Good Life Project - Anne Lamott | Finding Joy in the Journey

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

My first exposure to Anne Lamott’s work was her iconic book, Bird By Bird, which as a writer, was transformative. Not just because it helped me better understand how and why to write, but also because her wonderfully wise and irreverent voice inspired me to be more real, more honest in both my work and my life. I’ve remained captivated by her writing ever since. The author of too many The New York Times bestsellers, including Almost Everything; Hallelujah Anyway; Small Victories; Stitches; Help, Thanks, Wow; and her most recent Dusk Night Dawn, Anne goes places other fear to tread with such humility, humor and craft, it’s like you’ve been invited into her mind, her life and her ability to draw belly laughs, deep wisdom and hits of awakening from those often tiny moments that touch down in our lives that so many of us miss. She reminds you, it may not be fun while it’s happening, but it’s all part of the beautiful souffle of life and every ingredient matters. So excited to share this best-of conversation with you now.You can find Anne at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Glennon Doyle about living more authentically and untamed.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You have to learn to hold paradoxical experiences and truths without freaking out. I mean, if you can't deal with the reality that life is just unbelievably beautiful and that love is really the answer to everything and that we're all going to die, then it keeps you being, you know, a nine-year-old for the rest of your life, trying to keep that at bay instead of saying, yes, we're all going to die. How do I live in the face of that? How do I live today? How do I live for the next few hours in the face of the fact that life is short and precious and such a trip? So my first exposure to Anne Lamott's work was her iconic book, Bird by Bird, which as a writer was really transformational for me, not just because it helped me really better understand how and why to write, but also because her wonderfully wise and irreverent voice,

it just inspired me to be more real and more honest in both my work and in my life. And I have remained captivated by her writing ever since. The author of too many New York Times bestsellers, including Almost Everything, Hallelujah Anyways, Small Victory, Stitches, Help, Thanks, Wow, and Dusk, Night, Dawn. Anne goes places that others kind of fear to tread with such humility, such humor, such craft. It's like you've been invited into her mind, her life, and her ability to draw belly laughs and deep wisdom and hits of awakening from those often tiny little moments that touch down in our lives that so many of us miss. She reminds you that it may not be fun while it's happening,

but it's all part of that beautiful souffle of life, and every ingredient matters. So excited to share this best of conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been

compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. Born in San Francisco. G grew up in the Bay Area.

You write in your book, actually, dread was my governess growing up. Tell me more about that. Well, I just was a, I had a family that was not doing well. There was alcoholism and black belt codependence. And my parents had a unhappy marriage and I had two brothers and I, this voice spoke to me that, that, um, kept me very small and afraid because it was like a very strict English governess. And it was named, I didn't know it was named dread really until I started writing about it for Dusk, Night, Dawn.

But it, you know, it probably saved my life. It kept me from running out into the street or swimming out too deep. But it also kept me from really being who I was, which was just wild and eccentric and playful. And, you know, I was raised to be excellent at all I did. You know, I wrote in operating instructions that I was 35 years old before I discovered that a B plus was a good grade, you know. So my husband, Neil Allen, who has a site you can check out called Shapes of Truth dot com, works with people and has written a book about taming the inner critic. And he would call the governess the superego, you know, that that constantly.

Either scares or shames you into staying small and kind of walking on eggshells because that's how you get ahead in school, certainly. And so when he and I met a few years ago, he calls it the super eco and I call it my governess dread. Yeah. No matter what name you give to it, I think we all grapple with that in some way. But I mean, especially for you, because it sounds like your mom, mom was from Liverpool from what I remember. My mom was from Liverpool. Right. So when you're raised, you're sort of being raised in a family also where expectations are very high and propriety really matters, social propriety and social grace. And sort of like not being that person who knows how to function and operate and is always perfect and is showing up in the right way and is the center of conversation, it sounds like it just wasn't acceptable in the family.

