Good Life Project - Jessi Hempel | The Power of Living Authentically, Even When it’s Hard

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

So, what’s your biggest secret? And, what’s the cost you’ve been bearing for living, or trying to live, under its weight?For many of us, it’s wrapped around our identity. There’s something about us we don’t want others to know. The idea of being your 100% authentic self, meaning no secrets, no masks, and no pretending, in front of your family, of all people, is something that sounds terrifying, if not impossible. But, what if the opposite were true? What if living behind the facade was actually the more brutalizing experience, one that sustains, possibly for years, decades, even life? In contrast to the momentary or even season of disruption incited by coming out as your true self, yet followed by a lifetime of liberation?That’s where we’re headed in today’s conversation with Jessi Hempel, whose own revelation about her sexual identity, became the first in a chain of "coming out" events that touched every member of her family. Jessi is the host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and she's a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. Jessi's striking upcoming memoir, The Family Outing, is a fascinating look into Jessi's seemingly picture-perfect American family, whose lives slowly start to unravel after a series of coming outs. In our chat, we uncover universal revelations, like seeing and realizing the humanity in your parents for the first time and the liberation that comes with claiming your whole truths—even in the face of uncertainty. Jessi opens up about the complexities of growing up with two parents struggling with emotional turmoil and learning to embrace her imperfect family as each of them shed their secrets and found, or rediscovered, their place in the world. You can find Jessi at: LinkedIn | Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel podcastIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Jake Wesley Rogers about bringing all parts of himself to work and life.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And sometimes the things about us that we perceive to be different are so wildly uncomfortable that we feel like we need to keep them secret. The thing is, it is my gut feeling about life that keeping those things secret inevitably hurts us. It causes us pain. And no matter how large those things are, when we find a way to speak them, we begin to heal ourselves. And even more hopeful, we begin to heal our relationships with the most intimate people in our lives. So what's your biggest secret? And what's the cost you've been bearing for living or trying to live under the weight of it? Well, for many of us, it's wrapped around our sense of identity. There's something about us that we don't want others to

know. The idea of being 100% authentic, meaning no secrets, no masks, no pretending, no hiding in front of our family, our friends, our colleagues, all people. It's something that sounds terrifying, if not impossible. But what if the opposite were true? What if living under the weight of that facade was actually the more brutalizing experience, one that sustains possibly for years, decades, even life, in contrast to the momentary or even season of disruption, inciting by coming out as your true self, yet also unlocking a lifetime of liberation and freedom and lightness? Well, that's where we're headed in today's conversation with Jesse Hempel, whose own revelation about her sexual identity became the first in a chain of coming out events

that touched every member of her family. Jesse is the host of the award-winning podcast, Hello Monday, and she's a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. And for nearly two decades, Jesse had been writing and editing stories about work, life, and meaning in the digital age, profiling many of the biggest names in industry and appearing on major networks in the news. And her striking memoir, The Family Outing, it's a fascinating look into Jessie's seemingly picture-perfect American family, whose lives slowly start to unravel after a series of coming outs. In our chat, we uncover universal revelations

like seeing and realizing the humanity in your parents for the first time and the sense of liberation and freedom that comes with claiming your whole truth even in the face of uncertainty. And Jesse shares about the complexities of growing up with two parents struggling with the emotional turmoil and learning to embrace her imperfect family as each of them shed their secrets and found or rediscovered their place in the world, which also becomes the touchstone for a coming back together of the entire family. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Go shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 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 8 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 or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary. You know how to write, so the writing is phenomenal. And also just the way you tee it up is so fast. I want to dive into in part, you know, like the story of the book and the secrets and the revelation and how you patch things together, sort of like the arc. But I also want to dive into some of the process for you because I'm kind of fascinated by that as well. You know, I was thinking, where do we jump into this conversation? I mean, you have spent your entire adult life in some way, shape or form investigating,

writing, journalism. And your focus the last few years has been in no small part on what happens when an entire family structure is in the shadow of secrets. You have this really interesting sentence that actually a few sentences that you share early in your new book. You write, I exist because of two secrets, one acute and unusual belonging to my mother and one common and culturally condemned belonging to my father. These hidden truths worked their way into the fabric of my being, coming up through me. My parents' shame became my shame. Without ever being told, I learned what I could share about myself and what I had to hide. I didn't have a name for this, only a fear that I was in danger. I'm fascinated by you living in this space, not just your entire life, but also like revisiting it over the last few years. I'm also fascinated by that last line, only a fear that I was in danger.

It feels incredible otherworldly to listen to you read it, Jonathan. In some ways, this is a particular story. It's a story about my family and the secrets that my family had and the inherited shame that goes along with that. But actually, I think every family has things like this, that this, in fact, that paragraph could have been written by just about everybody I know in some way or another, I understood without ever understanding that there were things that culture smiled at when it came to who I believed I was and things that really were inappropriate. So I want to just go back a second. So, you know, my book is about coming out and coming out looked at narrowly is a term that the LGBTQIA plus community that we get the privilege of existing in has used to describe the process of finding their way to the most authentic expression of self.

