Speaker 1: Your brain doesn't really make the distinction between being rejected
Speaker 1: by love and being sort of cast out of the
Speaker 1: clan to lie on the savannah and be circled by
Speaker 1: Hyenas you know, your body registers this as a very
Speaker 1: threatening state, like a physically threatening state. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is a repeat guest the
Speaker 1: One You Feed podcast. It's Florence Williams, a journalist, author,
Speaker 1: and podcaster. She's a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and
Speaker 1: a freelance writer for The New York Times, Slate, Mother Jones,
Speaker 1: National Geographic, and many many others. Today, Florence and Eric
Speaker 1: discuss her new book, Heartbreak, A Personal and Scientific Journey.
Speaker 1: Hi Florence, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, so great
Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you. Yeah, it's wonderful to have
Speaker 1: you back on. We had you on. I don't know
Speaker 1: the date, it's been years. At this point, we talked
Speaker 1: about your last book, which was all about nature. Your
Speaker 1: current book is called Heartbreak, A Personal and Scientific Journey,
Speaker 1: and you're just such a great writer. It's it's such
Speaker 1: a well written and beautiful book. So we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that. But before we do, let's start, like
Speaker 1: we always do, with a parable. There's a grandparent who's
Speaker 1: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparents says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I've thought so much through this project
Speaker 1: about the power of negative emotions. So I had never
Speaker 1: experienced heartbreak before, and when it happened, it so knocked
Speaker 1: me off. My socks changed, the way my body felt, changed,
Speaker 1: my health, changed the way my cells were functioning. And
Speaker 1: that's what really drove me to write this book. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to confront why is it that
Speaker 1: uncomfortable emotions are so difficult to deal with? Why do
Speaker 1: we avoid them? And so the one you feed? You
Speaker 1: have to make a choice sort of on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: like how are those negative emotions going to play you?
Speaker 1: And how are you going to play them? And I
Speaker 1: think it really became a driving kind of pursuit while
Speaker 1: writing this book. I love are you going to play
Speaker 1: the emotions of the emotions going to play you? I
Speaker 1: really like that take because it doesn't say anything about
Speaker 1: that you have to get rid of the emotion, right,
Speaker 1: which you know, it's not a repression, it's a relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, it's how are you relating to and working
Speaker 1: skillfully with these difficult things, And in fact, I would
Speaker 1: say one of the profound and surprising lessons for me
Speaker 1: through this process was to sort of embrace the negative
Speaker 1: emotion um while not letting them exactly play me. But
Speaker 1: they're the ones who teach you, you know, and they're
Speaker 1: sort of what you have to move through in order
Speaker 1: to grow. And I think I had been living my
Speaker 1: life pretty differently, you know, before that. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to tell a little bit of your
Speaker 1: story of heartbreak. But I'm curious were you looking into
Speaker 1: this at all before it happened to you. Was this
Speaker 1: on your radar in any way as a writer, as
Speaker 1: a as a person who's looking at different things, or
Speaker 1: did it emerge wholly from like, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: right in the middle of this and it's terrible. What
Speaker 1: do I do. I have to admit it wasn't really
Speaker 1: on my radar, And in some ways I feel badly
Speaker 1: about that, because I have friends, you know, who went
Speaker 1: through heartbreak at various times, and I don't think I
Speaker 1: was the best friend to them. I think I tended
Speaker 1: to sort of dismiss heartbreak as being sort of the
Speaker 1: realm of melo drama, a little bit overwrought, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you got dumped by someone. You know, obviously that
Speaker 1: person was a loser. Move on. That's right, They're not
Speaker 1: the right fit for you. Lots of fish in the sea.
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, pick yourself up. Don't be so dramatic.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about the events that
Speaker 1: led you kind of into this. Sure, Well, I met
Speaker 1: the man who would be my husband when I was
Speaker 1: eighteen years old. It is literally my first day of college.
Speaker 1: And we dated for seven years and then we got
Speaker 1: married and we were married for twenty five years, two kids,
Speaker 1: And I think, like a lot of long marriages, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are moments of connection and there are moments of disconnection.
Speaker 1: And I guess I always had this sort of bedrock
Speaker 1: faith in it, and I had a desire really for
Speaker 1: it to work. I mean, there were so many things
Speaker 1: I was attached to about my life. But you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't really feel the same way, unfortunately. And I
Speaker 1: think often with heartbreak, when there's a separation, like this's
Speaker 1: a romantic split, one person wants it more than the other.
Speaker 1: And I was the one who didn't want it. I
Speaker 1: was afraid of it, and it also kind of surprised me, honestly,
Speaker 1: So you know, at one point he told me that
Speaker 1: he wanted to go find his soul mate, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I wasn't it ouch ouch, right, big ouch?
Speaker 1: And so I felt that rejection, and I felt that
Speaker 1: pain really deeply, you know, in my heart, in my stomach,
Speaker 1: in my pancreas, in my body. I had always thought
Speaker 1: that heartbreak, you know, was it was something that was
Speaker 1: in your head. There's a lot of sadness, and that
Speaker 1: heartbreak was sort of a metaphor. But you know, as
Speaker 1: I kind of launched my investigation into what was happening
Speaker 1: to me and why I felt this way, I learned
Speaker 1: that our bodies really register this kind of pain in
Speaker 1: ways that I don't think really get acknowledged or talked
Speaker 1: about enough. Yeah, and we'll go into that. I certainly
Speaker 1: like you have a history. You have, I guess unlike you,
Speaker 1: you've got sort of the one heartbreak. I've got a
Speaker 1: whole string of them. I'm sorry, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: The biggest one was to my ex wife, mother of
Speaker 1: my son, and I look back on that as both
Speaker 1: the most difficult period of my life and perhaps the
Speaker 1: most fertile period of my life for so many things.
