The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between by Mari Andrew

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between by Mari Andrew From New York Times bestselling author Mari Andrew, a collection of essays and illustrations, divided into phases of the sky--twilight, golden hour, night, and dawn--that serves as a loyal companion for life's curveballs A whole, beautiful life is only made possible by the wide spectrum of feelings that exist between joy and sorrow. In this insightful and warm book, writer and illustrator Mari Andrew explores all the emotions that make up a life, in the process offering insights about trauma and healing, the meaning of home and the challenges of loneliness, finding love in the most unexpected of places--from birds nesting on a sculpture to a ride on the subway--and a resounding case for why sometimes you have to put yourself in the path of magic. My Inner Sky empowers us to transform everything that's happened to us into something meaningful, reassurance that even in our darkest times, there's light and beauty to be found.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for joining us once again on this journey, this pathway we're going down to of the Chris Voss Show podcast. It's just a winding journey of over 700 podcasts.

Make sure you go listen to all those wonderful podcasts we've been doing not only this week, but last week, the week thereafter, or before thereafter. What? I'm moving into the future. I'm like the Terminator podcast and check them out. There's so much to learn. And, of course, we've got so much for you to learn today. You're just going to be blown away, amazed, uplifted. The light's going to come on and the sun's going to come out and you're going to go,

what a beautiful life and picture this is. I'm, of course, stealing a little bit from our author's cover here. I'm getting some inspiration. So go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification. You can see the video version of this also go to goodreads.com for just chris voss you can also go to all of the different groups we have on facebook there's four or five over there there's a instagram as well with multiple accounts and also on linkedin today we have, as always, the coolest guest, the author of the book, My Inner Sky, on embracing day, night, and all the times in between. She is a multi-book author, Mary Andrew, and she comes to us.

She's both a writer, artist, speaker, and flamenco enthusiast living in New York. She grew up in Seattle, went to Chicago, taught English in Chile, and spent a few years working through a series of retail food non-profit jobs in Baltimore, D.C., and she loves to write. She's written two books prior, Am I There Yet?, or I'm sorry, her second book, this one we're going to talk about today, is actually My Inner Sky. She's written these interesting books. We're going to find out why she wrote them, what they're about. Welcome to the show. How are you? Tell us where we can find you on the web and order up your books and stuff like that. I am always putting things on Instagram at ByMariAndrew and it's ByMariAndrew.com where you can find both books and some other of my thoughts. There you go. So you've

written this second book for yourself. I tried to give you more books in the intro. I was just trying to pad that intro for you. Appreciate it. But you've written My Inner Sky. What was the motivation to put out this second book? So this book is all about paying attention to your life in all of the moments, the boredom, the hurt, the difficulties, the beauty, the things that we don't want to go, how they're going, the things that we would rather forget. And there's a lot of talk these days about being really present, but I find that's really hard. I think it's a lot easier to pay attention. Being present, sometimes I feel like that means, oh, can I not look at my phone or can I not think another thought while I'm talking to someone? But paying attention means I'm going to feel the feelings I have.

I'm going to think the thoughts that come to me and I'm going to pay attention and say, what can I explore in that? What's that trying to tell me? And that attention to life is where I got these essays, which I've collected into this going through the day from golden hour to twilight to night to dawn, taking us through different times of life that I think are all worth paying attention to. So when I thought of being present, I thought I was supposed to be like a gift present, be a present. And I'm just like sitting here with my bow. I don't know what that means.

I like that better. I just have a little bow on my head and I'm just sitting here. Someone's going to recognize me. You're open. Yeah, someone's going to think of you as a gift. I'm the one who always gets returned. Anyway, so you wrote a series of essays in your book. And now you mentioned something about how you go through times of the day. Can you explain it some more in depth now that way?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how I structured my book. So it's my inner sky. It's about embracing a whole life, not just a happy one. So I use this metaphor as a sky that I want all of it. I don't want just blue. That's a boring life. I want the purple,

the pink, the golden, the dark. And I'm going to pay attention to that and see what each of those times of life have for me. I think there's so much wisdom that we ignore in the really tough parts of life, or maybe even more of the really boring parts of life. The times when we're really not doing that much, we think there's nothing here for me. There's no treasures to be found. And I have found the opposite. Wow. You've given me an epiphany as to how to approach life and look at life where you, you look at it from an aspect of, of there's a lot of people who just want the blue sky all the time. They're just like, I want everything to be perfect. I want the grass on the other side to be always green and or whichever sign I'm on, I guess. All that good stuff. But you look to embrace it because

you can't have blue sky 100% of the time. You just drive yourself crazy trying to get that. That's the thing. I had this really serious illness three years ago that partially and temporarily paralyzed me for a month. And it took about six months to recover from that, to learn how to walk again and use my body again the way that I used to. And I just remember at that time, this is 2017, so a different zeitgeist. And I remember positive thinking was really in the air. Everything was about positive thinking. And I was not positive because

