Good Life Project - Melissa Bernstein | Emerging From Shadow

Episode Date: March 18, 2021

Melissa Bernstein, along with her husband Doug, is the Co-Founder of the legendary toy company Melissa & Doug, which has created over 5,000 children’s products and sold billions of dollars of toys since its inception. Melissa and Doug started the business in their garage in 1988, and they’ve been on a mission ever since to provide open-ended, inventive, non-technologically driven playthings for young children. Sounds like a dream life, but throughout Melissa’s remarkable career, she kept secret her lifelong battle with severe, existential depression and anxiety. She spoke about it publicly for the first time on Good Life Project a few years back and that moment became a bit of an inciting incident to come more fully out of the shadows, share her story in a bigger way and begin to devote herself to building community, experiences, and solutions to help others moving through struggle and darkness feel less alone. Among those offerings is her moving new book, LifeLines: An Inspirational Journey from Profound Darkness to Radiant Light (https://amzn.to/3czkKKm), that takes you deep into her story and then takes you along the journey of discovery and creation that would eventually become LifeLines.com, an online ecosystem she and Doug are underwriting to support those seeking support, guidance, and community on their mental health journeys. Want more of Melissa? You can listen here to our 2018 conversation (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/melissa-bernstein/)You can find Melissa Bernstein at:Website : https://www.lifelines.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/seeklifelines/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Melissa Bernstein, along with her husband, Doug, is the co-founder of the legendary toy company, Melissa and Doug, which has created over 5,000 children's products and sold billions of dollars of toys since its inception. And Melissa and Doug started the business in their garage back in 1988. They have been on a mission ever since to provide these open-ended, inventive, non-technology driven playthings for young kids. Sounds like a dream life, right? But throughout Melissa's remarkable career, she kept her secret lifelong battle with severe existential depression and anxiety a secret.

She spoke about it publicly, I think for the first time actually, on an earlier episode of Good Life Project a few years back. And that moment became a bit of an inciting incident to come more fully out of the shadows and share her story in a much bigger way and to begin to devote herself to building community and experiences and solutions to help others moving through struggle and darkness feel less alone. Among those offerings is her moving new book, Lifelines, that takes you deep into her story and then takes you along the journey of discovery and creation that would eventually become lifelines.com, an online ecosystem that she and Doug are underwriting to really support those seeking

support, guidance, and community on their mental health journeys. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest 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 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. You and I have such a fun history around this like new season of life that you're stepping into. It was funny. I was looking back at the first email I got, and it was from someone on your team. It was October of 2017. And you were heading into the city.

I think it was to speak at SheSummit. And this person said, hey, listen, Melissa's been listening to the show. Are you cool just hanging out and saying hi? I was like, of course. And you came over. And my expectation was super cool. She I was like, of course. And you came over and my expectation was super cool. She seems like a really neat person. They've built this really awesome company, great conversation. And then we sat down and what you shared was absolutely not what I was expecting

in any way, shape or form. And it turned into then this really deep, powerful conversation on the podcast that went out into the world and I think affected a lot of people too. And it was the first time from, tell me if I'm right, actually, my recollection was it was the first time you sort of shared the fact that you had been for almost your entire life kind of living these dual existences. Yes. So it all started with you and this platform, your podcast, the Good Life Project podcast started everything for me because, you know, I listened to you. And for the first time, I think in listening to your podcast, I heard people share feelings to what I believed I had been experiencing in so many different ways.

And you always shared that your favorite book was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And after maybe the third time you mentioned it, it was in my shelf. And the crazy thing is I had read it in my 20s. But you know, when you're not ready for something, it doesn't truly speak to you. I read it again. And that book was what changed my life. You know, Viktor Frankl talks about after he got out of the concentration camp, he engaged in logotherapy, a form of existential analysis. And logotherapy is based on the contention that man's primary motivation in life is the search for meaning. And that was like the lightning bolt

that connected everything. Cause that was, I had been in a profound crisis of meaning my whole life. Yeah. So let's, I mean, we went deep into this in our first conversation, but for folks who haven't, haven't listened to that conversation, you're certainly welcome to like go revisit, but let's just kind of sort of share a bit. So people on the outside looking in, you know, like see, okay, so there's this incredible toy company, Melissa and Doug's, you know, like you have built thousands and thousands conceived of thousands and thousands of toys. You're a toy maker, you know, and, and this has been your career, your life, built it with your boyfriend turned husband, you know, raise six kids.