Speaker 1: There was so much opportunity for transformation in it. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't wish it on anybody. Yes, I can really relate
Speaker 1: to that. Do you think Eric, that it gets easier,
Speaker 1: that heartbreak gets easier the more you go through it?
Speaker 1: Or does it get harder? Is it a cumulative this
Speaker 1: is you know, I've only had one big heartbreak, so
Speaker 1: I still don't know the answers to that. That's a
Speaker 1: great question. I don't think it gets easier. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think it gets easier. I do think there
Speaker 1: is a cumulative nature. You talk about this in the book,
Speaker 1: which is that the problem with heartbreak, unlike say death right,
Speaker 1: that kind of grief that comes from that is there
Speaker 1: is a element of I must not be lovable that's
Speaker 1: embedded in it. And when that happens multiple times, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if you're like, we'll see more evidence. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got multiple pieces of evidence to back
Speaker 1: up this theory. Yeah, And it's so interesting. I have
Speaker 1: been in a really good relationship with Jenny. Listeners have
Speaker 1: heard her on the show and it's been I think
Speaker 1: six plus years, and it's been really good, and they've
Speaker 1: been six great years for me as far as my
Speaker 1: own development and all that. And I kind of wonder, like,
Speaker 1: how would I handle heartache now, heartbreak now? And I
Speaker 1: think the answer is it would still be extraordinarily painful regardless.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's something that you evolve past.
Speaker 1: I wonder, though, I guess the hope would be that
Speaker 1: at some point you don't buy that story anymore of
Speaker 1: not being good enough. Yeah, I think there's that, And
Speaker 1: I think there's the other element that is an interesting
Speaker 1: question to think about, which is how much of how
Speaker 1: strongly I am affected by heartbreak has to do with
Speaker 1: things that have happened to me in the past that
Speaker 1: haven't been healed. That's right, I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the things you learned. Yes, Yes, it all comes back around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to think if it happened again, I
Speaker 1: would be in better shape because I had healed a
Speaker 1: lot of things. But I still think, based on the
Speaker 1: way we're wired up, that it would be very painful.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things you said you thought heartbreak or sadness was something
Speaker 1: that was in your brain as if it didn't exist.
Speaker 1: But what we know, and you point out, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let you elaborate on, is that that sort of pain
Speaker 1: triggers the same places in the brain that actual, real
Speaker 1: physical pain does. Yeah, that's right. I set out to
Speaker 1: talk to neuroscientists and uh, you know, geneticists and psychologists
Speaker 1: to find out sort of why our bodies get so
Speaker 1: kind of implicated in our emotions. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I learned there's been so much research on people
Speaker 1: who fall in love and the neurotransmitters associated with falling
Speaker 1: in love. I think it's kind of probably a fun
Speaker 1: research area. Um, your subjects are all happy, you know,
Speaker 1: your subjects are happy, it's all sunny. But I spoke
Speaker 1: early on to Helen Fisher, who is a biological anthropologist,
Speaker 1: and she has scanned the brains of dumped people and
Speaker 1: while they're looking at pictures actually of their sort of
Speaker 1: rejecting departing beloved, and she found that the parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that get activated are similar, not exactly similar,
Speaker 1: but basically the same, you know, very similar to where
Speaker 1: we process physical pain. And also parts of the brain
Speaker 1: light up. They're associated with craving and addiction, you know,
Speaker 1: just because someone stops loving you doesn't mean you stop
Speaker 1: loving them, and your body on some level kind of
Speaker 1: misses them and notes their absence and registers that absence,
Speaker 1: and you sort of want that back. You want those
Speaker 1: brain chemicals back, if not the person itself. Right, And
Speaker 1: in the book you mentioned multiple times there's this profound
Speaker 1: feeling of not being safe. Yes, that happens when you're dumped.
Speaker 1: The early stages of it for me feel a little
Speaker 1: bit like panic. Absolutely. I wouldn't call it a full
Speaker 1: panic attack, but it is a to use a word
Speaker 1: you've got in the book, hyper vigilance. Right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: feel deeply imperiled. And it makes sense because if you
Speaker 1: think about sort of how we evolved as mammals, you know,
Speaker 1: we are supposed to feel safety in numbers. We form
Speaker 1: deep attachments that drive our every sort of behavior. And
Speaker 1: when your primary attachment partner, you know, takes off, you
Speaker 1: literally feel alone. Your brain doesn't really make the distinction
Speaker 1: between being rejected by love and being sort of cast
Speaker 1: out of the clan to lie on the savannah and
Speaker 1: be circled by hyenas. You know, your body registers this
Speaker 1: as a very threatening state, like a physically threatening state.
Speaker 1: And so that starts this cascade of stress hormones nor panephrin.
Speaker 1: You know that, then talk to ourselves, talk to our organs,
Speaker 1: talk to our immune systems where white blood cells get
Speaker 1: made in our bone marrow, and they're designed to be
Speaker 1: very responsive to our environment, and it turns out to
Speaker 1: our social state. One of the researchers I talked to said,
Speaker 1: you know ourselves listen for loneliness, and when they detected, boy,
Speaker 1: they really kick into high gear because it's not a
Speaker 1: place where we are supposed to live for a long time, right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the things that heartbreak,
Speaker 1: slash loneliness does to the body. You know, we know
Speaker 1: how it feels, we can register the pain, but there
Speaker 1: are changes throughout the body that occur. You notate a
Speaker 1: lot of them in the book, So I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could just elaborate on a couple of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that feeling of sort of near panic or
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance sets off some very specific symptoms, for example, sleeplessness, agitation,
Speaker 1: difficulty digesting because your body is sort of gearing up
Speaker 1: for some kind of you know, fight or flight. For me,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of weight loss, my blood sugars
Speaker 1: were sort of messed up, I mean deeply messed up.
