Good Life Project - Tara Westover | Educated: The Story Behind the Phenom

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

If you haven't heard of Tara Westover's memoir Educated. yet, you're in for a real treat. Her massive blockbuster book recounts her time growing up in rural Idaho with a dad who viewed the outside world with deep fear and a conspiratorial bent and kept the family isolated and forbidden from pursuing public school education. Tara, who never saw the inside of a classroom until she was 17, retraces her steps from her survivalist childhood to her remarkable journey to earning her Ph.D. at Cambridge. She spent her time in Idaho working in her family's junkyard, learning about herbal medicine from her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife, and plotting her great escape. Ultimately, she graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University, and in 2014, she earned a Ph.D. in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, became a Writer in Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School, and was selected as a Senior Research Fellow there. When it came time to tell her own story, Tara wrote the book she needed to write for herself. Her truth. Her story. That's it. But just as she has her own story to tell through her own lens, so does each person in her family. This reality pushes us to wonder and question how quickly society has become to put people in categories or boil their existence down to a single instance or even statement. So how do you do justice to your own narrative when the stakes are the ability to ever reconnect with your family for the rest of your life? And is it even possible? In today's conversation, we explore Tara's story, but we also go deeper into her creative journey, her desire to make meaning and to write. To build her own life. And we talk about what happened leading up to the book's publication, as well as how that moment affected her in ways she could've never seen coming and the conflict between being loyal to her family and being loyal to herself. We explore how the ensuing years have led her into a new phase of self-discovery and revelation, in part, because of the stunning global success of the book and also the near-overnight exposure of her and her story to millions of people around the world.So like I said in the beginning if you've never heard of this book before —and even if you have— you're in for a real treat today. You can find Tara at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Elizabeth Gilbert about the power and also concerns that come from writing your truth, then sharing it.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book Sparked | My New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.OutschoolZocdoc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part of being able to really live in the present involves really reckoning with the past. The world that you're experiencing, whether it's a new lover or your child or your parents, all of that is going to be heavily, heavily filtered by what was. And it becomes a lot harder to see what is. And that's kind of one of the ironies, I think, of when you just refuse to engage with what happened. What happened becomes the only thing that you see. Hey, so by now you have likely heard the basic story behind Tara Westover's massive blockbuster book, Educated. Raised in Idaho, as she writes, by a dad who viewed the outside world with deep fear and a kind of a conspiratorial bent, kept the family isolated, opposed to public education, and forbade Tara and her siblings to

attend school. She spent her days working in the family's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mom, who was a self-taught herbalist and midwife. And she was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. And after that, she just immersed herself, pursued learning for a decade, eventually rebelling against the family edict, leaving, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University, winning a Gates Cambridge scholarship, earning a PhD in history from Trinity College in Cambridge, becoming a writer-in-residence at the Harvard Kennedy School, and eventually a senior research fellow. And a little bit later in life, when it came time to tell her own story, to write her memoir, to write the book Educated,

or that would eventually become Educated, she wrote the book she needed to write for herself, her truth, but also knew each person in her family, they had their own story, their own lens on what really happened. And how do you do justice to your own narrative when the stakes are the ability to potentially ever reconnect with your family for the rest of your life. Well, in today's conversation, we explore her story, but we also go deeper into Tara's creative journey, her desire to make meaning and to write, to build her own life. And we talk about what happened leading up to the book's publication, as well as that moment and how it affected her in ways she probably could never really see coming until it finally came. And we explore how the ensuing years

have led her into a new phase of self-discovery and revelation in part because of the stunning global success of the book and also the near overnight exposure of her and her story to millions of people around the world and how that impacted her as well. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. 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 are later familiar with it and may not have read the book. And, you know, we take a big step back in time, of course. Right now, you're living in New York. You have found yourself in a bunch of different places around the world. But the early days for you was a very, very, very tiny universe in Idaho, growing up in a family of seven siblings.

And I'm kind of curious. I know it's described as Mormon, but it really sounds like the culture that you brought up in the family was loosely interpreted. It was almost like its own development of thought processes that involved a lot of different things. Yeah, I was actually trying to stay away from the word Mormon because even though my family was Mormon, we went to Mormon church, pretty much the whole town was Mormon, actually. I just don't think it really accounts for what made my family particular. You know, we didn't go to school. My dad didn't believe in public education. We were homeschooled. We didn't go to the doctor. We were born at home, delivered

by a midwife. We didn't get birth certificates until we were nine. That wasn't a Mormon thing. Everybody in our town did those things. They went to school, they went to the doctor, they had birth certificates, and as I said, they were Mormons. So we had kind of a particular brand of Mormonism that I actually feel like it makes more sense to talk about in terms of my dad's kind of psychology that manifested through Mormonism, but I don't think can be accounted for through Mormonism. I try to shy away from that word. I didn't know what to call him, to be honest. I thought about it for a really long time. I was like, is he radical? Yeah, he's pretty radical.

He's definitely a survivalist. He was constantly preparing for the end of the world and wanted to have a 10-year supply of food and everything. The apocalypse was always right around the corner, and we spent our whole childhood getting ready for it. So I thought, well, he's definitely a doomsday prepper. He's definitely a radical, like, what do you call someone? And I don't know.

It's a question I'm still asking myself. Yeah, it's such an interesting question in the context of the world we're living in right now also. You know, like for you, this is, you know, like somewhat in your past at this point in your life. But I feel like we're living in this space right now where so much is defined by trying to identify people and label them in certain ways. And yet, and a lot of times, people are looking at politics or faith. But the traditional notions, I think, of what so much of that meant or was, it's just kind of crumbling. And I feel like we're all in this moment of trying to reimagine, you know, like what are the buckets that we use to sort of help us help our brains understand who people are in our lives. And even those buckets are just kind of melting before our

eyes. Oh, that's really interesting. I actually feel more the opposite where I feel like, I think it might be a social media phenomenon. It feels to me like our categories that we put people in, they seem very robust to me, much more robust than they used to be. And some of that is because I think we are sorting ourselves a little bit according to our preferences. You know, it's getting a bit ridiculous where you think if you know somebody owns a truck, you know, you think you know everything you have to know about them. You know, you know how they vote, you know, their views on important topics. If somebody owns a truck, you know, you think you know everything you have to know about them. You know, you know how they vote. You know their views on important topics.

