Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 475: Run Towards the Danger | Sarah Polley

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Often, when you’re afraid of something, the best advice is deeply counterintuitive, not to mention inconvenient: to turn toward the source of your fear.Today we’re going to talk about the fear of confronting your own past with our guest Sarah Polley. Polley is an Oscar nominated filmmaker and actress who recently wrote a new book, called Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory. In her book, she explores the relationship between her past and present and how the two are in constant dialogue. In this episode we talk about: The story of her concussion and the unusual advice she got from a specialist that became not just a path to recovery, but a sort of personal credo, “run toward the danger”What we often do with our stories of childhood shame, and the immense power of talking about itHow she has come to stop seeing her anxiety as a stop signHer argument that the advice to “listen to your body” is not always the best adviceThe liberating potential of intentionally making uncharacteristic decisionsHer path to meditation and her current practiceAnd the limits of her own “run towards the danger” mantraFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sarah-polley-475See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. Often when you're afraid of something, the best advice is deeply counterintuitive not to mention very, very inconvenient. The advice is to turn toward the source of your fear. I've been seeing this recently with a resurgence of claustrophobia,

I've been experiencing. The best way to deal with it, and there's a lot of evidence to back this up, is to continuously expose myself to the things that freak me out, like airplanes and small elevators. I don't enjoy it, but it definitely helps. Today though, we're not talking about claustrophobia, we're talking about another flavor of fear,

another source of fear, the fear of confronting your own past. We've all got our skeletons. So what do you think is the better move to engage in compartmentalization and denial, to pretend none of those things ever happened, to stuff your anger and shame and whatever else? I think you know the answer.

So today, we going to talk to somebody with a fascinating and challenging past who's done the hard work of looking at it squarely and has lived to tell the tale. Sarah Polly is an actress and filmmaker. She was actually a child star. For a while, she was known as Canada's sweetheart. And she's got a new book called Run Toward the Danger

in which she explores the relationship between her past and her present and how the two are in constant dialogue. This is a great conversation because we get to hear a lot about her moviemaking past. She has starred in such films as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Sweet Hereafter, and Dawn of the Dead. And she has directed such films as Away from Her, which was nominated for an Oscar. So we get to hear about some well-known figures such as Terry Gilliam and Julie Christie in this conversation.

We also talk about the story of her concussion, which produced symptoms that lasted for years, and the unusual advice she got from a specialist that became not just a path toward recovery, but a sort of personal credo, that advice was to run toward the danger. And this also became the organizing principle of the six essays in her book,

all of which confront what she calls the most dangerous stories of her life. We also talk about what we often do with our stories of childhood shame and the immense power of just talking about it, how she came to stop seeing her anxiety as a stop sign, her argument that the advice that we often hear about listening to your body is not always the best advice,

the liberating potential of intentionally making uncharacteristic decisions, her path toward meditation and her current practice, and the limits of her own run toward the danger mantra. I get that some of you may be thinking at this point, well, isn't this a show where we talk about meditation all the time? Should we really be dwelling so much in the past?

Shouldn't we be perpetually in the moment? Well, first of all, that's impossible, but still, it's a provocative question. So that's why we're gonna pair today's interview with another interview, which we'll post on Wednesday, with the meditation teacher Matthew Brenn silver, who's gonna talk about how mindfulness

can help us shift our relationship between our past, present, and future selves. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app.

It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from?

And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby This is Ski-E Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Sera Polly, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. If you're up for it, I think maybe it makes sense to start with the story of your concussion and what happened thereafter and then of course the transformative advice you got from

a doctor. But let's just start with the concussion if you're cool with it. Yeah, absolutely. It was just a, you know, a freak accident as many concussions are. I was rummaging around in a lost and found bin in a community center after I was swimming one day. I was looking for a lost blow dryer that really wasn't that important to me, which is something that really stuck in my brain for a long time afterwards.

And a fire extinguisher, a really giant sort of industrial-sized fire extinguisher was on the wall just above the Lost and Found bed. And I was sort of jimmied in there because there was this big giant free standing poster that sort of made it impossible to get to the Lost and Found bed any other way. So I stood up and when I stood up my shoulder somehow caught on the fire extinguisher and it dislodged and fell on the side of my head and left me with a concussion that was really severe and really long-lasting. And it went on and off for three and a half years, but at no point in the three and a half years post-concussion was I ever my complete self.

So I would have periods where I was really not functional at all. I would have periods where I was better, but only if I managed life in a very careful way and really calibrated the amount of activity and multitasking and noise and light I was exposed to. And I sought every treatment under the sun, both traditional medicine and alternative and nothing worked until I heard about University of Pittsburgh Medical Center concussion clinic with this doctor named Dr. Michael Collins.

And you know, for years, I had been trying to basically avoid the things that stimulated my symptoms. So lots of overhead light, multitasking, lots of noise, crowded environments, screen time. These were all things that gave me more brain fog, made me exhausted, gave me crushing headaches. And so beyond the lie down in a dark room for three weeks, which is mostly outdated now, but some people still get that advice. I was also told to just, you know, don't totally stop your life, but just manage things. You know, like make sure you don't go into environments that stimulate you too much.

Make sure you calibrate your days according to your limitations. A lot of listen to your body, which I was a big fan of because I feel like after years of yoga and meditation, that came very naturally to me. And so I did a lot of pulling myself away from the things that were hurting me. And when I went to see Dr. Michael Collins, his piece of advice that was so life-changing for me was, if you remember nothing else from this appointment with me, remember this, run towards the danger. So all of the things you've been taking out of your life in order to protect your brain,

it's been making your brain weaker. The more you eliminate experiences of things because they're painful, the more you're ill-equipped to deal with them. So you need to be going to grocery stores, you need to be doing more screen time, you need to be multitasking more, you need to be exercising vigorously every day. This was of course scaffolded with a lot of very specific, the stipular exercises and physical exercises. So I wouldn't want someone with a concussion just go out and run out and do all of this exposure therapy without a very specific plan from a doctor, but it was life changing.

