Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / "I Didn't Know I Felt That Way Until I Wrote It Down" Elyse Myers on Healing Through Storytelling

Transcript

"I Didn't Know I Felt That Way Until I Wrote It Down" Elyse Myers on Healing Through Storytelling · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: And who says?
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: So?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to question everything. Hello, Hello, and happy Halloween, well almost Halloween.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I was thinking back to when I was a kid
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and how much I loved Halloween. And I see so
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: many of my friends now who are parents and they
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: watch their kids kind of do like a parade like
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: walk around school and they see all the kids' costumes.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's so cute. I remember doing that.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I always dressed up as badass women like I was
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Xeno Warrior Princess. I was Gi Jane, which was inspired
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: by Demi Moore, you know, with her shaved head. And
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: in recent years I have not dressed up. I just
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: like felt like I didn't have the capacity to think
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: about costumes. And I think maybe next year I need
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to figure that one out, because it's so fun to
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: have a creative costume. I remember in La the cosum
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Egos party used to be big and I dressed up
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: as j Low for that one year. But that's like
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the last time I remember dressing up. And there were
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: so many good costumes at the party. Somebody was wearing
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: this really cute slip dress and they wrote Freud on it,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and she was a Freudian slip, which I thought was
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: so clever. I love when people are clever like that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: But I can't wait to see what everybody's wearing this year.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And I really hope that you have a fun Halloween, however,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and with whomever your celebrate. I also have one other
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: thing that I want to address before we jump into
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: today's episode, which is that last week, the episode with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: James Sexton, who's the fabulous divorce attorney, it blew up online.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It did really well, but I actually made a mistake
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: during my introduction and it was brought to my attention
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: by one of our wonderful listeners, and she wrote me
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the most graceful, kindest email saying that she was going
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: through a divorce and she was kind of triggered or
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: upset by the language that I used saying that divorce
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: was a failure, and.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I totally agree with her.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I feel like any relationship I've ever been in is
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: about growth and learning and evolution.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I would never consider it a failure.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So I felt honestly a little embarrassed that I used
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that term. And yeah, if anybody else felt that way,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. And I always try and be thoughtful
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: with my words and my language, and I'm going to
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: continue to try to be, but going to be even
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: more considerate. So to that listener you know who you are,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: thank you, And to everybody else, I hope you enjoyed
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: today's episode. So today is about creativity, how we make things,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: what we make from them, and what they make of us.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Elise Meyers is one of those people whose creative process
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: is the art. She's a writer, a storyteller, and accidental
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Internet confidant to millions. She's built this world where panic attacks,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: body image, creativity, motherhood, desire, autism, faith, doubt, marriage and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: joy can all sit next to each other at the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: same table. She has this way of saying the quiet
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: stuff out loud, so plainly that you just feel your
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: shoulders drop.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: You know that feeling.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Alise went from recording videos in her living room to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: millions of people watching her every move.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: She's known for her stories.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: They're so requested that she took them from the Internet
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to analog. Her new book, That's a Great Question I'd
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Love to tell You is not a traditional memoir. It's essays, poems,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: drawings from her journals. It's in full color and so homey.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: There's just so much of the creative process that looks
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: like wasting time, but then you make like a masterpiece.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: There's something deeply human about the way Elise moves through
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the world. She just doesn't pretend to have it all
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: figured out. She tells the truth about what it means
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to try.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: My creativity is like a gas. It feels like the
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: more space I am given, the more I can take up.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So the question we're circling today is how do you
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: build and protect a creative life that's honest to who
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you are. It's time to question everything with Elise Myers.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: At least, congrats on the launch of your book. I
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: was so drawn to the title, of course.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: The book is That's a great Question I'd love to
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: tell you, because every single time I would lead into
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: my tiktoks. When I first started making content, I would
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: ask myself a question and that's a great question I'd
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: love to tell you. And I accidentally created that hook
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: for myself, and now it just became this thing that
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: people know me as So when I do it in person,
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: people are like, oh my god, she did it. It's
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: like really funny because I say it normally in my
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: everyday life, I don't try and put that on and
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: so yeah, that's kind of where it was birthed from.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: And I wanted it to feel like the book was
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: like this walkthrough of my life, but not in like
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: memoir style, Like I wanted it to feel like you
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: were like you already knew me. You know that, like
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: a story that a friend is going to tell you
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: about their past or like something that happened in their
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: day is not it's not going to come with all
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: the lore that you already know about. It's going to
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: be like very oddly specific and like, but you know them,
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: so this makes sense in context of them. And so
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: all the stories in this are kind of that. It's
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: not the lore that got me here, but it's it's
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: the things that made me, very specifically me, and they
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: don't seem really big to people, but they felt really
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: big to me because they just they shifted the way
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: that I see myself in my worldview, even though they
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: might have been really small moments. So that was kind
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: of the idea of when I kind of picked all
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: those stories.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I just learned this word called interiority writing.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Have you heard this?
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: What color do you think that word? That phrase is?
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I don't know. I've never thought about like synesthesia
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: in that way.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: No, what does it feel like? Close your eyes?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I got orange? What did you get?
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: I got purple?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Cool?
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: What does that mean to you?
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know. Actually, there's no reason for it. I
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: just when I learn a new word, I like to
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: think about how it sounds and feels, and what color
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: it is. I think helps me remember it. I want
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: to like use it, you know, like when words just
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: sound good in your ear?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, okay, so they stick with you?
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And you and I are a lover of words, lover
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: of questions, and so to me, one of the marks
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: of a great writer is that they're able to sort
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of string together sentences and meaning that you feel in
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: your own interior in your mind, but can't quite figure
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: out how to say or communicate out loud. And I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: think a lot of your stories because these are like
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: short essays.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah did that.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of awkward, funny, surprising, but then
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: they sort of like sucker punch you with meaning. And
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: in the book you say that I've always been someone
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: who needed to tell a story to understand how I
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: felt about it. So to me, I'm like, okay, you
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: process through storytelling. When did you realize that that was
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: your way through the world.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: I think the storytelling part started when I was really young,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: because there was a lot of like I think chaos
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: happening when I was younger, especially I was I was
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: the youngest, the only girl like seven, eight and ten
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: years older than me my brothers, so like big age gaps,
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: and I think I just learned if anyone's gonna listen,
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: it's got I've got to I've got to be really
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: interesting and like captivating, you know. And so that's like
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: a little little trauma lore, but like you know, it's
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: it informed the way that I learned how to communicate
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: with others. But then I learned it was much more
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: comfy for me to kind of monologue style a conversation
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: rather than like figure out how to do the exactly
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: right back and forth and like, am I talking too much?
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: Am I not talking enough?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: Am I coming across as kind? Or we're angry? Am
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: I looking at them enough? Am I looking away too much?
