Good Life Project - One Last Secret | Augusten Burroughs

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

Augusten Burroughs knows how to keep a secret. An autodidact with no formal education (https://www.augusten.com/) beyond elementary school, he began working as a copywriter in his late teens and spent 18 years creating global ad campaigns. Behind the scenes, though, he was falling apart, an alcoholic, harboring the effects of what he describes as a wildly-chaotic, abusive and destructive childhood that he'd eventually detail in the massive New York Times bestseller-turned major motion picture, Running With Scissors (https://amzn.to/2qkxRus).He's since written numerous follow-on memoirs and novels, and crafted a life as a successful writer. But, there was one area Augusten never told anyone about, even his husband. Until one day, it literally came bursting onto the page. It was time to "come clean" with this one final, and deeply-provocative part of himself, detailed in his new memoir, Toil & Trouble (https://amzn.to/32mSkNk). In today's conversation, we unwrap the layers that led Augusten from a traumatic childhood through to his wild successes, the life-saving role that writing played in his recovery from alcoholism, what it’s like to navigate the world with atypical sensitivities, and finding the gift among the unfixable things in life.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) 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, Augustin Burroughs, is the author of a series of novels and incredibly transparent, funny, provocative memoirs, including Running With Scissors, which is the story of his early upbringing after his mom, who was dealing with mental illness and other things, ended up dropping him at the house of a local psychiatrist to be raised in what he depicts as a kind of wildly untraditional and at times abusive household. That book became a massive bestseller and a movie back in 2006, starring people like Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin, Evan Rachel Wood. And along the way, he's continued to write. And when asked if there was anything he was holding back, because he's known as being so transparent,

so real, so open, he'd always answer no. But in his latest book, Toil and Trouble, we learned there was in fact a very, very big and deep secret that he had been keeping to himself for his entire life, one that was central to his identity. And it was time for it to finally come out. He didn't mean for it to happen. It literally just started channeling through his fingers into the computer, which he described as essentially destroying while writing this in such haste. In today's conversation, we explore Augustine's upbringing, his early career in advertising, which is kind of amazing considering he actually kind of stopped his education in primary school, his descent into addiction for a lot of years, and then the moment

that would pull him out of it and send him back into the world of writing and the career and the life that he has now. So excited to share this with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology,

it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. 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. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Very often when I sit down with somebody who's written a memoir, you know, sort of like the story of their life, you've written memoir, but you've written memoirs, plural, that tend to really focus in and zero in on almost like seasons of your life. And it's been interesting also because you haven't done it chronologically as well.

It wasn't like I'm going to start at the beginning and then slowly work my way up to the present. Right. But the early years, I mean, I think have been pretty well documented by you. It involved you, Northampton, a dad who was a professor of philosophy, and also, as you've written, a distant man. Yeah. Is that putting it mildly? Yeah, right. For those who don't know you and your work working your stories, really the earlier days also, and your mom who really struggled with mental illness, paint the picture a little bit of what the early days were like. Okay. Well, my parents met

in college. They were both from the South, from Georgia. And my father proposed to my mother by saying, if you don't marry me, I'll kill myself. So then there you go. From day one, things were off to a bad start. My mother was a poet. She was a painter and she was a poet and she earned the terminal degree in the arts, be diagnosed as sociopathic he had a sort of a mask that that uh would would appear in public when he was very very polite you know to the to the people at the checkout counter and he he would always have a smile but as as uh it repeated himself you know being a a professor that he was. But as soon as he turned his back, the smile was gone. And when he would be drunk, he would be very sadistic.

I mean, he didn't spank me. He didn't do things like that. He haunted me, you know. He did much more clever, sort of more diabolical little things. But my parents had a terrible, terrible relationship. It was just nonstop fighting. My mother was, when I was about 11, it began, 10, 11, 12, mental illness just took over her mind. And they went for marriage counseling with a doctor, an untraditional doctor. This was the 1970s and he was very,

very untraditional. And he wildly mismedicated her. And she just went off the rails. My parents divorced. My father was out of the picture. My mother couldn't raise me. And so she signed me over to this doctor and this doctor lived in this large, crazy, old, falling down pig pen of a house with several of his biological children and other adopted, you know, children, long-term psychiatric patients. Um, and there was a pedophile, his adopted son, um, who lived in the barn behind the house and he became, you know, my special friend. So I was sexually molested from a, from a young age and that was totally fine and encouraged. You know, it was like, I mean, it was no secret that we were lovers. And it was only actually when I was an adult and a therapist explained to me, well, no, that wasn't a relationship. You were a little boy. That's what sexual abuse is. It's when an adult takes advantage of the dynamic, the age difference.

You know, I mean, that's completely wrong. You may have, you know, felt older, but you're not. You're a little kid. You can't be in a relationship with someone who's, you know, in their 30s and be that age. So that's, but there was also a lot ofies and be that age. Um, so that's, uh, but there was also a lot of fun. I mean, it was a lot of fun. It was, I mean, there was no bedtime. There was, there were no rules, no supervision, and it was just a crazy, very eccentric, um, life. The one thing I think I learned was to depend on myself because I had no adult around me. I was terrible. I was bullied at school and I left school. The fourth grade is the last

grade I ever completed academically. And, um, there was no adult I could go to, to say, look here, this is what's happening. Um, so I had to figure it out on my own. Yeah. And, um, in, uh, later on my, in my, uh, twenties that, you know, I got into advertising as a teenager. I was very successful, and it was very easy for me, and I started drinking right when I got into advertising. I was an alcoholic for a long time and went into recovery, and that's another book. It's interesting. At a young age, you become all the voices that you need

because effectively there's nobody to turn to and say, is this okay? Is this not okay? Is this good? Is this bad? Is this constructive or destructive? And it's all got to be internalized, which I can't even imagine. At any age, I think everybody struggles with that. But to be young in an environment where you literally have to play every role in your life and don't really feel like there's a single person that you can look to to help. Right. I mean, I learned a lot of really tough, hard, ugly stuff. I mean, I remember when my

mother first left me with the doctor in the doctor's house, when I realized, oh, this isn't overnight. This isn't for a week. This is it. I mean, I had been like a really prissy kid in my polyester suit in a very neat, immaculate house. My mother could have been an interior designer. She had an amazing taste. So we had, you know, all this sort of Danish modern furniture and white shag carpeting. And to go from that sort of world into absolute physical and emotional chaos felt catastrophic. And I can remember feeling like I'm going to die. Like, I'm like, I need my mother. My father was out of the picture. So now I don't have a mother and like kids, like you got to have your parents or you, I mean, I really thought I was going to like die. I didn't know how, like a heart attack or something.