And I suddenly was running into the activities I had been avoiding. And in a very short amount of time, I think it was about six weeks. This concussion that had plagued me for three and a half years was gone. I mean, I don't have symptoms anymore. That's incredible that that worked. And you've already referenced meditation, but anybody who's ever meditated will hear the similarity of run toward the danger. Obviously run toward the danger with care and skill, but to turn toward the things you're scared of that is like one of the hallmarks of meditation. Yeah, absolutely and so I think it was good that I was used to the practice of sitting with discomfort

another pivotal thing he said to me which was actually kind of a hard thing to roll into my mind as a meditator, was stop tracking your symptoms. It's not helping you. Pay attention to your recovery times. So stop listening to your body so much. Stop because I was very good at noticing the nuances of what was wrong. And that in this case was not helpful, actually. So, yes, moving towards the discomfort by meditating, but it was like this little twist, you know, like a little twist in there that I hadn't considered, which is don't put only your attention on that. Like, also move through the anxiety, move through the pain because what had happened was it wasn't

psychosomatic, but my vestibular system had gone off and that had triggered my anxiety. Now there was a pathway between those two parts of my brain. Now, it wasn't just that my vestibular system went off, triggered my anxiety. Now my anxiety could also trigger the vestibular symptoms. So it was this they were talking to each other too much. And I had to kind of break the communication. So what's finishing for me is just like trying to process what it means to be conscious of your body

and conscious of sitting with discomfort and listening to your body. But not, I think maybe like having more of a conversation with it instead of just accepting whatever message you're given, it's sometimes something other than what it presents. So I think sometimes just grappling with, does something not feel right because it's not right or does something not feel right

because there's anxiety there that should be walked alongside as opposed to shutting you down. Does that make sense? Yeah, so it's not just listening to all of your thoughts and all of the signals from your body. It's interrogating it as well. I think that's right. Yeah. I feel like that was a hard adjustment for me to make somehow. This is a hard admission for me to make as the child of doctors and the husband of a doctor, but I don't know what vestibular remains. You know what, I'm going to give a really lousy description of it,

and I feel like I'm scared of how bad it'll be, but I believe it has something to do with balance, but I'm not going to be able to explain that well. I was just like doing whatever that guy told me to. I didn't do a little research. I was like, I believed him, and I got like really evangelical about it. I did not have a critical mind to this. So I was like, he told me I'm going to get better. I'm going to get better. So you're forgiven for not being an expert in whatever vestibular means. But speaking of your evangelical spirit, this idea of running toward the danger it appears to have become the controlling idea, the thesis of your book. Yeah, I mean, all of the essays in my book are very difficult stories to tell. They were hard ones to tell even to the people I'm closest to. They were certainly felt like an enormous

amount of risk and sharing them with a whole bunch of people I didn't know. And I think I got very interested in this idea of this conversation that happens between a present self and a past self when there's an echo of a past experience in the present. And then there's this opportunity to sort of move through similar territory, but as a different person. And hopefully this results in some kind of or is a pathway to some kind of recovery from really difficult experiences. And so all of these stories ended up being difficult to tell. And so I think that that idea of running towards the danger, of running towards the thing that good advice would probably tell you not to do, did become a pretty serious organizing principle for me in taking on the stories in this book,

because they were hard ones to tell. Can you say more about this conversation between present self and past self? I suspect that we'll resonate with a lot of people, but I'd be interested to hear more about what exactly you mean. It's most glaring with children, I think, in my life, although I've certainly had the experience in a lot of other iterations as well, where you're in familiar territory of something that was really difficult for you as a child or an earlier part of your life, and something that maybe left you with a certain amount of damage or even trauma, and you have this opportunity to walk through that same territory

to walk through that same territory as a person who has more agency and as a person who has more facility and tools and resources and have that experience go a different better way. And for me, that has been, you know, all that therapy I've done in my life and all the meditation I've done in my life. And I feel like those are the moments where it feels like. I mean these things are never completed or resolved, but it's the closest thing I can think of to that where somebody says something or does something that wasn't said or done in the past in a really difficult situation or you move in a direction that you didn't in the past experience. And some scab kind of just isn't there anymore in the same way. So I'm thinking of there's an experience I had as a child working on a very unsafe film set when I was a kid, I was a child actor.

And it was very traumatic with explosives going off, but as I'm at the time going to the hospital, really scary mistakes and issues with special effects. And I felt completely unsafe and completely unprotected and really helpless. And there was no adult to sort of step in and stop that. And so as an adult, before I started making my own films, I was an actor. I was on a film set once and there was a special effect that I was part of that, you know, on the scale of special effects, wasn't that scary actually? It was, you know, there was like a fire effect coming towards a car I was sitting in. And the director could see I was terrified.

And he said, why don't I sit in there and show you? And so they did the effect with him in the car. And I said, okay. And he said, you still look terrified. And I was like, it's okay, I'll deal with it. I can see it's fine. You're going to be in the car too when we shoot it. So as this cinematographer, I don't want to shut down this shot. And he said, yeah, we are all going to be there. But we weren't in the movie I didn't been in as a kid. It was called the Adventures of Baramun Chows. And he said, we weren't in the Adventures of Baramunchaos when we were kids. So it's different. And if you feel

scared, we're not doing the shot. And it was just the most extraordinary, kind of full-body experience of something I didn't have to carry anymore. Like someone just did something different. And even though at the time, I was in my 20s, I still held that child perspective on what it felt to be completely helpless and have nobody care about my safety and to have that one person take that upon themselves and be that compassionate and that moment. It made me view the whole story from my past very differently. It was actually able to see the humanity in even the people who were responsible for me being in danger. Like, it allowed me to pull back.

And so I think every essay in this book has an element of that of something that just goes a different better way in the present and allows a kind of recovery in the past. Let me quote you back to you. And then maybe you can talk about whatever comes to mind after hearing your own words, quote it back to you. But you say in the book that the connective tissue between the essays was a dialogue that was occurring between the two very different time frames of my life. The past was affecting how I moved through the world, well, present life was affecting

how the past moved through me. The past and present I have come to realize are in constant dialogue acting upon one another in a kind of reciprocal pressure dance. I mean, I spent years in psychoanalysis. So I walked around this world thinking about how my childhood impacted my present behavior, my present life, what I was constructing,

what the echoes were from the past. But I had spent very little time realizing that my present life could also impact the past, but I'd spent very little time realizing that my present life could also impact my past so that those memories and the meaning of them and the narrative them didn't actually have to remain these static hard things that those stories could kind of change. So being a child actor and being on sets and feeling unprotected, I think it's okay to feel angry about those things for a long time.