I was sick and I was recovering and it was two steps forward, one step back or one step forward. It was constantly, constantly a setback. And I just got to thinking, isn't my life beautiful too, even though I'm not thinking positively? Isn't there something that I'm learning from this? Do I have to be positive all the time? I do live in New York as opposed to LA. So I think that explains my stance on blue skies all the time. But I do think there is so much value in these really difficult things that we go through. Or like I said, these really not remarkable things we go through too. We were talking about some of this in my clubhouse group, I think last night. And someone was talking about how we interpret what's happening to us, what's going on in our life. And how we, I don't know, gauge or interpret that perception is what can make all the difference. And sometimes when we're in a pain point or we're in a complex challenging point,

we need to maybe learn or listen more for what the lessons we need to learn from that, as opposed to this really sucks. And that sounds a little bit of what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And I think sometimes when you're going through a really hard time, you don't want to learn a lesson because it's, this just sucks. Like I don't, there is no value in this I remember when I was in the hospital people kept telling me you're you're becoming wiser and you're learning so much and you're going to become this saint and I thought I would rather just be drinking sangria on my patio like I would rather not be a strong person. But through in hindsight, you realized, wow, that was like masterclass of life.

Like I just went to, I just went to get my PhD in the life in human experience by doing that. And if I just were to ignore that and say, well, that just sucked and I hated it. And I never want to think about it again. I'd miss out on a lot of the insight that I got and creative inspiration too. And I think some people take moments like that and they turn them into a crutch that they drag around for life. And they don't really learn something. They just use it as, I don't know, something to flagellate, self-flagellate themselves with maybe. Oh, totally. Yeah, of course.

The way we deal with pain in society is not well. We don't really know what we're doing. And I think a lot of people are very understandably will use that to drag themselves down. And that's completely understandable, but integrating those experiences, which we're not taught to do in society, it's actually something that's really like counterintuitive, embracing those as rich soil for empathy and for creativity and for the way that you're going to live and treat people certainly is a more meaningful approach to dealing with pain. So you're saying I should stop being scarred by the hangnail I had 10 years ago?

That's what I'm saying. Yep. Yep. Not to minimize anyone else's trauma, but it was a very painful hangover. So you started writing this book around that time, three years ago. Is that correct? Yeah. I wrote my first essay from the book after I returned to Europe, which is where I got sick. So I was taking a sabbatical in Spain when I was in the hospital and being in a foreign country amplified a lot of the loneliness and difficulty and obviously language barriers and all of that. Flew home to recover. And then a year later, I decided to travel again. And that was a really scary experience and a really beautiful one. I went to Ireland, which is a perfectly really, really lovely place with such lovely people. But I still

found myself scarred from this post-traumatic stress of losing my ability to move. The last time I was in a foreign country and reconciling what it would look like to live again, live a big life again and put myself out there and learn from this and say, all right, I'm going to keep going forward with what I love to do. I wrote the first essay then and then wrote for about a year. That's awesome. It's tough that we have to have the hard things happen to us in life. And of course, life is filled with the universe that tests our ability to survive and has a lot of chaos in it that it likes to throw at you and say, hey, dodge that one. It's kind of like universal mother nature dodgeball.

Oh, tornado. Yeah. Yeah. Hitting all those curveballs. I think I just came up with my new, the title of my new book, Universal Mother Nature Dodgeball. Yes. There is a very good theme there. You can run with it.

There you go. How to survive in the universe. Anyway, that's my book. Let's talk about your book. You've written a series of essays and you have them, do they address certain times of the day or give us an idea on the structure of, is there something that I would want to read if I'm struggling in a certain four o'clock in the afternoon or give me an idea as to how that plays out? Yeah. So the way that I structured it was it all came from this idea that I had when I was in this recovery period from my illness and it felt like a twilight.

It felt like, okay, I'm not in a night, but I'm not in day. I'm in this kind of weird time, or maybe a dawn is more appropriate. Like, all right, I'm beginning to see some light, but it's still pretty dark. I don't really know where to put myself right now. So I started writing about these in-between times of life. So it's the times when you're not really struggling, but you're also not killing it. It's those times where you don't really know how to define yourself. And a lot of people put that expectation on you. People want to put us in different boxes.