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: And doing they need to go? And so there's a
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: lot of clarity in telling a story because there's a beginning, middle,
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: and end and if a person wants to know more,
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: they can ask follow up questions about it, and if
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: they don't, they don't, and I'm like, great, done, cross
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: that off the list, goodbye, you know. And so I
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: think that I've always felt really naturally comfortable speaking to
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: somebody that way. And then when I learned you could
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: like write those down, like incredible, you know, because now
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: I can share those with people and not have to
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: talk to them, it was like it was amazing. And
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: I've always journaled as well. And so yeah, I think
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: when I used to say that when I could write
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: a song about it, I was processing it, and when
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: I could make it funny or make it like into
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: something that's not like musical, I have like healed from it.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: And so that was always my stepping stone for memories.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: I have and then turning them into like art, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: knowing when it was time for me to let it
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: go and let it give it to somebody else. So yeah,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: I think I've just always framed what I think and
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: how I feel and what I remember that way.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The beginning of your book opens in Anaheim, California, in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two Halloween night, when a magic eight
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: ball keychain named Lucy became your secret sidekick. Yes, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: honestly it felt like such a metaphor. After I close
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the book, I was like, Okay, this is such a
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: metaphor for how you've navigated the world, which is a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: little anxious and very funny, but also very brave in
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: your own way. And I'm wondering if that's what you
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: think people gravitated to online.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: I would say probably yes. But I think that people
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: can tell when someone is being that way performatively because
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: they which is also beautiful, because they want to be
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: that way, and I want them to genuinely feel like
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: comfortable in their skin to share that with somebody else
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: so that it lets them in and gives them permission
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: to be that way too. I think that I've reached
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: a point in my life where I have become very
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: neutral with all of those feelings, like the anxious and
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: the scared and the overwhelmed and the overstimulated and the
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: autistic and all of it just like all of it
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: is just my skin, Like it's me. It's I like pizza,
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: and it's hot outside, and I had a panic attack
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: this morning, and I have a dinner tomorrow and it's
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: really exciting, you know, Like it's just I think that
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: I was able to make this such a normal topic
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: of conversation and it wasn't like it didn't feel overwhelmed
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: and scary, and so people could relate to that of like,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: I can just be this way. I don't have to
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: fix myself or change myself or be something better or different.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: I can just like exist this way because she's doing
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: it and it's going fine for her, so it could,
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So I think that, Yeah,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: I think that people see themselves in me and gravitate
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: towards that, and I really enjoy that. Fun facts I note.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Can I did you know that that was my childhood home?
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: Can I show you?
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Please?
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: That was so that drawing the door to California is
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: my childildhood home.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Oh cool, yes, that's awesome.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Do you have a black and white or a color version?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Color?
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Color?
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: Okay, so you got to see all the mpages and stuff. Yeah,
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: I'm so excited. Sorry, I mean, I just keep showing
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: every single person that has eyeballs that because I'm really
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: excited about it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Well, for everybody listening, there's drawings in your book and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: also some text that looks handwritten, and that's sort of rare.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Is like, first of all, that means that the publisher
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: was taking they use some they use extra money to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: use color print. They really are betting on your book.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: They're thinking it's going to do well.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: I went in there when I sold the book, and
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: I was like, this is what I want. It's like
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: I want for color I have, I'm illustrating the whole thing,
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: I'm writing the whole thing. I'm this is what I
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: want to do for the cover. I want to read
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: my own audiobook. I want it to be sound designed.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: I want the Kindle version to look as pretty as possible,
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: like you know, I had all of I knew exactly
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: and I was like, if you don't want that, totally fine,
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: this is what the book will look like no matter what.
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: And like to find a publisher that was willing to
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: say yes to that. I mean, one day that will
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: be a whole story on its own, not now, but like,
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: it was a really powerful and magical experience and I
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: just did not give up on it, and I believed
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: in it so much, and to a lot of people
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: that yeah, yeah, yeah, almost everyone, yeah, I mean everyone
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: but one. I mean, it's expensive. It doesn't actually make
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: any logical sense to do it that way the first time,
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: but that's okay. I wanted to be working with people
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: that they had enough faith in me, and they saw
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: the track record, they believed in me and trusted me,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: because it takes that much trust for me to give
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: them my book, and so I want that back, and
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: luckily I have found that in HarperCollins and William Morrow,
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: which I'm really grateful for.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: I didn't say this to them specifically, but in my mind,
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: I was like, I'm very good at my job, and
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: I hope that I get that trust in somebody that
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I'm partnering with because I'm giving you my life stories.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: That's about as this is about as intimate of a
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: thing as I could give you besides my body. I
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: feel like like honestly and so, which is a crazy
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: thing to say. Sorry, as I said that, I was like,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: that's too serious, but like it just it's real. Yeah,
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: And so not only that, but there's like the handwritten
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: that's my actual handwriting from my journals, Like it's just
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: it's literally my life. And so I didn't like the picture,
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: like the cover, Like I took that film picture. I
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: designed the set for this and we went to Austin
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: and took this and it was such a cool day,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: Like everything about this book has been so specifically chosen
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: that to finally let people see it and read it
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: or hear it experience it is like, like I can't wait.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: It's been such a labor of love. I'm like, finally
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: people can see it, you know, I'm just so excited.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So, Alisa, I want to ask you about your rise online,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: because like, one day you're posting videos from your living
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: room and suddenly millions of people are leaning in. Yes,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that's got to be one of the weirdest feelings in
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the world. As a person who loves questions, what were
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you asking yourself as soon as all of that stuff
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: started happening to you.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: I didn't set out to be like I'm gonna be famous,
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: like or I'm going to have millions of people watch
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: me do what I do. So I think at first
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: I was I was questioning whether this was a good
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: idea or not. I felt really exposed. I felt nervous
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: that I had like opened this door for people to
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: like immediately be in my home with me and my family,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: and I was like, I just I didn't realize I
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: invited this many people over, you know, That's kind of
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: how it felt. I was like, there's not enough food
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: in the fridge, and like I don't even have a family,
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: I don't even own enough sil rower for this. Like
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: that's kind of how it felt. And I continue to
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: just question, like do I want this? If yes, make
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: another video tomorrow. If not, never post again, and it'll
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: go away. Like I knew every single day I woke up,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: I was choosing to move this forward, and so I
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: had to really decide with every single thing I posted,
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: checking with my family make sure that with worked for
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: the life that we wanted for ourselves, and I was
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: taking it one day at a time really helped all
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: of it not feel so overwhelming, and it allowed me
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: to like really decide how I wanted this to look
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: very specifically and what I didn't want to do, and yeah,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: like just just just staying really grounded. I guess in
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: the beginning of it, trying to decide what I wanted
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: this look like, I guess it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, was it exciting because I can imagine too, like
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: when your videos popped off, like they really were getting
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: lots of views, that this is like a whole new
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: financial place to be in.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Also, was that overwhelming? Was that exciting?