There's this magical story being painted from the outside looking. And in fact, it is magical in a lot of ways. But you use this word existential, right? And from the youngest, youngest age for you, there was a darkness that dropped down and really never left. Exactly. I was truly born with this sense of the utter futility of life and sort of three questions that plagued me from the moment I could form words, which were, why am I here? What is the meaning of life if we are all ultimately just going to die and sort of turn to dust? And what am I meant to do in my brief time here? And because I couldn't even verbalize those questions, much less receive the answers to

them, I lived in a profound state of terror, unsure if what I was doing was to ultimately mean anything and really feeling that sense of nihilism that there was no meaning to anything and it was all absurd. And I alone had no ability to make meaning in an utterly meaningless world. Yeah. How does that show up in a tangible way? How does it actually manifest in your life on a day-to-day basis? Those feelings were so deep and so dark and so threatening to submerge me that I basically ended up doing two things. I sort of took two separate routes. One is I lived in my imagination and I basically created a world where all was good. It was entirely in my control. I had two imaginary friends, Unky and Mickey, who became

like my best buds and they really were always smiling. They were always happy. And then the second was when I did have to live in the real world, I basically denied, repressed, and disassociated from every single thing I was feeling and created a facade based on performance and perfection and clung to that for validation with every ounce of my being. Yeah. I mean, it's having those two things, you know, like one is it's interesting when using the lens out now and you think, okay, so these are my two go-tos. You could see the former as being, okay, so maybe that's actually kind of a healthy coping mechanism. You know, there, let me create a safe world, a safe place

where, you know, I have people around me, even if they exist in my head, who I feel okay with. But then the other one, the more external manifestation, that can be so destructive psychologically, emotionally, and also socially. Yeah. It really, to be honest with you, it really threatened to take me down because I now see that for me, it was black or white. It was all or nothing. Perfection, 100%, like achieving every gold star, or a 99% was you are utterly worthless and nothing. And it was so extreme and so paralyzing because the more you achieve, the higher that bar gets and the more it threatens to take you under.

And ultimately, I did go under. I crumbled under it because we're imperfect as humans. Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting dynamic, right? It's almost like the more you perfect perfection, the more assured you are to eventually crash and burn and at a higher and higher level. So it's like, okay, so you meet this goal and then you meet this goal and then the stakes start raising and raising and raising, raising. And a lot of times it becomes more public rather than just private. So that eventually when things do fall apart, and they always do, in the end, the fall is exponentially

greater and the harm is exponentially greater. Yes. My worst times were in college. And I now see it so clearly because before I went to college, I had engaged in forms of creativity that were in my heart. And I make this big distinction between being in your head, which is the performance, and being in your heart, which is the beautiful creativity and everything good and being present. And I had engaged in music. I played music. I thought about being a professional musician. And, you know, even though I was despairing, I had a lot of lifelines that brought me in my heart.

But when I went to college and I chose not to pursue music professionally, everything changed because I suddenly went cold turkey, not playing music anymore because I was all or nothing, right? If I can't be a professional and practice four to six hours a day, then I'm not going to play at all because I won't be good. And I anchored to two forms of perfection, social acceptance and academic acceptance. And what ended up happening is I failed, in my opinion, in both of those so deeply that truly I had nothing to fall back on. I had nothing in my heart that brought me joy. I was purely a performance machine and failed in both areas. And that's when I was at my very lowest point when I didn't, honestly, I didn't want to live anymore. Yeah. I know you've shared that in the past. And I think, you know, I wonder if compounding that is at the same time, when you

pursue so aggressively that standard, it also, it can, in addition to the own suffering that that causes, it pushes so many people away from you, you know? So it's sort of like you're inadvertently, you're almost doing it because you want to feel a sense of meaning and purpose and you want to be accepted. You want to belong, not realizing that you're actually, you're eliminating the possibility of all of those things. And then you've pushed away the people who might be there to actually say, hey, what's going on? And can I be with you through this? I was trying so hard to be someone I wasn't and portray this person that wasn't even remotely me, that yes, all those beautiful, wonderful, self-deprecating people, the creative misfits,

just like me, who wanted desperately to be my friend, I looked at them like, why would I ever want to be your friend? And I rejected them. I now see in the same way I had been rejecting myself my whole life. Everything I didn them. I now see in the same way I had been rejecting myself my whole life. Everything I didn't like in myself or accept in myself, I couldn't accept in anyone else. And that's probably the thing that makes me the saddest. Yeah. I'm curious whether you've gone back in time at all, like gone way back to that season of your life and reconnected with anyone and sort of shared reflections about them? I have the most incredible story. I'm so glad you asked that. So I think I might've mentioned on the first podcast that my image of perfection physically

was to be like tall, five foot 10, long blonde hair, tan skin, and like impeccable figure. And because I was obsessed with Barbie, to be honest, and I played with Barbie every single day. And she was like my vision of what a female should look like. And of course, I looked nothing like that. I'm petite and brunette and you know, my skin isn't flawless and I'm not tanned, I burn. So I'm the opposite of that. But I was back at Duke at a board meeting and it's the craziest thing. I was sitting next to this beautiful, tall woman, five foot 10, long blonde hair, like beautifully tanned skin and really friendly. So in my, in my mind, these folks wouldn't have been friendly to me, but she was really friendly. And we started talking

and she mentioned that she was in my class at Duke and how, and we started talking about sororities and I said, oh my gosh, don't go there. Like I never got into the sorority I wanted. And I said, what sorority were you in? And she was in this sorority that I had so desperately wanted to be in and had gotten rejected from. And I, I had to do it. Like we started chatting and I explained that whole story about how I had so desperately wanted to look like her and be her and be in that sorority. And I had gotten rejected and it had put me in one of the darkest places of my life. And she looked at me with sort of this, I call it chalation, shock and elation, and just said, I can't believe you say that because it was so challenging being who I was