But looked at broadly, coming out for all of us in any way that we come out is about navigating the things that we thought unspeakable and learning to speak them. And I have this sense, this gut sense, that we are all born into other people's expectations for us, right? We're all born into our parents' hopes, fears, and dreams, into if we live within a religious community, the rules and ways of that community, into a culture. And sometimes who we are, the rules and mores of that community into a culture. And sometimes who we are, the most authentic expression of ourselves, is absolutely in line with what is expected of us. I think that's actually pretty rare and maybe growing more rare. More often, things are different. Sometimes they're just different enough to be a little bit uncomfortable.

You need to find a way to tell your mother, no, you never want to play baseball. You actually totally love drama and let that be okay. And sometimes the things about us that we perceive to be different are so wildly uncomfortable that we feel like we need to keep them secret. The thing is, it is my gut feeling about life and my thesis in that book, that keeping those things secret inevitably hurts us. It causes us pain. And no matter how large those things are, when we find a way to speak them, we begin to heal ourselves. And even more hopeful, we begin to heal our relationships with the most intimate people in our lives.

As you're sharing that, I don't think anybody would listen to that and say, oh no, everything's out in the open. And it's always been out in the open, especially in the context of families. The dynamic there is so complex, even in the most open and revealing and honest and truthful family, there are things that aren't spoken. Yes. There are things that aren't shared. And I wonder sometimes if, like the way you describe it is sort of as an intentional yet maybe sustained over a period of years or decades act. I wonder if people sometimes experience it actually as, ah, this is water. It becomes so much the fiber of the culture of the relationships in the

family that you don't even realize that it exists anymore. It just becomes your lived experience of how things are. And by not really realizing it exists anymore, you don't realize the weight that you carry. I'm wondering what you think of that. I think that's spot on. And the thing about water, of course, is that we are unaware of it, right? That is, you know, I think about air. We don't notice air until it is removed and we can't breathe. And, you know, to go back to those two secrets, the secret of my father and the secret of my mother, not giving away anything here when I tell you that my father and the secret of my mother. I'm not giving away anything here when I tell you that my father's secret was that he was gay and my mother's secret was that

she had become aware of the fact that her boyfriend as a teenager was someone who was involved in a series of serial killings. Now, I should say, if you're going to write a book and include serial killers in the first chapter, that in some way sells itself. So I want to dial that way back. This is not a book about serial killers. It's a book about the weight of that secret and how it informed my mother's life. But here's the thing. Neither of them knew they were keeping secrets. I mean, that would have been one version of their lives. But I think what was more true for them and what is often true about the things that the secrets we keep, if you want to call them that, is that we do so unconsciously. My father, let's start with him. You can kind of envision my father as a little boy, right?

He was born in 1948. So let's, you know, let's hit 1960 or so. He's a 12-year-old kid. He lives in a very, very religious family in Queens. His father is a minister and sort of old school German Methodist ministry, preached in German for a lot of his career. He's very formal. And then, you know, he has two daughters. He finally has a son and his son is just one of those kids that if you saw him on the street, you would be like, oh, young Paul, like he's got a little swish to his walk. What's up with that?

And in his childhood, he did a few things that were inappropriate and he understood they were inappropriate, but never why. Like he wore his like sister's petticoats, for example. And the messages that he got from his parents who were strong presences in his life and loved him dearly and from this Christian school that he went to were, and from the time that he existed in, from even mental health care professionals at the time he existed in were, oh, you know what? Don't worry about that. You're going to grow out of it. As soon as you grow up and make good with God, you're going to grow out of it. And so my dad waited to grow out of it. And when he met my mother, he authentically loved my mother. And he thought, phew, I've grown out of it. And so he started his life. And in that moment, he never internalized, oh, I have a secret, I'm gay. He simply, I would say, did not him when you share further down the road, you're coming back from college and you share like, hey, mom, dad, I'm gay. And your mom kind of says, okay, cool. Your dad stays silent. And the next day, there's this one phrase, which he comes back to you in a brief comment, which again, I wondered is that at that moment

sort of a continuation of this, well, this is not actually real or it was, I'm trying to communicate something to you, but I don't know how to. So in the moment you're speaking about, and I want to take you again, let's go to the early nineties. I'm like seat belted into the back of my parents' car. It's sort of, it's like this minivan looks a little bit like a dust buster. And we're driving home from college and I announce that I'm, you know, think that I could be, it's possible that, I mean, maybe not, but I could be gay. Try to take a deep breath.

And my mom does mom things, right? She cries a little bit, talks about the people she knows who are gay. And she says, well, you know, we love you, which is the right thing to say, like A plus mom. And dad says nothing. And the next morning, you know, he walks into the kitchen and he says, you know, I thought I was gay once too. And I just remember thinking, what? What the heck? And saying to him, well, what did you do?

And he said, oh, you know, I married your mom and walked out. And in that moment, and I've talked to him about it since, that's really what he thought. He thought, oh, Jesse will grow out of this. That's just fine. And it wasn't until much later that he told me that that was also, it was the beginning of something for me, right? And I'll get to that in a minute. For him, it was the beginning of, oh goodness, if she doesn't grow out of this, then maybe I am going to have to rethink it for myself. And it was several years after that that he found his way out of the closet. But for me in that moment, and Jonathan, I have to believe that many people have this experience with their parents at some point.

