold and dark Boston, and I am creating that
Speaker 1: for myself every single day. Even yesterday in degree whether
Speaker 1: I was able to do that and that was a
Speaker 1: win for me. And the third thing that I'm really
Speaker 1: letting go of is that idea that we really do
Speaker 1: need to know everything and have that sense of perfectionism.
Speaker 1: I have been very good over the years, but the
Speaker 1: pandemic has really brought that to light. And so every
Speaker 1: day I try to zoom out focus on what really matters.
Speaker 1: It's our health, our family, and love and those really
Speaker 1: cheesy things which we often took for granted. And when
Speaker 1: you can just zoom out and look at those essentials
Speaker 1: of what makes life meaningful, everything just goes from there.
Speaker 1: So I have a little a little gimmick I do
Speaker 1: on my podcast, which is I've spent an hour asking
Speaker 1: you all kinds of questions, and now I get to
Speaker 1: turn it around and you guys get to ask me
Speaker 1: a question and you can ask me a question about
Speaker 1: anything you want. Oh my god, I love this so much. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you were on a desert island for a year,
Speaker 1: sounds like Heaven, tell me the top three things. If
Speaker 1: you came off after that year, you would have said, Wow,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I did that. Well, because I'm on
Speaker 1: a deserted island, there is a survival aspect of it.
Speaker 1: So I would like to feel like I built a
Speaker 1: hut with a conk shellf fence by myself. I knew
Speaker 1: how to spear fish. I knew, you know, the basics
Speaker 1: of I knew how to live. I think the second
Speaker 1: thing is I would have had a year by myself
Speaker 1: and in my own head, which is amazing. So I
Speaker 1: think I would come off the island with a hell
Speaker 1: of a book, right which I'm already I'm already optioning
Speaker 1: into a movie. I feel like that bug. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got Reese Witherspoon already attached to this, um And I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would come back a better wife, mother, person,
Speaker 1: and friend for sure, because I would have so much
Speaker 1: time to think about the important things. But I think
Speaker 1: the most empowering thing is my conk shelf fence, which
Speaker 1: people will talk about for centuries. Again rights back to
Speaker 1: the creativity. I love it. I can't help it, um DT.
Speaker 1: What is your question for me? My question for you,
Speaker 1: Ali is more of a personal one. How do you
Speaker 1: still laugh yourself? And how do you give people the
Speaker 1: ability to laugh with the situation that we're in right now?
Speaker 1: I will tell you this. For me, laughter is an
Speaker 1: incredibly healing thing, and I deal with so many different
Speaker 1: things with humor, and so it's sort of just who
Speaker 1: I am. And during the dark days, certainly the beginning
Speaker 1: of COVID, I used humor as a way to help
Speaker 1: my kids. To my husband and I remember one night
Speaker 1: we discovered the show called Love Island Australia, which is
Speaker 1: just about people hooking up. It's it's the lowest, most disgusting,
Speaker 1: misogynistic show, and we all would watch it together and
Speaker 1: of course I would do running commentary about, you know,
Speaker 1: just the girls in the bikinis and the heels. And
Speaker 1: one night our family decided to have Love Island dinner,
Speaker 1: so we all dressed up, even my husband, George Stephanopolis
Speaker 1: put on a bathing suit. We all put on bikinis
Speaker 1: and heels and spoke with Australian accents and we were
Speaker 1: laughing so hard. I think one of my daughter's Peter pants.
Speaker 1: And that to me was about getting through a dark
Speaker 1: time with humor, and I I try to create those
Speaker 1: as much as I can in my life because otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm under the covers, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, with the shades down. So humor has saved me,
Speaker 1: and I think during COVID certainly helped my family. Well
Speaker 1: I'm crying because I'm laughing with that vision is so funny. Oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: I have I have a photograph that I promised my
Speaker 1: family I would never show, but you know it is.
Speaker 1: It's an image that will stick with us forever. And
Speaker 1: the accent like I love that and the accent oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh no. We were fully committed to this, so d
Speaker 1: c at Eve, I can't thank you enough for coming
Speaker 1: on go ask Alli and helping us with all kinds
Speaker 1: of ideas to literally lift our spirits. Thank you so fun,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having us. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: a unicorn space. And when they were talking about hobbies
Speaker 1: and side hustles, which were not allowed to say anymore,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how in the summer of the
Speaker 1: first year of COVID, I discovered clamming and I literally
Speaker 1: dipped my toe into it. And then I became obsessed
Speaker 1: and I ordered a clam rake on Amazon and wellies
Speaker 1: and I would go out in the afternoon for about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half and I would go clamming,
Speaker 1: and I would come back with like two dozen clams.
Speaker 1: I also got my fish shirt license, my claiming license,
Speaker 1: and I would come home and make Linguinian clams, which
Speaker 1: was great the first thirty times, and then my family
Speaker 1: got so sick of it. They couldn't take him anymore.
Speaker 1: And I used to go clamming, and then I would
Speaker 1: hand it out to people I knew friends in town,
Speaker 1: and that was my way of connecting to my community.
Speaker 1: So not only was it something where I had the
Speaker 1: headspace to be out in the bay digging for clams,
Speaker 1: I also got to, you know, feed my family with it,
Speaker 1: and then I got to be part of my community
Speaker 1: with it. So Jesus, I could write a whole book
Speaker 1: on clamming. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Alli.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and
Speaker 1: follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali Wentworth
Speaker 1: and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. Now, if
Speaker 1: you'd like to ask me a question or so just
Speaker 1: a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways
Speaker 1: to do it. You can call or text me at
Speaker 1: three to three three six four six three five six,
Speaker 1: or you can email voice memo right from your phone
Speaker 1: to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com. If
Speaker 1: you leave a question, you may hear it. I'm Go
Speaker 1: Ask Alli. Go Ask Gali is a production of Shonda
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