at Duke. And people judged me for my looks only and never thought I had a brain. And it would drive me crazy that people would purely judge me and never think to ask me anything intellectual. And all I ever wanted was to be like you, to be seen as someone who was humorous and witty and self-deprecating. And we just, I think for maybe two minutes, we looked at each other like, are you kidding? We've wasted like 30 years of our lives wanting to be each other when both of us are saying it wasn't, you know, it wasn't good to be in our bodies. So it was almost like the stars were aligning and sending me this message that like, be

careful what you wish for because it may not be everything you've dreamed it would be. Yeah. It's so amazing when we have moments like that. And then you kind of wish, well, I wish this would have happened decades earlier so I could hold out a lost time in the middle there. It's so true. And that's why I so badly want to share those experiences now, because there's nothing more exhausting or tragic than denying who you are and trying to be someone else.

And we waste our whole lives doing that, exhaust ourselves to no end until we finally one day, hopefully one day, come to see that we were were perfect exactly as we were and it's all we have. So if you can't love yourself, you can't ever even remotely love anyone else. Yeah. Such an important lesson to learn. And it's interesting, you know, cause I've often wondered, you know, what can you do to try and accelerate that awakening in people? It's, it's, it's not a small part of what I seek. How do you actually cultivate those moments without somebody having to literally psychologically and physically be brought to their knees, which so often is the thing that ends up triggering it?

I think for we creatives too, I use the word blurs. It is my blessing and my curse, the fact that I can create. And for most of my life, I wanted to kill every quality that made me eccentric and able to create. And, you know, I write a verse, you know, creatives are maligned for being overly dramatic, exceedingly despairing, and uncommonly dogmatic. But it's those divergent qualities that birth such brilliant art. And we all deserve a chance to be exalted from the start. So, you know, those qualities make us not fit in. And when you don't fit in, at least in this

culture, like you are stigmatized, you feel really alone and that you're, you're going the opposite way of traffic. And that's a very isolating feeling. And I feel like I want to speak for all those creatives that are hiding in the shadows that talk to themselves, that are really passionate, that feel so deeply that they might wake up like I do some days with tears on their pillow and not even know why and say to them, we love you exactly as you are. And if that's what it takes for you to create and change our world with your beauty, then we are going to accept you with open arms. Yeah. Sing that to the mountains, right? But the curiosity is that idea, that notion is not new. It's been out there. It's been written about. It's come at us

in so many different ways. I mean, the beautiful verse you just shared really lands. And yet still in culture for generations, there's something about our wiring that says, look, we're told this, we know it. We've read the biographies of the greatest creators and the greatest scientists and the greatest writers. And we see that so often they were the oddballs when they were young. They were the weird ones. They were the ones who didn't fit in. And that became the source of their magic when they embraced it. And yet we still don't do it. And I just wonder, I think the yearning to belong, especially through adolescence, but even in young adult life, the 20s and 30s is so overpowering that it just completely, it keeps pushing that impulse away and away and away and away. It's like we're terrified of something. Yes. And I think we're terrified of showing

the emotional spectrum. I mean, I know I felt such pressure to conform and I don't even know where it came from. It was like a gorilla sitting on my shoulder saying, don't you dare share what you're really feeling because it is going to be judged and further isolate and stigmatize you. And I grew up truly feeling that my badge of honor was bucking up and putting on the smile no matter what I felt and putting one foot in front of the other and never showing an inkling of it. And I knew I couldn't do anything other than that. And so many tell me they feel the exact same way.

I think, you know, our issue is twofold. I think one is having the courage to come out and truly show who we are in all our emotion. But the second is society then knowing how to accept us in that full spectrum of emotion. And just the other day, you know, it's a crazy story, but it really made me think, you know, I was at an event for one of my kids and I saw someone looking at me kind of with that look, like they're looking down, they kind of are like, want to run away, but they know they can't because I've already seen them. And I already felt sorry for them because I knew what, how awkwardly they felt. But this woman finally comes over with her,

her eyes averted, gives me a few like very comfortable pats from afar and says, I'm so sorry, and just runs away. And I laughed because, you know, I felt worse for her than myself. Thank goodness. I've evolved enough. But I think, you know, that was the only way she knew to show communion for what I've come out and said. And I'm so sorry, basically says, I pity you. I feel really bad for you. And I think that's kind of the way society is now. Like we don't know how to talk about these things. And we're terrified that it's either going to be contagious or we might go there ourselves because we don't learn how to touch the dark side of the emotional spectrum. We all try to stay, force ourselves to stay up in the shiny side, convey everything's okay, when we're all, in some sense, undergoing an existential crisis. I mean,