Well, my parents were like very hip, avant-garde people who loved us and did the best that they could, but it was all about doing well. it was all about the appearance. It was that my brothers and I were raised to be readers and great conversationalists. And because my mother is from England, it was all ultimately about the appearance and that you just keep burnishing the surface so that you, and by extension, the family look really great. So I didn't even, I think it was, I was 16 when the first issue of Ms. Magazine came out. And I think that was when I first started to be able to talk back to the governess. I mean, I was really funny and I drank a lot and that helped me lose some

inhibitions. But when I saw that first issue of Ms. Magazine, that was the day I began to arrive. I know that for you, the effect of this, sort of like the weight of expectation, it showed up, you said, you know, described on the one hand as perfection, but also a pretty healthy dose of neurosis and self to the rising to level self-loathing really, um, that manifested physically for you too. I mean, from what I understand, you had migraines from the age of five. I had migraines for the age of five. And then I had disordered eating from the age of about 12 when I was just skinny, skinny, skinny. I was a really tiny at first. And then, then I gained weight. My mother was very heavy heavy and then I had from the age of 12

to I got sober when I was 32 and I broke through bulimia at that age but I had total physical reactions to the degree of stress and you know I wrote a whole chapter on bird by bird on perfectionism and I think I had about three weeks between the emaciation at 12 and being overweight at 14, where everybody would have said I was just set an ideal way. And, you know, it's a long road back from that stuff, from that sort of shame and feeling of essential ungood enoughness. Yeah, I know you're right in a dozen. Perfectionism is the most toxic condition for the soul followed by self contempt. It sounds like you were bouncing between both. And this raging ego, you know, it's like a ping pong game between this raging ego and this terrible self esteesteem that told me I was a fraud or I'd done so well for so long,

but the jig was up. And, you know, I mean, everyone I know has grappled with that. You know, it's like in a bird by bird, I talk about this radio station, K fucked radio, K F K D. And it's on until you start to get enough healing or you learn you have therapy and meditation and like incredible friends. Out of one speaker is coming that you're better than different, smarter than, hipper than, certainly more humble. And then out of the left hand speaker that you're a fraud and that it's if people got to know your inside self, they'd run screaming for their cute little lives, you know, and that it would be, as my mother would say, all over for England, if people got to know who you really were. So then because of the women's movement and a few close friends who would admit to that ping pong game. Little by little, we started collectively getting

well. Yeah. It's funny. I sometimes wonder, I have so many friends who are artists, whether it's writers, painters, musicians, who grapple with that almost exactly what you've described. And I wonder sometimes whether the artists are actually the ones who are just more open about it, where it actually shows up in everyone's lives, or whether there is something about people are drawn to art for some reason, because it helps them process that in some way. It helps them express it in a way that goes from destructive to in some way constructive. Well, yeah, I think you're right. But also the difference is what, what you said is really beautifully put.

I would just add that if you're an artist of any kind of writer, dancer, singer, whatever, you get in touch with what we all get in touch with. But for you, it's grist for the mill. It becomes transformed into really universal material. Yeah. But I guess, I guess then there's the, also there's the dark side of that, right? Because on the one hand, there's a lot of suffering connected with it, but on the other hand, you know, there's this there's this tendency to maybe say, well, if this goes away and if my identity is as an artist, what then?

What is my source fuel for creative expression? I think that's why I've written so much about people I'm close to who've been terminally ill, because usually it takes a terminal illness to get stripped down to what is really true and authentic about you. Because if you're very sick and maybe facing death, you're not going to carry around this stupid stuff about appearance and surface and trying to get even more people to like you. You know, you're going to concentrate on what was there after all this stuff was stripped away. You're going to concentrate on what still works and what is still beautiful and nourishing about any given day instead of trying to get people to notice how well you've done or whatever it is you've tried to do for so many years.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder. It's funny. I've thought about that same thing and i and i've wondered often is there some gentler way for us to come to that place you know well yeah i mean that's the point of of uh well not just of death's night time but i would say the last 10 books is that you don't have to get terminally ill to make a decision to get real and to get into and to have the awakening you know and to just stop hitting the snooze button and to push back your sleeves and get serious about why you're here you know that's one of the chapters in dust night dawn is um in my sunday school class which

is usually three or four kids of you know who might be seven or 16 that day together in class and in Elijah God at one point says to him why are you here you know and I asked my kids that why are you here well the funny answer of course is always because our parents dragged us you know but the real answer is what you intuitively know even at 10. I'm here to discover who I am. I'm here to discover what's real and beautiful and how to be of service to others and how to discover more and more about life and to be more fully alive every given day. Like, well, my kids and I will just walk around the courtyard, and it's not beautifully landscaped or anything,

and we'll just look for signs of God or beauty, you know, and we'll see, like right now, the daffodils are out, which are just like in California, which are just like each one is like a hilarious little sight gag, you know, with their big, bright schnozzes. And we'll just and so, you know, intuitively here to pay attention. You're here to blink yourself awake again and again and stops thinking about, oh, no, what if, what if, what if, or how can i get so and so to do this thing that i'm sure will just make me feel so great about me you know and you instead look at a forget me nots are out right now like the tiniest blue bells you have to be paying attention and instead to think about