If somebody owns a Prius, then they must be this other set of things. I feel almost like our ideas of each other have been distilled down to the point where we almost only think in categories. And I think, you know, the first words of my book actually are, this is not a book about Mormonism. And it was because I didn't want that word or even any other word, survivalist, radical, to become a stand-in for a category that we think, well socially among like-minded people, to me, actually seems like an over-reliance on categories. The most extreme version of categories coming to define everything. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting context. And I guess, thinking about what I was saying and how you're framing it, there's a lot of contextualization and sort of like saying you're this, this, this, this, and this. But I feel like a lot of it has become so fragmented and it's like we use the same words, but we don't mean

the same things a lot of times. For sure. I think that's true. And maybe that's not a new phenomenon. Maybe it's just being brought to the surface so much these days because you see it so much. Yeah, I think there's something about the way that we are all consuming information and the fact that it seems so unusual to bump into something that is different than what you were seeking because everything in your life, the way the algorithms work, everything is designed to feed you what you want to know. I just think that that tends to lead to more thinking in categories, more processing stories in categories, even just the way that we consume headlines.

I mean, I've noticed headlines have changed so much over the last 10 or 15 years. It's just everything, because everything is clickbaity, it's this kind of strange phenomenon where the punchline is delivered first. And it's almost, I mean, a lot of people, you don't even need to read the article because the article will tell you everything is the most important thing will really boil itself down in that one sentence. And so you read the whole thing with that kind of idea hanging over it. And I don't know, it's a strange way to have your mind organized and you have to fight against it a lot. And it's probably a losing battle even when you you have to fight against it a lot. And it's probably a losing battle

even when you are trying to fight against it. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting in the context of your upbringing too, right? Because you exist in this world now where the universe is your domain when it comes to gathering information, if you want to step out of the silos and sort of like the algorithms that very rapidly understand what to feed you to reinforce getting you to keep deepening into it. And in an odd way, it's not entirely dissimilar to the structure that you were brought up in, but it's not algorithmically reinforced or like through technology. It's sort of like, okay, so you had your parents, your dad in particular, who basically said, this is the universe of things that you will be fed and everything will be aligned with this thing and nothing else.

Yeah. He didn't want us to go to school. And I think it's because he didn't want us exposed to things that he didn't agree with. And in his, you know, that was a pretty long list for my dad, things that he didn't agree with. And we were kind of kept at home and we got his version of history and his version of biology and his version of everything. And that can be, you know, pretty strange phenomenon then when you grow up and you try to enter the world. And in my case, I, you know, I never set foot in a classroom until I was 17. I kind of tricked my way into this Mormon university and told them I'd been homeschooled when I kind of. I kind of tricked my way into this Mormon university and told them I'd been homeschooled when I kind of had and kind of hadn't and entered the world, you know, at that

time. And there were just a lot of things I didn't know or things I had a pretty strange set of opinions about. You know, I'd never heard of the Holocaust before. I raised my hand in one of the first classes I was in and asked, you know, what is this? Because I'd never heard of it. And kind of understandably, a lot of the other students, they heard that not as a question, but as a denial, you know, they thought that I was denying it had happened, but really I just never heard of it because my ideas of history were just so, they were just very either haphazard. I don't think my dad is a Holocaust denier. I think he would have taught us that. It just, it wasn't something that came up with him. It wasn't an important thing. And so somehow it just was absent from my whole concept of history. And for me that day when I went to the computer

lab and I typed it in, I read about it and kind of leaned back in my chair and suddenly the world's looking very different than it was before I had realized that had happened. And then, I don't know, I was pretty shook up. I think part of it was reading about something awful, really terrible. And the other part of it, I think, was realizing the depth of my own ignorance, you know, that something could happen on that scale and I wouldn't know about it. And the free flow of information is not guaranteed, I don't think, anywhere at any time. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of, especially when you're younger, a lot of the constrained information was fear-based,

like from your dad, then really creating this container of fear about the outside world and then instilled in you. And I'm curious when that becomes almost like a fiber of your being, it's like a part of your core belief system from the earliest days, what it takes to dismantle that. Because it sounds like even before you end up in college, it's you're questioning, you're pushing boundaries. And for me, I always wonder like, what was the impulse inside of you that made you say, but what if this is not true? And how that show up? You know, it'd be wonderful to tell this story and say, oh,

I was just a free thinker and I knew that I wanted to be different and search for truth and all that kind of thing. But the funnier story and the truer story is just, I had no idea. I'd never been in a classroom, so I didn't know what education was. I had no romantic ideas about it. No, no ideas about why that would be important or why I would need that. I think I actually went to college because I like to sing. And I had this idea that that's where you, you know, my brother, my older brother had taught himself trigonometry and algebra and had taken himself off to college and he'd been allowed to go to some years of school. He was a lot older than me. And so he'd been to some years of, I think one year of high school even. And so he took been allowed to go to some years of school. He was a lot older than me. And so he'd been to some years of, I think, one year of high school even.