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I think so. I was running a business at
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: the time, So I was a web developer and I
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: owned a pretty successful like web development, coding, and design company.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: So I was running that full time and just had
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: a baby. So when this happened, at first, I was like,
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: this is just a thing I'm doing in the morning,
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: my job before my job, kind of a thing, well,
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: my hobby, my hobby before my job. Basically, it wasn't
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: until it got to the point where I had to
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: choose how much time I wanted to be spending where
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: because it didn't financially make sense anymore to not choose
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: content creation. And I mean, if I didn't want to
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: do it, I could easily. I loved my business but yeah,
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: I was like, I think that this makes more sense.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: I can be home with my family more, I can
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: be more relaxed. It turns out you can start traveling
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: a lot. So it changed really quick. But like, yeah,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: it was the best and most right decision for my family,
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: but it was overwhelming. I remembered thinking so many times,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: I'm so grateful I know how to run a business.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: I know how to look at contracts, I know how
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: to make deals. I know what a good deal is,
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: what a bad deal is when I'm getting taken advantage of.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: I had a family, and I was like a little older,
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: and so I just kept thinking, I'm so glad this
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: didn't happen to me when I was like seventeen. Like
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: I couldn't. I honestly couldn't imagine. It's just different. It
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: was so different when this was happening to me at
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: like thirty years old or twenty nine. I guess time, No,
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: twenty eight. My god, I've been doing this for four years.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: What year is it? Yeah? Four years this October? Crazy? Wow, Wow,
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: it feels honestly like it happened a year ago. It
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: blows my mind that it's actually been that long, which
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: is cool, but yeah, it was overwhelming. And I remember
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: driving from getting groceries and it was like the first
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: week the taco story had gone big, and my mind
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: was all over the place, like it was like my
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: brain was just had a fire hose of water on
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: it and I couldn't hear or see anything else but
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: wondering what was happening. And you know, it just felt
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: like a lot of attention and I couldn't decipher between
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: real life and like millions of people seeing me on
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: the internet. It just felt all real, like I was
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: like just standing on a stage with million people staring
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: at me. Twenty for seven.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Wow, were you reading in like the entire comment section.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: I yeah, I used to respond to as many comments
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: as I possibly could, But it wasn't really that. It
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: was just I mean, the human brain is not meant
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: to know that millions of people are watching them. That
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: is a very bizarre and like biologically unstable situation, you know,
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: neurologically like. And then when that is sustained for long
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: periods of time, it's like you have got to figure
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: out how to turn that off, that awareness off. Even
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: when I go out, because people will come up and
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: say hi, and I love saying hi to people. And
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: this has changed the way I even like exist in
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: a physical space because if I'm making eye contact with
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: everybody that I see, like I would have just walked
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: around and just looked around a room, right, But now
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: I am always ready for someone to come up and
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: interrupt me in a good way, like just I stay
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: interruptible with what I'm doing. So I have to decide
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: if I want to go out. Am I in a
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: place where if someone walks up to me, I feel
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: good having a conversation. If not, I just don't go out.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: And so it changes how you live, and so you
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: have to turn that awareness off and really focus on
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: like what am I doing? What do I need to do?
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: Where's my body? What's around me right here? And like
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: am I getting my stuff done? And everything else is
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: just extra? It's interesting.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: So did you ever watch Queer I for the Straight Guy?
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: So the reboot there's a guy named Karamo on there
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine from when I first moved
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to LA and I remember him telling me that when
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Queery really took off, they would do sort of these
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: conventions and all five guys had different expertises, and Karamo
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: was sort of the therapist, the counselor, and so he
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: was like everyone like people would go to Bobby and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: talk about design or whatever, and the people that would
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: come to me would trauma dump because they were like,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I was the feelings person, and he was like, even
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: though I have big feelings, Like, it was really a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: lot for me because you have big feelings and a
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: lot of your content talks about big feelings.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Is that a similar experience and how do you navigate that?
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah? I mean I was just having this conversation
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: last night with Jonas. I can't really keep my cameos open.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: I want to. I want to so badly, but like
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: almost every cameo I get, and I have a round
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: I need to finish today and we'll see how it goes.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: But I'm like, okay, we're gonna stop in. I'm so
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: honored at first and foremost, I'm so honored that someone
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: would see me and be like, I want to give
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: her this information because I trust her with it and
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: she's so safe that it wouldn't even be a question
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: in their mind, Like what a gift it is to
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: be that for somebody. And then I think there's a
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: layer of it where when that's a one off situation,
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: it's beautiful, and when in the context of relationship, it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: really beautiful. I think out of context of a relationship,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: and when it's happening one hundred times a day to you,
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: it can feel so overwhelming because I feel things so deeply,
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: like I will wear that. I will, I will have
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: that feeling like it's my own, and I will take
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: it with me in my personal life. And I do
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: not just like see it, read it and go oh,
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry you're going through that, and then walk away
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: from it. The very thing that makes me good at
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: what I do and a person that people want to
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: follow or relate to or share with, is also the
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: thing that could destroy me if I let it, And
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: so I have to be very careful with protecting my emotions.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: And that's why I don't really go through the comments anymore,
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: not because they're bad, they're so kind, but I think
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: it like it's a lot of feedback that you hold
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: or like, you know. I don't have my direct messages
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: open on most social platforms because I get a lot
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: of those kind of messages and just I want to
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: be as available and as open as I possibly can
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: but there does become a point where you have to
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: protect your mind because for that one person, it's like
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: they feel like they got to share that with me.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: But when it's fifteen times in a row, it's like
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: I just need a second, you know, And I just
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: it's hard to process all of that. There are still
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: stories I'm thinking of right now that someone told me
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: like three years ago that I just I'll never I'll
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: never be able to let that go. And I think
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: about that family all the time. Yeah, it's a hard
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: it's a hard balance because I don't want that to
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: go away. I want to be someone that people trust
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: and want to share with. It's good to communicate that
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: to people. I think that a lot of people are
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: scared to be honest about that because they don't want
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: to seem mean. And I think the kindest thing I
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: could do for people that love me is tell them
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: how I best feel loved in that. And I think
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: it's really valuable to like communicate that to people, and
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: so I try my best to do that in a
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: way that helps them understand. It's not because I don't
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: want to hear it. It's just I'm not a licensed therapist,
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: so I don't know how to deal with these feelings
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: like I would person talked to a therapist about these yes,
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: receiving them. So like I wish I could give you help,
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: I can't. I want to point you in the right direction.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I experienced a lot of that, but it's
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: gotten a little it's gotten better since I've started to
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: open up about that. Online.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I remember because I'm online, like I like, correct,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I sort of you and I I were two years apart.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I'm thirty four, and so I think that we're in
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: this interesting age group that has one foot in and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: one foot out of the digital world because we sort
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: of grew up without Instagram and YouTube in the same
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: way that gen Z did. And so I grew up
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: in the sort of like influencer world in LA when
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I got here for my career, and so I'm very
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: aware of the internet. And I remember, at least popping off,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I heard your name everywhere and there were so many
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: like you had you were you were like the big
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: new person on Instagram, on TikTok. You took some time
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I'm off from the internet, and then you came back online.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: What made you want to come back?
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: Coming back? Truly like was me deciding that I'm always
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: going to be a creative person and no matter where
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: I'm creating, whether it's on the Internet or like writing
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: songs or making crochet animals or anything, you know, making
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: silly videos, anything, I will always be that person. And
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: so like you also need to turn off the output
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: sometimes you have to just input. You have to like
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: have enough and you can and feel full creatively to
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: then give back out words you know and create and
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: make things. And I think that resuming posting and like
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: just coming back onto the online content creation world was
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: me accepting that, like, no matter what form of no
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: matter what medium I'm creating on, I will always be
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: a creative And so yeah, that was just a really
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: important season for me of like learning how to accept
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: myself as a maker and really fall in love with
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: that again and make it fun again and go back
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: to the way I felt when I first started it.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: It was really essential for me to fall back in
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: love with it. So that's kind of what happened when
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: I started posting again.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Is that when you decided you were going to write
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: your book.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: No I wrote. I started writing my book. I was
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: five months pregnant with Oliver, when I started doing the
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: book meetings, but I had decided a year before that,
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: so this really has been going on since like twenty
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: twenty two. It's you write your first book like twenty
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: times over for like three years, and then the second
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: book is like, well, see you in six months. Like
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: it's a very fast turned around, which is funny.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: You write no, I mean, I write for fun, but.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: I think you should write thank you. No one likes
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: words like that and doesn't write Come on, what do
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: you write for fun?
