Stay ConnectedWriter Elise Loehnen explores life’s big questions with today’s leading thinkers, experts, and luminaries: Why do we do what we do? How can we understand and love ourselves better? What would it look like to come together and build a more meaningful world?
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"This to me is basic, but it feels like we've drifted really far from it in our culture. That to be a human, the basic condition of being a human is being needful. You know, like we need air, we need housing, we need food, we need companionship. We need all of these things. And somehow in our culture, it feels like you're asking for too much, if you need things, right, you're supposed to be super self-sufficient. You're supposed to be able to like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You're supposed to be able to like handle everything and it's just it's work. And it is it's too much for one person to do."
So says author and journalist Angela Garbes, who in the first pages of her new book, ESSENTIAL LABOR, expands the concept of “mothering,” creating a tent for everyone, of any gender, who is engaged in the process of creation and care. This pretty much includes everyone. A first-generation Philipino-American, Angela makes the argument that the United States must re-orient the way we think about everything—the economy, in particular—to venerate the vital act of care, of tending to each other’s needs, and of prioritizing the collective…otherwise we are lost.
In our conversation, we touch on what this means for all of our lives, including the ways that women like me must come out of our shame pockets to talk about all the people who care for us—labor that has become largely invisible behind the veneer of our projections of what it looks like to be a functioning family in America. As I explain to Angela, our family would cease to work without Vicky, who is effectively our third parent. I believe Angela is right, that we need to be having these collective conversations first, in order to push culture to reprioritize against a new axiom of what really matters in our lives.
MORE FROM ANGELA GARBES:
ESSENTIAL LABOR: MOTHERING AS SOCIAL CHANGE
LIKE A MOTHER: A FEMINIST JOURNEY THROUGH THE SCIENCE AND CULTURE OF PREGNANCY
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"When we talk about the ghost of the unsaid, we're talking about the inherited feelings of our parents, unprocessed trauma, where the Phantoms that lived inside them, We're talking about traumas that our parents and grandparents would not process, and they are transmitted to us in some raw way. And I quote in the book, Holocaust survivors Maria Toric, Nicholas Abraham, who said, 'What haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.'
So says psychotherapist Galit Atlas, who has spent her life and career both witnessing and unraveling the ways that the lived—and unlived—experiences of our ancestors can show up in our own lives. Galit—who is Syrian/Iranian by way of Israel—grew up in the midst of trauma, violence that continued to unfold around her against a generational tapestry of pain. We talk about the direct transmission of trauma in our conversation, as well as these “Gaps” or secrets, that show up in her practice again and again. We also talk about this idea of what Freud called “Afterwardness,” which is the way that we reprocess traumatic memories again and again from our new lived perspective. We explore what healing looks like for clients who suddenly become aware of how these hidden forces and patterns are informing their lives—and what it looks like to clip those threads and set yourself free. And perhaps most poignantly, we discuss the idea of victims and aggressors, and how so many of us, in the grips of our victimhood feel justified in lashing out—this is a phenomenon we can trace from our personal lives to the global stage, and it deserves our awareness.
MORE FROM GALIT ATLAS:
EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE: A THERAPIST, HER PATIENTS, AND THE LEGACY OF TRAUMA
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"I talk to so many women who, you know, we talk about huddle and we talk about, I referenced, you know, back catalog friends, people who I've known for years and years, you are never too late to add to your huddle. You are never, it is, you are never too old to, to add to your circle of friends. And what Elise is alluding to is certainly something that I feel as well, which is, you know, we live in these various chapters in our, in our lifetimes, you know, things change. We go through different. We have these various aha moments, I think for you. And I, we've both really deepened our spiritual practices and our intentionality around life and what we wanna do and how we wanna share ourselves. And I think as we've been in these more vulnerable spaces on the other side of giant things, we've been a part of, we've gotten to know ourselves better." -Brooke Baldwin
Many years ago, journalist Brooke Baldwin sat in her mother’s bedroom and cried about the state of her career and her relationship—and while she was grateful for her mom’s attention and support, she had a simultaneous thought: Where were her friends? Thus became her quest—ancillary to her daytime job as an anchor on CNN—to find her huddle. In her mind, she wanted to reclaim the idea of huddle—a macho sports term—and apply it to groups of women working together for mutual goals, like joy, success, and intimacy. She wrote a book about this adventure—understandably called HUDDLE—where she explores the power of female friendship and camaraderie all over the country. And the way that when women come together, they achieve improbably awesome things. As her book went to press, she announced her time at CNN was coming to an end, and we met each other shortly after, when we were both feeling stripped down and open to new adventures. Brooke is now part of MY Huddle, and her enthusiasm for the power of friendship is palpable and contagious.