And so he took himself off to college and then came back and said to me, oh, you like to sing? Why don't you go to college and kind of help me apply? But that was the radical truth of it, you know, is that I just really liked to sing. And that seemed to be the place that you went to learn music. And so once I got there, of course, everything changed. I started taking classes in history and psychology and geography and politics and all kinds of things. And then my interests shifted or expanded. But at the beginning, I didn't have any high-minded ideas. Music was something I loved and I was

persuaded that that was the place I could go to learn more. Yeah. And I know we've been talking about your dad more, but your mom was in the picture as well and seemed to be the way you describe her is more open. And yet at least the story also comes around a little bit later where at the end of the day, it seems like she's more open and eventually ends up, your dad runs a junkyard and your mom ends up in herbalism and then midwifery and sound like largely supporting the family, which on the one hand, you're like, well, okay, so she has a role in the family, which is empowered and has a sense of agency and actually has her own point of view. And yet over time, it starts to feel like it is still perpetually constrained by the larger sensibility of your dad and the larger sort of like dominance

of his character and his presence. Yeah. My mom has incredible aptitude, is incredibly resourceful, is a real force in her own way and, um, built this company, this essential oil company that, you know, 20 years before anybody thought anything about essential oils, my mom was doing it and built, yeah, built this incredible company. And so there's a way where I guess that goes back to our thing of thinking in categories. Nobody, who is this, this Virginia Wolf? I'm, I can't remember. So, you know, nothing was ever the one thing. And my mom is just like that. She's not the one thing. You know, she lives in a very, I would say, patriarchal world. She would probably disagree with that characterization, but I think it's very patriarchal. And yet within that boundary, she's really incredible amount.

And then, you know, the end of the story is if you look it up now that my dad actually owns that company and she works for the company and my dad owns it. And I don't know the ins and outs of how that occurred, but I'm sure that there was a reason, but it's an odd outcome. And so there's a way where people can be so much more interesting and creative than just the stereotype or just the category implies. And yet there's another way where the constraints are real and have to be reckoned with. Yeah. It's sort of like there's a container and you can push up against the edge of it to a certain extent, but the container remains in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I think it did in this case, for sure.

Yeah. I know your mom also, there were a lot of accidents that unfolded in your family. We weren't OSHA approved. And one of them is actually with your mom, a traumatic brain injury that leads to some pretty substantial changes. You as a kid, and you referenced this, your dad was anti a lot of things, anti-establishment, anti-education, also anti-traditional medicine in a lot of ways. When you as a kid see this belief system that says if you're injured, even really, really major injuries, brain injuries, we take care of ourselves. We don't go to the outside world to take care of these things. On the one hand,

I wonder if that says, well, we have the capacity to do so much more than we ever knew in terms of healing ourselves while also rejecting all the possibility and the potential and the validity of sort of like this outside world. It's almost like these two different messages, one of them being somewhat positive, you know, like in that physician heal thyself, but there's always, you know, like there's the overexpression of that, that can become disastrous. Yeah. I've always thought, you know, the things that my mother can do with herbs and healing, there's real power there. She's a knowledgeable person. And I think my concern with it has always been, I don't think my dad and because of my dad, my mom had a whole, how do I even put it?

I don't think he had a sense of scale, particularly. You know, one of my brothers actually said to me once that my dad was just incapable of perceiving when a situation was dangerous, neither before, during or after the injury. He just never really understood the situation, the concept that people could get hurt, that things could be serious. There was, oh, I don't, I don't know what it is, but it was like he just didn't have that bone in his head that says, this is dangerous. We got to pay attention. And so things would happen. One of my brothers got lit on fire. He got burned pretty badly. And I just don't think my dad understood that it was serious. He just didn't understand it. And then because he was afraid of doctors

and really deeply convinced that they were trying to hurt us, even when he would finally maybe realize, oh, this is a serious situation And I don't think that that really explains it because he treated himself the exact same way. I mean, the injury that was the worst injury that ever happened in that junkyard happened to my dad. He was removing a fuel tank. He was getting a car ready for when the car crusher comes. Car crusher, you really probably need to know this. It's super relevant to your life, but they won't take a car if it has a fuel tank attached because it's dangerous. So usually what you do is you'd puncture it, drain the fuel out and remove the tank. And my dad decided he wasn't going to drain the fuel. He was just going to light up a cutting torch and remove the tank with the fuel still in it, which is obviously a little bit dangerous. And the tank exploded

and he was burned really badly i mean really badly over the whole top half of his body and they didn't go to the hospital you know they treated the whole thing at home they had he didn't have a drop of morphine they don't even believe in ibuprofen uh they they treated it with my mother's herbs and he nearly died is the reality, but he didn't. And, you know, I have seen my dad since that accident light up a torch and remove a tank from a, you know, he can barely run a cutting torch now wants him to be injured, then he'll be injured. That burn taught him so much and was an important thing that God had in store for him. And he won't do it again, basically. Like, God won't allow that to happen twice. And so it's an extraordinary view of the world.

And when you're a kid, you're narcissistic in a general sense. I don't mean that judgmentally. I mean, you just think everything is about you. And so the concept that something is happening because dad has a mental problem or dad has a paranoia or dad has a block in his brain, you don't understand that. You don't have that kind of theory of mind. And so your explanation is it's something to do with me. And I think that's where the trouble comes in, is that when you're little, there can be a really complex situation. You know, someone like my dad who cares about his children but has some pretty strange ideas about the way the world works. But as a kid, you're not necessarily able to parse out and understand the whole situation.

I mean, that makes so much sense. And you hear it with kids in all sorts of different contexts, especially when they see stuff going on with their parents that's disruptive or harmful or upsetting. I mean, divorce, like on the most fundamental level, so many times you hear kids say, like asking the question, like, what was my role in this? Did I cause this in some way, shape or form, which is its own sort of like secondary trauma. I know looking back with sort of the benefit of time and other education, and you've shared that you look at your dad's behaviors and you wonder if there's actually some level of bipolar and clear paranoia going on. And I've heard also that like he has been exposed to you saying that and just outright rejected it.