those to be in that space with those for 30 seconds instead of of thinking, how do I get Oprah to pay attention to this book? You know, it's like, well, maybe we'll think about that next hour. But right now the, the, the wild mountain irises are in bloom right now. You know, they're, they're like a Bob Dylan song. And so lean into the wild mountain irises. Yeah. I mean, it's, um, I love the return to simplicity. Um, I know you've written, um, about the kids in your Sunday school that if you want to help kids fall in love with God, like help them fall in love with nature, which is really what you're describing. It's like, focus on the simple things that are all around us and the natural environment too, which is just on the one hand it's simple and beautiful on the other hand it's gobsmackingly filled with awe like how is this

even possible yeah well you know with my sunday school kids let alone with my readers you have to learn to hold paradoxical experiences and truths without freaking out. I mean, if you can't deal with the reality that life is just unbelievably beautiful and that love is really the answer to everything and that we're all going to die, then it keeps you being, you know, a nine-year-old for the rest of your life, trying to keep that at bay instead of saying, yes, we're all going to die. How do I live in the face of that? How do I live today? How do I live for the next few hours in the face of the fact that life is short and precious and such a trip, you know? So all of the books from the very first novel I wrote 41 years ago,

it's like these things are true, that life is a gift and Earth has always been a very dangerous place to live. And Cain is always killing Abel and is killing him right now while we're on the air. And that love can bring you to tears. That response to the public, response to the mile-long lines of cars at the food banks brings you to tears. And thinking about the people that are manning and womaning those food banks, you know, and walking up and down the lines of cars and saying,

don't give up. Do you need some water? Let me try to find you some. That's what God looks like. Let me try to find you some water. I mean, it's so interesting because I think people tend towards one or the other extreme. There's various little sort of like in the middle where it's either once the veil is removed, you either tend towards nihilism or you tend towards seeing everything as a moment of grace or at least holding the potential for grace. But I almost wonder why people default to one versus the other, you know, like what are the things that would move them from one to the other. Well, certainly gives you some, the illusion of having some control in your life since you're blocking out half of truth and especially probably not blocking out the beautiful elements of truth, but because that would be truly crazy,

but blocking out the stuff about life and yourself and the future and climate and your family, that's scary and inconvenient. I know, and I write a lot about this in Dusk, Night, Dawn, that the only hope you have control as a child was to think that you were the problem, that you were the reason your parents' marriage wasn't a happier one. Because I had migraines. My family ground to a halt a couple of times a month. And then I had extreme stress and OCD and an overarching anxiety disorder, which was not part of the

people's consciousness in the 50s and early 60s. And so if you as a child believed that you were responsible for the unhappiness, then that gave you some control because you could try to do better and need less. And then they'd surely be happier. And then they then dad would be nicer to mom. less in her caffeinated neglect of trying to keep, you know, to six plates of 50s and 60s wife and motherhood in the air. So it was for me, my only hope of control. And, and it's still my default place is to think that like something goes wrong at the dining table or for my family or my beloved people or for the poor in America. And my default is how can I fix or save or rescue this situation instead of just feeling the compassion and the grief of what life has been like for most people in the last year, let alone,

say hypothetically, the last four years. And so, but just my help is not usually very helpful, certainly with my family. My help is usually harmful to them because I think I have good ideas for everybody that usually have to do with how I can feel more comfortable about how they're living their lives. And so what I do frequently is I grip my own wrist and I say, honey, stop, you know, release, release, release.

My son is 31 now. He's doing a really great podcast called HelloHumans.com. He's a father of an 11-year-old child who's just a beautiful human being. And he does not need me to run alongside him on his hero's journey with juice boxes and chapstick. He needs me to be on my own emotional acre and just be blown away by all that he's done, all that he's been through, all that he's come through, and all that he's offering people in terms of how to be fully human here. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I feel like sometimes we equate control with it being the gateway to hope. Whereas, you know, it's actually the exact opposite. Yes, the exact opposite. Every single thing, you know, there's a thing in the book about

having taken the 20 questions for drinking once, but substituting thinking. And, you know, have you ever missed work as a result of your thinking have you ever uh have you ever ruined relationships as and i answered all 20 of them you know because we're addicted to the thinking and the thinking you know is really for entertainment purposes only uh we were intellectuals and atheists when i was a young when i was a child and we worship thinking that means we worship um east coast uh powerful white men because those were the thinkers of the culture and so this stuff gets very deeply inside of you and you have to have the awareness that it's hurting you and that you're ready to try something new because it is sinks its teeth in you figure it out is not a good slogan but in but it is my