Speaker 1: My gut bacteria was messed up. I ended up with
Speaker 1: an autoimmune diagnosis some months after the split, that was
Speaker 1: type one diabetes. And what I learned, you know, from
Speaker 1: talking to researchers, is that sometimes these autoimmune diseases do
Speaker 1: in fact have an emotional trigger. They are made worse
Speaker 1: by inflammation, and inflammation is kind of the key. So
Speaker 1: I want to talk to a psychologists the University of Arizona,
Speaker 1: David spar Up. He said to me, you know, the
Speaker 1: story of divorce is an inflammation story. You know, I
Speaker 1: had never heard that before. And so then I met
Speaker 1: with a researcher at U c l A. And we
Speaker 1: actually analyzed my genetic markers, my transcription factors, which are
Speaker 1: basically signatures for inflammation. And we did this at various
Speaker 1: time points after the separation, and that became kind of
Speaker 1: one of the central threads of the book, kind of
Speaker 1: looking at how myself were responding to loneliness and how
Speaker 1: they were responding to different science based interventions that I
Speaker 1: was very eager, you know, to try, in this sort
Speaker 1: of urgent it to feel better to feel healthier. I
Speaker 1: love that aspect of the book, you've got bio markers
Speaker 1: that you're trying to sort of pay attention to to
Speaker 1: see what's working what's not, in addition to just the
Speaker 1: correlation and making the correlation to how I'm actually feeling right.
Speaker 1: And I think that naturally a lot of us will
Speaker 1: emerge from heartbreak and hopefully start going, all right, what's
Speaker 1: this next phase of my life look like? And we
Speaker 1: start adding and building things in which I think is
Speaker 1: a natural process, and you go through it, and I
Speaker 1: just love that you're also bringing the science along with it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting when you said that the story
Speaker 1: of divorces an inflammation story. There's also you're talking about
Speaker 1: heart health at a different point in the book. One
Speaker 1: of the people you quote the tragedies of life are
Speaker 1: largely arterial, so there's actual heart aspects to this also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating to me that, you know, for millennia,
Speaker 1: cultures across time have known that the heart is in
Speaker 1: some ways the seat of the emotional probably because it's,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the few organs we can actually feel,
Speaker 1: we can feel it pumping, we know it stops sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, during crises, and people have known for a
Speaker 1: long time too that you know, of course, husbands and
Speaker 1: wives sometimes die within a couple of days of each
Speaker 1: other or within months of each other because their heart stopped.
Speaker 1: But it was only in the nine nineties that researchers
Speaker 1: in Japan were able to start imaging the heart during
Speaker 1: heart failure to see that people were coming into the
Speaker 1: hospital with sort of symptoms of heart attack, but there
Speaker 1: was no sign of an arterial blockage, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the standard cause of a heart attack. Instead, these
Speaker 1: people were experiencing this weird distention of the left ventricle
Speaker 1: quadrant of the part, so it was like ballooning out
Speaker 1: and then being unable to pump correctly. And they named
Speaker 1: it talk at Subo after a lobster pot which has
Speaker 1: this very bulbous head and a narrow neck, so it
Speaker 1: looked like this quadrant of the heart. So it's the
Speaker 1: stress hormones like adrenaline landing on receptors in the heart
Speaker 1: and causing it to just literally balloon out like that
Speaker 1: and sort of freak out. So we know now that
Speaker 1: takatsubo makes up about five probably of all heart failures,
Speaker 1: you know, showing up in the hospital. About five percent
Speaker 1: of those cases will result in death. Another twenty percent
Speaker 1: will result in you know, continued sort of cardiac risk.
Speaker 1: And we know that especially middle aged, post menopausal women
Speaker 1: are about of the patients, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So there's there seems to be something protective about the
Speaker 1: estrogen sort of counteracting that adrenaline. But we know that
Speaker 1: people suffer this kind of heart failure after the death
Speaker 1: of a spouse or the death even of a pet um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's after the death of a sports team. Your
Speaker 1: particularly their cases in the literature, men suffering this when
Speaker 1: their sport team loses the World Cup, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: just seems to happen, you know, for no known reason.
Speaker 1: But this is really interesting. There are cases that really
Speaker 1: spike after a natural disasters when there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, adrenaline. That makes sense, And there's just recently
Speaker 1: a new study showing that cases have spiked during the
Speaker 1: pandemic during COVID interesting, especially in women. So do we
Speaker 1: know of any things that make any factors that make
Speaker 1: us more susceptible to the really damaging effects of heartbreak
Speaker 1: or of having like heartbreak tear us up more? Is
Speaker 1: there anything that sort of says like, people like this
Speaker 1: or have had this happen or this sort of thing
Speaker 1: are more likely to have like just heartbreak to feel catastrophic,
Speaker 1: versus people who might say, well, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean again, I'm not saying anybody's gonna be like a
Speaker 1: big deal, right, but I seem to be one of
Speaker 1: those people. For whatever reason, it was earth shattering to me, right,
Speaker 1: And I had friends who yeah, it was painful, but
Speaker 1: it did not seem to just devastate them in the
Speaker 1: same way it did me. And I just don't know.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that explains that sort of difference. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, we know that their personality traits that seem
Speaker 1: to make people both more resilient and a little bit
Speaker 1: less resilient. You know, the data is not destiny here,
Speaker 1: but in general, people who on personality tests, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of registers being a little bit more neurotic, a
Speaker 1: little bit more introspective, a little bit more anxious, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of tend to ruminate and cognitively engage, you know,
Speaker 1: with their emotions are going to be harder hit, you know,
Speaker 1: by some of these emotional blows. And also we know
Speaker 1: that people who have had early life traumas and childhood
Speaker 1: traumas are going to be more susceptible, you know, to
Speaker 1: future challenges. But I was so encouraged to talk to
Speaker 1: Paula Williams at the University of Utah who said, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: we know heartbreak is is really hard, and we know
Speaker 1: that especially you know, people who split up after these
Speaker 1: long term relationships and divorces um do have higher risk
Speaker 1: for early death, They have higher risk for depression, they
Speaker 1: have higher risk for metabolic disease, for cardiac disease. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a grim littany frankly, but we
Speaker 1: also know that there are certain traits that make you
Speaker 1: more resilient. And this was the really heartwarming news to me.