I'm curious how, like when you look back and say, well, was some of this mental illness, how you reflect on that? You know, I think everybody has their way. I've had conversations with my siblings where they've said, oh, well, obviously dad has schizophrenia or something like that. And I've had conversations with the same sibling, you know, a couple of weeks later where they've said, well, of course, dad isn't mentally ill. What are you talking about? And I've had conversations with the same sibling, you know, a couple weeks later where they've said, well, of course, dad isn't mentally ill. What are you talking about? And I've had the same conversation with my mother. It comes and goes. I think for me, I think it's the most reasonable explanation. And I also think it's the most loving explanation. It's the most consistent

that I can think of. It's the only way I can reconcile what I know of him as a person with some of the decisions that he's made. And otherwise, if I can't have that piece of it, then I don't, I don't know what to make of the fact that he didn't take my brother to the hospital when he had, you know, third degree burns all over his leg. I don't know what to think of that. I, I don't think he's a monster, but that was a pretty horrible, that was not a good parenting day, let's just say.

And so I need a way to square that circle. And what I know is that my dad was deeply afraid of doctors and hospitals. And I believe that that fear was unfounded and really out of proportion to many of the situations that we were in, you know, where even a small risk of an infection or something was really small considering the injuries that we were dealing with. And then just the danger, the dangerousness of the scrapyard generally was, you know, there were a lot of injuries in that junkyard and it's just because there was no safety. There weren't safety precautions taken really in any form. And so that's how I have come to understand it. And I think everybody reckons with the past in their own way. You know,

some people just don't talk about it and don't think about it and try to forget about it. And, and then there are people who try to pull it apart and understand it. And I'm, I'm more one of those people. I didn't used to be. I used to be a forget about it person. I used to be kind of deny it person. I became a pull it apart person because I realized that just wasn't serving me very well. Actually, yeah, all of my ideas, I realized I had all these wires that were just crossed in my mind and uncrossing them and kind of reassembling myself was going to require actually looking at what

had happened and where did I get the beliefs that I have? And that really can only be done by looking at how you came by them. Yeah. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals.

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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 know you've described being in therapy in different sort of like moments of your life also. And I've also heard you describe the fact that the early days of therapy wasn't really about addressing what you just described.

It was more like trying to figure out much more external superficial things. So I'm curious, you know, when you share like, okay, so eventually you did come to this moment where you said, okay, it's time. Was that in decision to sit down and say, okay, I'm going to write about this? Was it years after? I'm curious sort of like when that moment was and what was the tipping point that made you say, okay, I'm going to write about this? Was it years after? I'm curious sort of like when that moment was and what was the tipping point that made you say, okay, now? You know, I went to therapy. There was a time where I was kind of in the, I was losing my family is what was happening. You know, I had a brother who was pretty violent and I tried to talk to my parents about it and they just didn't want to hear it. And I had ended up getting disowned for that. And it was really,

I mean, I was 22. I was in no way mentally prepared for what was happening. And I did go to therapy in that time, but in a kind of weird way where I just didn't talk about my family. You know, I talked about my boyfriend's parents. Like I just, it was a total proxy war that was happening there, but it was helpful. You know, it was like a kind of triage. I I just, it was a total proxy war that was happening there, but it was helpful. You know, it was like kind of triage. I needed it, but I really don't remember hardly ever talking about my parents in those sessions, my childhood, anything like that. I couldn't go near it. It's the truth. And then I wrote the book five years later, I wrote this book and I, I went through everything. And I think that was in a way, a little bit, my effort to avoid therapy. Like, Oh, if I can just tell the story, like if I can just go through and make sense of I went through everything. And I think that was, in a way, a little bit my effort to avoid therapy,

like, oh, if I can just tell the story, like, if I can just go through and make sense of this, then I don't need therapy. I've told the story. And that turned out to be false also. You know, it helped a lot, actually, having that narrative, having that story. But you have that emotional inheritance until you deal with it. And writing is a helpful way to deal with it. It's maybe phase one, but there is more that has to happen. And so I kind of, it was probably about two years after I'd published the book, I was looking at my life and just realizing I am, I'm just repeating these patterns. Like the kinds of people that I'm bringing into my life are not so different from the kinds of people that I grew up with. I'm finding them. I'm finding them in New York City. I'm finding them and realizing if I want to live that same life here, I can just continue doing what I'm doing. And if I want to actually

leave, you know, really leave and build something else, I'm going to have to do the dreaded thing, actually go solve, go figure myself out. So that was, yeah, about what would have been two, three years ago, I started actually going to therapy and not talking about my parents. It's like, oh yeah, those two people also. It's interesting because you hear so many folks say, you know, I sat down and wrote about it and the writing was a huge part of the processing. And whether that ever becomes a book or not, like oftentimes it's a journaling experience or something like that. And yet I often think that writing helps you get clear on what your experience of the story was, but it doesn't necessarily resolve the open questions that emerged even from that level of clarity. It's almost like mindfulness meditation to a certain extent. A lot of folks say, well, like mindfulness makes me so much calmer and more at peace. And it's actually, you know, mindfulness actually just allows you to see more clearly, you know, get closer to the bone. What was the truth or at least your truth, but doesn't necessarily resolve things. And that

sounds like it's a lot of what you're describing. It's like, you know, it was the setup, but it wasn't the resolution. There's probably people for whom writing the story does what they need. I think it depends on the person and it depends on what your issues are. And it depends on a lot of things. I think for me, you know, I talked to Bessel van der Kolk once who wrote this great book, Body Keeps the Score. Yeah, we've had him on the show. And he told me, he said, you know, having a narrative of your life, it's a very good

thing to have that. It's a very good thing. But it's not enough. It's not for most people going to go back and let them remake themselves in that same way. You know, I mean, you kind of need, you need an alternate set of experiences, you know, and you have to go through and process some of those feelings and make sure that you and your unconscious and your body and all the parts of you that you don't have direct access to. There's your rational self. That's how I experience myself as this thinking, rational creature who can be persuaded of things and told things. And that is part of me.