default slogan okay i'm gonna break the code okay if i okay if i can figure you know and it's like what if i just do what i call the sacrament of ploppage you know and and sink into my chair or get up and make myself a lovely cup of tea like I would for you, like I would for a stranger who was having a tough day. I'd say, you sit right here. I'm going to go back and get you a lovely cup of tea. And I want you to sit here for a minute and promise not to think about how doomed everything is right now. I want you to look around in the gravel for shoots, green shoots that have broken through the hard winter dirt. Yeah. I mean, it's such a, it's a subtle but an incredibly powerful shift in lens.

Yeah. X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy

jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what's the difference between me and you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk You've written about and you've spoken about in various different ways. And you write about it in, I don't remember if you actually use the word in Dusk Night Dawn, but the notion of trance. Sort of moving through the world, moving through life in a state of trance where we're fabricating the world that we think that we're in.

Because it gives us something to be in that imaginary space. But it also brings incredible suffering because every moment that we're there, we're denying the reality of our daily existence. And it doesn't allow us to interact with something more honest and to be with something more honest. I don't know if you're familiar with Tara Brock's work at all. Oh, of course. I love her. Yeah, she's incredible. And she speaks and writes about this trance state all the time as well.

And it was interesting to see you sort of have this 3A approach to trance, which is not entirely dissimilar to Tara's RAIN approach, you know, like recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. Well, the trance, yeah, for me, she's brilliant. But the trance for me, whether it's with like a romantic or sort of a sex and love, a trance of, you know, dropping little rain checks with somebody that you are having some little energetic flicker in their presence, or whether it's the trance of dieting, there's an anorexic trance, there's a trance, there's a gym trance, you know, and I don't personally know about the gym trance, but putting that aside, the trance is to keep you from feeling your feelings. Your trance is to keep you from being in your body where so much damage and destructive destruction took place, especially when you were a child and you are powerless to stop having people do whatever they really wanted to with you. And the trance just feels so great because you're not

feeling sad. You're not feeling violated. You're not feeling anger. And an angry woman is a doomed woman. An angry woman, the culture tells you, will be exiled and almost certainly divorced. But the trance means you're squandering your life because what I've written about for probably all 19 books is that the anger and the grief are the way home and what Tara says if you go straight into them what's going on here that little kid inside of me is really really scared to death well what can I what do I have to offer I have to offer me I'm a wonderful mother i'm a wonderful grandmother i'm a wonderful sunday school teacher and so always the solution is one of two things either juice boxes or glue sticks you know and let's draw and let's create and let's make a collage and let's have a capri sun and um

and but it's funny because the culture is entirely about helping you create trances. If you lose five pounds, your whole world's going to change. If you drink Michelob Light, you are almost definitely going to get laid later, right? If you have a, you know, and it's all just a total crock, but it is so mood altering. That's the purpose of the trance. It's like alcohol and drugs. It's mood altering. That's the purpose of the trance. It's like alcohol and drugs. It's mood altering.

It softens the corner. When I first got sober in 1986, a mentor of mine said, you have to ask yourself every day, do you want the hit or do you want the serenity? And I said, I want the hit. Hello, I'm a drug addict and a bulimic and hello that's kind of a no-brainer but you know what i secretly want what we all want which is the serenity which is peace of mind which is a safe place what ram das calls the heart cave inside of me that i can settle down into and and breathe and be and rest. Yeah. Ram Dass is, you know, his, his famous line, we're all just walking each other home at the end of the day. That's what we want. You know, we want to be walked home and then we want to be home, but we, that we have this trans like

vision of what we think home is, you know, or is not, that is sometimes not the most constructive thing in the planet. That's exactly right. Well, if you think about what home was, for me, it was very scary. But, and that's one of the reasons I create these trances and this fantasy world is because it puts, you know, I think with this guy, I mean, now I'm married, but if I, if he notices me, if he falls in love with, it's like maybe dad will arrive and dad will have gotten therapy and dad will

have developed this incredible respect for women and girls. And, and, and I catch myself as I get older, which I love. I notice that I'm recreating home. But home is very stressful. I'm on eggshells a lot. And I'm trying to save and fix and rescue everybody there. But if I give up the dream that dad or mom are there, it means they're dead. And that's pretty awful to have to bear. And that I didn't really have healthy mom and dad when I was a child anyway.