Speaker 1: You can actually cultivate some of those traits and try
Speaker 1: to become better at them. And the one that was
Speaker 1: surprising to me and change the trajectory of my whole
Speaker 1: reporting over the two or three years of this book,
Speaker 1: which she said, the people who can really engage with beauty,
Speaker 1: people who can experience awe on a regular basis, who
Speaker 1: can cultivate all these are the people who seem to
Speaker 1: be able to make more meaning and sense of their tragedies.
Speaker 1: They can create more connections between their frontal cortex, which
Speaker 1: is kind of their seat of their self concept, and
Speaker 1: their sensory and motor parts of their brains in a
Speaker 1: way that helps them create meaning, helps them find respective,
Speaker 1: helps them experience conflicting emotions like yes, utter pain, but
Speaker 1: also wow, joy and beauty and possibility. The people who
Speaker 1: might be able to find a kernel of optimism and
Speaker 1: that that became true for me throughing the course of
Speaker 1: my journey. So I just glommed onto that as life
Speaker 1: saving advice. Not only could I experience beauty, but she
Speaker 1: was telling me that I could get better at it.
Speaker 1: The trait you're describing is often considered on a standard
Speaker 1: personality test. How open are you to new things? Right?
Speaker 1: How open are you in general? And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that say, you know, where you land on
Speaker 1: the personality test is sort of where you are, like,
Speaker 1: these things don't move right, they don't tend to move much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're stating that either introverted or you're not right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you know, openness to new experience and the
Speaker 1: ability to find beauty you're saying, is trainable. What are
Speaker 1: some of the ways to do that well, she's a
Speaker 1: huge fan of starting early. So for example, childhood art education.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a tragedy really that we don't
Speaker 1: have more of this, you know, in our schooling system
Speaker 1: in the United States. But this kind of developing an
Speaker 1: appreciation for art and for beauty is a lifelong gift
Speaker 1: that's going to help you survived the blows of life.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, wonderful if we could start that early.
Speaker 1: But with things like awe and beauty, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a mindful practice. You can go out,
Speaker 1: you know, around your block, and you can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like find some things that are beautiful on
Speaker 1: this walk around my block, and I'm gonna look at
Speaker 1: this flower. There's a way to sort of and I
Speaker 1: love this micro dose off that I learned about um
Speaker 1: from a study that I participated in where there's an
Speaker 1: acronym for a w E where the A is attention.
Speaker 1: So you know, on your walk or as you're going
Speaker 1: through life, or even inside your house, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a house plant, or you have an incredible meal,
Speaker 1: or you're looking at your baby, you know, attend right,
Speaker 1: just pay attention to that. And of course philosophers talk
Speaker 1: about this all the time, that attention is love and
Speaker 1: love is attention. You know, don't space out while you're
Speaker 1: looking at this beautiful blossom. And then did double is
Speaker 1: for weight? So stay with it, stay with that attention,
Speaker 1: and the E is just exhale, just two breaths, exhale,
Speaker 1: you know, so you may be staying with this moment
Speaker 1: of beauty for a couple of breaths. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like a one minute practice, and if you do it
Speaker 1: a couple of times a day, there is some emerging
Speaker 1: data showing that it really does improve people's well being.
Speaker 1: It improves their moods, it improves their feeling of purpose
Speaker 1: in their lives, gives them some perspective. We know that
Speaker 1: the science of AWE is so interesting, also relatively new
Speaker 1: field of study. But in the presence of something beautiful,
Speaker 1: we are kind of naturally pulled out of our own thoughts.
Speaker 1: Our rumination sort of stops dead for a minute when
Speaker 1: the moon comes up, or when we notice, you know,
Speaker 1: the owl in front of us on the path or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And I've had that experience where I've
Speaker 1: been just you know, so lost in some kind of
Speaker 1: conversation that I'm thinking about that I had, and then
Speaker 1: this owl jumped out in front of me on the
Speaker 1: trail and it was like, WHOA, completely stop thinking about
Speaker 1: what I was thinking about. Um, I felt, you know
Speaker 1: the presence of something beyond myself, right, and that in
Speaker 1: itself is an incredibly helpful just feeling of connection on perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that acronym usage, and I love the idea
Speaker 1: of you know, the weight and the exhale. Reminds me
Speaker 1: of Rick Hanson, who talks about a practice, you know,
Speaker 1: taking in the good, which is pretty much the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: if you're having a good experience, stay with it a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, give it favorite, you know, give
Speaker 1: it a little more attention. There are other attentional exercises
Speaker 1: that I think can be very helpful in this regard
Speaker 1: to which is things like, you know, I often play
Speaker 1: with seeing the edges of everything. What would be an
Speaker 1: example of that, Well, if I'm looking out my window
Speaker 1: right now, I mean I've looked out this window ten
Speaker 1: thousand times, right, And what we know, you know about
Speaker 1: the brains sort of predictive nature, right, is that there
Speaker 1: are some people believe that I'm not even really registering
Speaker 1: what's out there. At some level, right, my brain is
Speaker 1: sending down a prediction of what it expects to see.
Speaker 1: My senses are sending up what they do see, and
Speaker 1: if they match, I never have to process it. So
Speaker 1: something like looking at the edges would just be like,
Speaker 1: let me look at the edge of everything I see?
Speaker 1: Where are the edges of that building? Where the edges
Speaker 1: of that tree? It just causes me to have to
Speaker 1: actually looks interest or you could do this with color,
Speaker 1: you know, let me see all the green that's out there.