In fact, I think you probably should. I think it's kind of maybe cheating to like skip over those things, but it's nice if that can change. And in this case, it's like, I no longer look back at my parents as, you know, having done this. It's not that I ever thought they were malicious, but I really focused on how they failed me

by not stepping in when I was unsafe on sets. I really focused on how they failed me by not stepping in when I was unsafe on sets. I really focused on Terry Gilliam, who was the director of that film, being some kind of monster for letting those things happen. And I now see them all as kind of like unbearably human. And that, you know, my parents were in an environment they would have loved to be in themselves. And here is their child getting this opportunity and this access to a world that they were thrilled by

and excited by not just for themselves, but for me. And I also see now having lived a life on film sets how hard it would be to stand up and shut down a giant production with hundreds of people and millions of dollars at stake because you felt uncomfortable about something even if that was your kid. I see Terry Gilliam as this like,

imaginative brilliant child who really needed someone more adult to rain him in. And it would have been great if he had adopted a more adult side of his personality throughout the years and stopped himself when things were going out of control. But I also look back and go, he also never snapped at me. And that's almost unheard of. Like in my experience as a child actor,

director has always snapped at you. So there's also something there, and he would sort of greet me with this look of, I'm glad you're here, which I think is a child is so meaningful. So those were things that were invisible to me when I was locked into how furious I felt that this kind of thing had happened to me. But having had enough experiences now as a director myself in control of sets, having worked with directors as an adult who showed compassion in equally unusual ways to the unusual ways in which I was neglected. It does change what you can see in the past

and it does make the memories more complex and ultimately much more interesting to live with. To be clear, and I think you said this earlier, but I just think it's worth, I'm going to use a little corporate speak here, double clicking on this. There's no magic here. It's not like you're saying you can in the present moment just magically decide to bypass all of your difficult feelings about the past and magically make it all okay. Yeah, no. I mean, I think you have to go through a lot of really hard stuff for that opening to happen. And I don't think it can be rushed either. I spent a really long time in therapy and

psychoanalysis, and I'll probably go and end out of it for the rest of my life. And I think, especially if you've had hard experiences early in life, I think that's stuff you're always walking alongside. And you're always grappling with in new ways. They hopefully just become more interesting ways. But yeah, I think it's really imperative for me. If I had tried to go straight into the kind of positive thinking realm of things early, I think it would have just sort of piled up resentment, you know, layers of resentment that would have exploded. Like, I had to be really sad and really angry about this for a really long time. And I think really also unpack and untangle a lot of the details of it

before I could kind of let some of the story go and sit with what the emotion was. And then also be open to a moment that helped me kind of reexamine and recalibrate my relationship to those memories. You gave us the story of Teri Gilliam, but let's talk a little bit more about your child acting career. There's an essay in your book about the adventures of Baron Munchhausen and the filming of that movie that essay is called Mad Genius. But there's also an essay in your book about the adventures of Baron Munchhausen and the filming of that movie that essays called Mad Genius. But there's also an essay in there called Alice Collapsing. Can you tell that story and maybe give us a little background on how you became a child actor? Sure. I feel like that essay, I think I started writing it when I was 18 and I finished it when I was 41. So it might be hard to sort of give a praise of it, but I'll do my best.

I was working at the Stratford Festival, at the Interfestival when I was 15, and I was playing the lead role of Alice through the Looking Glass. And I was also dealing with scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine, which was getting worse and worse. And I had at its worst, I think it was a 60 degree curve in my spine.

And my mom had died when I was 11. I really feel like I'm giving a laundry list of sob stories here. I'll see if I can add a few fictional ones. And here's my list of trauma. Love me. So when I was 11, my mom died. And I was sort of like caught in this situation with my dad where he just kind of fell apart after my mom died. So, you know, the house was squalor, he wasn't functional. And I was kind of alone with him in this house, in the sort of isolated in the country, away from my friends, away from everything. And then I went and I did this play. And the play itself, I mean mean the stories of Alice through the looking glass and Alice

in Wonderland were stories that my dad loved and always wanted to reach for me as a kid. And they always terrified me. And he was obsessed with Charles Dodgson, the real Lewis Carroll, who wrote the stories and his obsession with Alice Ladell. And there's a lot of writing, speculating that he was a pedophile. And it was just a very uncomfortable story for me to live inside of and to be portraying. And there was all of the stuff that hadn't been dealt with about my mom dying, about my body basically falling apart. I needed a major surgery. I had been avoiding. I was wearing a fiberglass brace over my torso 16 hours a day. And I ended up, I think, all of that stuff ended up sort

of manifesting itself through this debilitating stage fright. So I just became absolutely terrified to go on stage. And I guess I had a kind of nervous breakdown or some kind of break with reality. We're actually thought I was inside the play and I was terrified all the time. And I ended up going to a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, and telling him I was an agony and he needed to write me a note to get me out of the plagues. I was in so much pain. And this doctor ended up saying to me, you know, usually scoliosis doesn't cause this much pain, but he said, I had a patient recently who was playing baseball, and he had scoliosis.

I don't know how much pain he was in, but he really needed to get out of playing baseball. I wrote him a note and it got him out of it. Is that a note that you need me to write right now? And I said, yeah, I really need that note. And he, it was just, you know, it was an amazing example of a doctor treating the whole patient and seeing someone in their office, not just for what they're presenting with, but for everything else as well. And so I got out of the play 15 or I can't remember how many shows early, 10 or 15 shows early, but kept that a secret until really, really, you know, quite recently.

Like in the last five, 10 years, the first time I've ever really told many people that I faked this stage fright to get out of this play. And it was sort of a big deal to drop out of this lead role at the Stratford Festival before the run was done. And I'd gotten all this sympathy for my back pain, which I felt terrible about. And as it turned out, what's been interesting about releasing the book and telling the story is, a lot of people from that play have reached out to me and said, you weren't lying, it was a substitute.

