Speaker 1: What do you do when life doesn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
Speaker 1: or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
Speaker 1: is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
Speaker 1: by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
Speaker 1: with a guest to talk about the times they were
Speaker 1: knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Speaker 1: Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
Speaker 1: are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
Speaker 1: every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
Speaker 1: answers one question, now what. I'm so happy to be
Speaker 1: talking to you, Duff. I was thinking because every time
Speaker 1: I hear your name in the book, I forget that
Speaker 1: your name is Karen.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that. That's one of the million of
Speaker 2: reasons why I adore you. It's really interesting to feel
Speaker 2: that you get mislabeled. My family calls me Cannonball. I've
Speaker 2: never been called Karen, even before it became a pejorative
Speaker 2: for a whiny white woman. I always said, like, what
Speaker 2: were you thinking? And my mom was like, well, I
Speaker 2: was gonna name you Willie May, after my best friend.
Speaker 2: But I'm an Irish twin. I've got a brother who's
Speaker 2: ten months and she just said, oh, we just picked Karen.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to all the other Karens who love their name.
Speaker 1: My guest today is my good friend Karen Duffy, or
Speaker 1: Duff as she likes to be called. Duff is a writer,
Speaker 1: an actress, a model, an unofficial spokesperson for Stoic Philosophy,
Speaker 1: and a former MTV VJ. She was a red carpet
Speaker 1: mainstay in the nineties until a life changing medical diagnosis
Speaker 1: forced her to pause and ultimately of it from the
Speaker 1: path she'd envisioned for herself. Duff's diagnosis changed her life
Speaker 1: and career drastically, but her incredible spirit has stayed the same.
Speaker 1: She built a new life, started a beautiful family, and
Speaker 1: wrote three hilarious books, including her latest Wise Up. I'm
Speaker 1: in awe of Duff's grace and I'm excited to share
Speaker 1: some of her genuinely good advice with all of you. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is Karen Duffy. Duff thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining the podcast. I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how I was going to introduce you, and
Speaker 1: it just feels impossible. Because you're so many things to
Speaker 1: so many different people. How would you describe yourself?
Speaker 2: How about the slow hied, raven haired pixie that's stealing
Speaker 2: America's heart?
Speaker 1: Wow? Oh okay.
Speaker 2: Aspiring Stoic I think a most proud of in life,
Speaker 2: besides raising my son, I think is finding a way
Speaker 2: to be useful in life. I find that, you know,
Speaker 2: we have a choice to be useful or useless, and
Speaker 2: that usefulness, that sense of purpose is actually evolving. So
Speaker 2: going from a recreational therapist, which was my first job,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that being a recreational therapist in a
Speaker 2: memory care at the nursing home, that the skill set
Speaker 2: that I learned having a specific elocution, knowing how to
Speaker 2: move my body to capture somebody's attention or perfect for
Speaker 2: MTV because MTV was shrinking America's attention span. And I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, That's what I've been practicing for for
Speaker 2: my whole life.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Stoic and Stoicism For the laymen, who are
Speaker 1: the Stoics and what is Stoic?
Speaker 2: The Stoics were a group of philosophers who wanted philosophy
Speaker 2: to be available for everyone. Probably the most well known
Speaker 2: Stoics would be Marcus Aurelius, Seneca Zeno, and then my
Speaker 2: main man is Epictatus, and the Stoics believe we can't
Speaker 2: control what happens. We can only control how we respond,
Speaker 2: and that is what stoicism is all about.
Speaker 1: How did you? How did you come upon? What was
Speaker 1: your journey to being able to open your heart and
Speaker 1: mind to what you're just describing. You know, it's.
Speaker 2: Probably been about thirty years. I realized that when I
Speaker 2: got my job at MTV, that like I had a
Speaker 2: responsibility to be less stupid, and so I kept trying.
Speaker 2: You was always taking courses and reading Marcus Aurelius's meditations.
Speaker 2: Ignited the incandescent love that I have for the Stoics.
Speaker 2: And then I was diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disease
Speaker 2: called sarcidosis of the central nervous system, which causes chronic pain,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I don't want this pain to make
Speaker 2: me mean, because I am full of gratitude. And I
Speaker 2: found the Stoics to be a great help. Atpictatus, who
Speaker 2: is my Stoic main man. He was enslaved by one
Speaker 2: of Emperor Nero's secretaries, and he was a sadist and
Speaker 2: broke Atpictatus's leg, and Epictatus is always shown with his
Speaker 2: walking stick, and I know that two thousand years ago
Speaker 2: he lived in chronic pain and was able to have
Speaker 2: his radiant mind inspire the smartest people who've ever exist.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what sarkoidosis is? How does it create the chronic pain.