And it was a real, uh, rude awakening for me to realize, wow. So wait, when we took that trip, when I was five years old to Mexico, my mother, her best friend and her best friend's little boy, who was my age, also five, he got lost in Mexico, in Mexico City. We found him. But for a while, he was missing. So I thought, well, what if that had been me? Like, would I have died, you know, at five? And I thought, well, no, really.

Because I could have found somebody would have found me and loved me or taken care of me somehow, you know. Or if not, I could have, like, you know, eaten out of dumpsters. So technically, I guess I don't need parents at all. And I realized that really young and parents are, and I tell this to young people now too, who struggle, who have maybe abusive parents or, um, parents who are addicts. You know what? Parents are a luxury. That's the brutal truth. Paraluxury. I mean, if you have one parent who loves you and takes care of you and is supportive, you have one parent lotto. If you have two off the charts, if you have none,

Hey, that sucks, but that's the way it is. So you absolutely have to accept it. And you're going to have to do this on your own and you can, no it's not fair but fairness is not woven into the weft and weave of the universe fairness is not a thing it's not it's a fairy tale yeah a lot in life is absolutely not fair and so you've got to then uh work with it and it's best to um that's why that's what honesty comes in. Being honest with yourself. Telling yourself the actual truth. Okay, this is what it really is.

I don't want to have to look at how ugly it is, but this is how ugly it is. So what can I do from here? And that's empowering. That does give you strength because that's when you tap into your own inner reserves. And I think I did that from a very, very young age. Which I think is one of the things that's so unusual, right? Because I think a lot of us come to the conclusion, I think at some point in our lives that, you know, like the everything is equal, everything is fair, sort of quote mythology, is largely that. And we are in no small way responsible for a lot of where we end up.

And of course, there are circumstances that control a certain part of it. But to come to that realization at a point where the average kid doesn't have the skills, the coping mechanisms, the cognitive abilities and presence to actually understand how to step into the role of being intentional. I mean, it's not only unusual, but then to actually be that person who steps into it and says, okay, this sucks, but let me own it, and how do I actually move forward from here? Really unusual and extraordinary.

Not necessarily a good thing to have to experience that early in life. But it sounds like it taught you something about yourself and the world in a season where most people don't have those lessons. It did. And I think, you know, one thing that I believe, because people have said similar things to me. They've said, you know, I don't think I would have survived that. What is it about you?

As though I have some sort of special survival, was born with a factory-installed toolkit for surviving. And I think that, you know, people have far greater reserves for survival than they may imagine. It's true that the majority of us don't have this kind of a childhood, you know, they're not left entirely on their own. But there are a lot of people who are and who do have to fend for themselves. And develop, I mean, resilience at a very young age. You can also become, you know, very bitter and angry

and that's the thing that I never did because I don't blame. I mean, blaming is a useless thing. Just like an apology, really. But as a kid, like, how do you not go to that? Because it's not efficient. But even as a kid, like, how do you, how do you not go to that? Because it's not efficient. Yeah. But even as a kid, like, in your mind, you're telling yourself. Yeah. It's not like, blaming is not going to, it's, it's, okay. So as a kid, I was, I mean, as a really, really, really young kid, I was obsessed with what we now call theoretical physics. I wanted to understand

where are we? What is this? I mean, what is this? You know, I was very, you know, thoughtful about things. And to focus on what I didn't have or the wrongs that had been done or my mother's illness and the resulting, the neglect that resulted from it. Those moments have actually passed. Time is like a river. You know, it just goes. And that moment that I just said the word, it goes, that moment is gone now from the world. It doesn't exist. The me, the person I was when I said that,

not even 18 seconds ago, is gone. So every single minute, everything is reinvented. Everything. We are brand new every second. And to focus on the past or to blame isn't going to alter anything. It's going to keep me trapped. It's going to keep me trapped. And the reason I know that is because for a while I did it. I absolutely did. I spent years being furious at my father and focused on him. And it's like it wears a neurological groove. You wear a neurological groove into yourself.

And it becomes difficult to break free of it. Because really, we want to have understanding of why things happen to us in a certain way. We want closure and that's not a real thing. Like you can't get that. You're never going to understand why so-and-so did something to you. Never because you can't really get inside of them. We don't get answers. We don't get closure.

That's not part of the deal. So you've got to accept that. And when you move on, you don't need it because you're not living there. It's like when people talk about being haunted by the past, a lot of people get stuck in life haunted by the past, but that's not accurate. If you're really honest with yourself, you're in the shower one day and you've bought a new shampoo or a new conditioner because it was on sale. You'd never tried it before. Squirt a dime-sized dollop in your hand and the smell of it brings you back instantly to when you were 16 and a half and you have this flashback of actually something horrible that happened when you were 16 and a half. And so you revisit it in your mind.

You go back and you think about that horrible day, that horrible thing that happened to you. And you allow yourself to go back and feel those feelings and you can feel the hormones rushing through your body, the stress, the adrenaline, the fight or, you know, the flight or fight. And getting worked up and the past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. And learning not to do that, practicing not doing that is how you move forward. Yeah. So when you're moving through, you end up not in school. Eventually, though, you go back and get your GED.

And then as you shared, you go into the world of advertising in New York. Why? What was that about? Like what was in it for you? So at first I had gone as a teenager. I enrolled in a trade school that doesn't exist anymore. It was called Control Data Institute. It was to learn how to program computers. I think I actually remember commercials for that.

Well, it's funny you say that because it was actually right about, right before graduation when I saw a commercial on the air for Control Data Institute. And it was like, hey, you, they're on the couch. You get up and train for tomorrow's career today. And that's when it really hit me that I'm not at MIT. I'm not at Harvard. I'm at a cheesy trade school. And that ad is so horrible. I could do that.