It's that adolescent experience where you look up and you think, oh, my goodness, you are more than my dad. You are a human being. You have had many chapters to your life. You've had many different expressions of your own identity, and I have only ever really known one of them. It's like a central growing up moment. I would venture to guess also for so many of us in that moment, we're probably even thinking, because I think, like you said, I think we've all had that moment once you're old enough. I think you even start to wonder, have I even known one of them? Have I even been present enough or paid attention enough to see the humanity of the parent that I know during the window of time that I know them? Or have I been just really focused on me? I don't even think that we know one of them until we choose to invest ourselves in knowing it.

And maybe we can't know one of them until we've done the work to know ourselves, right? And so if I hadn't gone through the process that I went through in college to literally fall out of the closet, and if you knew me in college, you would also know that I was the last person to come out to me. Everybody else knew. But if I hadn't figured that out about myself, I wouldn't have had the space to consider that my parents also might be figuring things out and that my sister and my brother might be. You mentioned your mom dating somebody who was involved in a series of murders in her local town and of people who were her friends or people that she knew. For her, this creates a certain amount of trauma. How could it not?

Not just in being so close to it, but I have to imagine at some point she realizes that could have been me. They're but for God's grace, right? And the trauma that goes along with that, again, and this is something that she keeps secret for pretty much her entire life. Like you as kids know nothing about this. And yet you do know something's wrong. It's hard not to know something is wrong with my mom because she's unhappy and it's hard to miss that she's unhappy. But, you know, my mom's story, she grew up with very happy parents who loved her a good deal in a small community in the Midwest. And fast forward to the late 60s, she's a teenager, and somebody begins killing people in her town, somebody that, the church deacon's secretary, the assistant art teacher from her high school. And over time, and this unfolds over the years that my mom's in high school, the town sort of gets into a panic about it. The men in the town

become volunteer police officers. And of course, all of the young women, first of all, I should say they all look kind of like my mom. They all have the same chestnut long hair she has and same earrings she has. And all of the young women are told, whatever you do, don't go with people that you don't know. Don't be with people that you don't trust. And Jonathan, here I think about the message that we send to young women generally about violence that could befall them. And inherent in that a bit is also like, it's your fault if you do like we told you we were trying to protect you and in trying to protect you we are making your protection your responsibility so my mom she has a part-time job she falls for a young guy at the part-time job he's a little exotic he's

an older college student and it never becomes a hugely serious romance but it's starting down its path and one day in the back of a stock room he scares the bejeebers out of her i use the word bejeebers because my mom actually always uses that word it's not like i hear that word a lot but my mom always uses that word and really terrifies her and she has that moment where she realizes oh this could be the guy now here's where the really unusual part of the story happens. The next day, this man is arrested for the murders. He is arrested with his best friend. And in the end, what happens is he agrees to testify against his best friend. His best friend is put away, and he leaves town. And so the legal system never makes a pronouncement about whether he was involved.

But my mom has reason to believe that he was. And her parents have reason to believe that he was. And the message to her is basically, don't tell anyone. This is embarrassing for our family. Let's be done with this. Don't answer his calls. Let's just never talk about it. Which I just want to be very compassionate to my grandparents. That is the message that in the United States in the middle of the 20th century

was probably the message most families would have conveyed to their young children, their teenagers. And so she doesn't. She just goes on about her life. She wants to get out of, you know, the small town she lives in. And several years later, she meets Jonathan, my dad, the slightly effeminate son of a minister looking to get married right away. Trustworthy, lovely. And he has the answer to so many of her problems. And so rather than turn and look at those discomforts of her emotional life, she turns toward my father. They get married and have us, and we are supposed to be the answer to the problem.

But of course, for her, we're not. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. It's so interesting how the culture at that time also was almost like, no matter what you've been through, no matter what ails you, no matter what you suffer, just find that other person, make it conventional, lock it up, and everything will be okay. That is the answer. Yep. And that is the path that so many people took, especially sort of like at that moment in our

culture. And for so many people, it fell apart eventually too, because it's not the answer and it can't be. As a kid coming up in this household, then when your dad is grappling with his own secrets, your mom, you know, PTSD, which we now know, it doesn't ever go away unless and until you do the work to integrate it. And even then for many people, it becomes something that is with them for life. And they're trying to figure out how do I be with this? So your mom is sort of like struggling. And I would imagine that your mom is also picking up a lot of cues about your dad, consciously or unconsciously, that are deepening her concern, her distress about just who she is,

how she's chosen to move forward with her life. And a sense of, but now I have a family, I have all the things that are both a blessing and a quote, trapping possibly. This is what it is. And that sounds like it really starts to manifest in deep depression and stress and also in pretty severe emotional swings. And you almost look at that and say, well, how could it not? I totally agree. My mom, in some ways, her path in this book is to me the most important path because there's the most healing and redemption in it. But when we were young, first of all, on the outside, her life looked awesome, right? She was married to a lawyer. They were important people in the church. She had these three children. We were all adorable

in exactly the way that the Sears catalog would want small children to be adorable in the 80s. And we excelled at school and were likable. And in the center of her family, she was the loneliest person. My father traveled all the time for work and wasn't emotionally present at all because he was really just trying to do the right thing and couldn't go near his emotions. Because if he did, he might discover things that were just too big for him to navigate. And how are you supposed to know what a marriage is supposed to feel like anyway? So how is my mom supposed to know in these moments that her unhappiness is not her fault or that it is not what all the other people in all the other marriages around her are