Speaker 2: So it's a rare disease of unknown origin, maybe one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand of us in the US. So it normally
Speaker 2: is in the lungs. And what happens is the tissue.
Speaker 2: It's all soft tissue. So the only place you can't
Speaker 2: get sarcodosis is your teeth and hair, but everything else
Speaker 2: is game. And so the soft permeable cells of your
Speaker 2: skin or your brain tissue where I have it and
Speaker 2: my spinal cord, become crystallized. They then these crystals make
Speaker 2: a lesion. I equate it. When I wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning, it feels like a donkey wearing ice skates
Speaker 2: is kicking me in the neck. And then when I
Speaker 2: take my medicine, it feels like the donkey put on skateguards,
Speaker 2: but he's still kicking pain. Really hard to talk about
Speaker 2: because it reduces our language. But I realized that pain
Speaker 2: is inevitable. We will all experience physical pain emotional pain,
Speaker 2: but suffering can be an option.
Speaker 1: What was it like for you to get that diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Was it like going through the stages of death? Was
Speaker 1: it like going through the stages of grief?
Speaker 2: Yeh, yes, Elizabeth Koobler's Ross's Five Stages of Death, and
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, disbelief, anger, bargaining, acceptance. Well, mine
Speaker 2: were like finger pointing, whining. I honestly felt that I
Speaker 2: knew it was pretty serious early on, and I just figured,
Speaker 2: all right, this may take a lot out of my life,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to take my sense of humor,
Speaker 2: or my sense of curiosity or my sense of purpose.
Speaker 2: And I believe that having a purpose is so simple.
Speaker 2: It's just having something to love, something to do in,
Speaker 2: something to look forward to.
Speaker 1: Were you working with Revlon at that point?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was working with Revlon MTV. I'd done a
Speaker 2: few movies. Did it change your job as the VJ? Well,
Speaker 2: at that point, you know, there's a really short windowspan
Speaker 2: for VJs. You tend to age out. But what's interesting
Speaker 2: with Revlon I was on chemo and I was on steroids,
Speaker 2: and trying to keep my illness a secret was like
Speaker 2: keeping a beach ball underwater. So I did tell the
Speaker 2: good folks at Revlon, who have donated so much to
Speaker 2: women's healthcare research. I was like, listen, I'm not that
Speaker 2: the mean tomboy that you hired. I'm sick and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna and I'm really changing. And you know, my hair
Speaker 2: was falling out. I grow a mustache from a hunchback
Speaker 2: from the steroids. So unless they were going to have
Speaker 2: an aftershave, I was not going to think that I
Speaker 2: was going to keep going. But the amazing thing about
Speaker 2: Revlon was they were like, well, keep you around, and
Speaker 2: they did keep me around for almost twenty years. But
Speaker 2: they were like, you know, we hired you for inner beauty.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's why I feel such a sense of
Speaker 2: compassion to my brothers and sisters who live in chronic pain,
Speaker 2: because I think I've tried to make good choices, but
Speaker 2: also I have been on the receiving end of a
Speaker 2: lot of luck, and so I feel like it is
Speaker 2: my responsibility to share. And honestly, we can really thank
Speaker 2: sarcoidosis for a spate of taren duffy movies that never
Speaker 2: got made because I am box office poison. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: watch blank Check if it was screening on my own corneas, so.
Speaker 1: I will start our own library and them and they
Speaker 1: still didn't get.
Speaker 2: Seen, you know, Like I remember telling my son Eddie
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, I can't believe this, This doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. And I was like, you know, Jack, somebody
Speaker 2: has to make the bad ones. They all can't be
Speaker 2: Citizen Kane.
Speaker 1: Now you wrote wise up for Jack or your son.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how and why
Speaker 1: you decided to do that and what his reaction was.
Speaker 2: It's interesting there is a Stoic tradition that Stoics wrote
Speaker 2: letters like Letters to a Stoic by Seneca, and I
Speaker 2: knew I wanted to share the radiance of Stoicism and
Speaker 2: how it gave me a roadmap to navigating my life.
Speaker 2: I had written it as a collection of essays and
Speaker 2: and I realized I wanted the reader to feel so
Speaker 2: loved that I figured, well, who do I love the most?
Speaker 2: And so I asked, Jack, can you stand in for
Speaker 2: the reader? Can I use your name and address these
Speaker 2: letters and let the reader hopefully feel this love, and
Speaker 2: he was very funny. He was like, yes, but please
Speaker 2: use my real name, don't use my don't call me
Speaker 2: Lefty or Jack like it?