I mostly experience myself that way. But there's a whole lot of you that is just not rational. You can call it many, many different names. It'd be your reptile brain your instincts your unconscious people talk about left brain right brain Bessel talks about the body versus the mind or whatever like people have different ways of carving it up but what they're all trying to say is just there are parts of you that are not they're not totally amenable to just words and language. Like you can, you can tell yourself over and over again that something is over. And yet when you think about it, you know, react as if it's happening and your body could be having all

the same experiences as if it's happening. And you can tell yourself over and over again, oh, I, I don't like this particular kind of dysfunctionality. It makes me miserable, but still fine. Mysteriously, you just keep going back to it over and over again. And so I think for me, it was first just recognizing that that could be true, that I was not a fully rational creature for whom just telling the story or just giving myself a list of good advice was sufficient. You know, there's, there are parts of you that are, they're old, you know, and they're also really young in the sense that even just the way we perceive the world is, is filtered through not just the inputs that we're getting in the moment, but also the experiences that we've had with

neuroscientists called priors, you know, what are your prior experiences? And that filters things. People who've had a lot of trauma or neglected as kids, they might see the same smiling face looking at them and interpret it as hostile. And they'll interpret it as hostile in the moment. You know, they'll really go around the world looking at the same faces the rest of us are looking at and think that it's a hostile world and the rest of us will see either neutrality or even positivity and so kind of how do you go back and and and talk to those parts of you that are you know they're framing your entire reality they're so fundamental to the way you move through the world but you can't just talk to them you can't just say don't worry You can't just say, don't worry, it's all fine now.

There's nothing to worry about. They don't respond to that. They respond annoyingly and frustratingly. They respond to actually addressing what happened, processing the feelings, actually making contact with that experience and letting it move through. For whatever reason, they respond to that. But you can't just say to yourself, oh, the car accident's over or I'm out of that place. It doesn't really work that way. You were made by those things and unmaking them, it's a lot of effort. Yeah, it's so true. And it's interesting that you bring up his legendary book at this point, The Body Keeps the Score,

and his core theory that so much of trauma actually is literally physically embodied. You can't talk your way out of it, even if you recognize it and if you identify the patterns. Most people, they actually need to physically do something to integrate the experience of trauma. That's why I know a lot of his early work was really focused around yoga, integrating yoga or physical movement into the process of trauma recovery. He's also, in his most recent work,

he's actually shifting a lot of his focus to psychedelics and their effect on trauma and some pretty incredible research coming out around that. I'm wondering whether that is a world that you have explored in the context of your own history. I'm going to plead the fifth on that. But I would say, I mean, I've read a lot about it, I can say for sure. And I've talked specifically, I've talked to Bessel van der Kolk about it. Because of those issues, you know, I've talked to Bessel van der Kolk about it because of those issues.

You know, I am very persuaded by his idea that part of what happens to people and it doesn't have to be extreme trauma. I think when you're a kid, what constitutes a trauma can be it's much broader than when you're an adult. Yeah. Well, it's like he calls little T and capital T trauma. We all have little T at least that are just unbearable in some way. And a lot of things can be unbearable when you're a kid, you know, not having anybody looking after you can be a kind of unbearable thought when you're a kid. And his idea that when something becomes unthinkable or unbearable in that way, that you split off from your body in particular, and that people who have had these kinds of lives.

And if you think about what I was just saying in terms of priors, you think about that means you're living, if you're not connected with your sense experience, you know, what does it feel like to be in this room? You're living even more from your memory experience. What does your mind think the world is like? And his whole idea that part of one of the ways you calm people is you reestablish that connection and you bring people back into what's, what is the experience of being right here and let people start putting more emphasis on what's

happening as opposed to what's happened in the past. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of a counterintuitive thing that you get if you read his book is that part of being able to really live in the present involves really reckoning with the past. The two things go hand in hand. And if you just try to block away the past or forget about it and not think about it, that almost guarantees that you're living exclusively from a place of the past. The world that you're experiencing, whether it's a new lover or your child or your parents, all of that is going to be heavily, heavily filtered by what was. And it becomes a lot harder to see what is. And that's kind of one of the ironies, I think, of when you just refuse to engage with what happened. What happened becomes the only thing that you see.

It's almost like the more you just ignore it, the more it becomes the central part of your current lived experience. Yeah. Psychedelics, I mean, that's an interesting, the possibility that they seem to have and the research suggests that they have to re-set some of those thought patterns. It's really interesting. Yeah. So I've been reading a lot about it because I think it does sound kind of promising. Yeah. It's interesting to see all of a sudden there's an explosion of academic research around it. And yeah, I'm sort of following it myself because I'm like, it's really fascinating because it's one of these intractable conditions that so many people kind of live with. And it doesn't seem like there's been a huge amount of evolution in the

way that it's treated. I think Bessel's work is probably sort of has been at the leading edge for years and now there seems to be like this new evolution. So I'm so curious how that's going to unfold. When you sit down to write about your life, about your upbringing, so you're a little bit later in life when you do that. You have been out on your own. As you say, you've essentially been excommunicated by the family. You've gone deep into your own education and living in different countries. And you sit down to write this book, I'm always curious when you make that decision that says, you know, like now is the time to pick up the pen. What happened that like the day before it wasn't,

and then the day of it was. I mean, it was a gradual decision. It happened over a lot of time. I was thinking about it. I knew it was something I wanted to do, but I also felt a kind of inhibition about it. I felt, you know, mine wasn't a family where speaking about the past was well-tolerated and some families are able to do that. And some families really you're not. And in my family, we really weren't. I mean, that's when I had lost them in the first place, it was because I had, well, my sister had talked to my dad about my brother and I had supported her. And then my dad said we were both lying and got very angry. And my sister's testimony collapsed, which I totally understand why.