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: One day?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I write down my feelings. Sometimes I do find it therapeutic.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: But hand with your hand or a computer a.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Computer, and you know what, everybody that I admire says
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: do it by hand. So I'm wondering if I need
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to switch over.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I will tell you right now. There is
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: such a brain and body connection when you are writing.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: You think something and feel something, and then it takes long,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: like a lot longer to write it. So by the
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: time you start the sentence, it's already a more clarified
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: thought by the end of it, but your hand is
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: catching up to the writing process. I have written sentences
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: down and then read it back like immediately, not like
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: I don't ever read my journals back. A therapist told
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: me you should never ever go back and read your
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: journals because that version of you doesn't exist anymore. So
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: it's like eating expired food. It's like, yeah, so I
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: thought that was really cool. The only reason I had
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: to go through my journals was for this book. But
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: that's not a typical practice for me, and I enjoy that.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: I enjoy it's really freeing. Actually, like sometimes I'm like,
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: I'll just burn it. I don't know, yeah, but I
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: will write something immediately go. I didn't even know I
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: felt that way because it just came out of me.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Like it's like you're there's a very very powerful thing.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: It's not like a one plus one situation. It's like
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: a one plus one equals five when you are you know,
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: it's not like I'm thinking it, feeling it, writing and
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: processing it. It's like this magic happens when your hand
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: writes it and then your eyes see it, and then
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: you're like, if you say it out loud, your ears
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: hear it. It's it's really really cool. So my husband
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: knows if we're like, you know, some we get in
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: a tiff or something. When we first got married, He's
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: the kind of family that they're like, we're not leaving
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: till we work it out right now.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: And I'm just like, ew, no punch you in the face,
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: no get away from me, Like I don't I'm not want.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: I don't want to process this in real time in
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: front of you. What do you want to get like
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: iced out forever? Right?
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: Well, it's just totally it's it's both are not right
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: or wrong. Like, and I love that he loves communication,
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: but I am just not a person I will just mute.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: I've never talked in my life, Like, I need to
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: just write what I'm saying, what I'm feeling down because
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: everything feels so jumbled, and then when I can write it,
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: I can process it and I can go back and
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: be like, this is what I was feeling, what I
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: meant to say, which is side note, but it's always
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: been something that's helped. So what I would do is
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: I would get a little journal and I would start
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: a practice. It doesn't have to be every day, but
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: I think that you'll really I think you would enjoy it.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: You like words, Oh.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you?
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So you said you went back into your journals yeah,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: had you written about memories and then you turn them
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: into essays for the book or talk to me about
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: your process here.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So some of the journal entries are just from
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: like a lot of them are like transitional into different stories.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: So the actual essays and poems, those were all written now.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: So like i'll show you an example, Like one story
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: is just a contract. I just wrote. A contract just
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: makes me laugh every time. Sorry, every time I see it.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: It's called the rules on face touching as it relates
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: to facial hair, as it relates to surprise beers.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: So a lot of the essays and stories are either
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: allegorical or as literal as I possibly can get without
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: getting sued. So those were now. But then things like
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: you know, when I go and mine and my Jonas's stories,
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: it'll be oh, show yeah, it'll be like story and
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: then it will go into my journal entry from that
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: time of me being at like his house or something
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: like that. They're more like transitional. But the actual writing
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: process I had no idea where to start because I
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: didn't want to make it chronological. It's not chronological. There's
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: so many holes in the stories of my story of
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: my life that I had to like find ways to
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: visually tell you you don't need to ask any questions
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: about how we got here, like we're just we got
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: we're here, so now be here. Because I was like,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: I don't want anyone trying to make a bridge to
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: two places that aren't related, but I just like teleport
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: yourself to this new place and now we're here. And
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: so I didn't know how to start writing that. So
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: I just was like, I'm just going to write because
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: I write short stories and perform them on Instagram sometimes,
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: so it's like, I'm just going to start writing a
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: story like that, like if I were just to be
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: posting it online, and then I was like, okay, cool,
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: I'll write another one. But honestly, a lot of these
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: came from me reading a lot of like short stories
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: and just getting inspired by what I had around me.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: And I hadn't had the idea of like actual funky
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: poems in terms of like more artistic than anything else,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: more beautiful and allegorical until I was in New York
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: and I took a writer's retreat. I got a hotel room,
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: like a really pretty hotel room, because I was going
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: to stay in it. Basically the whole week and I
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: wrote my book in that room. I stayed there for
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: it every night and I laid on the floor and
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: I wrote my book and I remembered sitting there. It
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: was like day three and I had not written a
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: single thing, but I had read and I was like,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: how can I be a writer if I'm not writing?
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: This is crazy. I was sitting there on the ground
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: and the closet was up, it was in front of me,
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: and I had my jackets hanging, and I had this
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: flannel or this like kind of yeah flannel jacket hanging
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: and I was like, I wonder if that flannel is
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: judging me right now, cause it the way that the
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: closet door is really slated, so you can kind of
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: see through always even if they were closed. And I
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: was like, Ah, this shirt has just seen me this
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: whole the whole three days, not write anything. And I
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: was like, I'm going to write a story about this
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: shirt judging me for not writing, and all of the
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: times it's seen me, you know, like walk in front
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: of the closet or pace or do everything other than write.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: And I started writing it from the perspective of a shirt.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: And that was the first poem that I ended up.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: It changed so much, it's very different now than what
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: it started as. But I was like, here, I'm going
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: to read you the one line that I realized this
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: this is the book. This is the book. The story
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: is called His and Hers. So I wrote, when she
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: saw me, she cried. Her face looked happy, and her
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: voice sounded sad, way too sad, definitely more sad than
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: her face looked happy. And I drew a little pie
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: chart of like it was like seventy five percent sad,
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: twenty five percent like happy. And I was like, it's
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: the visuals, Like we're gonna have visuals and it's in
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna write poems and not all of them have
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: to be like straightforward essays of my life, and like
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: this is the last page of that story, and like
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: the words are like going around with the text and
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: it's like the And then I was like, oh my gosh,
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: the words are going to be the pictures sometimes, so
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: like if there's not an illustration, the words will look
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: like shel Silverstein's status. And I was like, oh my god,
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: I've got it, Like I just I will never forget
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: it all clicking because I had it was like I
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: had all these individual pieces, but none of them were
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: to the same puzzle. So I'm like, great, I've got
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: a puzzles worth of pieces, but literally they're all a
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: different picture, and it doesn't make sense. Why do I
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: have all of these? Who gave these to me? I
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: realized they were like all upside down or like a
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: like flipped over. So I just started like uncovering all
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: of them, and it's like, it's this, It's all the
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: same picture now it all was. It started rolling from there.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: It was really cool.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Do you think that you felt this like burst of
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: it all coming together those puzzle pieces because you gave
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: yourself some time alone in that hotel room?