experiencing? all the other people in all the other marriages around her are experiencing, she does a laudable job of continuing to steward our family. The other thing about mothers in particular, when you talk about them, is that very often, and certainly in the case of my parents, my mother and my father made life very hard for us as adolescents. Their pain became our pain, but in very different ways. For my father, it was just his absence. He was completely not there. For my mother, because of his absence, it was her presence. She was overbearing. Her depression was really tough to navigate. She was emotionally violent and sometimes physically violent. It was just a nut of anger that she had at, you know, a million things that were not her children

that came out at us. And I think it is too easy to read a book like this book and cast some blame on her without similarly understanding that she and my father created this situation together and that she at least stuck around. In the book, I talk about how she occasionally, her mood swings would lead her to be violent toward us in the house, but she showed up, which we desperately needed. She made sure that we were fed every day. She made sure that we had clothing and mostly got ourselves to where we needed to be. She was constantly trying to repair for her difficult parts. You know, Jonathan, in talking about the book, which, you know, she was very uncomfortable with me writing about that part. She's like, you didn't put in the part where I made you a chocolate duck cake

every year for your birthday. So Jonathan, I want the whole audience to know that was my mom too. Like she made us chocolate duck cakes every year for our birthday. She did her best. But of course, she also was a very imperfect mom during that period. Like Whitman said, right? We we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. 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-nest 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 X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. You know, it's interesting also because you described that window for you especially. And I guess it was sort of like as later in high school for you as the moment that you became a tracker. And that is the experience that so many people describe when they're in an environment, especially a household where there's a sense of sort of like constant threat and instability. And you're kind of, you live in a state of hypervigilance of trying to figure out how do I keep things as calm as possible? You know, how do I just like, how do I see things that might be coming before they're

coming so I can prepare for them or get out of the way. And so often for so many people, that becomes a part of the fiber of just the way that you live your life in all parts of life without even realizing it. Yeah. I mean, I still think I do that to some degree, but yeah, I mean, that was the central sort of characteristic of my middle adolescent years was, okay, let me attempt to identify and perceive the signs that mom is going to fly into a depression or a rage and try to get out ahead of it, both for me and my siblings. But at the same time there, you know, we benefited from living in a affluent community in Massachusetts, sort of like upper middle class community in

Massachusetts that had a like social sort of system that offered us a lot of support, even if it didn't understand what was going on. So I had this teacher at school who really stepped up, could identify that I was really struggling at home, couldn't necessarily identify what was going on. Believe me, if anybody could have been like, they all just need to come out of the closet, we would have been a lot better off. Couldn't figure that out. But stepped up and really made my success her mission and stepped in as a pseudo parent. And I lived during that time for her approval and her love and her assurance. Like this isn't you, just get a little further down the road, just get to college. And it is like, it's a reminder for me too, of the people beyond parents in any child's life

that are necessary in helping a child navigate adolescence in particular. I mean, it's interesting also that that person who saw something going on with you and stepped in was a teacher. And I'm curious, actually, it sounds like they existed outside of what had been the community that really was almost like the sixth member of the family for your entire early years, which was the church. Yeah. And which gave certain support and a sense of belonging and norms and things like this, but also establishing those in a way where to a certain extent they helped and to a certain extent they reinforced the sources of pain. Yeah, they did both.

Yeah, the church was so critical in our childhood. And I think I talk about this in early childhood, the challenge with a community like a church, like any religious community, is that you don't get to opt into just the pieces that you like or the pieces that support you. And you opt in or you opt out. And when, particularly when we were going through this sort of rough period in our family, the church community we lived in was much smaller. We were in Massachusetts where, you know, we had come from, we had early in my life, we lived in South Carolina. It was like deep in the Bible belt. You almost sort of added your church after your last name when you introduced

yourself to someone. That's how critical your involvement in church was to your sense of identity. We got to Massachusetts. The community was much smaller and was very important to us, but it was confusing because the church members were my parents' safe place and safe people. And so it almost couldn't be mine initially before my parents came out when really, if you had met our family at that point, when I was like 15, 16 years old, you would have seen pain. You would have, if you knew our family, you would know we were going through a rough time. But we didn't know what the rough time is. So we collectively did not do a

good job of communicating it. And what my parents perceived to be the rough time was me. I must be a bad teenager. I must be really going, I must be a problem kid. And so if you talk to anybody in our church, you know, when I was a teenager, I think they might say, well, you know, we're really trying to support Pat and Paul. They have a really, really difficult teenager. Now, of course, I probably was a difficult teenager. Jonathan, we've known each other a little bit. I can be a know-it-all and I can be bossy. And I was doing all the things that teenagers do where they explore their freedom and they try to figure out who they are and they individuate. And that's not easy. And now layer on top of that, my mother's massive depression and her undiagnosed PTSD and

my father's absence. And yeah, it was a mess. Yeah. And you having no sense at that age of there's also a whole lot that I have no idea about that might be underlying. So there's almost like nothing, there's nothing being offered as evidence for you to inquire into compassion which you know like as an adolescent we're not all that deep into compassion no matter what it's just i'm raising my hand there i think it's the really the rare kid who is jonathan we were at friend's house this past weekend and they have a daughter who is a daughter on some days and on some days they, a person who is maybe 13 who was like, oh, you know what the problem is there? That's main character syndrome.