Speaker 3: Do you do a couple of times he I can't
Speaker 3: teach you all dog nw tricks, but he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm proud of you, and I would I would like
Speaker 3: to do this.
Speaker 1: Do you ever talk to Jack about mortality? You know?
Speaker 2: It was funny. We were in the car the other
Speaker 2: day and uh, I have neuropathy in my hands, and
Speaker 2: so is.
Speaker 1: That a result of of starcoidosis and being on chemo
Speaker 1: for so long?
Speaker 2: So I'd spilled a cup of tea on my computer
Speaker 2: and so my husband just said, well, I'm just getting
Speaker 2: you a sippy cup, and he did. And I just mentioned, like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's really important, like when I'm on my deathbed,
Speaker 2: you gotta make sure I have lipstick. And the two
Speaker 2: boys they said, see what we get to look forward to.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because nothing is guaranteed. And that's what I
Speaker 2: admire about the stoics. They understand that our life is
Speaker 2: a perishable good and it is up to us to
Speaker 2: do our best. You know, one of my favorite words
Speaker 2: is a it's phill a fugal phil a fugal fin
Speaker 2: a fugle. It means the fear of endings, and I thought,
Speaker 2: I don't have a fear of endings. We have a
Speaker 2: tradition in our house. We have this thing where we
Speaker 2: pick a motto. Most recently it's been from Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Speaker 2: who said, write it on your heart that every day
Speaker 2: will be the best day of the year. He who
Speaker 2: is rich, who seizes the day. And so we just
Speaker 2: pick a motto and we memorize it the three of us,
Speaker 2: and then it's something to kind of fall back on.
Speaker 2: And that's something that I hope more people will think
Speaker 2: about because it really binds us. And that's what I think.
Speaker 2: I think the beauty of writing wise Up was celebrating
Speaker 2: this idea of having a life philosophy where it's not
Speaker 2: you know, people in cafes with black turtlenecks smoking gal
Speaker 2: waws is. It's like, no, it's you know, you can
Speaker 2: be an absolute knucklehead. But we all have a philosophy
Speaker 2: of for life. Sometimes we just aren't aware or haven't
Speaker 2: really contemplated it. And so that that was the goal
Speaker 2: of what I was hoping to ignite.
Speaker 1: There's so many different quotes that I pulled from your
Speaker 1: your book, and they're just you know, they're quotes that
Speaker 1: are from noted, brilliant philosophers. They're quotes that you say
Speaker 1: just as duff. You know, you give really a good,
Speaker 1: good advice without it being preachy. So I would love
Speaker 1: it if you would repeat some of that. For instance,
Speaker 1: what would be your advice for coping with and now
Speaker 1: what moment?
Speaker 2: Again? I think I would go back to the dichotomy
Speaker 2: of control. Everything can be taken away. The one thing
Speaker 2: you will always have is control over your thoughts.
Speaker 1: And it's also you talk about, you know, surrounding yourself
Speaker 1: with people who do fuel you rather than suck you
Speaker 1: dry and change, you know. And how about distinguishing a
Speaker 1: good relationship from a bad one, because you talk about
Speaker 1: that and the obligation. Where is the obligation? And how
Speaker 1: do you get out of a bad one? How do
Speaker 1: you recognize it? How do you get out of it?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting, Brooke. I always thought that
Speaker 2: loyalty was a virtue, but then I realized, if this
Speaker 2: person's being a real weasel, maybe they don't deserve to
Speaker 2: have my friendship. And so we do have control. We
Speaker 2: can weed our social garden. Friendship is a nine letter
Speaker 2: word for love, and it multiplies our happiness and divides
Speaker 2: our sorrow. But it's also really critical that we be
Speaker 2: a friend to ourselves.
Speaker 1: That goes back to life philosophy. Do you have multiple
Speaker 1: life philosophies or is there just one that you lived? By?
Speaker 2: Many? And that's the great thing, you know.
Speaker 1: I read all the time, and I don't look avid reader.
Speaker 1: You're like voracious and you remember stuff. You and your
Speaker 1: sister have like ridiculous picture memories or what do you
Speaker 1: call that?
Speaker 2: They're not photographic? I would say photogenic. It's funny. I did.