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: For sure? Oh yeah, I could not. And that was
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: what's so interesting is I was only going to go
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: for like three days, and Jonas said, no, minimum, you
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: need to be there a week because the first four
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: days are just you settling in. You're in a new place,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: you're sleeping in a bed that is in yours, You're
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: learning where everything is in the hotel room, you're catching
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: up on sleep that you've been missing because you're a
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: working mom and just exhausted. Who we our son was
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: still going through his heart stuff, and so I was
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: just in fight or flight. How can you be like
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: creative when your body is like are we going to
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: die today? Like that's everything extra just goes out the window.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: And I gave myself space and I was reading so much.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: I walked around the city because at the beginning, I
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: was like, I don't deserve to go outside and walk
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: around and spend time because I've not earned that break.
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: But so much of the creative process is input, Like
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: I was saying, like, you have got you have got
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: to have enough inputs so that there's enough to come out.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: And that input looks like for me going on walks, reading,
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: listening to music, watching TV, not talking to anybody, because
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: that is output. That is now like releasing steam in
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: a way that I could have been putting it on paper.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: And like, there's just so much of the creative process
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: that looks like wasting time. But then you make like
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: a master. I'm not saying this is a master, but
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: you make you make art, and you wouldn't have There's
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: no way you would have been able to make that
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: if you Sorry, I just love this conversation. I've got
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: a book called Someone Who Will Love You In All
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: of Your Damaged Glory. And it's a it's a collection
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: of short stories. And I bought it my second day
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: in New York for that trip. I was walking. I
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: went on a walk and I saw it in the
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: window of his bookstore, loved the cover, bought it, read
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: it in one day. And that informed so much of
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: my writing style in this And so there's no way
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: if I wouldn't have gone on a walk and wasted
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: some time. So that, yeah, that was like the space
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: I gave myself and my brain the permission to not write,
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: knowing and trusting myself that when I have wide open space,
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: I will fill it. But I have to have the space.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: Like my creativity is like a gas. It feels like
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: the more space I am given, the more I can
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: take up.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And yeah, hearing you talk about your creativity, thank you. No, really,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: did you always consider yourself a creative person or is
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: that sort of a new hat that you wear.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: I don't think I considered it like an adjective of me.
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: I think it was like I create things anything I could, diy,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I did any I was always artistic, but I never
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: saw it as like a gift. It seemed like a
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: huge problem. Because it was mean. Well it was it's
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: time consuming, and when you're a kid, it's like expensive,
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: and it's a hobby that is very superlative to like
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: things that are actually helpful, Like I was terrible at school,
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: but I could jaw you a mean picture, and like,
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: but then you live in a world where it's like
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: at that time, now kids, oh man, it's so cool
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: because we were just like you could be anything you
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: want to be, but like people mean it. People said
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: that to you. But people say that to you, like
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: back in the nineties, and it's like, you could be
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: anything you want to be unless it doesn't make you money. Yeah,
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: and you know, and and also you need a degree
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: so unless you're going to be a full time artist.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: It wasn't always that harshly said to me. It was
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: more just this like understanding of like, you can like
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: things and make things, but as long as it don't
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: get in the way of all the things that are
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: going to make you successful. I think now I'm realizing
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: my greatest strength is my ability to teach myself anything
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I want, because how hard could it be. And then
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: knowing like within that if I want to make something,
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: I can make it. I don't need to be a
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: pop star to write a pop song and make it
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: really cool, like at least just one. You know, it's
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: like any you could, it's fine, anyone could do it.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: That sounds silly, And I'm not undercutting how hard being
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: a creative is or how hard music writing is, but
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: like just releasing yourself from having to make it perfect
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: and make it monetizable and make it your job, I
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: think really helped me see myself as a creative and
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: not just like I do create. I don't know if
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: I answer made sense.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense, Okay.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I actually just interviewed an author of fantasy named Lee Bardugo,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and she did a ted talk about great art, and
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: she was like, for her, great art comes when you
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: push past the discomfort, because so many people think like, oh,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: if it's if it's not working. Similar to that story
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: that you just shared, where like you had three days
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: where like nothing was coming out and people would be like,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: maybe this isn't for me, and you just pack it
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: up and leave that hotel room and go back to
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: your family. And she was like, once you get past
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the point of that discomfort, that's when the magic happens
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: and She likened it to this question I love. She
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: was like, it's sort of like romance. We ask everybody
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: how did you meet? But really the better question is
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: how have you stayed in love? And it's like, how
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: have you pushed past that discomfort to create this art?
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: So your story made total sense.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I loved it.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: I also, I want to reiterate, Yeah, it's very hard
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: to write music. And I'm not saying anybody can be
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: a pop star. I have a lot of respect. I
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: have a lot of friends that do that for their jobs.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: I want to clarify, Yeah, Max Martin is very talented.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: Meghan Trainer out there, I love you.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: No. But the last the songwriter, Oh, she's so girl.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: She's a weapon, Oh my god. And not just a
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: great songwriter. She's an incredible audio engineer and producer. She
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: can track the hell out of your voice. She is.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: She has a studio in her house and I have
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: watched her actually work and it is mesmerizing. I would
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: love just like live feed footage of her tracking in
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: a studio and herself or other people. She's a genius.
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: And I know that she's not like putting all that
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: out there because she loves her music as well, and
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: that's like what she likes to share. But the girl
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: is an actual, like genius, so.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I'll just say that.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: So the last story in the book is called A
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: Very Short Novel and its sequel. It started because I
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: was like, so after New York, I almost finished the manuscript,
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: and I knew there was going to need to be
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: a little bit more added in, but I was comfy
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: with where it was. I was like, this is a book.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: It's going to be more of a book, but this
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: is a book. Even if it just went out as
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: it is right now, I would be very proud to
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: tell people I wrote this book. But then I don't
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: know what happened. I got in my head because it
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: was like I hadn't drawn the illustrations yet and I
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: just lost the vision of it, like almost like I
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: completed that thing that felt like a mountain, and then
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: I felt like I was I was starting over because
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: now I had to go through this next process of
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: like drawing it. And then I was like, I'm not
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: an artist, Like why did I say I would do this?