Like, I could do that better. And then I realized, like, advertising, people, like, do that. That's a thing. Like I could do that better. And then I realized like advertising, people like do that. That's a thing. Like that's a career and ads are disgusting. I mean, I, they're all horrible, so I can clean it up. And I sat down and I rewrote all the ads in the magazine and I started calling ad agencies and make a long story short, you know, I got a job in San Francisco. I had to move across the country,, I got a job in San Francisco. I had to move across the country, but I got a job in advertising and I was immediately very, very successful. I mean, I won everything I ever pitched. I just, it was like, because I'm good at it. I am really,

really good at solving problems instantly. I mean, I can remember UPS having a, they were a client, absolutely freaked out when Federal Express became FedEx because it was sexy. They're purple. They felt like we're dowdy. We're brown. And I was trying to explain to them, you are ubiquitous. Once I started working on your account, I saw a UPS truck every 30 seconds somewhere. So what you have to do

is you have to not paint your trucks. You just have to be more brown. You have to define brown. And they didn't get it. That was the one failure. Oh, the beige. They didn't get it. Later they did.

It's interesting the way your brain works when you look at the world of advertising. Because I think a lot of people go into that because it's expressive and creative and flashy and sexy. And you see it all. And it's none of those things actually. Right. It's tedious and disgusting. But it looks like the way your brain approached it was, okay, so here's a clear problem. For some reason, my brain works in a way where it just, it solves that problem like fairly readily

and in a really good, quick way that's helpful. And it was more like math for you. It was a puzzle. It was not ever about writing. And I mean, looking back, I really shouldn't have been a copywriter. I should have been on the strategic account side because of what I'm really good at is knowing, um, positioning. I mean, I know what a brand should be.

I'm not, I was not the best in terms of creative. Like there were way more creative people because I didn't really care about that. I'd wanted the thing that really mattered to me was the the point. What are we? What's the solution?

The solution for you, UPS, is to actually embrace your brown and be more brown. Go do it. But I had to be the one to actually go do it. I was also an alcoholic and it got into my drinking time. Yeah.

And that's also, so that's the backdrop of all this. Like that's the bigger context is that you're out in the world. You're earning a living. You're doing this thing. You're really, really good at it. And at the same time, you're living a whole separate life in the bottle. Yeah. And a lot of people do, I think, you know.

But I would, you know, just live in squalor. I mean, I just lived in absolute squalor. I was a bed wetter. I was the kind of drunk who'd wet the bed and never change the sheets. They'd be dry by the time I got home. And I never took the bottles out. So I had thousands of empty beer cans or bottles in the apartment, depending upon what I was drinking.

And then I hid it or tried to hide it. It was just a terrible attempt, I think, to run away from myself and to escape. I want oblivion, to not really look at certain things. Writing was an accident. It occurred accidentally. Nah, take me there. Well, I had, I went through rehab did not get sober for front row center seats for this death. So I'm going to drink again. And I did. And, um, you know, I had all the, all the symptoms of hallucinating spiders and all the symptoms of late stage chronic alcoholism. Um, one, I, I quit advertising and did it freelance so I could, I could, um,

get paid while, uh, just writing from home. I never had to actually see people. And one ordinary morning for no reason at all, I sat down at my disgusting table and started to write. Now at this time, about a year and a half, I watched, um, home shopping networks because back then there was no live television, believe it or not. Like when you turned it on, I mean, it was, you know, watched CNN, for example, they would be playing broadcasts from earlier in the day. However, home shopping was live 24 hours a day and it was having company. So I would just have it on, you know, just have it on for company day and night. And, uh, so like I said, one morning I woke up and I started writing.

And it was just this silly thing about a show host, you know, who accidentally exposes himself on the air. He's wearing, it's a slumber Sunday sundown event, and he's got a bathrobe on that they're selling. But backstage, a latte had been spilled on his boxer. So he took them off and he's wearing a robe robe but the robe opened and it was you know sort of like you know a wardrobe malfunction on a big scale and he was fired and it was just this sort of romp us through the like the world of a home shopping network and it was a little novel and i mean when you sat down and just that starts pouring out of you, did you have any intentionality behind it or was it just like you were channeling basically? Yeah, I just was – I had no idea what I was doing and I just know it made me laugh and I hadn't laughed for so long. I just kept writing that day and I was like, where are these people coming from?

Where is all this coming from? And when I drank that night, I didn't reach that sort of place that I used to reach when you drink. And in alcoholics, and if you have any alcoholics or recovering alcoholics or drug addicts listening to this, they will know what I mean when I say I didn't reach that place. It's that destination. And that's a frustrating feeling. Like, where is it? So I wrote the next day, I got up even earlier, wrote more, drank less. Third day was, this story had taken over. I mean, it was not a conscious, I wasn't sitting trying to figure things out. I wasn't like, okay, so that character just came in. None of that. I was just sitting and the characters were like coming to my fingers.

Fourth day, no drinking. Couldn't do it. No time. Seventh day, I finished the book. And I didn't know if it was, you know, any good, but it had page numbers and chapter titles. You know, so it was a book, but I had a profound realization, which was, this is the escape I was looking for. I'm never going to drink again. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. This is what I'm going to do. This is like,

this is it. This is this. I, this is it. This is it. And I never did drink again. And, um, so that, uh, that book actually, I, I did after being turned down by every agent in the city, the last, you know, one I approached signed me up, took me on and sold the book. And I, for an advance large enough for a brand new wardrobe from, you know, The Gap. 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 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. 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. I didn't have any other ideas for a next novel, though. But what I did have was a diary, journal journal that I kept when I got out of rehab. So I gave that to my new agent. Imagine giving a stranger your journal. I mean, I've been keeping journals since I was a kid. Especially the journals that take a reader into the childhood that you had. Well, these journals were about recovery.

So I just get out of rehab. I don't know what I'm going to do. There's a crack addict in group therapy, and I think I'm in love with him because he has psoriasis like my father and a southern accent like my mother, and I am so sick. I mean, it's just all this embarrassing, terrible stuff. And I gave it to my agent and you know, he took a while and then he got back to me and said,

why didn't you give me this first? And I was like, what do you mean? And the reason I gave it to him was because I didn't have another idea, but I had this other style, if you will, of writing, which is when I just write for me. I mean, I'm not writing it. Like the novel was weird. I'd never written anything like that before. The normal writing I do for me, like, can I use this? I mean, it's a terrible word, style of writing, but this writing I do for me, is it useful? And he said, this is a book. And I was like, it is. So my publisher who bought my first novel, they purchased Dry. And I was flabbergasted. And when I say Dry, what I mean is they bought my journal, my diary, now called Dry. And I thought, wow, okay.