If we had done, we would have, of course, been happy to stop the play. And we're so sorry we couldn't have been of more help. Which of course, if I'd thought about it rationally as an adult, I would imagine that would be a really kind person's response. But I was still carrying my child perspective on the story even through the writing of it, I think more than I thought. I think there was a slight slip of the tongue where you said faking stage fright, but you

weren't faking stage fright. Oh no, yeah. I get confused about what I'm faking. But this is important because the stage fright was real and stayed with you. And there was actually a moment later on, which goes to the core thesis of your book, which is that there was a moment later on in your life where you were able to kind of overcome the stage fright if memory serves on my end.

Yeah, I mean, I was given this honorary doctorate by this university in Canada at McMaster and I didn't know what the hell I could offer. A bunch of people who had university degrees because I dropped out of school in grade 10 and I was so terrified to go on stage. Like I was absolutely petrified and I started going to a psychology specialized in stage fright. And I started to realize like the only way I could do this

would be to demonstrate what it was like to do something you were a terrified of. And the only way to do that would be to tell the story of how I had a complete nervous breakdown being on stage and so I avoided going on stage of all costs, but that it actually meant more to me to get to be there than my fear did. And so I was there anyway.

And I did feel after sharing that story so publicly, which I kept so secret and felt like there was such shame around it still for me until so recently. I did feel like something on lock a little around that. Like I'm not completely terrified to go on stage anymore. Those feelings still come up, but they feel like something that can be dealt with or spoken to or I can be in conversation with them instead of like a very clear signal or a very clear stop sign.

It feels more like, Oh, here's that again. And what might make this interesting, what's an interesting way to go about this and is the experience worth more than my fear at this moment. So there was something about telling the story and lightning the burden of the shame that made stage fright writ large and all circumstances more manageable. I think that's right. I think taking the shame away from it and telling the story was extremely important. And it's always amazing to me like how I find this

with friends too when someone tells you a story of something they did when they were, even a very small child, that they haven't shared very much or at all. They tell it to kind of as that child. Like there's no analysis. Like it's so interesting when you hear someone's deepest dark secret from when they're a kid of what they did.

They tell it to you as though the adults will all be so disappointed and upset with them and that actually deep down there really, really bad. There's like a freshness to like the child in them in those moments that's really arresting. And I think it's always just so shocking to me how not having told a story enough can sort of leave us with the extreme weight of that story in a way that's like inappropriate after this much time has passed or given the age you were or that these things end up

not being what you think they are in terms of their gravity. I think it's bordering on truism, but an often overlooked one that talking to people about the stuff that's bugging you, the stuff that you're most ashamed of can be a massive relief. The problem is, I think people are afraid to do that, even maybe even with their shrinks. The other problem is that we live in an increasingly isolated, atomized society where people don't have that many close friends anymore. Yeah, it's a really big deal. I feel like close friendships are a really big deal. I remember when I was 21 when I first went to therapy. I remember my first session saying, I wanna learn how to be a friend. I'd let a very isolated life being a child actor

and I felt like I was kind of a lousy friend and I was like, I wanna figure out how to actually be of use to other people and be somebody someone could rely on and trust and connect. And it is actually something that has to be practiced and worked at and a skill and it's unsurprising given how much more isolated and divided we're becoming that it's it's just something that people aren't having much

of. Like when I am really really busy and in a work mode and I go a few weeks without talking to people, I can't believe the difference when I do. Like when I do make that time, even though I don't have it to see a close friend or talk to a close friend, it's such a cliche and it's so obvious, but I'm always kind of shocked by the difference it makes in my mental health to just have connection. We're going to take a quick break, but before we do, I just want to say after this interview, we looked up the word vestibular and Sarah's right. It means relating to a vestibule, particularly that of the inner ear or more generally to the sense of balance. Anyway, coming up Sarah Polly talks about her path to meditation and shares a very funny story

about an unintentional epiphany she had on her first meditation retreat. We also talk about the limits of her run toward the danger of mantra after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, after this. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownalder, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So I'm gonna provoke you to tell some more stories. Another of the essays you've written, I believe it's called dissolving the boundaries, rather than me summing up, would you give us the best version of a praisee that you could do, given that it's a complicated story?

I will do my best. I had this really magical trip with my kids. I have three children. It was when my third was still a newborn, and it was sort of an impromptu trip we went to Prince Edward Island, which is an unbelievably beautiful place with endless beaches that are totally undeveloped. And it was this kind of idyllic moment in our lives. And it was really strange we were there because when I was a kid, I was on this TV show called Road to Avanley in Canada in the states

it was called Avanley. And it was really popular and it made me, in a way that I found agonizing at that age, famous, in my world, in Toronto, if I walked down the street, I was stopped a lot, and I did not want to be an actor, and I did not want to be famous. And it was not a good experience working on the show. I worked extremely long hours, really crappy things happened like, you know, after my mother died in the year or two after

there were more than one scene written of me crying about my mother dying. They knew they'd get a great performance. It was really quite, and I wanted to be in school. And it was just a not good experience. And then added to that was this kind of notoriety and like people stopping me on the street and kind of wanting something from me all the time. And so the show took place on Prince Edward Island and my experience of going to Prince Edward Island as a kid was basically being mobbed, like being followed non-stop, like signing autographs in malls. And I remember it being like a particularly bleak moment in that period of life of feeling like people were all over me and that I was kind of grumpy and miserable and disappointing all these kids that were really excited to see me. And it was just a really like

going to PEI was not something I would do for fun ever. And I had this experience of being there with my three kids and nobody knew who I was anymore. The show is long gone. Kind of having this amazing experience of being with my kids and looking at these landscapes that had been fictionalized in this show for so long and had a certain meaning for me. And watching just the narrative around what that show was and what it meant and how I was still carrying like so much anger and I think damage from the experience. And I really just felt it kind of melt away bit by bit. And again, it's not done. And I'm sure I'm going to be in conversation with those memories for a really long time. But something softened like and

dissolving the boundaries refers to that that that all the boundaries of the narrative versus reality and life, and unhappiness versus happiness, and injustice versus what would have been okay, that just got softer and more pliable. And it was just this beautiful experience also of figuring out what kind of parent I was going to be to these three kids, and what kind of life they were going to live, and how different it was going to be to the one that I did. But also in the full knowledge that I'm going to make my own mistakes and they're going to have their own story of how they were let down right and hopefully, you know, one day they'd have a trip to PEI like I did and and find some forgiveness there. But it was just sort of like this sense of being able