And that's pretty awful to bear. But it's kind of automatic. But, you know, sometimes you'll see me and I'll have a red, very big, loose red rubber band on my wrist. And I use it. My older brother learned this at a smoking cessation place. They would use it when you were in the middle of a craving. Because when you're in the middle of a craving for nicotine, the craving tells you very nicely that there is a way out of the pain. And that's the cigarette. And so what they teach people to do is very gently snap

the red rubber band on their wrist and it kind of spritzes you back to breathing like a plant mister into life and then the craving passes scientifically in five minutes so you breathe through that and then you get 20 minutes just like contractions you get 20 minutes till the next one but um left to my own devices i kind of like the trance i like i was a very heavy smoker i liked it i like the feeling i like the ritual i like the little island that i got to be on and that's what the trance gives me it's this feeling of being on a little island all safe and and kind of whole but it's a lie it's like true it's like that great movie truman's world oh the truman show yeah the truman show with jim carrey yeah it was all fake it was all a movie

set right and so you break the trance it's like oh here i'm talking to jonathan and this little dog just came in and got on the back of my seat, which is why I'm not quite as comfortable as I was because I'm leaning against it and it's licking my back. And so it's a little bit distracting, but it's lovely. The three of us together, you, me and Gizmo, you know, but it's a practice. Like Tara Branch would talk about, it's a practice. You practice waking yourself back up and, you up and maybe a hundred times a day, maybe 10. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting the way you brought up the rubber band on your wrist also. One of the books that keeps bopping in and out of the number one spot on the times list for

a couple of years now is Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps score. And I think we're all in this moment where we kind of, we're sensing that the answer is to come back into our body. Because that, for some reason, I think for so many of us, that's the place where the trance starts to break. Right. In breath. Right. In breath. And even swallowing, each swallow, if you just decide to watch, to feel it, the next few swallows, you're back in the here and now, you know, you're back in the eternal, you're back in the holy moment, but you have to remember to do it, you have to remember to, the body is just so confusing, and I completely agree with what you just said. But my body hurts a lot of the time.

I'll be 67 next month. My upper arms look like hell. My feet, I have tendonitis and I won't stay off of them. I hike every day. And so it's a really mixed bag. And so I wrote in Death, Night, Dawn, but also a lot in Traveling Mercies, one of my first spiritual books, that you do tend to the soul through your body, you know, that you, I do have jiggly thighs and I have some sort of terrible cellulite disorder, you know, that should be

treated more seriously at Johns Hopkins. And the other way I can heal that is that I rub really delicious smelling lotion into my thighs. And I put a temporary rose tattoo on my thighs. And I sank my aching feet for the million miles through life that they've brought me so far and still to come. And so, but I understand when people don't want to be in their bodies because either such terrible things happen to them or they hurt now or they are deteriorating. Like my son, who's 31, is so handsome. I mean, and this is objectively speaking, you can go to Hello Humans and see a photo of him. He's actually very handsome. He just shaved off his quarantine period and um and so he to me looks like a movie star

like Antonio Banderas but to him he just sees he has a slight double chin because he's not 16 anymore I don't know how that happened since I remained so young but um and so when he looks in the mirror he doesn't see Antonio Banderas Lamont. He sees the chin, right? And so even, you know, we were raised this way. If you watch TV, which we all have and did, and, you know, started doing it at early age, every single commercial said, if you just, if we can help you change who you are and what you look like, and help your body not have any pain or signs of aging at all, then you will truly have a fulfilling life. The horrible truth is that it's an inside job. That if you're going to get that love and that respect, that you just so connect, that union starts inside.

But inside this body is a lot of memory of stuff that happened sometimes that we solicited and chased down sometimes it was just done to us because we were so vulnerable and because some of us grew up in the hot california sun i was a tennis champ from the age of about eight till i went off to college and uh sunscreen was not you know in california we rub baby oil on our limbs i'm of the age also where we had those little like foil reflectors oh my god what were we doing i know you know what we were doing we were doing what we were told to do right right to get tan and to look more useful. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting though. And I completely agree and acknowledge that, you know, sometimes we kind

of don't want to just sink into our bodies because they're unhappy elements of them, you know? And yet at the same time, if we don't, then the thing that we choose to fall in love with is just the illusion of how we are. And that creates, at least in my experience, and I wonder how you feel about this too, falling in love with the illusion while denying the reality of just your lived experience every day, it doesn't make that reality go away. So it just piles delusion on top of pain. Whereas instead, if you just acknowledge, well, yeah, this is me and this hurts and this doesn't.