Speaker 1: It's a way for me of I think of actually looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it pulls you into some kind of process that's not
Speaker 1: about your head, that's right, that's right now. The thing
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, though, is that is the element
Speaker 1: that goes a little bit beyond that, which is how
Speaker 1: do you then go from that sort of mechanical thing
Speaker 1: into a little bit more of a state of almost
Speaker 1: a creation. Right. But as they say, you know, I
Speaker 1: think Mary Oliver said it best right that you know,
Speaker 1: attention is the beginning of devotion, right there you go, yep,
Speaker 1: you know, so how do we devote ourselves to something?
Speaker 1: We pay attention to it? And I think you know,
Speaker 1: My Zen training talks so much about this, about just
Speaker 1: the ordinary thing. If you give it enough attention, it
Speaker 1: will come alive. And I think you do get better
Speaker 1: at it the more you do it. Yes. For example,
Speaker 1: I'm during the pandemic one of my little rituals when
Speaker 1: you know, we all felt so house bound and isolated,
Speaker 1: and I would walk every night to go look at
Speaker 1: the sunset, and it just became, you know, this automatic
Speaker 1: part of my day. It's like, oh, time for the sunset.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna run, run down the street and go look
Speaker 1: at the sunset. And it's when you do that, it's
Speaker 1: impossible not to sort of drink it in, you know,
Speaker 1: like this bomb. It just you you become better at
Speaker 1: doing it. I think so you found over that time
Speaker 1: that you began to develop the skill of appreciating the
Speaker 1: sunset more. Yeah, I'm really trying to sort of access
Speaker 1: the a in it as well, to find myself stilled
Speaker 1: by that beauty. And then the other interesting thing that
Speaker 1: happened is that there were a number of my neighbors
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, and so you know, I would
Speaker 1: see the same people every night, and I felt closer
Speaker 1: to them. You know, I didn't know them. But but
Speaker 1: pretty soon I did, and we would say hello and
Speaker 1: and so it became not just this personal awe experience,
Speaker 1: but it became a collective experience, which was incredibly comforting
Speaker 1: and you know, a really nice antidote to loneliness. If
Speaker 1: you can experience that kind of unselfing in the presence
Speaker 1: of other people, I sort of amplifies it, I think.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like you had a location that multiple
Speaker 1: people agreed was an optimal place to watch a sunset from.
Speaker 1: Is that accurate. Yeah? So I live in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I'm about I don't know, five blocks or so
Speaker 1: from the bluffs overlooking the Potomac River. So it's one
Speaker 1: of the few places where you you actually can get
Speaker 1: a little it of a vista. Got it. It looks
Speaker 1: west and there's the sunset. Wow. I mean it just
Speaker 1: you know, some nights it was it was lame, but
Speaker 1: usually it was pretty right. Yeah, So let's move into
Speaker 1: Now we've talked about what heartbreak is, how difficult it
Speaker 1: is for us, the things that does to us. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about where did you start to turn for healing.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get through all of it,
Speaker 1: but maybe you know, highlight a few key places. Sure,
Speaker 1: I became so motivated to try to do what was
Speaker 1: kind of science based in my kind of urgent bid
Speaker 1: to get healthier, and so I turned, per this conversation
Speaker 1: with Paula Williams, I turned to spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in nature, trying to focus on beauty. I went
Speaker 1: on a wilderness trip to even try to kind of
Speaker 1: crank up the volume on the awe and the immersion.
Speaker 1: So I embarked on a thirty day wilderness trip. Um.
Speaker 1: I did half of it alone, which has kind of
Speaker 1: um some unexpected results. I would say, actually it was
Speaker 1: good in some ways, it was not as helpful in
Speaker 1: other ways. I did some E. M. D R therapy,
Speaker 1: which is supposed to be good for emotional trauma, and
Speaker 1: there's some interesting emerging research about that. And I did
Speaker 1: some psychedelics, actually working with a clinician in a therapeutic setting.
Speaker 1: Again too, I would say heightened the awe kind of
Speaker 1: dose that I was trying to go for. And and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of science there, of course, and it's
Speaker 1: really helpful to me. So let's start with nature. You
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Nature Fixed, which was all
Speaker 1: about how nature is healing for us and critical for
Speaker 1: us as humans. Did you find yourself naturally? Just? I
Speaker 1: guess that's that's a funny sentence, naturally coming to nature,
Speaker 1: Like you just kind of knew it and you went
Speaker 1: to it. Or was it a case of sort of
Speaker 1: having to rediscover that. I was so primed already to
Speaker 1: think that nature could be helpful. Having written The Nature Fix,
Speaker 1: I felt like I was leaning on every lesson I
Speaker 1: learned from that book, not just because you know, the
Speaker 1: subtitle of that book was how to be healthy, Happy,
Speaker 1: are Healthier and more creative. Now I felt like I
Speaker 1: needed it to survive. You know. It was a whole
Speaker 1: different level of kind of need, and so it was
Speaker 1: an intuitive place for me to try to seek help.
Speaker 1: But in that book, I only talk about sort of
Speaker 1: the dose curve of nature immersion up to three days.