Speaker 2: I did tell my son that he inherited a superpower,
Speaker 2: which is memory, which is not at all inherited. There's
Speaker 2: there's no proof of that, but I figured if I
Speaker 2: just kind of steered him. I was like, dude, if
Speaker 2: you could just practice mnemonics, which are little tricks to
Speaker 2: remember things, like I try and remember a quote a day,
Speaker 2: and we forget eighty percent of what we've learned the
Speaker 2: day before. So I wanted to hang on to that
Speaker 2: a little bit. I look at books and I think
Speaker 2: these are not lifeless slumps of paper. These are radiant
Speaker 2: minds alive on the shelf, and we're competing for so
Speaker 2: many things with social media, and you know, there's a
Speaker 2: million things to pay our time. But I think it's
Speaker 2: important that we pay attention to what we're paying attention to.
Speaker 1: I feel that you've had many, many now what moments,
Speaker 1: But can you tell the listener what some of the
Speaker 1: most important now what moments and what decisions you made
Speaker 1: during those now what moments? Because like, I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: this idea of the difference. What makes one person when
Speaker 1: faced with something, react one way and enough different person
Speaker 1: react another and how do you move forward?
Speaker 2: Well, a make or break moment was, honestly the fertility
Speaker 2: struggle of having so many chronic conditions and then just
Speaker 2: trying to get that one lucky egg. I just remember
Speaker 2: thinking I cannot go on. I can't. I would say
Speaker 2: fertility brought me to my knees. And I thought I
Speaker 2: was tough because I like spat in death's eye with sarcoidosis,
Speaker 2: and but the fertility journeys really what cut me off
Speaker 2: at the knees. But one of the most beautiful things
Speaker 2: was I was just like to my husband, was like, dude,
Speaker 2: I can't do it. I just can't. I just can't
Speaker 2: go another round.
Speaker 1: How many rounds do you mind me asking? You went
Speaker 1: through three transfers, five cycles over a course of three years, Yes,
Speaker 1: three years. I mean as someone I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about this, I went through seven transfers and Rowan ended
Speaker 1: up being from the first batch and she had been
Speaker 1: frozen for two years from me. So that's a whole
Speaker 1: other podcast. But what made you then decide to try
Speaker 1: it one more time?
Speaker 2: Well, I think what kept me going was my husband.
Speaker 2: It was, you know, there's been so much with you know,
Speaker 2: the cataclysm of seeing two thousand, nine hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: three people die on nine to eleven, and then the
Speaker 2: subsequent wars, and I just was like, dude, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I could bring a kid into this world.
Speaker 2: And my husband was like our son Constantine Agna menmon
Speaker 2: el Frios Lambropolis. He just made this elaborate Greek name,
Speaker 2: which totally cracked me up, and I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: you're in the amazing thing. We were blessed with a
Speaker 2: surrogate who I call my wombmate, and we met in
Speaker 2: the parking lot of Lbean in Freeport, Maine. And I
Speaker 2: was asking, you know, the therapist of the CLI, like
Speaker 2: how will we find each other? And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you will know, and it was amazing. We just saw
Speaker 2: each other thousands of people fighting over fleeces and boots,
Speaker 2: and I was like, why would you ever do this?
Speaker 2: And she said how many times in your life do
Speaker 2: you get a chance to do something this big for
Speaker 2: somebody you don't know? And it was amazing And it
Speaker 2: did take several times. And my son was a ten
Speaker 2: pound baby. All of her children were five and six pounds.
Speaker 2: So as he's coming cannon balling out of the business
Speaker 2: end of the birth canal, she was like, I should
Speaker 2: have looked up the size of your head before.
Speaker 1: I said, yes, and your husband, and it was amazing.
Speaker 2: So they had to call in a pediatrician who then
Speaker 2: caught him and said, okay, who do I the baby too?
Speaker 2: And so give the baby to his landlord because he
Speaker 2: had a nine month's sublease, and then she can introduce us.
Speaker 2: And the amazing thing was later that day the doctor
Speaker 2: went in to see her and they fell madly in
Speaker 2: love and got married. Oh my god, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: a lifetime movie.
Speaker 1: You returned the kindness back and said you're gonna get
Speaker 1: a reward after this.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. It was the altruism and the heroism.
Speaker 2: Women are just amazing. I just we're just incredible.
Speaker 1: Are you still in touch with her or does Jack
Speaker 1: know her?
Speaker 2: Yes? Very well. And it's interesting because we were matched
Speaker 2: because she was like, I don't want to be anybody's auntie.
Speaker 2: She's like, I've got four kids, a big community, Like
Speaker 2: I I'm doing.
Speaker 1: This because as I can, Well, what was that time like? Like,
Speaker 1: was it was it common for you? Was it taboo?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like yet another failure? I mean I
Speaker 1: felt like a failure. I felt that my life had
Speaker 1: been so extraordinary that this was going to be the
Speaker 1: price that I had to pay, that I wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to be normal and have a child because it's the
Speaker 1: only thing I've known for sure my whole life.