And at least you're still maybe dealing with the reality of physical pain or physical change, but you're not dealing with the repression of that reality as a secondary source of suffering at the same time. Does that make sense to you? Completely. Yeah, completely. And it's one day at a time and it goes slower, the healing, than we had hoped. But it all begins with this awareness that we have a habit and a way of living that we're

maybe taking as far as we're willing to take it you know and we really do carry so much stupid shit around in our airplanes it just keeps us flying so low like grazing the treetops when really we want to soar and so we start throwing out more and more and more of it and you know but I remember back to something you said in the 60s hearing for the first time, that if you spend your whole life trying to get your act together, then what do you have? You have an act, right? Instead of a life, instead of a being, a being here now-ness.

Yeah, right there with you. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You mentioned that a little over 30 years ago, one of the major trenches that you broke was addiction to multiple substances, which was no small part of your way of opting out of a whole bunch of other things. And I know you've written about a year before that, I guess.

You did this writing residency down at Esalen and literally blacked out and almost fell off a cliff. In the year between that and then the moment where you're sitting in a small houseboat in Sausalito and something happens where you call a friend and that's it, that is it. Do you have any sense for what the deeper shift was over that window of time for you well I got sober at 32 and I started going to this funny little church that was mostly black at the time and now it's about 50 50 not quite that I didn't want to be a part of that I had been raised to run screaming from that had nothing I thought I needed but it was across the street from a flea market that I went to every Sunday morning because I was really really hung over and if you're an alcoholic you know that when you're hung over you need a lot of fluid and greasy food really really helps absorb some of the damage and I started to hear this music from

from gospel music but also music of the civil rights movement that I had I'd grown up on because my parents were all about the weavers and Joan Baez and Pete Seeger and um and I went there for I mean see I would have to call it, um, maybe it was just good orderly direction and maybe I've come to, and so I went to church for a year, you know, hungover or drunk and really smelly. I call it my gap year, but you know, there were 30 people there and they, they could just see that I was hurting. They weren't trying to get me to convert or to come to Bible study. They just like were very gentle looking at me and getting me water. But I think ultimately the willingness to look at how you're living and if you want to keep living that way, it just comes from the pain.

You know, I didn't figure it out, has never been a part of my transformation here. But the willingness comes from the pain. Figure it out has never been a part of my transformation here. But the willingness comes from the pain. And then the healing comes from one other person who just kind of groks you, you know, who has what you have, who's done what you've done, who tried what you tried, who thought what you thought, maybe even this morning. But they didn't pick up a drink or a drug and they didn't um uh you know take two boxes of x-lax and um and they just felt the pain they felt their feelings and they called a friend and at some point when i was 32 july 7th i woke up and i had been in so much psychic pain and my soul and my being were so filled with swiss cheese holes that i was teachable and i called a friend who's who's passed but who's

an alcoholic and who had found a way um to not pick up a drink one day at a time in community and i've been friends with him for years he He knew I drank a lot and I knew he didn't. And I said, quaveringly, I said, I think I might be done. I've been just as sick and crazy the day before. And in fact, it was a 4th of July weekend, 1986. And the 4th of July had been on a Friday and I had been in a total blackout. And I had been thinking about climbing over the side of a boat. I was on a rowboat on San Francisco Bay in Sausalito watching the fireworks near the Golden Gate Bridge. And I was thinking when I was in and out of the blackout of just climbing over the side. And I don't have depression.

I have massive anxiety. But I was just exhausted. And I couldn't face waking up one more morning feeling the way I always wake up when I'm drinking. However, I kept drinking that day, Saturday the 5th, Sunday the 6th. And then I got some sort of what I would call some sort of Holy Spirit nudge. And Monday, July 7th, I picked up the phone the 200 pound phone and i called my friend i didn't have a clue what the future held for me i was already already had religion church wasn't getting me sober um but i had run out of any more good ideas and i think maybe that's what grace looks like sometimes just exhaustion and running out of good ideas and I didn't drink that day and haven't found it necessary for the last you know almost

35 years to pick up a drink or a drug and go figure or don't but what I do is i um tell other people usually other women i have what you have i love to be incredibly falling down drunk it's my idea of a good time and maybe get a little bit of meth or cocaine if i'm dating the right guy and um but i don't do that one day at a time because i i uh i got this other thing. And you want to know what the other thing was that I got? I got me. I got radical self-love and I got self-respect. I got respect that I've been trying to jimmy and horse the world into giving me for.