Speaker 1: Like I end the book with the so called three
Speaker 1: day effect, talks about the interesting things that happened to
Speaker 1: your your brain and your body after three days aside,
Speaker 1: And I felt like, Okay, but I see a lot
Speaker 1: more than three days, because this is a really big heartbreak.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go for thirty days. So what were
Speaker 1: the aspects of that that felt really healing, and what
Speaker 1: were the aspects of that that felt more challenging. Well,
Speaker 1: I did half of the trip with other people and
Speaker 1: half of the trip alone. So the first half was
Speaker 1: the half of other people. And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: I loved the planning the trip, even the logistics of
Speaker 1: an expedition. I can actually pull you out of kind
Speaker 1: of the limbic parts of your brain and forced you
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, be really cerebral in a
Speaker 1: way that's helpful right to deep emotions. And then I
Speaker 1: also just wanted to spend good times with my friends
Speaker 1: and family. You know, I felt so much comfort from
Speaker 1: being surrounded by them. I had all of these friends
Speaker 1: and family who signed on, and so I felt very
Speaker 1: supported by them. You know, they were helping me kind
Speaker 1: of self actually, but also they just also really liked
Speaker 1: being on the river, you know, and so it was
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of jolly times. I would say,
Speaker 1: it was sort of jolly and fun. And then everyone
Speaker 1: disappeared and it was like, Okay, now I'm going to
Speaker 1: do the really deep work here. I'm gonna learn how
Speaker 1: to be alone because I have not ever in my
Speaker 1: life been alone since I met my husband when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, I'm gonna learn to access bravery since I'm
Speaker 1: scared of this future that looks so different and so
Speaker 1: it feels so insecure. I wanted to feel the metaphor
Speaker 1: of paddling from one destination to another. Tell listeners about
Speaker 1: what the trip was real quick. Yeah, So it was
Speaker 1: thirty days down the Green River in Utah. Starts in
Speaker 1: southwestern Wyoming and then um flows through a lot of
Speaker 1: Utah to merge with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park.
Speaker 1: It's one of the sort of premier river trips you
Speaker 1: can do in the United States where you can be
Speaker 1: on the river for that long. You know, most of
Speaker 1: it is through public land. You need a series of
Speaker 1: permits to go through these different canyons. Um they're different
Speaker 1: permitting agencies, including Indian Reservation. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: logistically complicated. For the solo piece. I was in Canyonlands
Speaker 1: National Park for most of that, also some Bureau of
Speaker 1: Land Management land and so um there's only one resupply
Speaker 1: point in that two weeks, one road that goes in,
Speaker 1: so I had to sort of line that up. You
Speaker 1: plan the food, and I felt like I just needed
Speaker 1: to mark this passage in my life, you know, by
Speaker 1: doing something kind of um grand and something that would
Speaker 1: harry me, you know, through this passage into what I
Speaker 1: thought would be kind of a better story of myself
Speaker 1: as literally the pilot of my own boat. You know,
Speaker 1: metaphors were just irresistible to me. And so what were
Speaker 1: the good and bad parts of those fifteen days. I
Speaker 1: think that I did access a lot of bravery. I
Speaker 1: think I felt like, Okay, I can be alone, I
Speaker 1: can take care of myself, I can be self reliant.
Speaker 1: But I also had this realization that I don't want
Speaker 1: to be I don't want to be alone. I don't
Speaker 1: want to take care of myself. I learned that it
Speaker 1: through the absence of having other people around me, that
Speaker 1: the value of having other people around you is to
Speaker 1: help you not feel so bad about yourself. You know
Speaker 1: that if you tend to go down these dark rabbit holes,
Speaker 1: it's the company of people you love who helped pull
Speaker 1: you out of that. You know. It's one of the
Speaker 1: tremendous values of our social you know instincts, but you know,
Speaker 1: beyond that, we are healthiest when we don't just rely
Speaker 1: on ourselves. It's kind of our cellular super fuel as
Speaker 1: a species, that we do help each other, and so
Speaker 1: if we deny ourselves that opportunity, we're just not going
Speaker 1: to kind of hit our real potential, I think. And
Speaker 1: those were all big revelations for me, because I don't
Speaker 1: think I had wanted to rely on other people so much.
Speaker 1: I think I did want to kind of embrace a
Speaker 1: kind of self reliance, you know, this is the myth
Speaker 1: that we're all sort of fed from such an early age.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to connect with people through dark emotions,
Speaker 1: you know. I think I had been taught that dark
Speaker 1: emotions aren't necessarily something you want to share with other people.
Speaker 1: Nobody's comfortable with. UM, let's just put on a happy
Speaker 1: face and keep going. And I found myself so resisting
Speaker 1: that and wanting to sort of have more authentic connections
Speaker 1: with people in my life that necessarily involved expressing that
Speaker 1: I think earlier on and this is certainly my journey
Speaker 1: also in this which was earlier on my view of
Speaker 1: spiritual development, of getting healthier, of being psychologically well, all
Speaker 1: that was kind of there was an element of self
Speaker 1: reliance in it, and there was an element of psychologically
Speaker 1: healthy people don't need other people, right, sort of a codependency, right.
Speaker 1: The opposite of codependency. Codependency was saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: lean on other people too much, you cared too much
Speaker 1: what they think. It's it's what rules your life. That's
Speaker 1: a problem, and certainly it can be. But more and
Speaker 1: more I'm seeing people talking about the fact that we
Speaker 1: are social creatures that do need each other and there
Speaker 1: is a healthy way to do that. Not only is
Speaker 1: there a healthy way to do it, it is healthier
Speaker 1: for us to do it, to find connection, and that
Speaker 1: we thrive best in connection with other people. And it
Speaker 1: just seems that that is a theme that is coming
Speaker 1: up more and more. I love it that people are
Speaker 1: talking about this more, and in some ways, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the silver linings of the pandemic
Speaker 1: is that we have realized the value of connection more
Speaker 1: and we've kind of fallen on our knees a little
Speaker 1: bit and said, yeah, this is a hard time, let's
Speaker 1: talk about mental health. I think those are really really
Speaker 1: positive developments. But I also worry about especially younger people now,
Speaker 1: who do you consider themselves the loneliest demographic, which is
Speaker 1: so interesting. They're the most anxious, They're the most lonely.
Speaker 1: They're the most concerned about their mental health. I worry
Speaker 1: about them, and I think that they live in very
Speaker 1: challenging times where they are not making the authentic connections
Speaker 1: maybe that we sort of grew up with in the
Speaker 1: absence of the internet, in the absence of social media. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's another element to that that I think
Speaker 1: is interesting, which is there's an idea out there that
Speaker 1: stress becomes stress when you perceive it to be harmful
Speaker 1: to you, or let me say that differently, stress becomes
Speaker 1: harmful when you perceive it to be harmful. Right, And
Speaker 1: I'm going to make another analogy, which is sleep. Right.