if we choose to lead an authentic life, we will have to come to terms with the fact that, you know, we're all here in our mortal form somewhat for a limited time. And if we could all recognize that, probably life would be a lot easier. Yeah, but denial is a very warm blanket for a certain season of life until it basically vanishes and leaves you cold and shivering. And eventually it always does. But you said something also, which is, it's the notion of being accepted. And I wonder if, I know this is your story, but also I'm thinking of so many others who have shared similar wiring to you, is that when you figure out, if you figure out, if there is a pathway to channel the existential angst, dread, whatever, however, like whatever level it shows up as, into source fuel for some creative act. And then that creative act is something that is admired and embraced by society. Then somehow the quirky, weird, you know, like the side that people are scared of,

it somehow becomes more acceptable to them because they see you as also the source of this magical output that society welcomes and wants and wants to praise you for? I think so. I truly believe I'm giving voice to a lot of those creatives in explaining in such detail those hypersensitivities and the fact that if you are a true creative, that's creating from the boundlessness of white space, you are going to, by definition, be hypersensitive. It's just going to be your wiring. You're going to feel the beauty and the pain of the world so deeply, it's almost unbearable. And that's going to make you more passionate, more up and down, more emotional, more sensitive than other people. And I really want to bring that to light and show that that's okay. And I think people always thought I was doing it intentionally.

And that was my big lament was whenever someone said something and I was moved to tears immediately, they'd be like, oh, you're so dot, dot, dot. You're so sensitive. Right. It's like, oh, that's her shtick. That's her shtick. It was like I was putting on to get attention when the last thing I ever wanted was to be pitied and seek attention. It was really the way I was, which made it even worse. Because then when people are saying like, oh, cut it out, you're like, cut out what? This is who I am. You're telling me to cut out who I am. And that's when people like myself retreat into our shells and we never come back out because it's too terrifying to come out of there. So I think it's critical we find those

seeds of self-expression in us. We learn to channel that darkness into light. And then yes, through that, we talk more openly about those qualities that enabled me to see those toys from nothing or write those verses from nothing so that people can begin to, I think it's education and understanding who we are as people. And just like some extroverts have the gift of gab and they can talk effortlessly, I'd love to hear how they do that. You know, maybe one day they'll want to hear what enables me to create.

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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 or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Creativity becomes one of your really powerful outlets. Like you, you learn how to take this and something in you at some point says, okay, so I can actually work with these feelings.

Like I can feel them instead of pushing them away and like spending my whole life trying to deny they exist and, and conform to people. I can actually feel them fully and then use the emotion and the energy that they're giving you as this incredible fuel to just start creating. And a primary outlet for you is toys. I mean, you're literally turning it into elements of like mechanisms of joy for millions of kids and families around the world. But as you've referenced a number of times, another outlet for you, which it sounds like

it's half coping mechanism and half sort of like creative outlet, has been writing from the earliest days that has been a consistent through line. Yeah. I mean, both of them. And I think the toys were the first time that I realized, and this was my existential journey going from existential nihilism, which is the worst form when you feel like there's no meaning and we cannot make meaning within a meaningless world to existentialism, which is where we realize that despite the fact that there may be no meaning,

we alone are able to make meaning for ourselves and must make meaning as our sort of thwart against the meaninglessness of existence. So when I created innately at maybe age two, my most innate form was writing. I wrote these rhyming verses from the time I could even think. They just poured out of me and music. I wrote musical compositions too. So those were my most innate forms, but they never brought me meaning because I never allowed them to see the light. I was so terrified by their darkness because they were very, very dark and questioned life's meaning. I kept them hidden away. 3,000 of them, when I finally brought them out of the shadows, they stayed locked away my entire life basically and never

brought me meaning because they never touched other people. But when I started making toys in my early 20s, I saw this incredible thing because I never realized I had a choice. I thought the creativity, the dark creativity just took me as a victim and channeled through me. And I was basically like, I'm at your mercy, just take me. And it was just darkness and made me even sadder. But when I saw, I had a choice to either make darkness out of darkness or darkness into light. And I could channel that same despair that had written all those dark verses into toys, no less, that were just light and bright and could touch a child and ignite their imagination, I saw this profound sense of control over my life, that I could actually control the direction my creativity would take and harness it into something that could touch others. And that

really was the first dot. That changed my life because I now saw there was a meaning to all that nihilism that I had faced the first 25 years That changed my life because I now saw there was a meaning to all that nihilism that I had faced the first 25 years of my life. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting also to me is that that awakening and then you actually fully embracing it and doing it, you're not saying these feelings went away because I think there's a tendency for us to want to look at your story and say, oh, she found this thing. It was her therapy. And then she started to feel better. And everything was like all sunshine and butterflies and end of story, lived a happy life, yada, yada, yada. But I think it's more interesting because it's a much more nuanced, that is not in fact the story that you're telling. And I think the story that you are telling and the truth, the real story, is much more

freeing for people. I agree. So it's really a twofold story. And the second part starts where our first podcast left off. Because the first half of the story was I was able to take all this darkness that brought me such despair and channel it into positivity through making toys. And that became, you know, my mantra, which is step on out of the head, moving into the heart, free to channel all dread into jubilant art. And that word jubilant