And I was like, what's main character syndrome? And she's like, you know, it's like when you just think you're the main character of all of life, like every kid has it. I was like, I'm totally going to adopt that title because yeah, that summarizes a lot of like the issues I see emerging in my own life. And of course, when I was a teenager, I had main character syndrome for sure. As do we all, right? I mean, hopefully we grow out of that. I think sometimes not everybody does. And sometimes we can grow back into it as we get older. Yeah. You know, as this is all unfolding,, you have siblings who are really growing into an understanding who they are and they aren't also and feeling their own sense of, but I can't share this given the culture, every member of the family is deepening into this sense of there is something really important about me that I can't share. And I'm

also living in a state of hypervigilance and threat at the same time, which leads to sort of like years and years of collective suffering. And then a bit further into life, there's this season where everything just starts to be exposed to the light of day. It begins with that car ride that you described with you sharing with your parents, I think, I might, maybe. And that becomes your accepted out identity. And then not long after that, your dad, not voluntarily, but is effectively outed, at least within the family, by your sister in a way that was not planned. When she stumbles upon something where she can't ignore it at that point. And then everything that's like, sounds like that's a series of dominoes that then just start to cascade. Yeah.

We like to say that he was kicked out of the closet or that he, you know, fell out of the closet and tried desperately to crawl back in and the closet was too full and couldn't get back in. But yeah, my, you know, my sister was home from college. My sister is three and a half years younger than me, four years in school. And she, her name is Kat. Kat was home from college for a summer, was chatting on an old web program, I mean, think like late 90s, with her boyfriend, who was also home from college in a different state. And her computer died. And so she went, she trotted off to the family computer, and somebody else chatted her back. And she realized she was in dad's profile. And she realized that a lover of dad's was chatting her back. And how tragic and terrible

for my sister. This was so out of character. I mean, my dad at that point, even at that point, was incredibly respected in our community. A church elder, like very involved in the community, you know, in his law firm, totally a guy we hardly knew at home he was really sort of distanced at home but it wasn't like she saw this coming it just really came out of nowhere and so she calls him and she tells him you know you know mom picks up the phone she's in one of those car phones like pre--cell phone, you might have a car phone, big old chunk of thing. And she picks up the phone and Kotz is like, tell dad Ed says hi. And in that instant, my dad knew the gig was up. still tried to see if like well maybe maybe it wasn't maybe it wasn't going to be that bad but in fact it was that bad in a very short period of time in like 48 hours he had had to come clean with my mom that he was having these digital affairs he'd really only physically broken the

covenant of marriage once and i say the covenant of marriage because that's the way that my dad talked about it then um And then understood it as sacrosanct, no matter what was going on for him in his life, he had made that commitment. And so there was that instant, right? But what's actually much more interesting is everything that came after that, which, you know, my parents then had to decide what to do and what to do was not at all obvious, right? They each had to decide independently and with each other how to heal. And then they had to decide what to do about their life. And they were married for 28 years before they divorced. And this happened about 25 years into that.

And it wasn't at all obvious. It took a really long time for them to decide how they were going to manage what came next for each of them. It was a mess for us, Jonathan. I can't even imagine. I mean, they're grappling with that. You're grappling with it, that this becomes a part of the family conversation also in your lived experience. I wonder if as difficult as it was for your parents, when you learn that personally, does it then open up anything inside of you where you start to connect all these dots looking back about your dad, about your parents, about the thread, about the relationship, and find even the seeds of understanding or empathy?

Or is that something that really happens way later? I mean, look, immediately I was like, you know, dad did give me a CD player for my 11th birthday. And my first set of CDs was everything that Barbra Streisand had ever recorded. Meh, looking back, like it starts to fit together, right? But yeah, for me in that moment, I had distanced myself from my family when I had gone off to college and still was overwhelmed by them, was overwhelmed by the scope of my mom's depression, which continued to grow, you know, guilt about my siblings who were unhappy in their own ways. I was going to say similarly unhappy, but they were differently unhappy. And so I just went off and traveled. And at this point, I was as distant from them as I had ever been. This was back in the day when, while I was traveling in India, if I wanted to be in touch with them, I needed to send a fax from a post office in town. It was really, truly,

it wasn't like, I'll text you at the end of the day and let you know how things were going. I needed that distance. I really, really did. I wasn't surprised when'll text you at the end of the day and let you know how things are going. I needed that distance. I really, really did. I wasn't surprised when my dad came out of the closet, but I sure was angry at him and concerned about my mom. And that concern was pretty hard because my mom and I had had so many things between us that had been difficult for so long. But I was not the right person to be able to offer her any comfort. And in those moments also, you know, one challenge we always had in our family, curious if this is true in your family, Jonathan, like I was always just sort of like my dad. I can't even say, we just sort of understood. It was like we had a language

that we both spoke that wasn't universally spoken in our family. And similarly, my sister is like that with my mom. They just gravitated toward the same things, understood each other in this subtle, lovely way. It made me the wrong person to help my mom in those moments. Yeah, that's so interesting. I would imagine there's probably some dynamic like that in many families. I know in mine, it know? Yeah. That's so interesting. I would imagine there's probably some dynamic like that in many families. I know in mine, it was my mom, you know, we're, we're wired very similarly. So we, you know, there's a shorthand that exists. Yeah. You know,