to see something from a different perspective and from a very specifically happy point in my life to be able to look back on that just felt really different. What if your kids came to you and said they wanted to be actors, child actors? Someone said to me recently that the lessons the universe hands you are custom-weird and so that has happened. I don't know about the universe delivering lessons. I come from a similar place that you do

of total cynicism before I found meditation. You wouldn't find somebody more cynical than I was about all things woo-woo. So I don't know about the universe delivering lessons, but this is custom-weird that my oldest kid is obsessed with being a child actor. And we talk about it most nights before bed. And it's been such an interesting process from because I've been very, very clear, we'll do as much children's theater campus you want and clubs and anything that's not in a professional environment where you don't have that intense pressure of adults

and their livelihoods and a product and people trying to make a profit. And any experience where you don't have that around you grade, like acting's awesome. And they're like, no, child actor, it's gonna be professional. And it's been so interesting because it's the only thing that I have a real red line around.

Like there's this immovable boundary, and that's certainly where I wrote the book from was this place of, this is the one boundary that doesn't get crossed. It's really interesting because they asked me the other day if they could just audition for something, and I was like, yeah, but you can't do it. I just want to experience it by auditioning. The audition, the people wanted to cast them in a small role. And my kid turned

down the part. So I don't know what it means. I just took a few things to happen in the last few days. And I'm like, I don't know how to process any of this. But I think it maybe was a test of my rigidity. Because again and again, Eva said to me, I'm not you, I'm not living your childhood. I don't have your parents, I have you. So it's not the same. And I think what they were doing potentially, I don't wanna speak for them.

But my gut is that on some subconscious level, they were trying to wear down the baggage I was bringing by saying like, no, you don't get to make red lines based on your childhood. Okay, fine, but I think it was really gratifying for them to know that I let them do that. And I hope to God that's the end of it because I would be the most nightmare stage mom

of all time. I'd be shutting down production. If it was a little too hot, I'd be like, we're all going home. Guess what? You lose to a million dollars. Sorry. This child is helping you run toward the danger, it seems.

Oh my God. Well, and believe me, that line gets thrown at my face often. Eve is 10 and there's a lot of like, if this isn't running towards the danger, I don't know what is mom. That's what you called your book. It's like, I really regret it.

It gets tossed at me anytime. I don't want to do anything for anybody. They ask me to run towards the danger. Ha ha ha ha. One night when he was annoyed with me, my then three-year-old said the name of my next book should be 10% poopier. So that's amazing.

There is a question. I feel like you don't talk about your kids in that book. Do you? I didn't have a kid when I wrote that book. Okay. I was just like, did you hide? He's gonna be all over the next book because he's like a karmic torpedo. He's just so good at one lineers. The other day I don't think this is gonna be in this next book, but I was in a pool with him and he swam up to me and I hadn't seen him in a few minutes and I said, who are you? And he slapped me in the face and said, I'm the guy who just slapped you.

That's amazing. That's amazing. He's got jokes. How old is he now? He's seven. Oh, I'm so glad you had a kid. I mean, not that like life depends on having kids. I know plenty of happy people don't have kids,

but I felt like I really wanted to see what would happen when you had a kid. I was so curious just to see where some of those stories went and how things got processed. Yeah, well, a lot of embarrassing things happen so I thought her for a book. Amazing. I do want to get you to tell some more stories

from your past, but, and I guess this does involve a story from the past, but it's not specifically an essay in your new book, but you have referenced meditation a couple of times, and I would love to give you the chance to talk about how you got introduced in meditation, because I believe it was through the well-known actress, Julie Christie.

Yeah, so I knew Julie from acting with her when I was, I think, 22, and then we acted again together when I was 24, and then when I was 27, I cast her in my first feature film that I directed away from her. And I don't know, you know, she had really outgrown the whole evangelical phase of like, you know, when you went to meditate and you're like screaming about it to everybody and telling everybody they have to meditate to solve their life. She had really outgrown that part.

So it actually was a long time of knowing her before I even knew she did meditate, or that she was deeply interested in Buddhism. And I think it came up because I was talking about something I needed to get done. It was either needing to find a place to live or a relationship I needed to resolve. And she just said, you know, I think the thing with you Sarah, is you're always waiting to arrive somewhere. And I think what you're going Sarah, is you're always waiting to arrive somewhere. And I think what you're gonna end up realizing is you never really arrive anywhere.

And I was just horrified. Like that was the most evil thing anyone had ever sent to me. It was like, what, I just felt like she pulled the rug out from under me. And we talked about it more. She ended up talking a little bit about Buddhism. And then she kind of waited for me to come to her, I think, for a few years.

And then I think when I was 27, I said, I'd really like to, like, read more about Buddhism. Like, would you recommend any books? And knowing how unbelievably cynical I was, generally, she was really strategic in terms of the books she gave me. She gave me with very clear instructions on the order I was to read them in. The first one was Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Bachelor, which is a great book if you're dealing with someone very cynical. I just remember reading that book and saying, I feel like my head is being exploded. Like the entire experience of reading that book, I remember so vividly, like my entire worldview was

exploded by that book. And then the second one was when things fall apart by Pema Children. And it was an amazing one to punch, like as someone's introduction to Buddhism. And then I started meditating. I started to go to meditation classes. And I would say from the age of 28, 29 on, I meditate every day. And if I don't, I'm just a completely reactive ball

of God knows what, it's so necessary now in a way that, you know, now I'm like, am I too attached to meditating? It's such a thing. It's like too much to touch me. But I do feel like the days, I mean, everyone knows the days I haven't meditated. I'm pretty okay, but nobody wants a day with me without meditation involved. It's an interesting question. Can you be too attached? Can you be attached to meditation? Is that a healthy or a wholesome attachment?