Speaker 1: I've rebelled a little bit in my own head and
Speaker 1: with people close to me a little bit with what
Speaker 1: I refer to as the sleep police, right, because now
Speaker 1: everybody is saying, like, you've got to get eight hours
Speaker 1: of sleep or you know, you'll you'll get the bubana
Speaker 1: plague next week. Right. I get the over correction saying, look,
Speaker 1: this is really important, but I have restless leg syndrome,
Speaker 1: and when it kicks in, I don't sleep well. And
Speaker 1: so now I'm not sleeping well, and all I'm hearing
Speaker 1: all the time is how destructive it is to me
Speaker 1: that I'm not sleeping well. And I worry that all
Speaker 1: this research about how bad it is to be lonely
Speaker 1: could be doing the same thing to people who are
Speaker 1: already lonely, and now they're being added to that is
Speaker 1: oh god, how bad is it for me to be lonely?
Speaker 1: And to the extent that any of those things help
Speaker 1: us take positive change, right to the extent that the
Speaker 1: sleep police helps somebody to go, you know what, this
Speaker 1: five hours of sleep nonsense I'm doing isn't really a
Speaker 1: good idea. I should put more effort into getting sleep
Speaker 1: really positive. To the extent that knowing how destructive loneliness
Speaker 1: is to us helps us move towards positive direction. I
Speaker 1: think it's helpful, but I worry about a tipping point
Speaker 1: with all this stuff. I think you're right, but loneliness
Speaker 1: is such an interesting emotion because you know, it's subjective, right,
Speaker 1: so so you can be in a marriage and feel lonely,
Speaker 1: can live in a house full of people and feel lonely,
Speaker 1: and yet it seems to have a very highly adapted reason,
Speaker 1: which is that it is a signal, you know, the
Speaker 1: feeling of loneliness tends to make us feel like there's
Speaker 1: something we don't have that we want. There's a disconnect
Speaker 1: between um, what we want, what we have, and by
Speaker 1: noticing that and feeling it, it actually is supposed to.
Speaker 1: I think propel behavior drives us to seek a little
Speaker 1: bit of comfort or a little bit of connection. The irony, though,
Speaker 1: is that if you feel lonely for too long, it
Speaker 1: kind of does the opposite. It makes it harder for
Speaker 1: you to have connection because you're more suspicious of other people,
Speaker 1: maybe feel worse about yourself. It's one of these emotions,
Speaker 1: sort of like heartbreak, that I think exists for a reason,
Speaker 1: but can also kind of morph into something more destructive
Speaker 1: if it lasts for too long. That's a really great point.
Speaker 1: It turns into something that's harder to get out of
Speaker 1: the longer you're in it. And what I find really
Speaker 1: interesting is, you know, you just stated something, which is
Speaker 1: that kids these days, you know, teenagers are considered the loneliest.
Speaker 1: Now forever, it's been senior citizens, right, senior citizens were
Speaker 1: you know, it was just very clear they were the loneliest.
Speaker 1: And we understand why, right, Their partners are passing away,
Speaker 1: their friends are passing away, they don't have a job, right,
Speaker 1: they're isolated in in ways, But it is sort of
Speaker 1: stunning that kids feel that way. Now, I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure what to do with that information. I don't know either,
Speaker 1: but I think we need to pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: I'm really concerned about it me too. I'm concerned that
Speaker 1: the people who generally have the most energy to solve
Speaker 1: that problem don't feel like they can solve it. You know,
Speaker 1: youth does have an energy of I feel like, the
Speaker 1: ability to make things happen. And I get when you're seventy,
Speaker 1: it's much harder to be like, all right, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to three social events today. Right, you're tired.
Speaker 1: But when you're eighteen, that's a different thing. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I find it somewhat alarming. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: why I feel, frankly so motivated to talk about the
Speaker 1: things that can help build resilience, such as authentic connection
Speaker 1: to other people but also to the natural world. You know,
Speaker 1: I really do believe that by helping young people connect
Speaker 1: to nature, by helping them get out of their own
Speaker 1: anxieties a little bit, you know, I do very strongly
Speaker 1: feel that it's part of the solution. Yeah, I do to.
Speaker 1: I remember my last bad heartbreak, and I remember exactly
Speaker 1: what I did. I just made a last minute decision
Speaker 1: to go to this nature retreat in Ohio for like
Speaker 1: four days. And it's basically it's entirely off grade. You're
Speaker 1: you're by yourself more or less except meals are provided
Speaker 1: for you. And it was transformative for me. It kicked
Speaker 1: off something really valuable in my life. And you know,
Speaker 1: nature was certainly a big part of that. So I
Speaker 1: think that is one path in did your research lead
Speaker 1: you into other paths out of loneliness for people? Yes?
Speaker 1: So you know I told you that we did this
Speaker 1: experiment where we looked at my white blood cells for
Speaker 1: markers of inflammation and also for markers of virus fighting ability,
Speaker 1: which is something you really want when you're going into
Speaker 1: a pandemic. And I worked with this researcher, Steve Cole,
Speaker 1: who has in fact done a lot of interventions with
Speaker 1: populations where he's looked at their immune cells and how
Speaker 1: they may improve after, for example, they try zend meditation
Speaker 1: or after they try volunteering in schools, And what he
Speaker 1: has found is that where he sees the best improvements
Speaker 1: in people's immune cells, immune profiles is not necessarily when
Speaker 1: they report feeling happier or kind of more mirthful or
Speaker 1: they're able to seek more pleasure. He says that he
Speaker 1: sees the biggest improvements in they feel like they have
Speaker 1: meaning in their lives and purpose in their lives. And
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing as waking up every morning,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling amused totally and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: um calm. It's this kind of larger right north star.