there's a raise of an eyebrow or a nod or just like a, oh yeah, we know we get it. Um, type of thing that tends to happen. And, uh, I see that with my daughter also, you know, like, so it spans generations. It's a lovely thing. It can be a real treasure. Yeah. But it's so interesting though, that you recognize that as almost because of that, you are, and for other reasons, you are not the person to step in and really be the one to be there and to take care of your mom. And right around in the same window, like a period of, it sounds like about five years or so, this happens. Your mom, while grappling with all of this, then goes to a place where she actually really has to, for the first time in her life, grapple with what happened in her teen years and is thankfully through, it sounds like somebody in a therapeutic relationship recognizing there's something else going on here. And that starts a whole commitment to, okay, let me unpack beyond the trauma of this moment and the relationship potentially changing

and trying to figure out what does this look like moving forward, if anything. I need to go back in time also because there's something that has been a sword over my head since I was a teenager. So there's an unfolding and an opening that happens. And then at the same time, your sister and your brother are grappling with their own things in the same window. It's like the cascade just keeps coming and coming and coming. Yeah, I think in many ways, you know, Pandora's box, like you begin to look at like one aspect or element of a system and suddenly everything is up for examination. And also when the people who are closest around us begin doing the work of self-assessment and self-examination, it is my experience that we often either move

toward it for ourselves or we distance ourselves from it right and so in the case of my family I think it was a little bit like dominoes you know my parents started couples counseling and couples counseling brought to the surface the work that my mom needed to do and that was so painful Jonathan I mean know, you read the book, she had to be hospitalized for a short period of time. She spent so much time just trying to find the will and the want to thrive and to live. And, you know, anybody who has been through a really, really difficult period knows that that's part of it. And for my mom, like finding that will and that want and finding that purpose, you know, she talks about how she just had this great, great, great therapist that she

grew to really count on and love and respect. And at some point she was like, how do you have your stuff together? And that woman was like, you think I have my stuff together? The healers heal. That's what they do. And that was this aha moment for my mom where she thought, well, I could choose to go back to school. I could choose to try to figure out how to help people. And that was my mom's path of reaching for the rung of the ladder. Now, look, the unfortunate part here, Jonathan, is that while that was happening, we were

all doing our best to grow up, right? And my sister and my brother in particular were still pretty young. My brother was still at home in his last year of high school. My sister was still in the middle of college. And I'll tell you this, and she would tell you this, she was not very present as a parent. And in fact, she was somebody who needed a ton of support. My sister's college experience was punctuated by getting in the car and driving back and, you know, taking a school exam on the road or from like the hospital waiting room so that she could be present for my mom. Because really that connection that my sister and my mom had ended up being so critical

for my mom. It was in many moments, the only real support she felt, which was a lot for my sister and my mom had ended up being so critical for my mom. It was in many moments, the only real support she felt, which was a lot for my sister to carry. And then there's my brother who, you know, I always refer to him as my brother. There are people already who have read the book and said, well, yeah, but you knew him, your story, you knew him as a little sister growing up. And one of the things that writing this story unlocked for me was I don't actually experience him as my little sister now, even in the rear view mirror, even through history. He has so fully come into his own as my brother. But that transition for him, that gender transition, happened for him at the beginning of college. And so you can also imagine my brother kind of being ignored his senior year in high school,

finding his way to Oberlin College and going through his own really, really big questions and ultimately transition. Yeah. I mean, just everybody in their own individual storm swept up in a collective storm, all trying to figure out like, who am I? How do I survive? How do I thrive? How do I move forward individually?

And then what does this family unit look like moving forward? If anything, you write this line, after things fall apart, there's freedom. All of the expectations that have constrained us have been demolished. The concentration of the psychic pain will dissipate and in its place will be time and autonomy if you can recognize it. That last part really stuck with me because that's a big if. Yeah. Right. It is a big if. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good at first, at least. Right. I think the magic to my own family is way back to each other because the damage of our entire childhood, but especially those five years during which everything was falling apart would have just been too great. Yeah. And everything has to happen in five individual times. You actually write about this. There's another verse that jumped

out at me, right? We will all discover that we can endeavor to improve ourselves, but we cannot schedule our revelations. There's a more organic process to healing. Time has its own rhythm, its own beauty. This is what I'll call it when I have perspective. Yeah, you want to hurry things along. You're like, okay, okay, I get it. We're all gay or queer or something except mom. And like, let's have the holidays and things will feel okay. And you still can't hurry things along, right? You just, you have to heal on healing's timeline. But I'll say this, like one really, really critical thing that our family did, that the kids did, myself, Katya, and Evan, is that when our parents were spiraling, we put up a boundary. And putting up that boundary ended up allowing us to individuate

and then be able to come back to them. And I don't know how we figured out to do that, but I think about that a lot. I think when anybody loves somebody who's desperately in crisis and they're trying to save that person who is in crisis, there comes a point where you are sacrificing so much of yourself in the attempt to save someone that if you are able to succeed, you won't like them anymore, right? You won't be able to find a path to love them anymore. And with my parents you know several years after the original rupture my parents were still being clowns from our perspective Jonathan they were needy mom was depressed they were calling all the time each of us you know were sort of fielding their calls and fielding their emergencies and it was exhausting it was depleting our energy and I would like to think that this was my idea

because I'm the oldest child and will always take credit for everything. I don't know if it was, but I spearheaded it. We actually organized a conference call with them where my brother and my sister and I called them and we said to them, look, we think you should divorce. This is what we think should happen. And that turned out to be not that interesting to them. They didn't care what we thought. They did their own thing. But also we conveyed to them, we want to know that you are okay. That is all the three of us collectively want to know about how you're doing. We want to know that you all are handling it,

but please take a step back emotionally. Like, you know, we, the three children, we need some space here. And in that moment, which by the way, my parents don't even remember, but all three of us remember, all three of us can tell you exactly where we were sitting, right? In that moment, we bought ourselves the space to do our own work. And because of that moment, I think that when they were in when they were each individually in places where they could rebuild, we were ready for it. We could meet them. I'm always fascinated by what people remember and don't remember, especially in a relational context. Because so often you'll remember something that is just, you'll never forget it.