I think I had four books published by the time I got sober. It wasn't, you know, the publishing world hadn't given me love and respect. And and it turned out the publishing world couldn't take away love and respect because it was an inside job. And other sober people helped me slowly find it. So that's what I have to offer, you know. And so I say to people that are still drinking or in extreme pain or just getting out of rehab or a mental hospital, I say, boy, tell me about it. I really remember. But if you want, you can call me and text me all day.

And I'm pretty sure that we can help you get through the day without using one. You in? The pain is great enough. Maybe they say yes. Yeah. I mean, it feels like it's a matter of timing exhaustion. Um, but also this notion of beloved community, you know, whether some people go to AA, whether, whatever it is, you know, um, for you, it sounds like, you know, this was, that was kind of church for you. You know, like it was beloved community in the context of a loving God, but it was also beloved community in the context of you were showing up for a while, not changed, you know,

like doing the thing you were doing and they weren't turning you away and say, come back when you're sober. Come back, maybe take a shower. They never said that. They never said, why don't you come back after you're sober. Come back, maybe take a shower. They never said that. They never said, why don't you come back after you get it together? Because first of all, I knew I wasn't going to get together without a beloved community. So I have my church, St. Andrew Presbyterian Services at 11. Everyone welcome. I have a recovery community. I'm about to go for a hike with my best friend, who is also 30-some years sober.

But, you know, Martin Luther King was the first time I ever heard about that, that it was the beloved community that was going to be changing the entire world. It wasn't going to be one person that they could read or look up to. And then I was very influenced as a teenager, even an atheist or wherever I was, agnostic by the great French theologian, Henry Nouwen. I know you know him, but he, you know, he had been at Harvard. He had hit every single high watermark that the world had to offer him, professorships, bestsellers, and he gave it all up to go live in a precious community of developmentally disabled people. And he worked for the next 20 years with a young man who was

then a boy and then a man who could never once say a single word to him. And that was where he found sanctuary and salvation and union. So, yeah, I mean, my journey in all of these books has been both about helping my insides become more inhabitable by not putting so many toxins in, by treating and talking to myself completely differently, by putting these lotions on and a lot of sunscreen, talk about closing the barn door after the horse got out but I mean not really I mean sunscreen keeps me safe from getting cancer and and from um and um and lotion so that I smell delicious now and temporary tattoos so that I remember how beautiful I am and my friend who I'm about to hike with it's funny she's in a 12-step program for people who have tiny control issues.

And she saw somebody at a meeting who had tattooed on their left arm, it's not them. They're not the reason you're acting this way or feeling this way, you know. And so she got me temporary tattoos for Christmas that I put on all the time when I'm in my disease of, you know, codependence and self-control of trying to control other people. It's really not them. You know, you've got a problem. I heard this about a week after I got sober. If you got a problem, go look in the mirror because it's your judgment and reaction to something going on. Most things are neutral, but not when I get my mitts on i'm usually my first inclination is to figure out who to blame whose fault is it and then to correct what either they're doing or what they've said or done and uh it's not them so anyway yes so

henry nowen and and uh martin luther king and the first issue of Ms. Magazine, those were the communities that literally where I found salvation, literally my little funny little church. Yeah. It's, it's amazing always to sort of see how that emerges into people's lives at different moments for different reasons at different times and what shape it takes. I mean, for you, it's kind of fascinating that the shape it took was you have your recovery community, but also within the faith-based community, that it took that shape given that you were raised in a family of devout atheists. So it wasn't just stepping into this place and stepping into the community. It was also effectively, I mean, and maybe I'm assuming

this, so I'll just ask it, was a part of that process also grieving the loss of the religion that your family male East Coast intelligentsia, which is who my parents worshipped. And it's taken me most of my 41 years as a published writer to heal from that. But so I didn't miss that. I mean, it's been kind of humiliating to find myself a Christian in the Reagan and George Bush and compassionate Christianity and certainly the right wing QAnon or at least Donald Trump expression of Christianity, because it is all such a lie. You know, this is a Christianity not based on a single thing Jesus ever said or thought, you know, and for the record, Jesus never said a word about abortion. Jesus never said a word about gay love or marriage but um so it's mortifying but there are a lot of us that are

very left-wing activists who also just kind of against all odds fell in love with this gentle brown-skinned revolutionary from the middle east who walked around 2 000 years ago trying to convince people that if they took care of each other that they would be taken care of and that they would feel really blessed by paradoxically by giving it all away so um i was actually so blessed by being raised by intellectuals because i was reading you know at four and i i was familiar with all of the great poets and writers and the movies, you know, that were out in the 60s and by the movies that intellectuals are due to watch in the 40s and 50s and Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Hulot. And so I got all of that.