For sure, if you're attached to it having a certain result, that's no bueno. But what if the story you're telling yourself is, like the story I'm telling myself is, like I'm no good without meditation. And I'm not gonna actually be helpful to anyone today because of meditation. Like that's where I think it gets toxic

and a bit tricky is this belief that you can't survive. I would agree with the caveat that I'm not a meditation teacher, which I like to issue a lot. So I'm open to being corrected on what I'm about to say, but that sounds right. And I think there's a way in which, especially people who've been meditating for a while

can get attached to the formal practice when, you know, you can learn to be mindful all the time, which may, I mean, I'm always a fan, and I think any meditation teacher or most meditation teachers would be fans of time on the cushion, so to speak. But I think you can get a lot of what you think you're getting from sitting formally from your everyday life if you're just paying attention with some continuity. I wonder if you had this experience with your kid when he was a baby, but like when you're

walking a baby in the night, you're sort of forced into this walking meditation, which can actually be kind of a great experience if you're not focused on how frustrated you are at the baby's sleeping. I'm trying to remember that too, is that anything can kind of be turned into a meditation, but yeah. Did you have that experience when he was little? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I do want to say just to put in a word for walking meditation generally.

And I'm talking about formal walking meditation. If you go to a meditation retreat, there are people walking extremely slowly, you know, within very small spaces, you know, back and forth in a room, feeling the motion of lift, move, place of every footfall. But often in the evening, it's not too tired to do a formal seated meditation. I will do a walking meditation around the house at a kind of normal pace. That's a different flavor of mindfulness. It's really with your eyes open, all the sense doors, all the channels are open.

I find that to be a really useful practice, especially it might be good for people who are kind of attached to formal seated meditation eyes closed to work some of this in because it is, it's kind of just different aspects of the mental muscles. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. I went to this retreat once where there was a lot of walking meditation, and it was my first retreat, and I just had this memory while you were talking. But like, I remember going, you know, for days and just feeling like I was not, I was just not connecting, and I was not in the moment, and I was not present, and there was a lot going on in my life at the moment, and

I remember, like, I remember being in the washroom washing my hands towards the end of the retreat. I was washing my hands and I was really aware of washing my hands and of the soap and of the paper. And I remember literally having the thought, oh my God, what am I doing that in here for? I'm wasting it. I have to go back and do that the whole time in there.

And I'm doing it in here. And this is my moment of love. I'm like, I'm not quite registering the point of something. It takes a while to get the joke. And I think for Taipei people, we get very focused on doing the practice correctly. But the practice is just a gym for your life. And what you really want to do is do your life better. So washing your hands and being there for it, that's the point actually. Yeah, it was a, it was an amazing moment of revelation.

I'm just how far off the mark I had been. It was kind of great. I often say that if you're committed at all to personal development, you are sentencing yourself to a life where you realize that you've been a complete moron up until about six weeks ago your whole life. It's very, very true and actually kind of helpful to hear that because that can feel like a very specific individual experience.

So speaking of individual experiences, let me just go in our remaining time, just get you to talk about one more of the essays, and that's about motherhood. And I believe the title of that essay is High Risk. And just again, through the lens of running toward the danger and having a different relationship to your past, I'd love to hear how this story fits into that. Yeah, so I think what happened was with my first pregnancy, which ended up being really complicated and high risk. I had gestational diabetes, there was ripping and tearing of scar tissue from endometriosis as my uterus grew, and then I had a placenta previa, which if not handled well,

and without a C-section can be life-threatening. So I was on bedrassed for months, and I was really grounded, and it was a very painful and really terrifying experience. And I think of it now as a kind of enforced grief because I don't think I had ever truly let myself get sad and angry that my mom had died when I was 11 like for all the therapy I had done. I think I hadn't even scratched the surface of that grief. But having to do nothing I think I hadn't even scratched the surface of that grief, but having to do nothing and be still in the middle of this crisis and all of this terror for months meant that my grief for my mom and my memories of her just kept coming up through the cracks. So I was sort of on the brink of being a mother myself.

I hadn't really witnessed a mother mothering beyond the age of 11, but really more like eight or nine, she was very sick for the last couple of years of my life. And I think in order to assume that role, I had to deal with what I had lost and what that had left me with. So that essay is really a meditation on being on the brink of motherhood and finding myself really for the first time acknowledging that I was motherless. And again, like I think that, you know, there's like a hard rock of a narrative we carry around to explain ourselves to ourselves.

And a lot of that was about how busy she'd been all the time and how I'd lost her so young and how I never really got to know her. And that was all true. But what also came up for me during this time where I had to really sit with it and be with it was a sense of her warmth and of how she really saw me and really appreciated me and how 11 years of that is actually unusually privileged that most people don't get that from their parents after a whole lifetime. So I think I was able to end up seeing what was best in her.

I think that part of that was also this incredible medical team around me. I had amazing doctors and amazing nurses, not all of them, but most of them at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. And they kind of nurtured me through the experience in a way, and my kid ended up in the neonatal unit as well. And the way they sort of got me through that process with incredible patients and compassion and care, it just felt, again, like this dialogue between this current moment in my life and this moment in the past that

had kind of informed who I'd become and all of my behaviors and they were sort of speaking to each other. And it was sort of an amazing thing because in a way I was sort of mothered through that experience by the medical system and by these amazing professionals to the point where when I was discharged, I was ready to be a mother. And part of that was seeing my own experience of having had a mother very differently. Coming up Sarah talks about the liberating potential of making intentionally uncharacteristic decisions in your life.

And she explores the limits of her own run toward the danger mantra. Keep it here. You said this earlier, but I think it's worth going back to the idea that, yes, we talked about how it can lighten the load to tell a story and to retail the story in a new way based on being an adult and looking back with some increased maturity and sanity. But you said before that the stories aren't done with you, that you're still processing them. I just one more time going to kind of read you back to you and see if you can free associate afterwards.

In the book you write, I have changed. I know now that I will become weaker at what I avoid, that what I run toward will strengthen me. I know to listen to my body, but not so much that I convince myself I can't do things or that I can't push myself, not so much that I use the concept of listening to my body as a weapon against my vitality. I do the highway drive. I'm nervous about. I prepared to make a film. I write the book. I've always wanted to write. Run toward the danger is a way of being that I have taken into my life with me, a treasure, a spell, a sword. Yeah, I mean, it has been really transformative for me.

I was somebody who always saw their anxiety as a stop sign or a reason to not do things. And now it sometimes feels to me like a starting gun. I think I needed to cocoon for a lot of years. I think maybe I judge myself a little less than I used to about that period of just needing to remove anxiety triggers. But I feel like it's really fun to not have a fixed idea of self or identity of what you can't do of what you're not like.