is so key there because it was actually the act of taking the dread and channeling it into positivity. But I realized, you know, and I've done that for 32 years. I've made toys, close to 10,000 of them, you know, millions and millions. And it has been a profound sense of peace and salvation through it. However, after your podcast and after I began receiving, I'm talking hundreds, Jonathan, of letters from your viewers saying that I gave words to the ineffable and gave voice to things they had been feeling and never felt courageous enough to express, I knew I was going to have to do something more. And unfortunately, it was going to first involve myself because although I had channeled the

darkness into light and made toys, the irony is I still hadn't yet accepted those burdensome, onerous qualities that gave me the ability to create. And I knew I was going to have to take this arduous journey inward, stop racing outside myself for the answers and come home and finally try to accept myself in totality. And that was the first time ever I realized I needed help. And being a perfectionist, I never admitted I needed help. I never could admit I was flawed. I never could ever in my entire life admit I made a mistake. It was too terrifying to admit imperfection. But I knew I couldn't make that journey without the help of a trained professional. So I enlisted the help of a therapist who's become one of my dearest friends.

And together about four years ago, this was really sort of right at the time of the podcast, I started to, for became so deep, dark, but ultimately revelatory as I ended up realizing I can stare despair in the eye in all my nakedness and emerge that I decided I needed to devote sort of the rest of my life to showing others the light and recreating the journey that I took so others could take it as well. Yeah. So it's really, you know, it was really the beginning of a new season for you, both starting personally, like, let me go deep into this, you know, this thing.

And then also realizing, okay, it's very much the hero's journey or the heroine's journey. You know, it's, it's like you, you go out, you're like, okay, it is time. I've been the reluctant, reluctant, reluctant, reluctant, but like, I can't, I can't not do this anymore. You go out into the world and just like the classic, you know, Joseph Campbell, get brought to your knees in a lot of different ways and sometimes really dark, hard ways. But you have your allies and you find these things and then come back. And then it's like, okay, so what do I do now that I'm back? Do I go back into, you know, like toy company is still going great. I'm still a mom.

Or am I changed enough that now I have to make a different choice about how I bring myself to the world? Yes. It's like suddenly the stains on your lens get cleaned off and you see the world in an entirely different light and you know that you've been forever changed. And I think, you know, and the other part of my journey too was philosophical. I had two roots. One was the psychotherapeutic through the talk therapy and really sort of going in and really divulging who I was and that I was more than just one

emotion because my whole life I was just great, fine, perfect. I didn't know how to feel. I never felt tired. I never felt sick. I just was a robot, truly. And that took a long time to actually come back into my body and come home to myself because I was racing throughout the world and never took the trip home. But the other was, and that made sense. So I was able through that to make sense extrinsically of my life. But in order to make meaning intrinsically, I needed to go back to philosophy because I realized I wasn't the first person who ever pondered life's meaning. And Viktor Frankl took me back there too. There were many, many, many wise people long before I who discussed these things and sought to find meaning in a meaningless world. And it was through them just in the last year that I truly have come to find

peace because I've understood how they found peace in the journey and didn't succumb to the madness. And one of my verses when I was really young, I was probably five years old, I wrote, I'll succumb to utter madness and most surely go insane if I cannot numb life's sadness or make meaning from its pain. So I was always trying to find my way out. I just couldn't until I used the wisdom of those before me and really understood that there's no real answer. But once we have awareness, we have a responsibility through engaging in the flow of life and committing ourselves to finding our own meaning to make the most out of the short time we have here. And that's kind of where I ended up.

Yeah. And I want to go into where that led you and what that's now led you to create, which is really cool. But there's another question that's spinning in the back of my mind, and that's this. When you say yes to the journey that you've been through over the last four years. Some of that yes is also an acceptance that, okay, so I've reached this point in my life where I'm financially successful. I'm fulfilled by a lot of the work that I do. I have a good relationship. I like the relationship with my family. How much of that is built around structures and assumptions and a way of me being in the world in relation, because I like all that stuff. But if I change, how does it affect that? Because I think a lot of people are terrified of moving into a process of deep self-discovery because the trappings of

security and safety and stability and okayness are kind of like, they're like, I don't necessarily want to break that. And I'm afraid if I do take this deep dive, it's all going to come tumbling down. And I'm wondering whether that was part of your sort of like process or thoughts or concerns. That's a great question. You know, the cry of my own soul to be seen authentically had gotten so loud and was so overpowering that believe it or not, it didn't matter anymore. I was so exhausted from, you know, pain plus suffering equals resistance. I was in such pain and I was in such resistance and I was suffering, you know, I'm sorry, pain plus resistance equals suffering.

I was resisting and I was in pain and I was suffering to such an extent that there came a point when I didn't have the energy anymore to keep resisting and it didn't matter. It was like, I will not be at peace until I finally like unshroud myself from this, you know, these layers that I've just been wearing my entire life and finally say, it's all I got. Like, here I am. And I have to say, it was really an incredible feeling to know that I'm not hiding anymore. Like, it's who I am, take it or leave it. And I really have to say like, heeding my own cry was more important than being accepted.