Because she, you know, she lives with my parents. She works with my parents. She has to live in that world. And I, I at that point didn't. I was a graduate student. I lived in another country and, um, you know, but I'd, I'd lost my family because I, of this thing I had done where I wanted to say, Hey, this is really not okay. This thing that has happened and is actually still happening. And yeah, my family was just

not a family that could deal with that. And then deciding to actually take it even a step further and write a book, I think was for me, I think I wanted to understand the experience and I think I wanted it to mean something. I wanted to make sense out of it. And I guess in the end, I kind of wrote the book I wanted to read when I was going through the really confusing experience of losing my family, not knowing how I felt about that, wondering if I'd made the wrong decision, wondering what it said about me that I just could not make these relationships work in a remotely functional way that I could live with. And just feeling a great confusion about it and not finding in literature or television or, you know, everywhere I looked,

like commercials and everything, the message always seemed to be the same, you know, family is the most important thing and you should always choose your family. And I felt like that is my overwhelming instinct is to agree with that. And yet I had this kind of new knowledge that was coming into me, which was that there was just a conflict between being loyal to my family and being loyal to myself.

The two were not the same thing. And in fact, they were very much opposed to each other. And I think it was just a desire to sort out the story of what had happened and how I felt about what had happened and leave a record and have it mean something to other people the decision was so settled. The truth is, I feel a lot more settled about it now than I did when I wrote the book. I was really conflicted when I wrote the book, but I wanted to write it in that moment because I think that's the moment when someone else is making a really key decision. That's the moment you're making it when you're not sure and you're on a knife's edge, as it were. So I wanted to write it in that moment so that it would have some resonance, or at least soon after that moment. But yeah, if I were to write it now, a lot of that ambivalence for me, time smooths it out.

You look back and you think, yeah, at least I do now. I feel very confident that was the right decision. I don't know what the alternative would have looked like, but at the time, I had really messy feelings about it. Do you think it would be a different book if you were sitting down to write it now? Oh, it'd be completely different. But I knew that when I was writing it, weirdly. I knew this is a moment where I made this choice, and I really don't know how I feel about it. And in 10 years, that won't be true. I'll know how I feel about it. And so I wouldn't change it for that reason. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of bits of the writing I'd change, but no, I think it was meant to be written in that moment. I think it's better to be in that moment. It's interesting. I've heard Liz Gilbert just give the advice to writers who

are thinking about memoirs, especially when it touches on hard truths and other people, to write first, assuming that nobody's ever going to see this but you. Just write your full experience. Write about the other people. Write about the moments. Write everything as honestly as you can. And then make a decision later about whether this ever sees the light of day beyond yourself. And if so, what stays in and what stays out? I'm curious whether you had a similar type of process with the way that you did it or whether you kind of took a different approach because you're writing about not just you, but other people who are still alive and who knows, maybe some time down the road, you're like, there's, there's as much as there's trauma and as much as there's angst, it's still family.

And maybe there's hope of reconciliation with at least some parts of that family. So it's such an interesting thing to figure out. How do I write this? And then even once I write it, what stays in and what stays out? It's good advice. I mean, I think it's important to try to write the whole thing before you make decisions about what you need to take out. It's good advice. I mean, I think it's important to try to write the whole thing before you make decisions about what you need to take out. I think that's pretty wise advice. You might just find after you've written a whole bunch of things that this thing that you really

don't feel comfortable putting in, you don't need anyway, and you can just take it out. And I did a lot of that. I did a lot of putting things in and then realizing, you know what, I can actually achieve what I need to achieve without this and it's invasive and I'm going to get rid of it. And so I did a lot of that. I think the other question that you're asking is a really interesting one, which is about the effect of writing about people who are alive. And is that going to be the end of those relationships? And what does that mean? I think it's a, I didn't know the answer to that question when I was writing it. I think I was, I wanted to know the answer to that question. I think, I think for me, the book was a kind of, you know, I was living in this family where it was just, everything was a

secret, you know, and everything was not even just a secret, but there was like one history, which was my dad's history. And that wasn't just true of the world history of things like the Holocaust or, or slavery or civil rights, which we only learned my dad's history, but it was true of our own history. Like the family history was the version of history that my dad was comfortable with. And I think it was important to me to find out what happens if I insist on, on having my own kind of narrative, my own reality, like not where I just agree to my dad's, but have my own and not to say they can't have theirs and everyone has to agree with mine, but just like, what does it mean if I just insist on this? Like I get to have my own idea of what happened. And, and that's something I think

I know now my family just couldn't tolerate at the time. I kind of hope that they could. And that for me would have been a kind of measure of health as it were, you know, like if, if we can agree to disagree about this, then, then we at least have some ground to stand on, you know, but I think for some families and for some people, that's not always true. I mean, the other thing that you're getting at, which is just how do you write lovingly about people for whom, you know, they're appearing in your story as these little side characters, you know, like in their own lives, they're protagonists. And you see everything about why they are the way they are. You would see everything about why they are the way they are. You would see everything about why they are the way they are, you know, but often when we're writing stories, people just

wander into our narrative for two seconds and do something asinine and leave, you know. And so I think the other problem that you have is that you're bringing people onto the stage often in an unflattering moment and then, you you know bringing them off again because you're telling a story that is about you and or maybe it's about somebody else but in any case there's a focus and not everybody is the protagonist and that i think is a really complicated thing and i think you just can't put enough weight when you're writing about people who are alive people you care about you know how can i bring someone you know know, this happened, this is a true thing, it happened, but it's not like the most representative thing of this person, you know, they did it, or it's not

the whole story, or, and how can you give enough context and enough, and that's where I try to focus my effort as much as I can. Even with my dad, he raised us a certain way that had a set of effects that I think were pretty rough, but he is a complicated person and he has his reasons for being the way that he is. And trying to allow people a little bit of space to have the kind of fullness of their story, even if you're only going to bring them on for a second, because you're telling a different story. I think that is where I spend a lot of my time thinking about, okay, this is a moment of this person's life, but it's not the whole thing.