So if you like that, I should tell you a little bit about my childhood. So I was raised by a lunatic psychiatrist who dressed like Santa and scooped his turds out of the toilet and lay them in the sun to dry and would divine the family fortune from the shape. And there was no school and I was molested and da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And they said, go write that book. So I did. And, you know, a lot of that, actually everything in Running With Scissors, I hadn't thought of until I sat down and wrote it. I mean, I had a few stories that I would tell, very, very curated stories that I would tell people very selectively over the years. I had an eccentric upbringing, you know, but I never actually thought about the things that happened. So memory is most reliable the first time you access the memory. Each time you access a memory,

the memory is altered through neurotransmitters. And the first time that you access it is the most accurate that you will ever be. And it's the only way that I've ever, it's all I've ever trusted. So when I write, like when I wrote about running with scissors, I was blank. I couldn't remember. I was like, I don't remember anything at all. The process of remembering occurred on the page, and it was like watching a movie. So I would watch whole scenes unfold with dialogue and people, what they were wearing,

and I wrote it, and that's it. There we go. So, I mean, it sounds almost more like transcription. Yeah, I felt like a court, exactly. Right. Like a stenographer, right. I was watching, I describe it as like watching a movie and typing as fast as I can to keep up.

And after the book, you know, the book was very popular. It sort of hit a nerve and no one expected it to be. I mean, they didn't print many copies and it was not the kind of book that was selling at that point in time. It was 2002. So all the books on the list on the New York times bestseller list, it was all about dead presidents and history. And there was just not this, but it exploded in a big way. And along with it came a lot of scrutiny and journalists asking,

first of all, being very dubious of my upbringing. I speak well, you know, and I'm sophisticated. Really? I went to fourth grade? Really? That's all? Really? You know, and just,

a lot of people had really found it very, very, very difficult to believe that I had parents who were as well educated as they were and would allow molestation to occur. And then there was the issue of how do you remember such perfect dialogue? You know, you're lying, you're making it up. And I never had a really good answer because it's like, well, you don't remember really? Like you can't remember being, I remember learning to walk. You don't, what's wrong with you? I mean, it's just like, what? I didn't know how to answer that. And I also thought and said, so when you're a journalist, it's a very, very competitive field,

probably more competitive than advertising. You do not get a job at the New York Times or Time or Newsweek or without having gone through a very, very prestigious school of journalism. And you're not getting into that prestigious school of journalism unless you've gone to one of the Seven Sisters or the Ivy. The Seven Sisters or Six? Six or Seven, yeah. And so to get into that Ivy or Seven Sisters school, if you're going to, you know, Smith College or Harvard, you had to be top of your class in high school, which means you had two parents who were on your butt to do your homework. So your exposure to this underbelly of life is limited to Quentin Tarantino movies.

And that's why you don't believe me. Because it's not part of your reality. But it turned out that a lot of people had a very similar childhood i mean i will never forget my first big reading in los angeles outside it was just around the block and it was filled with celebrities and if they weren't famous, they were somehow in the industry. It was just a sea of $5,000 Gucci jackets. And I was mortified. I mean, I was like, oh my God, look at these cool, beautiful, popular people. I am a zoo animal. What did I put in that book? This is a nightmare. And I just, I felt just the deepest

regret that day. And I just wanted to get through this horrible event. And I realized I had made a terrible mistake by, by revealing this about myself. Now that I saw these cool, groovy people smiling at me, I was like, oh, this is horrible. And then one by one, they came up, you know, the guy who won two, man, thank you for writing this book. I was also molested at a really young age. And it was just so comforting to read this. Thank you for writing this book. My mother was also bipolar and it was just such a relief to read this. Thank you for writing this book. I was, and it was on and on and on. And I was like, whoa. Whoa.

Wasn't expecting that. And that's how it was from then on. I mean, not everybody relates to everything I write, obviously, but there is somebody who does relate to everything, even the tiniest little thing. Yeah, and apparently enough people. Yeah, and apparently enough people. It's interesting when you write the way that you write. thing. Yeah. And apparently enough people. Yeah. And apparently enough people. I mean,

it's interesting when you write the way that you write, you know, it's interesting to know that, especially when the first book comes out or not when the first book, the third book really, but the one that kind of really blows everything open and running with scissors, it becomes this mass thing that there was so much pushback around the idea of credibility. And it's interesting to hear your frame also, which is that so many of the people who were kind of coming at you and questioning everything, you know, very likely came from such a profoundly different experience of life. Oh, incredible privilege. That is like, how do you even conceive of other people living that way?

Exactly. And then to go out into the world and once the book starts interacting with you and you start actually talking to all these people who are reading it and saying, and you're just getting this perpetual validation at volume of like, no, in fact, a lot of people haven't lived my exact life, but pieces of it, it's much more. I never had any pushback from readers ever. I never had doubt from readers. Readers never were like, you betrayed me. Readers, because you know what?

The truth, okay, so when you read something that's true, it's like you feel it. There's like a scent or an aroma. So readers would be like, whatever I was writing about, it's like the readers were like, I know exactly what he's describing because that's what I did too. And you only know that if you did it. So I had these two worlds,

this sort of public media world where everything was suspect in terms of my memory. And then the fans who were like, yeah, I recognize that. It's interesting because years later, many years later, my primary care physician a a year after knowing me, called me and said, you know, you, I've, I've suspected this for the first time I met you, but I wanted to know you for a full year. And now that I do, you have ADHD. And I was like, what is it? You know? And so he put me on Adderall and I was like, what is Adderall? I looked it up and it's like, wait a minute. I'm going to be on like speed, like uppers, like in the 50s. This is like not a good thing.

Like this is not going to help. So I, I mean, I'll never forget taking the first pill. I'll never forget it. Because all of a sudden, someone said something to me and I heard right away what they said. And that's when I realized, oh my God. You see, all my life, people have said to me that I should have my hearing checked because I have a hearing disorder because I ask people to repeat themselves a lot. Excuse me, what was that? And all of a sudden, someone said something to me and I heard it. And it's because I didn't automatically repeat exactly what they said silently and very quickly in my mind,

which I had done every single day for my entire life and never known that I did it until this moment when suddenly I didn't do it. The other thing was that it relaxed me in a way that nothing else ever, ever had. It was just like I felt like I'd been raised by two surfer parents in California from Half Moon from half moon bay you know it was just like whoa i mean it's funny because it's like if i well after i took the pill i would have to get to work otherwise i could just sleep and my doctor was like okay so that's what we call a neuro atypical reaction and that's diagnostic that so he then sent me call a neuroatypical reaction. And that's diagnostic.