MORE FROM BROOKE BALDWIN:
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“One reason I wrote the book is that the lack of recognition is such a powerful harm done to patients. And I think until you've gone through an experience like this, it's really hard to convey why that is. But basically it comes down to having the dignity of your suffering possessing. Some kind of meaning, I think, right. And we're all social creatures, right. We don't actually get sick totally alone. It feels lonely. But one reason that my illness was doubly hard was that I had the loneliness of physical symptoms. And then I had the additional of never having them recognized or validated, which made it so much harder.”
Writer, journalist, and poet Meghan O’Rourke—a former editor at The New Yorker, and the current editor of The Yale Review—has written stunningly, about many topics in our culture. But her latest book—THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM: REIMAGINING CHRONIC ILLNESS—is a memoir of her own suffering as she navigated the medical world in search of a diagnosis. Her journey to understand what is wrong with her—to even be seen as a sick person—was particularly complex because she has a web of autoimmune diseases, which…is not that uncommon, actually, particularly for younger women. In her book, she explores the complexity of illness and what it means to look fine—vital, even—and yet feel like you’re failing inside, and how quick we are to dismiss suffering we cannot see. Particularly when it’s the suffering of women.
MORE FROM MEGHAN O’ROURKE:
MEAGHAN’S WRITING FOR THE NEW YORKER
FOLLOW MEGHAN ON TWITTER
FOLLOW MEGHAN ON INSTAGRAM
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“Usually in high conflict, the conflict becomes the whole point. So you make a lot of mistakes and you can miss opportunities that would actually be in the interest you are fighting for. The reason you got into the fight to begin with, whereas good conflict is the kind of conflict where again, you can be angry, you can be yell, you can have radical visions for the future. You can and must, you know, organize and protest and hold people accountable. But you do it much more skillfully. You make fewer mistakes because you're not essentially being controlled by the conflict. You're not in the trance of high conflict. And it's, you know, it's not easy to stay in good conflict. Everybody is gonna visit high conflict, even if it's for, you know, a few minutes, but you don't wanna live there because you, you and your cause will suffer.”
So says Amanda Ripley, investigative journalist, podcast host, New York Times bestselling author and the queen of conflict - good conflict, that is. Amanda’s most recent book - High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out - draws on her years of experience trying to make sense of conflict on a personal and political level—particularly in this heightened time of OUTRAGE.
Not all conflict is bad, Amanda tells us. In bad conflict, what she calls high conflict, the conflict becomes the whole point, an us vs. them mentality that takes on a life of its own and leads participants down a path of perpetual anger without resolution. Good conflict, on the other hand, goes somewhere interesting as genuine curiosity and deep listening leads to better mutual understanding. So how do we make the shift?
In our discussion, Amanda arms us with a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world. We talk about what it means to get curious about what lies beneath the surface of a conflict; how our own unresolved internal conflicts often inform our external conflicts; as well as the importance of engaging in deep listening in order to make others feel truly heard. In a world engineered for misunderstanding, Amanda gives us faith that individuals, and even entire communities, can end the doom loop of outrage and blame if they can learn to really hear each other.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
MORE FROM AMANDA RIPLEY:
High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why
Listen to Amanda’s Podcast, How To! on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Follow Amanda on Twitter
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“I’ve won arm wrestles with big muscular men, right out of prison because you align the energy. Everything wants to harmonize with it and things start to flow with you and it's silent and it's, it's quiet, it's gentle, but it's incredibly powerful. The strength you can access when you're in a state of integrity. So as that starts to grow, we're seeing the Putins and we're seeing the Trumps because they are so freaking loud. And we don't even know that in the silence all over the world, there's another power rising and rising and rising and looking at what's happening in Ukraine and looking at the atrocities and saying, okay, we're not going, we're not gonna do this anymore.”