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: And so I started spiraling in my closet and I
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: was like, Okay, my brother's an artist. My brother's an
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: incredible artist, which is why I always wanted to draw,
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: and I was like, I could, I could commission him
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: to do this, and then like I should, like do
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: what did I need a ghost writer? Like sh should
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: should I have not written my own book? It was
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: like I just really lost it, and I tried to
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: start writing a story because I knew I wanted something
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: at the end and I hadn't gotten there yet because
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: that point it was a lot of unrelated stories that
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: were good, but there was no like ending, you know
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: that really felt like it it was cohesive with the
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: rest of it. And I had such bad writer's block,
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: I like could not write. So I wrote about having
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: writer's block, and then as I did that, I realized,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: when you end up reading it, it's like, it's really cool.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: It ties back into this exact feeling I had when
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: I was really little and I would write, but then
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: I didn't know what else to write, and then I
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: like it just it all came together. And it was
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: because I was spiraling in my closet with having writer's block,
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: and I know, you know the saying like depression can't
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: hit a moving target. Yes, okay, So it was it's
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: kind of like that, like, how could you possibly have
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: writer's block if you are actively typing a sentence in
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: a word document. It doesn't matter what it is, right,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: it could literally be an inner monologue, but like you
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: don't have writer's block. That is like it's a it
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: is truly like a mentality that you just have to
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: not accept. It's like I didn't say what I'm writing
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: is good, but it I'm writing and writer's right, and
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: so that's what I'm going to do. And pushing past
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: that was truly like I've decided that this is who
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: I am and I love it and I'm not going
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: to let myself take it away because that would be
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: wild and silly. So yeah, that was how the last
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: story ended up coming into play, and it truly is
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: the most powerful story in the book I've tried. I
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: cried the whole time I tracked that I'm in sound
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: booth and I look over at the audio engineer. His
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: name is Chris, and I am holding it together. Obviously
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: I'm embarrassed because there's a producer in my ears, sound
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: engineer out of the booth and everyone knows. Just don't
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: say a word, like I'll get back into it. We're
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: doing it two words at a time, Like I'm like,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: how is this going to even sound like real sentences
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: when it's like, you know, pieced together. And I look
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: over finally and I like make eye contact with Chris,
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: and Chris is crying and he's got like a little
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: like tissue and I was like, Chris, you can't cry,
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: you hav to cry, and he's just like I've been
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: crying this whole time. And it's just it's a special book, dude,
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: It's special. I have had so many people that are like,
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: I'm not readers, and I read your book and it
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: I loved it. People like I'm not your target audience,
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: but I have been enjoying it this whole time, like
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: this producer in my ear, And it just feels like
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: there's something magical about it that's hard to explain that
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: has allowed me to connect to so many people that
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: don't see themselves in the book world. But I'm not
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: going to say it's a book for people that don't
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: like books, because it's not. It's a great book, and
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: it's a book for people that love books, but also
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: it's a book for people that just love really good
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: stories and to look at beautiful things and to feel
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: something and people that are visually inspired and if you
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: like scrolling on Pinterest, you're gonna like the book like
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: it's that kind of feeling. So yeah, it's just been
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: a joy to right. It is instilled so much confidence
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: in me.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It's restored, like hearing that.
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm like I after doing this. No, you
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: can't tell me nothing. I can do it.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: If you've been through childbirths, so for you to say
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: that means you.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, really, oh this is harder than it. I mean, yeah, no,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: having a child compared to this is a child. This
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: is like twelve children. I wrote this book so many
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: times over it's again, but I'll tell you it's like
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: it was worth every every every single meltdown in a
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: closet and trip to New York and crying on Zoom
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: with people that have already paid me money to write
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: this book, of me saying I'm going to give you
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: your money back. I can't do it. I literally can't
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: do it. I don't know why you I even said
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: I could. I was I was like high on coffee
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: that day. I'm not even sure what I was saying.
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: It's been worth that because when you have the physical
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: final product. It actually happened. We did it, we made it.
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: It's a physical manifestation like so many different things that
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: I had to push past and believe about myself to do.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: And I'm so I'm really proud. I'm really proud of it.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: In the about the author, it says Elise has three
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: simple goals behind everything she makes to make people feel known, loved,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and like they belong. So as I'm hearing you, I'm thinking, Okay,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you must have in part written this book for a lease.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Oh but you're also so outwardly focused. People won't hear
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: this part. But you asked me a ton of questions
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: before we even started recording. You are really a person
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: who thinks about other people, so I know that other
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: people came into your purview when writing this.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Who did you write this book for.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: It's a good question. I'm gonna cry. I wrote it
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: for my sons. I dedicated it to my sons and
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: me and Jonas. I wrote it for them because they
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: deserve to know all of the things that brought me
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: to them and why they're here. And man, I see
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: so much of me in them. And if they are
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: even a quarter as anxious as me or a quarter
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: as curious or overwhelmed or like driven or creative, like
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: they deserve to have books in the world and stories
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: in the world that make them feel known, loved and
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: like they belong, and that like they can then give
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: that to other people, that that acceptance and that clarity
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: that like, I am great just as I am and
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: and I'm not. It's like, it's not like i'm I'm
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: I'm people will put up with me. It's actually such
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: a gift that you are this way, and it is
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: a gift that you can give people that acceptance of
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: themselves as well. And so every single story I wrote
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: in here, I first wrote for the young version of
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: me that needed this when I was little, and the
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: validation and the guidance and the self acceptance and the
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: permission to just like myself. And then after that I
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: was like, I didn't get that, So I'm going to
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: give that to everybody coming up after me. Yeah, that
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: was who the book was for, and within that everyone else,
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: you know, because they are the first, and then everyone
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: else gets to enjoy it too.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: That was really beautiful, Lily.
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you some fun rapid fire questions right.
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: I love fun.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Rapid fire, okay, amazing.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: One of the many things I value about you and
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: what you put out into the world is that you
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: do not pretend to have it all figured out. What
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: is something that you're still unlearning?
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: This is not a rapid fire question. Let me see,
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: let me see.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It could be personal, it could be societal, it could
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: be from your parents.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: I think reacting when I feel overwhelmed. I have a
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: oh I'm not wearing it right now. I have a
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: bracelet friendship bracelet. I wear it. I made it says
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: it's all good, buddy. That phrase when I break a
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: glass my like, it's my immediate thought, like it's all good, buddy.
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: When I'm angry at someone, because I feel like my
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: justice sensitivity is like flaring up, the first thought I
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: have when I'm angry at them is it's all good, buddy.
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: Like there's so much compassion and like kindness and just
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: acceptance in that phrase that when you say it, no
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: matter what situation you're saying it in, either to myself
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: or to someone else, calms my nervous system immediately, because
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: I just am so used to being so reactionary, because
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: everything that goes wrong feels like the end of the world,
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: and it's usually not. And so yeah, unlearning that like
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: unlearning that like immediate just like reaction because I feel
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: like I'm in trouble or getting you know, feeling like
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: that control has been taken from me. Like it's all good, buddy.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: I love that phrase. And it's not like everything's gonna
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: be okay or because sometimes it isn't. You know, sometimes
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: it's not a good situation. But it's like it's like
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: such a breath really quick, like it's all good, buddy,
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Like we'll figure it out whatever needs to be figured out. So, yeah,
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: that's what I'm doing.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: There's also a feeling of companionship in it, like even
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: there were in this together souling yourself.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how it feels.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, your favorite question to ask a stranger or
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: ask somebody at a dinner party.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: I have one that I've been asking the people a
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: lot recently. I have a bunch one of them right now.
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: Is what is the first thing you you like really
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: remember thinking I'm too cool for this, not not because
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: you actually were, or because like for okay, A good
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: example is like my friend, this is my friend's answer.