Yeah, it's complicated for sure, especially when you don't have easy access to those people. As you're sharing that, Dani Shapiro is an old friend of mine and I don't know if you ever read her book, Hourglass, but it's just short and sweet, just a series of vignettes about her marriage with her husband, Michael, which is 20 something years at this point. And they're still very much together

and very much in love and wanted to be the thing for the rest of their lives. And yet she was sitting there saying, how do I write honestly about the 20 years that we have had together? And of course he was available to her and he showed, I remember she was sitting there saying like, how do I write honestly about the 20 years that we have had together? And of course he was available to her and he showed, I remember she was telling me she showed him the transcript. And there were parts where she was writing about him and maybe like not the most flattering way. And he was literally like, no, like you need to be more honest about me.

It is an interesting contrast because she has access to this person and input into sort of like his ability to like how his part of the story is told. And he's asking her to go deeper and share more. Whereas you're sort of doing it in a vacuum. You've got to make all these decisions on your own without the benefit of their input. I had some of their input. I had cousins and a couple of my brothers and I had, I definitely had some, but there was some people I didn't because I was writing about the end of relationships. You know, it's, I think you kind of just have to accept you're never going to get the full picture. There are things that you edit out. I had a sibling of mine say the exact same thing. He read the book. I was like, you haven't

put any warts on me. I need more warts, you know, write me honestly. But then I wrote one like kind of remotely, not even like when we were kids, some stupid friend, he freaked out, you know write me honestly but then i wrote one like kind of remotely not even like when we were kids some stupid and he freaked out you know and i realized like okay it's interesting it's like not that honest but you don't want this like you really don't want this but you want to want it and there were just ways that i edited myself because i cared about him and i have an idea of his psychology that's probably wrong about the kinds of things that I think are going to bother him and the kinds of things that I don't. And I just think if there's ways that you probably delude yourself when you're in a relationship that you shave what the story looks like. And there's ways you delude yourself when you're not in a relationship that you delude yourself.

And so I think the delusion is constant. Like people are not objective and they're not objective when they're with people and when they're not objective, when they're not. And so I think you have to kind of surrender without wholly surrendering it because you don't just want to say, well, I'm making everything up, but you want to, I think, live in a space where you're doing the best you can and you're making decisions based on, you know, what your goals are and also how it's going to affect these people. And I think that's okay. And you're making decisions based on, you know, what your goals are and also how it's going to affect these people. And I think that's okay. And you're not a camera, you know, you're not

just recording the absolute most objective fact of what happened. And so you're doing the best you can. You'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 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. that said, okay, if I put this down, if I sort of like share, this is the way that it happened from my lived experience and this wanders out into the world and my parents get hold of this and read it, that maybe, like maybe, maybe there's just this small chance that they'll actually

see and understand me and the way that I experienced this whole thing and maybe it'll open channels or maybe there'll be this sense of forgiveness or the opportunity to reconnect. Yeah. You always have that kind of hope that things are going to change in a positive way. And my family had, I thought in some ways, my parents had got less extreme as they got older. And in some ways they'd got more extreme. I feel like some of the ideology loosened a tiny bit, but the kind of control that my dad had over the family and the idea that it's the one story that was actually getting much worse. And I don't know. I mean, yeah, you always hope for change in a different direction. And I think, yeah, when I was writing it, there was definitely some kind of hope for that.

But I don't think it's, it's not the reason I wrote it, but I think it was part of it. Yeah, it's just sort of like the thing that gets tucked away, I think sometimes, but it's there. So as we have this conversation, it is what now about four years since the book came out? Yeah, yeah, about four years. And the book comes out, it becomes this pretty fast global phenomenon. And all of a sudden, this story that was your story and becomes something that millions and millions of people are reading and interacting around. And you go from a relatively private person to a very public person and your story becomes very, very public.

I'm curious how that experience lands with you. I mean, it was bizarre. You know, when you write a book, you're kind of told the publishing industry is really rough and you're not going to be able to get it published. And even if you get it published, nobody's going to read it. And so there's all these kind of reassuring things that get kind of baked into it where you think, well, this probably isn't going to work anyway. So I might as well give it my all, you know, because it's not going to work. And once it actually started working, there was definitely something a little terrifying about, oh, my God, what have I done? And I can't stop it now. And it has its own energy. And that I definitely had a little trembling around that time, but it was also wonderful. You know, I mean, it was, it was in a way what I'd hoped for in the sense that I wanted the story to resonate. I'd wanted it to mean something. It had been

something that happened to me. You know, we all want our lives to mean something. And so I think it was helpful to me, you know, when people would write me and say, you know, I, I was like, I grew up with fundamentalist parents also who wouldn't put me in school and blah, blah, blah. And I have the same thing as me. And I really identified with your story and I would feel good about that. And then I would get emails from people saying, oh, I grew up son of a diplomat on the Upper East Side. And I really identified with your story. Those were almost my favorite, you know, to just think, you know, isn't it interesting that people, there are constants. You don't have to be raised by a radical in the mountains of Idaho and kept out of school to know what it's like to be in a family

with one story. You know, you don't, you actually don't have to have that. A lot of those families exist and they exist everywhere. And a lot of people are asking that question of, you know, how do I love people in my life and try to have a relationship with people, even when the relationship itself is pretty destructive, maybe a bit toxic, like, how do I do that? And how do I sort out the feeling I get that I really want to get out of this with the sense I have that I'm not allowed to and all these other kind of complicated feelings that we can have around family and especially parents. You know, it meant a lot to me that people could read it and maybe they would

have a different answer. Maybe they'd have a different ending. Maybe they'd have a totally different situation, but that they would say, oh, you know, this kind of was helpful to me to find that this had happened to other people and that I wasn't the only one. So there was a lot that felt good there, but there was also a lot of overwhelm there. Just like what is happening? Yeah. I mean, cause when you get thrust into the limelight like that and you spent probably what the better part of two years, two to three years, literally like nonstop touring around the world. I would stop every now and then, but then I don't know. It was like, you make these commitments really far out world? I would stop every now and then. But then I don't know, it was like you make these commitments really far out. And I would always I didn't have a very good