So he then sent me to a psychiatrist to make sure that this was correct. And the psychiatrist asked me a series of questions that no one had ever asked me. Does the back of the tags in the back of your T-shirt bother you? And I was like, yeah, as a matter of fact, look at the hole that I, from pulling out the tag today in the cab. Is your skin really sensitive? And I was like, oh my God. You know, when I, I have these under cabinet lights, um, on my, in my kitchen, you know, and when I, when I lift and put a dish from the dishwasher onto the cabinet, it's like I get sunburn

and on and on these questions that I just never had thought of because they were so much a part of me. Like, um, do you have, is your stomach upset? It's like, well, always, always and not. Went on and on. And he said, yeah, so ADHD, you could absolutely, you know, it's a spectrum. I mean, you could be properly diagnosed with Asperger's. What I think probably we tend to call this would be a sensory processing disorder. And what falls under that umbrella, when people come and present with these symptoms that, you know, that you have, one of the things that I see, that we see, I think he said,

is the adaptive memory is different. So in other words, when you're a little child and you know, you have to know how to get into the high chair, as soon as you graduate and you leave the high chair, the memory of how the strap functions, the memory of how to get into the high chair evaporates. It leaves. The brain releases that memory so that new memories can form. But people with what you have tend to retain those memories. So we see people with sensory processing disorder who have memories that extend deep, deep, deep, deep into early childhood and are complete. That is so interesting. And I was like... So he's like now describing...

Oh my God, where were you when Good Morning America or whatever it was, was like in my living room asking me how I can remember these. It's like, it's medical. But it's true because, you know, before I was a writer, sometimes I would amuse myself by just, you know, laying in bed and revisiting a prior experience, something tiny, you know, that was ages and ages and ages and ages ago. Yeah. So it's like there's something that's literally in some way neurologically atypical that allows you to almost watch the movies in

vivid detail in a way that most other people just don't have access i don't have control over it and it's odd because i actually have i consider myself to be someone with a poor memory in that i'm i'm not good with names i'm good with like, what did I do last week? I like, I have no idea. I often don't know the month. I don't know. I don't even know how old I am because I'm in my twenties. I skipped a year. So I think I went from 22 to 24 and forgot to be 23. And that messed me up. So when everybody, any, anybody says, how old are you? I was like, I was born in 1965. So I don't know.

Whatever that comes out to. Whatever that comes out to. And I'm not good at math, so in there. I can't learn languages, and I've tried. So I don't have control. But what I do have is, like is I have recall. So when I go back, I can go back and revisit. I never think I can because when I think,

okay, I'm going to go back to whatever period. There's nothing there until I'm at my laptop and my eyes are closed, and I've got to have one little trigger, one thing. I've got to have one memory. Like a jumping off point. Exactly. And then it all floods right back. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it's almost like you can't make it happen, but you can open.

I can open the door, and then it does. Yeah. But you create the circumstances that let it come. I can't select what I'm going to remember. I can't select what I'm going to remember. I can't select it. So when you sit down to write something then, right? You've written a number of different memoirs now and some fiction. So when you sit down to write the first time, you're like, okay, so there's a new thing I'm going to sit down and start on.

Do you sit down at that moment knowing what it's going to be, or do you sit down and just kind of say, okay, let's see what happens? Absolutely not. It's always a surprise. And with this book, my most, my new book, it was the biggest surprise of all because I was, my previous book was called Lust and Wonder, and that was a memoir. And I felt like that's the last memoir. Because if you sort of read Running With Scissors and then Dry and then Lust and Wonder. It's like it covers. You know, it's trilogy, really. And I didn't know it, but it is.

And that's all you ever need to know about me. And I've got other books that are collections of essays. And there's a Christmas book and a Horrible Father book. And, you know, those are separate kind of things. And they're memoirs, but they're separate. Never going to write another memoir. That's it. Going to write, you know, a thriller and I'm getting, you know, nowhere on it and struggling with it and trying to figure it out and make it work. And, uh, our great dane comes in one day with a horrible limp we go to the doctor and he's got a torn acl and it requires invasive surgery and he's got to be remaining he's got to remain still

for a month you know so i buy a uh memory foam mattress put it in the living room back one edge up against the wall with an armoire at one end and i shove the couch up on the other side and then i flip a table over on its side so it's like this big sort of playpen right and then i'm in there with him with my laptop and i'm like working on my novel that's horrible and like not going anywhere. And then I just start writing something else. And something that I was never going to ever write or ever talk about ever, ever, ever.

And it came out so fast and furiously. It was... So I'm not even sure how many words the final manuscript is. Maybe it's like 80,000. But I wrote like 355,000 words in days. Wow. I destroyed the laptop. I ended up with two forms of tendonitis,

one of which I'm still, like you see me, I'm pressing on my arm still because it was just an explosive experience. And I, again, I did not plan on writing that memoir. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA.

That's uvic.ca slash future MBAa. That's uvic.ca slash futuremba. 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. 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 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. It's interesting to me because when you do that, you know, you're at a point where, like you said, you kind of got the trilogy in the other books out there, and you're at a point where, like you said, you, you kind of got, you've got the trilogy and the other books out there and, and you're, you're absolutely known for not holding back and being very honest and very raw and very real. It's like, well, I would imagine a lot of people was, well, what else could there be that you would actually say this will never come out. And what it is, it's kind of magical. Well, I would always, when people would ask me, is there anything that you won't, I mean, a lot of what I've written is not flattering to me. And I'm totally fine with that. I mean, I, I've made a lot of mistakes. I mean, yeah, bad stuff happened to me, but I also did awful things.

I did awful things, and I'm not going to spit shine that. It's just, it is what it is. So when people would ask me, is there anything about your life that's off limits? I would always reply, no, no, no. I would, nope. And it never dawned on me that I was not being truthful. I was not being transparent that in fact, there was something about myself that is such a huge part of myself and has been my entire life, but it's something that I had never told anyone,

not my husband, my best friend. I mean, it's something that my mother and I shared, my aunt, which was my grandmother's sister, the women in her family, when I would visit down in Cairo, Georgia, that's when I could talk about this aspect of my personality, of my being, but every day with my mother. So Running With Scissors is about my mother in the throes of mental illness and chaos. And, you know, she was a character and she was funny and crazy. And, but she was very, very, very different before mental illness and mismedication ravaged her mind. So what happened was I was on a bus and this is what the book is about.