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: You know the Kia commercials Kia Right Soul or something
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: with the cars that looked kind of like Scions but
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: they weren't. Oh yeah, you remember those.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: So my friend was like, he was like in middle
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: school and he saw that commercial with the mic the rats,
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: the mice, remember like there was like dancing rats. Oh,
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: it was a crazy It was a crazy time on
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: TV with commercials. They were just trying anything at that time.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: And he said, I remember seeing that commercial and thinking
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: that car looks so oh impractical. I think I've I
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: think that that's too far. All right. He's like eleven
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: when he's thinking this, but his like first time thinking
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: like I'm too cool for I've aged out of my
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: own generation. That feeling for me, it was the Sidekicks
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: team O like the Sidekicks. I was like, I don't
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: think I'm cool. I don't think i'm cool enough for that.
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: I think I'm too old for this. I was like
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: in high school. So is there something that you remember
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: feeling that way about?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm too cool for this. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: I want to know.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Oh you're asking me.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, of course, you can't ask me my favorite question
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: and then not let me.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Ask it Ooh, okay, I'm going to think and if.
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: You don't have an answer, you don't have to think
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: of one. But I do want you to then text
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: it to me or something because I have.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: To know.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to think about it.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: My initial instinct was I never feel too cool for anything.
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: Well, that's well for me. My answer was the opposite.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: It was like, I'm not cool enough to use this.
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: I've like phased out of my generation. So that's kind
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: of what it was. So another question I'll ask you,
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: and I do want to answer this right now. Who's
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: your best friend? Do you have a best friend? Yeah?
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: Or a good friend?
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: I do?
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: What is a quality in them that you would feel
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: you want you want to be more of?
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Oh? At least I've been thinking about this a lot.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Cool and I love this question. Okay.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: So I have two of my closest friends have incredible integrity,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Like they see the world way more black and white
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: than I do.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: I see a lot of gray.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: And it's not that I don't value that perspective, but
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: sometimes when I'm making a decision, I think what would
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Elena do?
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: What would Chelsea do? What would Julia do?
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Because I'm like their integrity is so strong, and I
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: always want to make sure I'm there.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: I love that.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: What's your answer? That's such a beautiful question.
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: Thank you. I have a two. I don't know how
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: to categorize best friends because I'm like best in what way,
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: you know? But like, I have two really good friends
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: and they're together. They've been together for like I think
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: nine eight years. I love them so much. And one
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: of the friends is there's not a moment where she
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: isn't like thinking about other people. But it's no effort.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: You know, when you go to someone's house and you
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: can feel like they're stressed about taking care of you,
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: and you're like, just sit down, like I would rather
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: just hang out with you. She doesn't. It's not that way.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: It's not like manic mom. It's like you're talking and
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: she's like floating around her house and getting you water.
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: But not one moment do you not think that she's
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: not paying attention to you or in her mind thinking
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: of I'm not going to listen to her, but I'm
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: going to take care of her, because that's kind of
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: out counterproductive. She is just so effortlessly hospitable in every
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: area of her life, and I love that about her,
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: and I am the opposite. I am like, I want
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: to make sure you have everything your need to, you
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: need to the detriment of you actually feeling like I'm
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: present with you, because anybody can get you a glass
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: of water, but I want to like sit and like
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: hear your story, you know. So I love that about her,
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: And then.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: I love how specific, oh thank you.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: I think about this all the time. And then with
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: her partner, I love how he is so adventurous and
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: so fun but doesn't stress about things, and not in
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: a careless way. He just truly has this idea that
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: like he can just figure it out if we're out,
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: if like we just decide randomly to go to a
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: second location out altogether, and like I think it's gonna rain.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: I don't have a jacket. He's like, if we really
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: get caught in the rain, it's all good. That's like
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: such a cliche example, but like when when you're so
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: used to just worrying about the worst possible case scenario
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: all the time, being around somebody that panics the appropriate
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: amount is a pretty good hard reset to your nervous system,
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: and it's really teaching me how to panic appropriately, Like
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: he's like, worry about the things that actually matter and
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: really worry about them. It's all good, but the things
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: that don't like, he's like, you've got to let that go.
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: And he's so New York he's from Jersey, so true.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: I mean he's like, he'll slap you in the face
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: really if you're going too hard, and you're like, you
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: know what I needed that? You're so right? Not really,
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: but that kind of vibe. So them together is hilarious
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: because they could not be in a way more opposite.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: And she's like so here and he's like get over it,
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: and both of them, I'm like, yes, yep, yes, it's
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: really cool. They are such a power team. It's so great.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, Okay, one thing every woman should try once.
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: Sex with a woman.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Oh you know you're not the first guest to say that.
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm also by so I'm partial. But yeah, no,
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: I think maybe not that that is my answer, but
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: maybe another one too. I've been really into and I
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: didn't think I was, but now I'm like getting into it.
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: I wear I call him a power set. So it's lingerie,
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: but not lingerie for like sexy time lingerie. I mean
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: it can be anything, can be lingerie for sexy time
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: if you try had enough. But it's just beautiful, like
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: bras and underwear that I wear under my clothes when
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: I'm really nervous a in a like business setting that
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: you don't see, but I know that they're there and
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: I don't. It is so because people would say stuff
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: like that when I was younger, and I'm just like, ewe,
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: I don't know, Like I don't. That's like, so it's
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: not comfortable. I mean, they're not the most comfortable things
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: to wear. You can get them cute and comfort, but anyways,
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: it's a long tangent. But I have been doing this
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: in very strategic and specific situations and now I have
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: like Pavloved myself to wear. Every single time I put
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: them on, I feel powerful. Then you can take that
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: into the bedroom, which is so fun. So it's just like, yeah,
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: pavlov yourself essentially with things to make you feel powerful,
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: and it's it's quite a time.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I like that so much better than a power post
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: that never does it for me. I like going like
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: this the superwoman in the mirror.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: It doesn't work.
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: No, No, I'm there's so much actually about those things
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: that I want so badly to resonate with, but like
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: my brain just talks me out of it, and I've
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: released my need to make those things work, like even
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: body like positivity, that that feeling. I'm like, I just
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: want to be neutral. I literally just want to be
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: like pretty neutral about myself because I've got so many
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: more things to think about. But the power set has
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: been really really really fun adventure.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks for sharing something so intimate. I love that.
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now I'm like, now people are gonna know, they're
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: gonna under that's literally what it is. I have one
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: that's red. It's like red and like see through PoCA
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: dot see through mesh with the like darker parts of
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: like Polka dots. It's so cute. I just got it
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: Victoria's Secret. It's so cute. I'm obsessed with it. I
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: literally I love it so much. I think about it
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: when I'm not wearing it.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, I.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: Love it. And coming from me, I actually cannot even
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: begin to just describe how miraculous it is that I
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: can get to a point where I say that, because like,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: I didn't own mirors in my house for a while.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: I was so scared to look at myself, like, so
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: to do this and I got that just walking in
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: them all, seeing it in like deciding to go in.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: It's one day. We can have another chat about that,
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: but it is like there's so many steps that had
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: to happen to get here. So I understand that just
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: saying go get a pretty like set like that and
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: where underneath is not a task people can just wake
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: up and go do. But if you're at that place,
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: it's so it's so powerful, or take little baby steps
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: to get there, because yeah, lots of things between that,
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: but yeah.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: That's an awesome answer.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, a book that you've read that's changed your life,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: something you think everybody should read.
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I have different answers for different because I don't
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: think every single person would like every single book. But like,
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: if we're going creative bird by Bird by An LaMotte,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: have you read that?