And the person or the community, the group that was on the other side of that conversation or experience has zero recall because it just didn't mean the same thing to them, but it was seminal to you. 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 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. You know, you talk about the process of individuation and stepping into your own identity, which everybody had to do. I thought it was interesting also. It seems like a really small step, but I wonder if it's actually bigger because of what it said. So all three of you, like you, Kat, Evan, changed your names in different ways when you effectively became adults. You go from Jessica to Jesse when you head off to college. You know, Kat goes from, I guess, Katie to Kat or Katya and Evan, who that name is taken later in life when sort of fully transitioning into his gender. On the surface, it seems like, well, it's just a change in name, but it's much bigger than that. And it's fascinating to me that it happened across all three

kids in the family. I know. And thank you for noticing that. I think about that too. I think I'm the only one who actually, interestingly, my name is a throwback, right? I was actually, you wouldn't know this reading the book, but I was actually Jessie until I started kindergarten. Like the young child that I was to my adoring parents was Jessie. to college and just thinking jesse is strong jesse is not gendered it doesn't force me to ascribe to what i saw as sort of a very gendered and cutesy jessica like identity by the way that's just my version of jessica i'm sure there are a lot of like super solid butch jessicas out there um that was it for me then katya katya went off to to a study abroad program in austria and everybody looked at the spelling of her name and called her katya and they were like you've been mispronouncing your name since you were born and then of course evan evan chose evan very deliberately his middle name is reese the r very deliberately as a throwback to his birth name um which i don't share in the

book and won't share here because for most people in the transgender to his birth name, which I don't share in the book and won't share here because for most people in the transgender community, your birth name often is called your dead name, and it is a symbol of the things that you are choosing to leave behind because they didn't fit. So it would be disrespectful and inappropriate. And what is the same for all of us is that kind of what we're saying there is we don't want to be that earlier version. We want to be this new version that we are choosing. I think that jumped out at me also because I did the same thing. Did you?

I did, yeah. And so did my sister. Interestingly enough, my sister's given name is Katie. And she's now Katya and has been literally since probably freshman year of college. If you know me up until I graduated college, you call me John. If you know me from the first moment that I stepped into college, you call me Jonathan. And I have been Jonathan for every second of my life since then. And of course, my family from earlier years has a completely different just family nickname for me

that even my niece and nephew call me to this day. So it caught me because I was like, huh, that happened in my family too. And it was meaningful to me. And it was a lot of what you were talking about. I had a pretty good upbringing, actually. I was very comfortable, always loved, taken care of. We had our mishigas like every family. And yet there was something that happened to me that said, there's a stronger version of my actual given name that I have not stepped into, but that's who I want to show up as from somebody does, makes what's seemingly a little tweak like that, but it's actually much bigger. I love that because you're right. It's not about a name. It's about an aspiration and it's about asking to be seen in a powerful way. One of the things that so often happens through a process of revelation, evolution,

reformation of who and what you want to be and how you want to be in a relationship is a process of loss. That can be loss of an old identity, loss of a relationship you knew the way it was, loss of a sense of community or family the way it was, but also very physical loss, like losing human beings in your life. And I think as you grow older, we all experience that and eventually we will be gone. And you write about that in various different ways and in all of those contexts almost. And at one point you share as you're grappling with loss, a friend shared with you that was so poignant to me, you write, my friend noted that the first major challenge in our lives

is learning to feel love. We must strip away so much of what we're taught in order to connect deeply to love. But then just as we figure it out, we reach the middle of our lives. When the challenge shifts, we spend the rest of our time learning to love through loss. And, you know, like being in the, probably past the middle, that resonated so deeply because it really, there is this shift that happens where, you know, loss is coming at some point in some way, in some shape or form. And you still have to keep saying yes to it because what it gives to your life on every given moment, you have to hope is so much greater than what you suffer when it's gone.

That exactly what you said, Jonathan. You know, for my mother, the loss of her marriage and her identity within that marriage was so profound that she articulates not being able to move past it with not being able to leave the anger in some ways she can but in some ways she still carries the anger which i so appreciated because it's so honest right we all want to happily ever after but we also all carry everything that has happened to us it's it's present and i understood that but you, and I don't talk about this directly in the book, but when I, right after we sold the book, my wife and I found out we were pregnant. Talk about that

at the book. That was amazing and unexpected if you knew me, which when you read the book, you'll know that part of me. And we discovered we were having twins. And this really rocked my world. And then toward the end of the pregnancy, we discovered that one of the children had an issue. And we tried very, very, very hard to do what was best for both babies. But in the end, we had one living baby and then we had one baby who passed. And I had not had a loss like that. It shook me to my core. I will spend the rest of my life learning how to think about that loss newly. And it allowed me to understand my mother in a way I never had before, which isn't to say that you can compare loss. There is unfortunately no grief Olympics. Nobody wins with loss. It's just all tragic and terrible and painful and then also beautiful, right?