I was, you know, tormented in elementary school, bullied all the time for lots of different things. But I always, you know, used to space out. That's what they called it when I'd be blank, just blank. And I wouldn't have a thought in my head, and I'm still like that. I'll be looking off somewhere. Like this will happen to me when I'm backstage, and I'll be like, really, I guess I look intense because I'm staring, and someone will say, I'm sorry you look so deep in thought, but I just wanted to let you know five more minutes.

But the truth is I don't have a thought in my head. So I was on the bus. I was eight, and I was on the bus. I was eight. And I was like the hump seat. So when you get on the bus, I was on the side the driver's on, dirt road. And there are two little bridges the bus had to go over to get to my house.

And I felt the bump on the first bridge. And I'm staring out the window. And it's just a blur. My eyes are not focused. and it's just a blur. My eyes are not focused, so it's just a blur, a blur of trees. And then I remember, they happened at the same time,

the second bump of the bridge and my grandmother. It's like the bump, the bump knocked my grandmother's head into my head and she was bloody. And it's difficult for me to put into words what it is it was knowledge it was something very

very bad has happened to my grandmother now and has happened to my grandmother now. And the bus stopped just a few seconds later. I got out of the bus. I ran up the driveway, rang the door, bang, bang, bang.

My mother answers it, and she's got the phone cord pulled from the kitchen all the way out to the front door. And I am frantic. My grandmother, I called her Ama. What's the matter with Ama? What happened to Ama? Something happened to Ama. Something's wrong with Ama. And my mother cupped her hand on the phone and said, what? Something happened to Ama. What's the matter with Ama? And my mother went back to the phone speaking to her brother Mercer, yes Mercer Chris just came in, my name was Chris because I changed my name legally when I was 18 so I was born Chris and my mother

was saying, okay you call me and my mother hung the phone up and she said okay, what did you say? and I said, something bad has happened to Ama. And she said, that was your uncle Mercer calling from the hospital. Your grandmother's been in a car accident and she has a punctured lung and a lacerated forehead, but she's going to be okay. And I said, she's going to be okay. Okay. And then I said,

mom, how did I know that? And my mother had the, the strangest look on her face of like surprise, relief, joy, delight, mischief. I mean, it was just, and she sort of got down on her knees to my level. I'm really distraught. And her face is not matching the situation. And she took me in her arms and she said, because you are my son. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? This is like, mom, how did I? She sits me down, and she says,

do you know what a witch looks like? It's like, well, like in The Wizard of Oz, like, you know, I like the bad witch better. The good witch seemed airheaded and stupid, and my mother was like, well, yes. That's beside the point, but witches do not have, you know, green, pointy green faces and noses and warts and pointy hats.

Witches look like me and your grandmother and your Aunt Curtis. And they look like you. And I said, wait, so I'm a witch? And she said, indeed. But I didn't know that until now. And she explained that when my brother was born, she thought there was something different about him,

but it was not. He hadn't inherited the gift. And when I came along, she just thought she had two normal, one odd, but, you know, two non-witched. And then she had her confirmation that. So thus began my relationship with my mother where after school uh every day come home i'd sit she painted she wouldn't look at me much but she would teach me about what it what this is so my mother was a very um um, she was a creative person. She was artistic, but she was also very scientific. All the women on my mother's side were, my grandmother was a

scholar, a Latin scholar. My great aunt Curtis, um, I call her my aunt curtis but she actually had great aunt curtis was uh she programmed the first satellite and she was a mathematician worked for bell laboratories and my mother had read um albert einstein's theory of relativity i mean the day that it was translated and understood it completely and had me read it from a very, very early age. And, um, she was a physics scholar and a scientist. And so she taught me, okay, which witchcraft, it's the most natural thing in the world. It's not supernatural. It's hypernatural. So she wasn't saying this is some sort of mystical thing. This is, let me describe it according to the laws of science. neurological that people do not understand. It's an absolutely natural thing, but it's a personal private thing. Because if you tell people, I knew my grandmother was injured in a car accident,

even though she was 2000 miles away, they're going to think you're crazy. So we don't talk about it. It's something we never talk about because people don't understand it and you'll be a joke. And I got that because I was teased enough so I wasn't going to be a joke. You know, so she taught me that, you know, look, there's different people practice magic in different ways

and there's people who are very ceremonial. We're not. She explained that it is about incredible focus. It is not wanting. Well, she said there are two things. You know, there's many, many sides. It's a complicated thing and it's not even, of course she didn't understand it all, but my moments of spacing out, she said that's an enormous gift for receiving information. that are perhaps happening right now but are distant or that have happened, have occurred,

but we haven't reached that moment yet on the timeline. We don't understand, my mother said, what time is. We think it's the thing on our watch. Our watch is measuring, but we don't, we don't understand what it is really. Um, she talked about, so that was in terms of, you know, sort of having a, a sense of one quality many witches have is like a sense of something about to happen or that, happen or that is, or a sense about another person or, you know, and that kind of, but also of conjuring, causing something to occur, something to happen.

And my mother instructed me that it's not about wanting. It's about certainty. It is certainty based on very powerful focus. So to hone and refine my focus, we built together what's called a memory palace. Alice, and she taught me that, you know, before, long before the written word, people will remember things by building houses in their minds, castles in their minds. And they would, so they would design a house in their head and they would, every day they would think about it. So you walk in the front door and to the right, there's going to be this long chest. How many drawers does the chest have? Well, let's think. Let's give the chest six drawers. So in the first drawer of that chest, when you walk in, let's put a key in there and all through the house. So everything, you know, furnished. And

so my mother would then, you know, sometimes say, Prius, you know, in the room with the white canopy, where is the lilac pen? And I'd be like, oh, well, that's in the chest underneath the black hats. It's in the white box. And that helped me hold an image in my mind. Because in order for for to make something happen you have to focus you have to see it unwavering with such clarity

and such penetrating intensity that something happens something happens. Something happens. And a thing occurs. A thing that you wanted to occur, that you decided has occurred, occurs. But not always.