Speaker 2: So was it did I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: What was the reaction to that? We have stuff? What
Speaker 1: was sort of the tenor of that time from other people?
Speaker 1: For you?
Speaker 2: Well, I've never really been concerned. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the great things that Marcus Aurelia says, is like it's
Speaker 2: almost amusing how we care for other people's opinions when
Speaker 2: we really just must trust ourselves. So I didn't feel
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't feel in any way Judge. I
Speaker 2: felt spectacularly lucky, and the fact that she has such
Speaker 2: a great sense of humor, Like I was like, what
Speaker 2: if they scramble the eggs? So I took lipstick and
Speaker 2: she wrote like Duffy Lambrose insert here. She was just
Speaker 2: really funny game and we talked all the time. We
Speaker 2: see each other and there's a really beautiful relationship there.
Speaker 1: Well, you talk about miracles, like you say, people don't
Speaker 1: you know, there's two schools of thought. There are no
Speaker 1: miracles or miracles happen every day. And to me, that's
Speaker 1: the miracle of you meeting her, the miracle of her
Speaker 1: meeting the guy, the miracle obviously of Jack. When Georgia
Speaker 1: throw was.
Speaker 2: The one who introduced us to this surrogacy, he was
Speaker 2: like the bachelor who was never going to have kids.
Speaker 2: He made lunch for my husband and invited another couple
Speaker 2: over and just said, you guys should have a talk.
Speaker 1: Well you had. Uh, it's in the whole fertility thing,
Speaker 1: really is. It's so interesting to me because it is
Speaker 1: about aging, but we're not taught, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: we're you know, I was right. I was where I
Speaker 1: worked ever since I could breathe practically, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're not taught that by a certain time. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: maybe want to be a VJ and a model and
Speaker 1: I do all this and have a career all that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you're clock's ticking, you don't. We don't really
Speaker 1: get educated until it's almost too late. Did both the
Speaker 1: fertility and your diagnosis. Did that affect the way you
Speaker 1: viewed aging in general, aside from being a model in
Speaker 1: Revlon and that world, because the beauty industry does something
Speaker 1: else to the view of aging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of felt like I snuck into a
Speaker 2: party and was just waiting to get kicked out. I
Speaker 2: was very aware that this was a this was a
Speaker 2: very short window, and I I was going to fly
Speaker 2: when the windows open, and I was going to have
Speaker 2: as much fun as I could. You know, It's funny.
Speaker 2: I have no fear of aging, and maybe because I
Speaker 2: was I was so young when I got sick. I've
Speaker 2: been sick half my life, and I think my attitude is,
Speaker 2: you know, truly just so rooted in gratitude and enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: So I think that having an enthusiastic spirit, not taking
Speaker 2: things too serious, and also trying to share, you know,
Speaker 2: the good vibes and share my luck with others. I
Speaker 2: think has been It's made it feel more palatable to me.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's fun to look to sort of
Speaker 1: look back and see the trajectory and and you know,
Speaker 1: and then be able to read a book like this
Speaker 1: that's filled with so many facts and so many fun
Speaker 1: facts and great stories and and lucky for Jack to
Speaker 1: be able to hear these letters that end with love mom,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's if you had to sort of
Speaker 1: look back throughout all of it, what would you say
Speaker 1: is your through line?
Speaker 2: I think that in your life, when you're asked what
Speaker 2: are you proud of? What are you grateful for? The
Speaker 2: only answer is love. You know. We're not like this
Speaker 2: wildly smushy, demonstrative family, but we show love in many ways.
Speaker 2: Words are vessels, and we have love and we use
Speaker 2: it in so many primitive ways, like I love a
Speaker 2: mister softy cone, I love of Joe's pizza, I love
Speaker 2: Nito point, I love my family. And I think the
Speaker 2: ancient Greeks with surprised at how primitive we look at love.
Speaker 2: We think of love as a soulmate or you know,
Speaker 2: erotic love as the pinnacle of love. But the ancient
Speaker 2: Greeks had this much more expanded definition that they actually looked,
Speaker 2: you know, Aros was more destabilizing. Philos was a friendship,
Speaker 2: which was the highest form of love. So there's many
Speaker 2: ways to love.
Speaker 1: That was the aspiring Karen Duffy. If you want more
Speaker 1: of her wit and wisdom, go pick up a copy
Speaker 1: of her book, Wise Up. You'll be glad you did.
Speaker 1: That's it for us today, See you next week. Now,
Speaker 1: What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our
Speaker 1: lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research
Speaker 1: and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Chrisstina Everett. The show was mixed by Baheed Fraser.