And so it was actually in talking about that loss that with my mom that we got to this sort of seminal like, oh, we still have to go on living. We still have to. We still get to get up every morning and be with the people who are here with us in the way that we get to be with them and make meaning of that. And that's the path from here. You know, some days I'm pretty angry about that myself, but that is the path from here. And most days I'm pretty appreciative of it. It's interesting also, you know, that it seems like, you know, you described that shorthand, you know,, that your little sister was your mom's person, and that there was never that sort of common thing.

And this profound loss for you becomes a bit of a red thread between you and your mom later in life, not one that anyone ever would have wanted. And yet it creates this tether, which is meaningful as you move forward and figure out your own relationship together. I want to zoom the lens out a little bit. You know, it's such a powerful story. And as you shared when we started talking about it, unique in the circumstance, but universal in so many of the things that people go through as they come into themselves as individuals, as they realize they have secrets, often identity level

secrets that are causing suffering individually and relationally, and meet a moment where the weight has to be shed. It needs light of day. And then have to figure out how do I reform myself, my life? How do I live into this in a way which is honest moving forward? what does that look like? And will I, will we be okay? This is hard stuff. When you decide to write a book and you're necessarily telling the stories, not just of you, but of your entire family, their individual stories, and especially you, right? Because you've made your bones for a lot of years as this phenomenal journalist who goes into super high power situations, sits down, interviews. You're telling the stories of other human beings, other entities, other cultures. You made an interesting shift a couple of years ago into the world of podcasting with LinkedIn. In part, I know through pirate

conversations that we've had because you wanted to be a part of that conversation as well. You had something to offer. And at the same time, your story was never centered like this. And I'm curious, for the first time, you've been writing a long time. You've been sharing stories. You've been going deep into issues for a long time. I'm wondering how you're feeling as this is the story of you and the people that are closest to you being centered in the work. And it's your language giving breath to the story in other people's eyes. How are you with that? In this moment, deeply nervous because it is a story that I'm about to hand off to the world and ask the world to please take good care of. That's a big ask. But also, Jonathan, I didn't

write this story for an audience, and I don't know if that will make sense, but I wrote this story to heal. There was work I had waited my entire life to do that I was ready to do. And I think that when we heal ourselves in any way or participate in the process of healing ourselves, we also contribute to the healing of others. And that's sort of how I think about the story. But also, what I learned as a technology journalist who profiled many people for magazines like Fortune and Wired is that there is great responsibility in telling any part of anybody else's story. And you have to listen well, and then you have to listen better than you thought you were listening, and then you will still be wrong. You will always be wrong. And they will come to you,

and you won't be wrong about the things you think you'll be wrong about. They will actually be angry. They won't care that you have just said that they ripped off investors and defrauded someone. They will be angry that you described their relationship with their mother wrong, or that you said they were short. And I think that, you know, two decades of learning about how to listen to other people made me curious about what would happen if I tried to listen to my family members, not as the biased big sister, eldest daughter who really does know everything. And if you asked me before writing this book, I'd tell you I'd probably write about most things. But to just really listen to what their experiences were. And, you know, it was a pandemic and things were quiet. They were really, really

quiet. And I did have this realization, which is that, you know, for the first month of the quarantine, right, Jonathan, I was out, you know, having zoom reunions with my college friends and going to zoom trivia parties and zoom yoga classes and then by the end of April I was done with it I did not want to be in the company of other people and when I was done with it and I came up for air I found that I was still talking to these four people my family members almost every day and I thought well how did that even happen what if the investigating question here is, how did we get to that? Because if you knew us during the five years that you and I talked a lot about in our time together, you would never have guessed that we would be here. And so, yeah, this is very revealing of me, but it is so much more entrusting of my sister and my brother and my mother and my father to say, yeah, you know what, I'm going to tell you my version of the story and then I am going to trust that you will choose the aspects of my story to share, I still feel so grateful to them for doing that and so responsible to them.

I want to do right by me, but I really want to do right by them. You're right. At this point, every version of ourselves is okay in this family. Every mistake is embraced. Missteps are tolerated. We turn to one another in difficult moments. We delight in one another. It's amazing that you got there. And it sounds like you saying, I'm going to take two years over this very strange moment in our lives and history to mine this, to go deeper into it, to see what we can figure out together, that it was an excavation. It was an act of storytelling. It was an act of vulnerability, of devotion, and also creation.

And in no small part, it was an act of family. And there feels like there is a reverence that has grown towards who these people are in your life over that window of time. That feels sacred to me from the outside looking in. That is true. And also I guarantee you, we will pick at each other during next week's family vacation at the beach. Like many, many families do. As all good families do, right.

Right. Somebody will have a fight with somebody by the end of the week and somebody else will need to take space. And I think the thing that we know now, know in our core, is that that's all okay and we'll always come back. And that's a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live honestly. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you will also love the conversation we had with Jake Wesley Rogers about bringing all parts of yourself to work in life. You'll find a link to Jake's episode in the show notes.

Good Life Project is a part of the ACAST Creator Network. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you 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. You're going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. 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 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.