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: No, I love a Lamont?
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: You feel bird by Bird and the book? What are
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: you talking about?
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Atlisa's eyes look so upset.
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: I am upset. I am very angry.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna add it to my TVR list right now.
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: I think it should be moved up to the top.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, it's it's and then start writing at yeah
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: you yeah, you're gonna when you get a journal at
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: the same time, because you're gonna be so inspired.
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: It's there. It is. Oh, it's so it is like
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: a meal. Every chapter is like, this is changing my
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: life as a writer. It's so good. And then for
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: people that love like fiction, oh, for people that are
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: like neurodivergent in any way, especially like women, the love
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: Quotient or sorry, the kiss Quotient by Helen I think
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: Hwang Huang. I want to get that right because I
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: know there's Anna Huang and then Helen Waang I believe. Okay,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: So it's a reverse pretty woman basically where she she's
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: a data analyst and she hires an escort to teach
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: her how to have sex because she's autistic so she
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: doesn't grow. Girl. I had to listen joys this. I
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: had to buy a second copy of this book because
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: the first one was my textbook. I literally learned how
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: to have sex with this book. And I'm not joking
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: you because I never understood how to communicate things because
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: it seemed embarrassing or scary or like, because nobody just
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: explicitly talks about how to have sex.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: Do you know what?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: I'm like, you're right, actually you're looking up porn like
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: hould I how would I actually figure that out? And
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: so I mean besides with another person, I know that,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: but like there's but for me, like I don't want
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: to be learning in front of somebody. I want to
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: like feel like I'm going and feeling like I have
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: a little bit of understanding of what's going, do you
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: know what I mean? So, so when I read this book,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: I had no idea it was going to be as
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: impactful as it was. So essentially, she tries to hire him,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: and he's like, I don't do repeat customers, and she's like,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: what if I pay you a large sum of money
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: and I can we can like a punch card kind
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: of situation, but we can do lessons, just like break
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: it down by lesson. And he's like, no, I'm not
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: going to do that. So he leaves and then she's like, fine,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: I'll just do it. I'll go back to this service
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: and do it with someone else. But he is like
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: an actually good person and he's like, there's disgusting people
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: on this app like that that will take advantage of you,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: and I don't. I don't he he has some kind
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: of fondness towards her initially, like immediately, so he's like, fine,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: I'll do it, but I'll only do like three times.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: And then because he has he's had people like be
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: obsessed with him and give him gifts and stock him
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: because they think that they are in love, because he's like,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a very intimate thing you're doing, and
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: it was really confusing for.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: People tell me he falls in love with her.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: Of course, but the thing is it's confusing because he's like,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: I don't think that she is. She likes me, she's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: just paying for my time. But the lessons are literal
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: like lessons. The length and the way that she describes
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: I like, she like this beautiful person in front of her,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: and she's like, I just don't know what to do
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: with you, but like I wish I did, and I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: feel so many things, but I'm also like overstimulated and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: feel like I'm going to like shut down, and if
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: I do anything wrong, I'm gonna feel like I'm thinking
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: about that more than thinking about being here with you.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: And it was just there's something magic about the way
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: that was written, and it was written by an autistic woman.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: And so she found out she didn't know she was
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: autistic the until the process of writing it, and then
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: the I've never read the end of a book like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: the it's not about the author. It's like the epilogue, epilogue,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: but not like for a story. It was like her
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: note interest from the author. At the end, she basically
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: was going through how impactful the book was to her
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: and how a lot of Stella, the character is like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: rooted in things that she has experience in her life. Man,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: I just hope anybody that is ever like felt like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: they don't understand this is going to be such a
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: funny conversation, but like I just have felt like I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: cannot conceptualize sex in a way that other people can
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: because I just I can't enjoy something until I fully
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: feel like I've got my head wrapped around it, and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: it's like I've got to study it. That's really how
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: I feel like I'm comfy in situations like I study
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: menus at restaurants. I love food, obsessed with food, but
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: I need to study that menu, Like I want to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: learn every single thing I can about you as a
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: person as a friend, like please tell me your entire
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: life story and then more after that. So it makes
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: sense that another thing that I love and enjoy and
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: want to enjoy I would have to study and figure out.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: And that book made me feel so seen and also
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: I learned so much.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: I love that. It's no one's ever really had an
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: answer like that. And I think that's one of your gifts,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: is you say this stuff that people interiority writing think,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: oh in their.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Minds express No. I think it's so wonderful. I'm so
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: grateful good.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: I think that we just need to read more about
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: sex from a like neutral place so that we can
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: hear learn more about it and like see more about it,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: because I just think I just think it's so important.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: I think it's so important.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, at least my last question for you is
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: something very up your alley. It's a game of questions
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: called the question Everything. So tell me when to stop.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: Stop?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, when is the last time you felt awe.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: Awe, this bone this call a louted up. I saw
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: your bookshelf, I was like, oh, that's so cool. It's
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: really I mean, that's a common feeling for me, and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: wonder is like, it's pretty hard for me to not
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: see that everywhere, so it's it's a wonderful gift, but
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: also it's very time consuming. Yeah, you're wonderful.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Some people don't feel it very often at all.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I also felt it. Her hair is so beautiful,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: so I was like wow. I was like, I need to
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: ask her how she does her hair?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: Sweet?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: And then I mean, we've had some incredible sunsets in
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: Nebraska lately, Like, yeah, beautiful sunsets that I want to
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: like pop up and like live in and eat the
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: clouds because they're so pretty. Yeah, yeah, just everything. What
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: about you?
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: So sweet?
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Last time I felt, you know what, my friend from
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: growing up had a baby and watching her be a mom.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: I was in total awe.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: It's pretty crazy, isn't it.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect it because I have a brother he
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't have kids yet. But and I can imagine you
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: feel this way as an aunt or uncle, but I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: haven't experienced that. The love that I'm experiencing for my
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: friend's children is it's such a gift.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: Like I get chills talking about it.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: It's so cool because I love them and then to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: love their babies and I'm like, oh my god, I
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: get to watch them grow up.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: It's so cool.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: I think too, Like it's such a beautiful thing to
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: see almost a younger version of the person that you
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: love right in front of you. And like when my
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: brothers had kids, like I literally look at my nephews
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: because so my oldest brother has two sons, my middle
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: brother has two daughters, and I have two sons. So
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: we like our genes are whatever, We've decided that's the
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: one we're having, which is really funny. But when I
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: first met my nephews, my first nephew, it wasn't at first,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: but it was like as he got older, he's like,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: oh my god, your drever like looking at him because
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: I never got to meet that version of him. He's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: ten years older than me, so I never got to
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: see the young versions of him like that. So I'm
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: just like getting to be reintroduced to my brother in
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: that way too. It was just like really crazy. And
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: then they're also their own person which is like, well,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: you're a whole person. You're not even you're not like
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: just a clone. You're like you're gonna have a personality.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: You have a personality. Even as babies, they have personalities.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: It's crazy. No, I agree with you. It's so beautiful.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Alice, thank you for this conversation and for what you
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: put into the world. I really really enjoyed talking to you.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: This is so fun. Thank you for having me.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today is a
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: good day, to have a good day. I'll see you
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: next week.