So says Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist and life coach who is the author of many incredible books, including the just-released, WAY OF INTEGRITY, an Oprah bookclub pick that just might change your life. Martha describes integrity as that sense of wholeness that we can all tap into when we are aligned and attuned to our true selves on the deepest level. It is from that place that we feel unrestricted and safe—like we are at one with the world and each other, and that we no longer feel compelled to control our own behavior in order to earn acceptance and belonging. It is a place of strength, freedom, and radical honesty.
The book, which is a mixture of memoir, anecdotes from her own, fascinating practice, research, and worksheets, uses Dante’s Inferno as a guide to healing. As with any heroic quest, you must go down before you can go up, and Martha walks you there, hand-in-hand until you reach the place of Satori, or enlightenment, which is really another word for the state of integrity. If you can’t tell, I really loved this book–and I loved our conversation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
MORE FROM MARTHA BECK:
The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self
Martha Beck - Think Like a Wayfinder Masterclass
Martha's TedTalk - The Four Technologies of Magic
Follow Martha on Twitter and Instagram
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You have to have something new to hope for sure. You might still keep hoping that somebody with a terminal illness might get better and indeed they do sometimes. Or you might hope as after 9/11, that somebody will be found who was in the trade towers when they fell down. And in fact, a few people were found in another country or in a psychiatric ward and not being able to remember who they were, but for the most part, you keep hoping and you move forward with life in a new way. Without that missing person, you must do both. You cannot just hope because that means you're immobilized, you're frozen in place and the children will suffer, the family will suffer, you will suffer from that. It has to be both/and.” So says, Dr. Pauline Boss, emeritus professor at University of Minnesota and world-renowned as a pioneer in the interdisciplinary study of family stress management as well as for her groundbreaking research on what is now known as the theory of ambiguous loss. Dr. Boss coined the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s to describe a very particular type of loss that defies resolution, blocks coping and meaning-making and freezes the process of grieving. With death, she says, there is official certification of loss, proof of the transformation from life to death, and support for mourners through community rituals and gatherings. In ambiguous loss, none of these markers exist, the lingering murkiness leaving individuals unnerved and stressed out.
In her forty years of clinical experience as a family therapist, Dr. Boss has worked with individuals, couples and families dealing with some kind of ambiguous loss - from families in New York who lost family members during 9/11 and are experiencing the physical kind of ambiguous loss, to those dealing with the psychological ambiguous losses of a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, a loved one with an addiction, or someone who is changing as a result of aging or transitioning. Drawing on research and her immense cache of clinical experience, Dr. Boss has developed six guiding principles for building the resilience to both bear the trauma of ambiguous loss and to move forward and live well, despite experiencing a loss with no certainty or resolution.
She joins me today to discuss this often unrecognized, but ubiquitous type of loss, particularly as it relates to closure - the subject of her most recent book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. Our conversation touches on our collective grieving following the pandemic and our country’s awakening to the concept of systemic racism; how we can begin to increase our tolerance for ambiguity, and the importance of discovering new hope in the face of grief that has no end. Our search, she tells us, must not be for the elusive concept of closure, but rather for a sense of meaning and a new way to move forward.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
MORE FROM PAULINE BOSS:
The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change
Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief
Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping with Stress and Grief
What if There’s No Such Thing as Closure? - NYT Magazine, December 2021
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"So if we take that off the table, if we take off this, this goal of changing somebody's mind, then what are you left with? What's what's your purpose in the conversation? And I feel like not only is that more attainable to have a conversation in which you are exchanging ideas, just exchanging ideas, changing information, that's attainable every time. But also it relieves some pressure, right? I mean, sometimes I feel like people see conversations as frustrating because they keep trying to do something that's impossible. Maybe it would be more enjoyable for you if you weren't trying to beat your head against the wall. I feel like that that paragraph from Carl Rogers is not just something that is useful to tell the other person. I think it's mostly for you. Like for you to tell yourself, I'm not here to change you. I'm just here to listen and understand."
So says Celeste Headlee, award-winning radio journalist and author of many incredible books, including Do Nothing, We Need to Talk, and Speaking of Race. Celeste, a self-described “light-skinned Black Jew,” has been having hard conversations about race since she was a little kid. Already an astute observer of culture, she has notated throughout her life how unproductive these conversations tend to be, how we shut down and get defensive, or try to reinforce our own sense of righteousness.