But I will say, you know, one of the most fascinating things was, so I do all this work, it's taken me years and I'm not, you know, I continue doing the journey. It doesn't really end. Sorry to be a spoiler here, but I do all this work and I'm thinking, of course, because I start to go into my head like, oh, every day is going to be blissful now, right? I fully accept who I am. I honor myself. I know I'm a full spectrum of emotion now.

And one day I wake up and I feel like my eye, you know, how you first open your eyes and you're like, how do I feel today? And my sense is, Ooh, I'm feeling really low. And I get up and I'm like, Whoa, I'm really low. And the first thing I see, I start, you know, getting emotional. And I remember that first day after sort of, I finished my first journey and I felt low, I was back in my head berating myself. I was like, Melissa, what's going on? You did the work. You've spent four years doing the work. You're at the peak now. There's no despair. You accept yourself. What's going on? Great. Does this mean you'll forever be depressed? And I started going into the rabbit hole again. And I realized it took me another couple of sessions until I realized that that's the whole point. The whole point is to be,

you must allow and accept everything. And that means that at least half the time you're going to be in the lower portion of the emotional spectrum and you can't judge it. You can't deny it. You can't resist it. You just have to allow it as being part of being human. And when, you know, the pursuit of happiness is the American dream, it's really hard culturally to understand that that's not true. And life is about just being in totality. Yeah, that so resonates. I recently wrote a piece about melancholy and how it's viewed so negatively by society.

And I was like, actually, if you look at the roots of the word, yes, deep depression, clinical depression, things that really can be harmful to you and take you away from people you love and stop you from being who you are in the world. Devastating. But the experience of sort of like rolling intermittent melancholy is not necessarily a bad thing if you understand how to sort of just be with it and know that, you know, like it's Tara Brock's phrase that I love so much, this too. You know, I think denying that is what layers on so much more suffering than the actual experience or the fundamental emotion would engender if you just said, yeah, this is here today. And that's just a part of it.

That is exactly, exactly right. And so I've become in my practice, if I'm having a lower day, I'll wake up and I'll say, Ooh, I'm going to create a lot of verses today. Because I find in those times when I'm more reflective and sadder, you know, I come up with more epiphanies because I'm thinking more, pondering more, maybe the dark side of reality. And that's okay. And if I allow it, I naturally just come right back up to equanimity. That's so interesting. I read a study a number of years back that showed that folks who tend to be slightly more towards the pessimistic than optimistic side of the sort of like just general affect also tend to see their life and life in general more clearly. And so you can actually respond to the world more as it is rather than sort of like the delusion of how you think or wished it could be. And I wonder if that's part of what allows you to then say, okay, so I'm seeing, I'm in more truth at this moment,

which lets me document that, share it, like draw from it. So believe it or not, you know, existential depression is not in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental illnesses. It's not considered sort of an affliction that's diagnosed. And many psychotherapists who have studied it say that it's actually not pathological. It's philosophical. And it's really just our knowledge of reality is just not shrouded by denial. So we're really not afflicted with something that needs a pathology. We're really afflicted with something that needs philosophy

to help understand how to make meaning in a world that to us, from very early on, seems somewhat absurd. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest 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 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 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. So when you emerge from this place, when you're, I'm not even going to use the word emerge.

Like when you reach this moment in your life, because the process of emergence and processing is like, it never ends. Right. But when you get to a place where you're like, okay, so, so I need to be different in the role and I need to devote myself to creating something different, to offering something different because there are a lot of people like me and I need to share what I've learned in a way that allows other people to step into it. You could have done that in so many different ways, but you chose the form of a book called Lifelines, which is stunning, by the way. Thank you. I picked it up and I was like, is this five pounds or something?

I was like, it's kind of breathtaking. And also along with a platform that goes along with it. And which really is, you know, so it's fascinating to me because the book is, it shares volumes and volumes of your verse over the years, moving through these like different seasons and different awakenings and different moments. And we'll talk about that a bit. And then it's bundled with this online platform that basically is designed to take people through their own similar journey. You know, like I kind of looked at, it's a weird analogy, but my first response was,

oh, this is like, this is Dora the Explorer for grownups and the inner life. I love that. I've never heard that. That's perfect. So tell me, I'm curious as a creative person also, like what led you to choose these forms of expression as the way that you were going to step into this? That's a great, great question. So it started with the fact that when I received a couple hundred letters from listeners on your show, I determined to talk to every one of them.

I wrote every single one of them back. I spent like six months writing every one of them back and saying that anyone who wanted to talk personally with me, I would speak with. And that experience was probably the greatest of my life because in those deep conversations, I saw that we were very much the same in everything we had experienced and everything we felt. And we really all are. We don't believe it, but we really all are. The only difference, and it was a big one actually, was I had found the channel from darkness to light and they hadn't. And they all were saying the same thing to me, Melissa, please shine the light on our path. Show me how to do it. And that was the calling. They were saying it one after another, like, tell me what to do, show me how to do it. So the first step was to share my

own truth because I knew unless I showed compassion for myself and came out as I truly was in all my darkness, that I would never be able to truly be there with someone else. So that was the book. And the book, basically I took my 3000 verses. I said, I could make a bestseller book. And the book, basically, I took my 3,000 verses. I said, I could make a bestseller book. You know, I know how to make bestselling toys. It could have all these cute anecdotes about my life and my kids and Melissa and Doug and show photos of the early days. And like many people had asked me to do that over the years, but I knew it would not be