I remember having a dream as a kid, and I write about this in the book, having a dream where I'm in a room with people and I'm able to float over them, you know, like hover. So, of course, when I wake up, I'm trying that. And I go to my mother and I'm able to float over them, you know, like hover. So, of course, when I wake up, I'm trying that. And I go to my mother and I'm like, so I had this dream and I could float and I'm trying to float. And she said, so why do you think it is that you couldn't rise above the room and hover? And I was like, because maybe I wanted it or my intent wasn't strong enough. And she said, no, it's because you cannot

levitate in a room full of people. We can't do that. You can't, you can't do something that's not possible. We do many things that people think are not possible, but we cannot defy any laws of the universe. However, we can appear to defy laws of the universe because the laws of the universe are not properly understood. But no, you can't hover. Just like you can't snap your fingers on your favorite show, Bewitched, and make a baked Alaska appear on the table. That's not a thing you can do in real life. So that has been a part of me all my life, totally taken for granted, never talked about just a private thing. And I never doubted it. So whenever I would have a weird feeling about something, it was like I was given

information. It was like I was given a professional briefing. I didn't doubt it. You know, I was like, I just acted on it. So when you sit down, great day next to healing and just, using your words, destroy your computer, getting this all out. And then you realize this is a book. And then you realize, okay, so this is the one thing that has been a through line in my life since I was born. I have been largely transparent about so much, but not this one thing. And now, you know, this is not just me sharing this with my husband, my friends, but this is me actually taking this one piece, putting it into the form of a book, and putting it out into the world. Did you have any more? I'm curious what your internal, what your self-talk was around that and whether it was different compared to anything you've written in the past.

Oh, completely different. No, I've never been afraid to publish a book, and this one was. Totally terrified the whole time, dreading publication day. Like I've never dreaded anything. Because I get it. I really get it. Oh my God, now he's a witch. I mean, I'm the thing that kids dress up as at Halloween.

If I weren't a witch, I wouldn't believe in it, and I would privately make fun of people who were. I mean, I would. I'd be like, yeah, they're a witch and that's precious, you know? So it's so easy for me to get into that headspace to see. It's easy for me to not be me and look at me and be like, oh, my God. But here's the thing. I actually think that the thing that we call witch or witchcraft,

as my husband says, it needs a new name and a new PR agent. I think it's something that is, if not part of everybody, part of a lot of people, and more developed than some. I think it is leftover. You know, if you think about our very earliest days on this planet as human beings, when the mother, the woman, was home with the children, the man, her mate, was out on a trip to gather food. If something dangerous occurred at home,

if, you know, Bobcat showed up or a bear, that woman, she needs to kind of text her husband and say, you got to get the fuck home now, dude. Because our species would have a greater chance for survival if that were possible. And it seems to me that it was possible. I liken it to dogs and the fact that dogs hear a higher frequency of sound energy than we can hear. But let's phrase that another way. For us, those sounds are not real things. We do not hear them. None of us hear them. We don't interact with them. They don't bother us. They don't affect us. They're not real. They're not part of the world. We have technology that

detects the sound. Dogs can hear the sound because they have different neurons. So we know that those sounds are in fact part of the world. They are there. Well, is that it? Really? Really? Is that really it? How is it possible? How is it possible that as a little boy, I knew moments after my grandmother had been in a car accident with a forehead laceration and a punctured lung, that I knew something bad had happened and I had a flash of her forehead with blood. How could I know that? Well, the scientific answer occurred in the 80s through a paper written by two statisticians. And that paper was a large numbers says, you don't really understand statistics. So allow us to explain to you that what coincidence you experience as significant

is statistically insignificant. And as a matter of fact, predicted. Of course, you will one day sit on a plane beside someone who's got your same name and maybe you're from the same hometown. That, even though in the moment it feels important, it's not. It's to be expected statistically. And if it didn't happen, that's what would be unusual. Thank you very much. But what the law of truly large numbers fails to explain is, what if it happens again, and then again, and then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and then again and again and again and again and again and again and again and

again and again and again and again and again is it still insignificant no i think that it the answer is, we have a lot. It reveals a bald spot in our knowledge of how the universe works. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. And yet we have this thing called quantum entanglement. So quantum entanglement is, let's say we have two particles, you know, we put them in play school together and then we separate them, you know, and we put one particle at this end of the universe and put the other particle all the way particle at this end of the universe and put the other particle all the way at the other end of the universe and so far away that our human brains cannot comprehend it trillions of light years separate these two particles and if you tickle the feet of this

particle they both laugh at exactly the same time. And this is not a theory. It's a fact. It's been demonstrated. It's known. What's not known is how it's possible because it appears to defy the laws of physics. How can information travel great distance simultaneously? And that tells you, well, obviously, distance isn't what we think it is. And probably the speed of light isn't what we think it is.

You know? I mean, nothing can go faster than the speed of light, as measured by whom? I mean, Albert Einstein himself said that there is no preferred point of reference in the universe. So, how is it possible to even measure it? Ever, accurately, ever. How?

I don't, that, and you know what it's really difficult to get an answer to these questions you get a lot of what you don't understand and people dive into physicists you know we'll dive sort of right into the math of it and the truth is they don't know they don't know what time is and i don't either, but I do know that information does travel great distances into people in through channels that we don't understand. And I think a lot of people have what I have to greater or lesser degrees, but they name it something else. Hmm, I had a hunch.

I just had a really weird feeling about it. Hmm, women's intuition. I mean, how many times, if you think about it, has something happened to you and it's a small thing. It's a small thing. You suddenly, you're thinking about someone you haven't thought about in 20 years and boom, they send you a message on Facebook or they tweet at you. That has happened to millions of people. And it's just something that we think, it's funny, it's weird. It's a weird coincidence. how many times has, um, oh, thank God I didn't do X because look what happened if I had done it.