In today’s conversation, we explore the reasons we’ve become culturally calcified as well as antidotes for taking on tough and essential topics. In Celeste’s experience, the more reserved we become about leaning into potential conflict the more fear enters the equation: And right now, one of the worst labels you can hear is that you are racist.
I loved DO NOTHING and I also loved Speaking of Race, because at its heart it is also just about the art of conversation--and active listening. And Celeste has a lot of experience: She is a regular guest host on NPR and American Public Media, and her Tedx Talk on having better conversations has been viewed over 23 million times.
While I’ve got your attention on Celeste, you need to listen to her season with John Biewen on Scene on Radio: They did an incredible series of episodes about misogyny, and his season on race, called Seeing White, which he co-hosted with Chenjerai Kumanyika is incredible.
MORE FROM CELESTE HEADLEE:
Celeste’s Website
Follow Celeste on Instagram and Twitter
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“I increasingly feel that modern life is becoming intolerable for everyone, whether they're neurodivergent or not. I think we've noticed it earlier. I think, you know, we've reached our point of unbearable discomfort earlier along the line. But I just begin to think that the way we are living is generally hostile to our brains and our neurology. We are, all of us, completely overwhelmed all the time. And you know, like the idea that some people had a good pandemic, well that's because the world called a truce on some of us, and we didn't realize we needed it until that moment. I mean, I don't know what it's gonna take for us to all pull the break on this because it's not good. It's not good for us.” So says Katherine May, the New York Times bestselling author of Wintering, the book that spoke to so many of our souls when it came out a month before the pandemic: Katherine anticipated what all of us felt, which is that our way of living was not supportable, and that we needed retreat and rest.
Katherine is a prophet for a number of reasons: Not only because she’s a stunningly beautiful writer and astute observer of the world, but also because she’s wired a little bit differently. Before she wrote WINTERING, Katherine wrote another book, a memoir called THE ELECTRICITY OF EVERY LIVING THING, about attempting to walk the 630 mile South West Coast Path in Britain before turning 40. But it’s not a book about a heroic feat, it’s actually about grappling with her late-in-life diagnosis as being on the autism spectrum disorder. Katherine always knew she was different, but she never knew exactly how or why, only that she found many parts of life overwhelming and chaotic. The book, which is stunning, explores the ways so many of us feel like we’re passing—picking up behaviors from other people in order to be accepted, or to fit in.
MORE FROM KATHERINE MAY:
The Electricity of Every Living Thing
Katherine May’s Website
Follow Katherine on Instagram
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“I think we're due for a cultural rebranding around crying. I think that crying, you know, if we start to cry, we inevitably apologize or invariably apologize. We sort of suck it back in and make it as small as it can be. Like the way someone would pinch back a sneeze, we’re like holding the tears back, making it smaller, collecting ourselves. And you know, if you know, somebody who's crying frequently or you're like, they're in a bad place. And I think that we really need to see crying as this deep wisdom from our body saying, you need a release right now, let's have of one. And when you get an opportunity to cry, dive into it and let it be big, let it be complete rather than smaller. Like let it be bigger.” So says Dr. Ellen Vora, a Columbia University-trained psychiatrist who takes a functional and holistic approach to mental health—namely, she treats the whole system, looking for where states like anxiety and depression might be rooted in the body, whether it’s less-than-ideal nutrition and an out-of-whack gut, or poor sleep and breathing.
In her just-launched book—THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY—she tackles this state that is ever-present for many of us. In fact, it’s easy to argue that if you aren’t feeling anxious, you aren’t really alive in this complex, difficult rollercoaster of time. But in Ellen’s model, she differentiates between true and false anxiety—both are very real and valid concerns. For false anxiety, typically there’s an imminently treatable physical root that can be addressed until the body comes back into balance and the mind calms. True anxiety, on the other hand, is an alarm clock that something is not right—that you’re out of alignment, or integrity, in some way. In today’s episode we talk about both, including the overwhelming load that we’re all carrying and how important it is to cry. We also explore psychedelics and what it means to really heal. OK, let’s get to our conversation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
MORE FROM ELLEN VORA:
The Anatomy Of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response
Follow Ellen on Instagram and check out her videos on YouTube and TikTok
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