serving my soul. I knew that would just be like creating another, you know, product. And I couldn't do that. This was about serving those verses that had been hidden in the darkness for 50 years. So I spread them out, 3,000 of them, and I divided them into the categories they fell in. And they actually fell into those 11 volumes of the book, about 300 in each category. Of course, I didn't include all of them. So they really determined the book because they were the pieces of my shattered soul that I had never accepted, but they were all part of me. So that formed the book. And the book was really just a bid to offer myself in all my vulnerability and give others

the courage to do the same. Because I think until we have the courage to share our true story with the world, you know, that's the beginning. That's sort of the first step. So then we could have stopped there, of course, with the book. But Doug and I never stopped there. And we knew we had such a greater role to really help ease the stigma of mental health and show others kind of three things. One is that they're not alone.

And that sounds really cliched until you understand my story, which is, you know, for most of my life, I felt utterly and completely unaccepted, rejected, and alone. And when you feel that way as a child, you feel so stigmatized that no one will ever accept you. It is the darkest place to be. And I don't want anyone to ever feel that way again. So we offered a community that will accept anyone as exactly who they are with open arms. The second premise is that we all have the ability to channel our darkness into light because I truly believe that every one of us is born innately with the beautiful sparks

of self-expression in our soul. We just become so burdened by societal convention and doing what we think others will accept from us that we never heed the cry and we never kindle those sparks into a bonfire with humanity. So our job is to help folks really shine the light on their souls and help them discover those sparks in themselves and then help them to set them free to ignite with everyone else's sparks. will not find ultimate peace or fulfillment until we make that journey inward and accept ourselves in totality. And that became, you know, the journey, which I call the journey to inner space. It was so profound and revelatory for me that I wanted to recreate that on the website and let others take it as well.

And by the way, our site is entirely free. Doug and I, from the goodness of 32 years creating toys, are completely funding it because we want everyone to be able to take that journey and really discover who they are. Yeah. I mean, sort of hearing the walkthrough and hearing how you thought about the book and how you thought about the platform and the community and the journey. It's really interesting to just sort of like hear how you came to that place and how you and Doug sort of like envision this. The actual website I think is, I mean, the book itself is gorgeous. It's filled with so many verses and imagery and just the platform itself, the tech, the online thing that's available to everybody is also, it's interesting to me because it's like this fascinating blend of what you've learned,

your psychology, very logical, vetted, intelligent steps and actions, practical things. But also it's the toy maker in you. It's the desire to take somebody on this magical, mystical journey and not frame this as, okay, people, you know, like buckle up. This is going to be hard. This is going to be like, this is, it's going to be really brutal. So get ready for like, you present it as this, like a magical mystery tour. Like, yes, we're going to do hard things, but we're going to break it down.

And you sort of, you create your own language, your own context, your own culture for people to step into, which feels like the feeling that I got from looking at this was, oh, I could do this. And I wondered if like, I'm thankful to be in like a calm and relatively easeful state, like in this moment in time. And I'm sure I'll move in calm and relatively easeful state in this moment in time. And I'm sure I'll move in and out of that as we all do. But I was wondering, would somebody who came to this in a much tougher state also look at this and say, and feel the same thing? Yeah, I can step into this.

Even though I'm really struggling right now, this feels accessible and doable and friendly to me. And it feels like a lot of that, it was so deliberate with the way that you and Doug put this whole thing together. I'm so glad you said that. That means so much to me. Yeah. I mean, when we thought about like, what do we want lifelines.com to be? You know, it was what we've done with toys. It's taking complicated concepts and just simplifying to make that experience just beautiful and make the engagement simple and effortless because really the goal is to find healing, right? It's not to get engrossed in the process. I mean, that doesn't do us any good. So we created, it was so much fun. I felt like I was creating an entire new world. You know, we created a backpack called the inward and onward backpack, and you have acorns you can

collect and pine cones. And we have this mood compass where you can track your feelings. So it's not, hey, we're not doing anything any hero hasn't done on their journey. And we're using a lot of exercises that exist. Like we're not, you know, reinventing things. I just wanted to put it, as you said, in my own simple way so that all of us can do it fairly easily. And one of the most incredible things is the very therapist who's become my dear friend, who I took this journey with, helped me to create it and make it therapeutically sound. So she is now part of Lifelines and really part of our community and helping others. And we're just peer to peer. We know, we're not pretending to be professionals

and have all the answers. But I think the idea that we can sort of make this journey side by side and really start to look at ourselves quizzically. And really, instead of again, racing outside for the answer, start to realize that the answers are within us. I mean, that is profound in and of itself. When you start to think, wait a second, I'm racing so far and wide to find these answers. Wait, they're inside me? Like that alone, if we can get people to just stop for long enough to realize that, we'll have done some good.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me also that this is arriving in the world at this particular moment in time, when the last year for a lot of people has been stunningly isolating really, really hard, you know, like physically removing ourselves from being in community with others. And also a lot of people have been hit financially, you know, which makes finding a way through challenging for a lot of folks. So I was wondering whether, you know, because I have to imagine with the level of depth that I'm seeing on the surface, you know, this was not a 12 month project. This has probably been going on for years, but I'm curious whether as you're working on this and then you're sort of watching what's happening in the world over