Speaker 1: And so I thought that was fascinating and also not
Speaker 1: something that we hear of as an antidote to heartbreak,
Speaker 1: an antidote to loneliness. You know, it's not necessarily being
Speaker 1: with other people's feeling like you're doing something worthwhile, Like
Speaker 1: there is a y that you are answering in your
Speaker 1: life and eventually, ideally that will lead to feelings of
Speaker 1: connection with other people. Yeah, my experience, I mean, I
Speaker 1: have sort of a close firsthand experience with that, which
Speaker 1: was in a a which was a big part of
Speaker 1: my life for a long time. That was the foundational element, right,
Speaker 1: which was to work with other people who were struggling
Speaker 1: with what you were struggling with. And that's not exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying. But what it was was purpose, it
Speaker 1: was service, and it was connect exactly. The line that
Speaker 1: I remember was nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking
Speaker 1: than working with another alcoholic. There's some a people out
Speaker 1: there who are gonna be like, you didn't quite get that.
Speaker 1: But it's close. Um, it's close, And so yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think that's so important. The other thing I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about, I think a lot about how do people
Speaker 1: build community? How do people go from being lonely? You know?
Speaker 1: How does this happen? And one of the things I've
Speaker 1: realized recently is that it's not that I realized. I
Speaker 1: found some research recently that said, you know, in order
Speaker 1: to make connection with a new person, right, So if
Speaker 1: you've already got existing connections, right, nurture them, right, But
Speaker 1: if you need to make new ones, you're just like
Speaker 1: I just don't have any in my life where I
Speaker 1: have very few and I need to make new ones.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time, it does. And so
Speaker 1: what I see a lot of people doing, and I've
Speaker 1: done this in the past, is I go, all right,
Speaker 1: you know what, I gotta find some connection. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to the local meditation group because I'm interested
Speaker 1: in meditation. There'll be people there that are like me,
Speaker 1: and that's how I'm going to do it. And I
Speaker 1: go once or twice and I don't feel connected because
Speaker 1: that's not how it works. And so then I go,
Speaker 1: this isn't working and I give up, or I do
Speaker 1: a volunteer thing that only happens once or twice, and
Speaker 1: that's not enough time either. So you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I've been talking with people about is
Speaker 1: really saying, you know what, pick a couple of things,
Speaker 1: but it's going to take a commitment. It's going to
Speaker 1: take I've got to keep going even when I'm uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: even when I feel like I don't fit in, even
Speaker 1: in the beginning, because it just takes a certain number
Speaker 1: of hours. You know that the research is different on
Speaker 1: how long it is. And I'm always skeptical of like,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty one day is do a new habit, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's so variable. So it takes more than
Speaker 1: seeing somebody twice for an hour, that's right. And I
Speaker 1: think that there are other ways to connect and to
Speaker 1: feel connection. I mean, you know, face to face with
Speaker 1: other people is one way. It's a great way. But
Speaker 1: you can have a meaningful connection with a pet. You
Speaker 1: can have meaningful connection. And I'm really big on this
Speaker 1: with nature. You know, if you have a sort of
Speaker 1: favorite spot or a couple of spots where you can
Speaker 1: go where you get to know the seasons and you
Speaker 1: get to know the birds, and you get to know
Speaker 1: you know the patterns of the water or the rocks.
Speaker 1: You know. It sounds a little goofy to say it,
Speaker 1: but I think there's some compelling research here showing that
Speaker 1: when people can feel connected to the natural world, it
Speaker 1: can be a great antidote actually for loneliness. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think that's a really important point to kind of keep
Speaker 1: coming back to. It's not only other people. There are
Speaker 1: lots of ways to connect. And even back to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier around beauty and art. I
Speaker 1: have deep connections to pieces of art, pieces of music.
Speaker 1: Things exactly do feel like connection. You know, they are valuable.
Speaker 1: So I guess, like the great trifecta, you know, to
Speaker 1: sort of um sum it up, the great trifecta of
Speaker 1: kind of heartbreak antidote or loneliness antidote seems to be
Speaker 1: this sort of beauty plus connection plus purpose. I think
Speaker 1: it's very hard to rely too much on one of
Speaker 1: those over the other. It seems to be, you know,
Speaker 1: in combination, it seems to be sort of a pathway
Speaker 1: into ultimately feeling a sense of belonging, feeling like the
Speaker 1: things that you do matter, and ultimately, of course, increasing
Speaker 1: your capacity for love, which is really what it's all about. Well,
Speaker 1: I can't think of a more beautiful place to just
Speaker 1: kind of wrap up. That was a great summary there, Beauty, purpose,
Speaker 1: and connection. I want to take a second and let
Speaker 1: you share a little bit about there's an audio version
Speaker 1: of your book, which I think is really exciting. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's so great about so many of
Speaker 1: these books like yours is you talk to so many
Speaker 1: interesting people, and we get you sort of giving us
Speaker 1: that in in the writing, but I think in the
Speaker 1: audio book we can actually hear these people. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for asking about that. I'm I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of this audio book that we made. That's very unusual.
Speaker 1: As I went around reporting the research for this book,
Speaker 1: I had my tape recorder and I taped everyone I
Speaker 1: talked to. I also taped myself in an audio journal.
Speaker 1: I taped my friends. I taped my therapist, and so
Speaker 1: when we made the audio book, we decided to actually
Speaker 1: pull that tape into the book, so it's not just
Speaker 1: me reading the text, it's actually these real conversations layered
Speaker 1: in as well as really beautiful music and sound design,
Speaker 1: and so it feels like a very immersive, I think
Speaker 1: audio experience, and I hope people will check it out.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a lovely companion for being heartbroken,
Speaker 1: I hope. So, you know, I really wanted the book
Speaker 1: to be hopeful, because I think that heartbreak is, you know,
Speaker 1: as as difficult as it is, it is a path
Speaker 1: to transformation. And how lucky you know that we can
Speaker 1: get that. Well. Florence, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: back on It is always a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: You two. Eric, thank you so much for having me.
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