Like, the experience of making the film I just made, I just made this film called Women Talking that I'm really excited about. And we were supposed to make it. And then we delayed because of COVID. And then the numbers were low. And we were about to shoot. And then the numbers started to go up again. And I knew we had the most elaborate safety protocols you could possibly have. Like it's actually nauseating how many safety protocols the film industry had compared to warehouses and you know, people working for minimum wage. But it was a safe working environment. people working for minimum wage, but it was a safe working environment. But my anxiety about an unsafe working environment on a film set obviously has such deep roots and it just went through

the roof. And I was like, we can't do this. I'm not making this movie. We can't do this. And I remember my husband is someone who's very reluctant to ever give advice. And I remember trying to figure out whether we should go ahead or not and basically having decided not to and I said to him Just I need you to tell me what you think I should do and need you to just tell me and he said all I'm gonna say is It's seemed uncharacteristic of you that you've left the door open to this so long like it doesn't seem Characteristic of you the way I know you and I think what he was saying in a very compassionate way was like, it's okay if you shut this down, it's like you to be cautious. But I sat with it for a couple days and I almost saw this amazing opportunity

to change what was characteristic of me and do the opposite. And like, yes, that's me is the person who would never make a film if there was any chance of anything going wrong for anybody. But what if, if I still maintain like being responsible, but go, this is an okay risk, I'm being told by the epidemiologist, I know it's an okay risk to take, it's not unsafe, it's not a responsible like what if I did something that actually made me someone else because I made a different kind of decision. And that just felt me someone else because I made a different kind of decision. And that just felt amazing. And in fact, it was transformative. I'm not sure anyone would say after the last couple

of years that it would be characteristic of me to not do something because of my anxiety. But it's a direct result of kind of subverting myself and not listening to myself too deeply and going, actually, you're going to be fine. And we're going to be a grown-up here. And it's okay. You said early on in this discussion, something about how you can look at your past and the present moment and try to take an angle on it that's more interesting. I think you used the word interesting a couple of times. Is what you just described an example of that?

You know, it's actually a blessing and a curse to share this book with people because my producer had already read the book. So she was able to go like, I know where you come from. I've read your book. I know it's coming up for you, but we're going to be saying, you know, people have this like manual to you, which is very embarrassing at times. But I think that, yeah, like what was coming up for me was all my stuff about being unsafe on film sets

and people not taking other people's safety seriously enough on sets. And it wasn't quite relevant to the situation we were in, but it was dictating all of my behavior. And I think I kind of got curious about that and interested in it as opposed to letting it guide the situation. But I don't think the answer is to just go like, no, not you anymore, like not those memories, not that garbage. I'm going this way instead.

I think when I say interesting, like it was interesting for me to observe that happen and to kind of go like, that's legitimate, but I actually don't want that to be like in the driver's seat right now. But it can stay in the back seat or even the passenger seat. Well, you can keep talking because it's not going anywhere. I don't think there's just some magical moment where we clear ourselves. I think it's better than that. I think we get to have new relationships with our own stories.

We're pairing the interview we're doing with you with an interview with a meditation teacher by the name of Matthew Bren Silver. So, this interview is going to be posted on a Monday and on Wednesday, Matthew's interview will be posted. And he talks a lot in that interview about how the present moment can be, which is, by the way, the apex predator of all contemplative cliches, the present moment can be, which is, by the way, the apex predator of all contemplative cliches, the present moment can be an opportunity to relate to the past differently. And he says,

it's stopped me this word a little bit because it's a bit grand. But he said that in meditation, you can kind of bless the past as you see shards of visual or somatic memories arising in your mind that with the sort of maturity and mindfulness and hopefully some degree of wisdom of being right here right now, you can in his words or in his word bless the past in that way. I throw that at you just to see if it provokes it for anything for you. I absolutely love that. Yeah, because I think we spend time kind of like running away from our past or suppressing our past or kind of dealing with it,

but all of the hard stuff around it, and I think all of that stuff probably has its place at moments. But yeah, there's something about relating to it, even the stickiest, ugliest part of it, with some amount of friendliness that it just makes me, I feel like that's a beautiful way of putting it. I love the idea of that. I'm going to carry that with me. Friendliness is a great word, in my opinion, because I've heard meditation teachers go on and on about holding whatever with loving awareness. And just some reason that kind

of phraseyology didn't work for me. Maybe it's subconscious sexism, because that's kind of stereotypical feminine language. I don't know what it was, but I didn't like that language. But Metta, the METTA, the word in the Indian language of Polly that is now translated as loving kindness, that actually means friendliness. And that, I think, is doable for anybody. Yeah, absolutely. And also just this idea that we don't have to be at war with what's happened to us. Like we don't have to like it and we can be really angry about it and really sad about it and everything, but maybe we can kind of like

not be at war with the fact that it's there. You said before your husband doesn't like giving advice. I'm going to give you a chance if you want to. Is there any advice having spent a lot of time thinking about how to use right now to have a different relationship to back then? Do you have any thoughts for people listening about how they can do that? It's funny because I feel like I'd have to know who I was talking to, because I know so many people who could use more listening to their bodies and more listening to themselves and to slow down and to not feel like they have to charge into every situation. And then I know so many people who were really well

acquainted with those things, but I've sort of, I think, gotten themselves into a trap of not challenging themselves and who they are and what they can do. So I kind of feel like all of this sort of big picture stuff around my book, it so has to be calibrated to where you're stuck. Like if you're stuck, not able to move, I do think it's a bit of a battle cry to move and to be scared and be okay with being scared and to not have that stop you. But I'm a very specific person who's writing that and who needed that advice to themselves. I do think it's probably in general kind of a good thing to have the hard conversation and do the thing you want that you're afraid of. And I do think that's, you know, generally probably okay. But I do know those

odd people who actually just need to listen to their body more and slow down. I think it's really specific. I wrote this book as a very specific person as opposed to a professional and any kind of mental health field. The best advice I've ever gotten from people along the way has been people helping me reframe how I was looking at something as opposed to offering any kind of guidance. It was just like how about looking at it from this angle. What's the edge for you right now? Is there anything you're struggling with today?