the last year, you're kind of like shifting gears and figuring out like, what does this mean to us, to this, to what we're doing and how do we adapt it? Like how do we make different decisions? Yeah. I mean, I think it wasn't intentional to come out now, but I think it couldn't have come at a better time because my existential crisis came from birth, but existential crises can come from situational times too. And my goodness, if people haven't been having existential crises this last year, it's the same thing, whether you had it your whole life

or whether you have it right now, having a meeting crisis, you're still looking for those answers to the why. So I truly feel like I feel so blessed to be able to be doing this right now when I think more people than ever are questioning life's meaning and sort of wondering why. And they're very well primed for taking this journey because let's be honest, without even doing anything, basically, we were forced to hit a brick wall and stop and pretty much everything shattered around us. All the

pretensions, right? All the convention, all the structure, all the routine, like went out the window. So it's kind of a really good time for people to say, okay, I don't wear makeup anymore. I don't do my hair. I don't put on nice clothes. Like I might as well dive inward and discover myself while I'm at it. Yeah. I think we have the prompt. We've been sort of disrupted. And then we're also, we can't be out in the world. So we're sort of like, okay, so what am I going to do with this moment, with this time, with this sort of season? Yeah. The timing is really, it's kind of fascinating. You brought up one other thing, which I wanted to season. Yeah. The timing is really, it's kind of fascinating.

You brought up one other thing, which I wanted to reference or ask you about, which is, and I saw this in the work that you're offering, which is a very clear recognition of the fact that if you are in current crisis, this is not going to fix that. If you are having really dark thoughts, suicidal ideation, if you're in a place of profound crisis right now, here's what you need to do. And it's not take this journey with us, but you need to actually do anything you can to work with a qualified healthcare professional. And I thought it was really powerful that you put that very front and center. Absolutely. There's nothing more important. You know, I know when you are feeling in that dark place, you need someone who's really

experienced to help you. And part of this is admitting that. Like, I am so proud that I finally had the courage to admit that. And now I tell everyone, I'm like, I'm going to my therapist today because I view it now as a source of like, instead of weakness, how I always viewed it. If you say I need help, it's actually my, my, my flawed perception was so wrong. It's now to me, the greatest sort of source of strength to say I need help. So yes, we don't want anyone to face dark feelings alone. I mean, they should go seek out a professional and it was

the greatest thing I ever did. So, um, and we're just peer support, you know, we're, we're here to, to show you, we care and we'll accept you and all that. But, but yes, if it gets, if it gets darker than that, I would say people really need to enlist professional help. Yeah. When I think back about the story you shared earlier, that kind of like started a lot of this conversation where, you know, like somebody in your community kind of was felt forced to come and, you know, give you the obligatory tap on the shoulder. And for some reason, what just popped into my mind as you're sort of sharing all this is that person, you know, and we, we have all probably been that person at various moments in our lives, right? Because, and a lot unease, I wonder, is because we know there's something inside of us that

is the same. And by going over and tapping and saying, whatever it is, good for you, it's less about the other person and it's more about us doing something to reaffirm in ourselves like, oh, we're not them. Exactly. Which keeps us from ever saying, well, yeah, we are. And maybe it's time to actually do something with this. Oh, I love that.

Yes. I'm so sorry basically puts them above me and says, wow, it's really a shame you're that way. I'm sorry for you. And it does, it separates us rather than unites us. And that's what I fear, you know, because I can take it now. And I don't, I don't see it that way because I'm not sorry for myself. But I know when people said that to me as a child, it made me feel horribly stigmatized and that something was wrong with the only me I knew. And we don't want to do that any further. We want to show our kids that we see them in all their full spectrum of emotion.

Love that. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So you know I'm going to ask you one last question here, because I've asked you it once before, a number of years back. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the praise to live a good life, what comes up? I'm hoping you'll let me read a verse, recite a verse, I should say. I don't read any of them. They're in my head. I would love that. I'm hoping you'll let me recite a verse because it really, it's the second to last verse in my last volume, which is liberation, which was when I finally became free of all my burdens and was able to sort of unite in the flow of humanity. I was solely outcome driven with results deemed black or white, some days wallowing in anguish, others basking in delight. Yet a hostage to perfection left me serving time in jail

with no courage to take risks or the capacity to fail till at last I welcomed grays to flow amid the other two for there's nothing more profound than living life in every hue. So these words basically are about finally making the choice to stop looking outside for the answers with the courage to plunge inward and accept ourselves in our full spectrum of emotion. And as exactly as we are embracing the duality of life in all its darkness and light in its highs and lows and joy and pain, living each and every day in all its glory. I love that. And that is a great place to wrap. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jonathan. This has been amazing. in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment

that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app

so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold.

See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest 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 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 gonna 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 gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.