relationship with my future self. And so these requests would come in and I'd be like, Oh, yeah, that's six months out. I'll totally want to do that. And then pretty soon my whole life was just scheduled. And I was traveling all the time. And, and, you know, it's pretty heavy thing to travel around talking about that book in particular. And so it was really kind of getting to me, but I wasn't very good at stopping. And actually, I was one of those people for whom the pandemic, as horrible as it was in a lot of other ways, was for me a really nice moment to say, actually, let's stay home for a while. And as I said, start attending to the other things, the putting yourself together again, the going to therapy for real thing, all that stuff I suddenly had time to do. So that was actually really good for me. And it's all unfolding in the context of both the pandemic and then also the last four or five years in this country where just mass polarization and family issues.

You know, like if there weren't family issues before, it's almost like they were created in the last couple of years. Yeah, and it was kind of funny. Like my family, you know, a couple of my brothers, I do talk to one of my brothers in particular, was a big Trump supporter. And we we've had fights about it because I never really supported Trump. I never was a Trumper at all. I was on the opposite side of that. And my brother was. And and it was kind of interesting because we have so much tension in our family around everything else. That was almost like our safe topic. We had one or we had maybe one really long disagreement that we got a little

bit, you know, about Charlottesville. I remember we were, but at the end of it, we were fine. But it was like, strange that I think our family has so much tension in it. Politics was the safe subject. So you write the book. It's one part of what goes on. You then literally have exposure therapy by spending two years traveling around the world, talking about it like relatively nonstop and then, you know, like get feedback from tons of different people. And then you say yes to a, to therapy that actually really goes into your own personal family history rather than talking around it. As we have this conversation, I guess my question is, how are you with your history? How are you just like as a human being, how are you with a sense of trauma? How are you just as you wake up in the morning and feel like, you're like, yeah, I can breathe again. I'm good. You know, there was a long period where I wasn't doing that good, actually. I mean, when I wrote the book, I wasn't doing that good. I was writing

the book to try to make myself better. And that kind of worked. And then the book tour was pretty stressful and it kind of reversed course. And there was a period, probably a year after the book had come out, that that's when I started going to therapy. And I just realized I'm just not doing well. I don't wake up feeling well. I'm sad through a lot of the day. I'm making terrible decisions in my romantic life. I mean, hilariously bad decisions and just realized, wow, this is with me. This is really with me. And yeah, there was an immediacy to it. Then when I started going to therapy, that was just like, I have to solve this. I'm so miserable. That immediacy, I would say is really gone out of it. You know, I am someone,

I think it's a lifelong thing. You know, you, you either are trying to dig through your history and make sure that it isn't deforming you too much and that your defenses haven't taken over your entire personality or you're not doing that. And you're just kind of letting it go and probably becoming increasingly defensive and deformed depending on what your life's been like. But I think it's kind of a binary in that way where people are either dealing with their past a little bit all the time or they're ignoring it and it's taking them over whether they know it or not and i i was trying to be somebody who was like putting attention to it you know and i i want to stay

somebody who puts attention to it but i i found that i tried a lot of different kinds of therapy and it got me to a place where that that misery went away which it's very hard to describe even what that misery is, but this pervasive sense of like sad and heavy. And, you know, why do I keep getting myself in these situations that I was really experiencing that's gone away. And now I really feel a lot more at peace with it and a lot more comfortable. But that said, I do keep putting a little bit of attention to it always because I think it's one of those things that creeps up on you. There's things that happen to you in your life and you develop these defensive postures toward them. And in my case, if I'm not careful, who I am gets completely submerged under these defensive reactions. I have a very intense

defensive system, very intense. And I can dissoci very intense defensive system, you know, like very intense and I can dissociate super easily and shut down emotionally in two seconds, you know, and it takes me, it takes me half a second to shut down and two weeks to open up again, you know, so I have to kind of watch it. Yeah. I think that is a not uncommon experience, by the way. Yeah. It feels a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So sitting here in this container, Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Wow, that is a remarkably hard question. You know, I think I've been in different phases of my life that's meant so many different things.

When I was younger, I think it meant it was all bound up with religion and what I thought God wanted me to do or what I thought my dad wanted me to be, which was a midwife like my mom and homeschool my kids. And then I think when I left that world, it suddenly became this big open question. Okay, I'm not Mormon and I don't have these beliefs my dad has. So what does it mean to live a good life? And I think for me now, it's focused around writing and storytelling and communicating as honestly as you can what it feels like to exist in the world and try to create something that means something to other people. But it's not a very sexy answer. I'm a little bummed I don't have a better answer to that question,

you know, to live a good life. But I know I've just had a quote come to mind that is making me really happy in the context of what I'd said about Mormonism and what my dad was, which I think is David White said this. He said, you know, the really disappointing, I'm going to massacre this quote because I can't remember it. He said, the hard thing really is when you realize that the world is not going to be what you expect it to be. That's a really hard thing. But the happy part of that, the other happy side of that is that you also don't have to be what the world wants you to be. And that's the upshot of it.

And I just love that. I love this idea that you come to a place where you realize, I just don't have to be what I was told I had to be. And then that question you're asking about what is a good life becomes a completely open question that you can answer for yourself slowly. And I have not answered it yet, but I have, I think at least at the age of 35, I've got to the point where it feels open to me in a way that it didn't when I was younger. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you will also love the conversation that we had with Elizabeth Gilbert about the power and also concerns that come from writing your truth and then sharing it with the world. You'll

find a link to Liz's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you haven't already done so go ahead and follow good life project in your favorite listening app and if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on good life project go check out my new book sparked it'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects you and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning purpose and. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. 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 eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg

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