And I thank them for instilling that in me because I've been talking about salvation all this time but really I found salvation at five in chapter books you know first you love being read to and that's really church when one of your parents is sitting or lying beside you reading to you then at six or five or six you get chapter books and this is where it all began for me this is why i'm a writer that somebody creates a world into which you can get completely lost for an hour and in getting lost you get completely found and the thing is you put it down and you know what it's there again when you wake up so i give thanks for that and And it's not my world anymore. And this is something you write about in Dusk, Night, Dawn, right? I think the language you use with salvation will be local, grassroots. And the center of it is love, is kindness.

It's not complex. It's not dogmatic. It's not cultural norms-based. It's so simple. And it's not top-down. This happens between one person and the next. That's right. I teach my Sunday school kids.

We always said before Advent have, we'll have like a plan of action. And one year we gave away, there are a lot of homeless people in Marin, as you know, and homeless families. And so we made little art packs for the homeless kids that were a Ziploc bag with the biggest index cards in them and

colored pencils and pencil sharpeners, which you can get like 10 for a dollar at Target, because it's very hard for homeless kids to find a pencil sharpener, right? It's not a priority. And then one year I taught them that every single day they had to flirt with an old person. And it could be in line at Whole Foods, even if it was the express line and the old person ahead of you had brought coupons, you still had to tell them how much you loved their hat and or or how much how adorable their dog was. And was he friendly? Could you pet him? Because that always makes people really happy and it creates union. And so that old people are invisible you know and we

used to at my church before covid used to go to a convalescent home and you know four of us would go and all we did what we sang and stuff but we we touched their hands we touched the back of their hands and i always said i am so glad to see you because you know what no one else has told them that for a while and so um that's what i mean by grassroots that's where it all begins yeah it all begins with his self-love it all begins with talking back to the governess named dread and saying thank you for sharing but this is actually a great weight for me you know if i get sick sick, I can lose a little and not need to be hospitalized or to say to Dredd, you know what, I'm really not in charge of the results of this, how this book does or how

my son's podcast, or you know what, but thank you for sharing. I always thank the governess of Dredd for sharing. And it all starts with that commitment to talking to yourself in the way that I would talk to anyone I see today at the park with our masks, walking our dogs, the way I talk to them. And I have to remember to talk to myself that way. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. You look great. What's your secret? And often that last part is the hardest one, right? I think it's easier for us to get up to offer that to other people than sometimes to bring that back into ourselves. And also approaching it as a practice. It's not a sporadic thing, but this is just how you bring yourself today.

And I think sometimes people feel, well, if I do it enough, it just comes easy. It just becomes a part of me. And maybe for some people that's true, but I think it's just, no, this is an intentional practice. And I feel they're total asshats. And if someone says to me, you know, I just feel really positive about myself all the time, or people will say, oh, I just love writing. I just sit down. I'm so excited. And it's so crazy. I think, well, maybe you feel that or think that. But why would you say that? It's just angry. It's ugly. And like Muriel Spark, the great British writer during the Second World War, Momentum Ori and Miss Jean Brody. She said when she sat down to write, she just felt like she had a dictaphone machine on because she was so plugged into God.

And she just typed away every day. And I thought, maybe that's true. I've never met another writer who experienced that, but maybe it's true. But why would you say that? You bring on the wrath of everybody else. Yeah. And the self-loathing of everybody else. Right. Yeah. I think it's the, I think your son has a tattoo, right? That says we never give up. We never give up. Right. And I think that's sort of, that's what it's about, right? It's leading with love and just over and over and over and over.

That's right. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out in this cross-country container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, to be here now, to remember to breathe, to get outside and to look up. You know, my pastor had that great sermon about trapping bees at the bottom of mason jars without a lid on because, you know, they walk around bitterly bumping into the glass

jar and all they have to do is look up and they could fly away. So I'm going to get outside in a few minutes and I'm going to look up and I'm going to breathe in and I'm going to look for signs of the spring, you know, the new green shoots and those hilarious daffodils. To live a good life means to me to have loving feelings. And if I want to have loving feelings, very simple. I just have to go do a few really loving things. Thank you. Hey, if you love this conversation, you will also love the conversation that we had with Glennon Doyle about living more authentically and untamed. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project you're still listening here. Would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person.

Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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