If my plans, you know, I mean, I just think it's this, this hunches people have, intuitions people have, gut instincts, bad feelings that in hindsight turned out to be accurate and correct is all part of the same thing. Just because a phenomenon doesn't have an obvious provable according to popular methodology definition. Well, it may very well be provable according to popular methodology. Well, it may very well be provable. Do you know that the year I wrote this, last year, they discovered a new organ in the body. So understand, we've been dissecting the body a lot of years for eternity right when i took anatomy and physiology in community college for the you know uh quarter of a semester that i was there i learned we understand the body the physiology we're still learning, you know. And yet they found an organ and it turns out to be the largest organ. Oops. It's actually, it's in the skin and it's something that they

thought, they assumed it was like a interstitial. Right. And they're talking about fascia or? It's, I forgot the name of it, but perhaps that is the name. But it's just shocking that in this day and age, new anatomy can be discovered. And you know, in the brain too, regions of the brain that we don't... Yeah. I have a number of neuroscientist friends who will readily tell you that what is known about the way that the brain functions is the universe is what is not known about it is is far greater than the universe of what is known um so we're literally sitting in the studio today um the day after this book that sort of like reveals this lifelong secret and set of capabilities um that book was out um like literally the day before as we record this.

So it's out in the world, and you're starting to talk about it and seeing how people are interacting with it. Do you feel any more or less comfortable as it's now? It's no longer anticipation, but this is out in the world. I'm more comfortable with it. Anticipatory stress is always the worst. That's the killer. It'll always get you. But I think that, I mean, I really think that statistically you know, growing up the son of a witch and as a witch and coming from a family that embraced it and, you know, but I think what's universal is the, um, are many

of the experiences that I talk about sort of knowing something that before it happens or knowing something I couldn't possibly know, or having a, you know, a sixth sense, so to speak about something. Um, and I think what I want people to understand, one woman came up to me last night and she said, after the reading, she said, I really related to what you talked about. And I've talked about it in my life as sort of, you know, the universe telling me, But it sounds like it's, like what you're saying,

it's witchcraft. And I was like, that's the word that I use that I've grown up with. And I love, because I love the history of it. But it's the same thing. Yeah, it doesn't matter

what you name it. It's the same thing, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's what it is. And you know what? I, that's what it is. And you know what? I don't know what it is. I don't know why I don't always have control over it at all.

Often, often, I will have a daydream or an image and it won't occur to me, you know, that in a few hours it'll happen or in a few days or when I'm in the throes of it, I don't often get that I don't, for some reason, pull back and say to myself, wait, why are you doing this? What's going to, I'm not logical or I'm not, I'm not. It's more reflective than that. Yeah. I just do it. So, so as we sit here, it feels like a good place for us to start to come full circle as well in the container of this.

It's a good life project, conversation about really living a good life, the elements of it. If I offer out that phrase, to live a good life for you at this moment where you're at, what lands? I'm really, really happy with my life. You know, I feel fortunate to be married to my best friend and to be living in, I mean, really the house I always wanted to live in, which is one that's so old. There's not a, uh, I feel drunk walking in it without being drunk. And I love the feeling of being tipsy, but I don't have to drink because it's not a straight line in the house. I love an old, old, old, old house, um, with our dogs and property. And, um, I love that. Uh, and I've kind of, I'm just, I'm even more so at a place where, um, I take risks and And I like that I'm not shutting down as I get older. You know, like I watched my father do. I watched him just shut down and become smaller and smaller and more and more rigid. And I'm really the opposite. I mean, I'm doing new things all the time and making

mistakes, but not the old mistakes I used to make, but brand new mistakes, you know, and I beat myself up. I think a lot less. I'm very forgiving. You know, one thing is, um, been really helpful is to realize, Oh God. yeah, all that stuff about myself. It's like really annoying and that's never going to actually change. Like I'm never going to get over that. So I'm not even going to try. I'm not even going to try. I'm not. I'm defective in certain ways. I'm a catastrophist. Oh, well, I am. That's just never going to go.

There's no pill. I'm not going to do that. I'm not sitting on a therapist's couch for nine years talking about my mother when that's not going to get me through. That's not how to fix it. Some things, they don't get fixed. Some things, some issues, they're not going away. So you incorporate them and find out. Here's one thing I've learned.

Every horrible thing that I've experienced, there's always been a present inside. You got to dig, but there's always been a present glittering. And you just have to find it. One thing that, you know, loss, I think, when you lose

someone very, very, very important, someone you can't lose, and, very important. Someone you can't lose. And then you do. It's a hole. You have a hole blown, a cannonball hole blown right through you. And it feels like you're going to die. But holes create more surface area.

That's what a hole does. Like Swiss cheese has more surface area than American cheese because of the holes. So the holes we have, they don't have to make us darker. They can make us deeper and that happens by accepting

and the loss and the way to accept it is you have to go through it you have to feel it and realize it's real and realize they're never coming back. They're gone. And then one day, many years from now, if you're in a place where you're going through something that a loss that's unbearable,

five years, six, seven years, the best thing, one of the best things to ever happen to you could happen, something you never imagined. And you will feel that joy and the bliss of such wonderful experience. And at the same time, you will feel the wonderful joy you feel, and the loss will sort of sit together on the park bench inside your heart. Like two old people, they'll sit there. And that sounds really screwed up and weird,

but that is the way it is. You don't get to erase anything. There is no way to make an awful thing less awful, but there is a way to continue to have wonderful, miraculous, exciting experiences. So that you become a well of wonderful and tragic and heartbreak and joy and all of that. And that's what gives you gravity and depth. I am so grateful today that I was molested as a little boy because I have had the opportunity many times to sit down next to a young girl or boy at school who has been molested. You've been able to really hear them, understand them, and make them see you're going to actually be so okay. This is not going to screw you up for life. It's not. Someday, you're actually going to be grateful.

It's horrible. It's horrible. It's ugly. You didn't want it, but it's given you a strength. And I wouldn't have that if I hadn't been abused. I wouldn't know how to talk to other victims of sexual abuse. I wouldn't know. And you know what? It's actually really good to know how because you can change their life you can be you can you can improve another human being's life

that yeah worth it absolutely worth it 100 it. Would never go back and undo that because I wrote about it. People connected with it and felt less alone. They felt like, oh my God, I'm not the only one. You know, after, um, in this last point I'm going to make on this, I wrote this book called This Is How, which is like a, it's a self-help book for people who are psychologically ambitious and want to really fix themselves and don't want to just waste time. It's like how to really do it. And I talked about, um, loss and a group of young women, teenagers, came up to me in New England. I couldn't hear what they were saying because it was loud and it was like, she said, we are from Newtown, Connecticut,

Sandy Hook, which was in the news. We all lost younger siblings in Sandy Hook, and we wanted you to know that your book is the only thing that's keeping us alive. That woman's comment to me made everything I ever went through worth it. Absolutely worth it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out 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. Thank you. 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. 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 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.