Yeah, so I'm not over COVID. It's been like three or four weeks and you know, I'm having my heart monitored right now because there's been regularities in my heartbeat. And it's been really challenging because my whole sort of mantra for the last few years has been run towards a danger. Don't lie down on the day. Don't nap because you feel it. Like don't listen to your body so much.

Know you can do it. And COVID is sort of telling me otherwise right now. So when I like don't have an app during the day, and I'm pushing, I'm like, no, no, I'm going for my walk. No, I'm doing my exercise. I'm not sure it's working that well. Recovery from COVID. So I feel like I need to take a tiny pause

and it's possible that running towards the danger for me right now is actually letting myself occasionally have an app and not exercise and not do all of the things and know that I will get back to that and that will be my baseline again, but it's just not for the next week or two or a few weeks or however long this lasts. So it's just, again, that flexibility

of not having these mantras and ways of being that can't alter based on the reality you're in. And I've found that challenge, but again, also super interesting, nothing should ever stay one way. First of all, I'm sorry you had COVID and it sounds like it sucked. The second thing to say is that you've been talking about this a lot in the interview. And I think it only just kind of clicked for me now is this is a tricky balance that you're calling for here.

Because I think my experience and this is probably projection. Most people actually don't know how to listen to their body. They're pushing through, they're wired and tired, they're drinking caffeine to paper over their fatigue. So they're not listening to this barometer that we're walking around with. They're all belfry and no tower. And that's a really big problem.

However, you talked about the fact that you can get so tuned into your body that you can use what can masquerade as wisdom to give yourself so much leeway that your muscles are atrophy. Yeah. And so knowing when to listen and when to not listen, that sounds like a tricky balance.

I think it's like a really tricky balance. And I think it's that thing that he said of stop tracking your symptoms. And I'm like, but I'm so good at that. I'm so good at tracking my symptoms. Because I was very, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are very much in this culture of like listening to your body and yoga and meditation and self care.

And I do think there's like a, it's like a near enemy thing. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, I do think there's a path you can go down there that's actually not what you think it is where you're tracking your symptoms so much that you're actually preventing yourself from moving forward alongside the sticky hard stuff and that you're using any amount of fear or discomfort

as a signal to stop and take care of yourself as opposed to actually moving through this situation would be really good for me. But certainly, yeah, I mean, especially in the film industry, most people are not listening to their bodies enough. I mean, most people that I've met in my life are not listening to their bodies enough. But I just think it's important to know

what's what, like my body tell, I'm really scared of highway driving. My body tells me every day, like I can't drive on a highway. But I know the more I don't do that, the worse I'm gonna get at it. So I do it anyway. I think what's can happen is this weird feedback loop and your conversation with your body.

So you're like, how do you feel body? And my body's like, I don't think I can do this. I think I need to lie down. And then your brain goes, okay. But then I think your body goes, oh, that got confirmed. And like that brain is sort of in charge. And they just confirmed for me my feeling about myself. So I really can't do that thing. Like I think we can get into a bit of a negative loop with the listening to your body that can be not great. At the same time, I've seen people injure themselves or make themselves really ill by not listening at all. So I do think it's about finding that tightrope and knowing when to push and knowing when

to sit down. It's just not always to sit down and I just do think that my body would prefer to nap all the time and not do anything scary. That's what my body says. So I like listening to my body can be a tricky thing. Yeah, no, I think it's tricky, but you know, this is why discerning wisdom is useful and using the prefrontal cortex to interrogate the signals. And yeah, so I struggle with a lot of claustrophobia, but I know that if I am constantly avoiding it, it's just gonna make the whole thing worse So that's such a place where I don't want to listen to every little thing my body's telling me

But I also have this problem why push myself too hard at work and so sometimes the body's saying you know Dude stop working a lie down and I do I should listen to that You might be one of those people has to track their symptoms more maybe maybe Is there a question I should have asked that. You might be one of those people that has to track their symptoms more. Maybe. Maybe. Is there a question I should have asked, but didn't? I don't think so. I think the only thing that I noticed is because it's six stories about really traumatic things that have happened to me.

I think what can sometimes get lost, certainly not in this interview, but in general about the book, is that there are stories about recoveries, instead of stories about traumas, like the thing that unites them is actually like the moving through something as opposed to the difficult experience itself, which is somehow important to be, not just to, you know, have people read it, but just because I think it's really important somehow that there is a way forward when we tell these stories or that there is something that comes out of it. Yeah, as you said before, it's not just a laundry list of, whoa, it's a story about challenges and then how you were able to reframe those challenges through a lot of work. Yeah, that's the idea. I'm sure I'll be reframing for them for the rest

of my life, but this is where I'm at now. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and also any work you've done recently or in the distant past, they might recommend to people who want to consume more of your output? Sure. So the book is called Run Towards the Danger and I've made three feature films that are available. I think they're all on Netflix now, and maybe some on Hulu.

Away from her, which is the one with Julie Christie, and take this Waltz and a documentary I made about my family and sort of interrogating family narratives and telling many versions of the same story. And it's called Stories We Tell. And I'm just, I've just finished my last film called Women Talking and that'll be out I think December 2nd.

In theaters, you were on a streamer. In theaters, unusually in theaters. It's very exciting. Very exciting. Congratulations. And thank you so much for coming on. So it's been really fun to talk to you. Thank you. It's really been a pleasure. And I'm such a fan. Thank you for much for coming on. It's been really fun to talk to you. Thank you. It's really been a pleasure and I'm such a fan. Thank you for all your work.

Likewise. Thank you again to Sarah Polly. Thank you as well to everybody who works so hard on this show. Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine, Davey Lauren Smith, Maria Wartelle, Samuel Johns, and Jen Poient. Also of course, all the folks over at UltravioletAudio who do our audio engineering. Don't forget Wednesday, we've got an interview with the great meditation teacher Matthew Brenn silver.

We're going to talk about how in meditation, we can explore the relationship between our presence self and our past self and our future self. And he's going to talk about just this unrelenting cliche we get in spiritual circles of being in the moment. How do you actually do that? So it's a great chat. It's coming up on Wednesday. Lenten, cliche, we get in spiritual circles of being in the moment. How do you actually do that? So it's a great chat.

It's coming up on Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.