And if you feel like some days I feel this way and some days I feel this way, it can be hard to feel like your experiences are legit and worth really paying attention to. So the way I structured it was a golden hour is about experiences where we are really present or have the opportunity to really look around us exactly where we are right now. And I call it golden hour because I think in golden hour, everything is just more beautiful, even like garbage cans. Twilight is about those in-between times that you don't really know where to characterize. Night is uncertainty. I would say we're in the collective night right now. And then dawn is that

renewal. That's when you step out into the new version of yourself, which isn't always easy. Like renewal is hard too. We want that light at the end of the tunnel. And then we get there and we think, oh gosh, this is like really intense. The tunnel was actually a little cozier in some ways. It sounds like when I walk out of Vegas casino and you've been in the casino all night and you walk out in the dawn, you're like, whoa, that's way too much. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of have to like adjust your eyes, wear sunglasses indoors. And so this seems like it's a really appropriate book for what's going on right now with coronavirus.

People are struggling. People are looking for hope. I struggled over the last year. I just got my Moderna shot a week or so ago. Yeah. And it's, it's a weird place to be. And I feel it kind of echoes or mirrors some of what you're talking about because for a year I've been living in this county. I don't know if they're because I don't know how long we're in this and it's really awful. And I really want my mom to stay alive. And I really want my sister in a care center to stay alive. And I really like them. I like to keep them around. And they're concerned about me because I'm the perfect epitome of health here.

And it's this dark time or nighttime, like you mentioned. And now that I've gotten the shot, I feel like there's a bit of hope. Hopefully I'm seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. And I imagine a lot of people are in that space right now. Have you gotten a lot of feedback on that or did anything that happened in the last year? I'm not sure when you went to press, but did anything in the last year contribute to some of your thoughts in the book? It's so funny. I finished it right before the pandemic started. And it was amazing to me how many themes really, really resonated. It's so funny. I just wrote this whole book about how we need to embrace

uncertainty and really pay attention to these hard times in life. And then this past year, I've been like, oh, this is so hard. So I need to read my own book. At least you had the manuscript where you could read it. We were all waiting for it. I know. I could just like sit at night, like scrolling through my manuscript. No, that is not who I take inspiration from. But I will say, yeah, people have been saying this came at the right time, which was, it's

a little funny to release a book right now and everything's virtual. And I'm just in my kitchen doing all of the celebrating and promoting from here and it doesn't even feel real. But there is this beautiful side of it where I wrote this whole book about how it's so hard to sit with these uncomfortable emotions and grief and sickness and all of these things that we're collectively experiencing right now. I wrote for my individual experience, but now it's so amplified. So there's some benefit of the timing in that way. Definitely, definitely. Now, did you do the artwork in this book? It's got a lot of beautiful pictures and artwork I'm seeing on Amazon. I did. Thank you so much. Yeah, I, I've always wanted to be a writer. But in the past few years, I've started my hand at illustration. And when I started out, my illustration was really cartoonish. So I was putting these kind of daily cartoons about my dating life and foibles as coming into adulthood. I put those on Instagram and then my style got a little more abstract. So

I started doing these watercolor washes and lose myself in thought when I'm doing it. And I wanted those to be a part of the book. I think people have such low attention spans these days. It's nice to give them something they can flip through and maybe just look at the artwork if they're having a low, low attention span day. I think it's beautiful because you're talking about a lot of these feelings that we're processing, a lot of these thoughts that we're processing, and it makes it much more funner to read the book when it's got beautiful, uplifting artwork, interesting things to think about. You do more than just read the letters on the page and you don't have these in a times roman new roman font or whatever they use in books these days i'm not a clearly not a typesetter

but i like this it's it's really beautiful in in how it portrays itself and then you've got the colors and everything so i gotta tell you maybe i had to read this book more often like yours where i can where there's pictures because Pictures help. Yeah. Especially when you're trying to upload, uplift your feelings and everything and get through it. Now, did you also do that with your first book? I did. So my, my first book was actually mostly illustrations and just these kind of like observational cartoons about going through life. And a lot of them are funny or snarky or they're a little more cartoonish. And, and I, my styles changed a lot and I, I wanted to do a lot more writing in this book, which I got to do, which was wonderful because that's always what

I wanted to do. But it is, it is difficult to be known for art and then say, I want to write a book of essays. That's, there's a little bit of a disconnect there. So I was very lucky to work with some great people who really supported that. And then I got to put in the art too, which I agree. I think there's something about colors that evoke feelings no matter what. Like when you look at a sort of purpley blue, that might evoke for you like melancholy or nostalgia or might just really make you happy i don't i don't know but there's something about that that can move you through this like emotional experience just like watching a movie or something the colors and cinematography and lighting really add to that experience so to get to put them together was a dream what's interesting is

i think you might break me i might i might anytime i read a book now, I'd be like, hey, where's the colors and stuff, man? Where's the colors? I want some colors. Yes. I don't care if this is a political nonfiction book about history. I want some colors, darn it. But no, you're right. It's really beautiful.

I find that I process it more when there's colors. And in looking at the pages through the book, I just, sometimes you just pause and you just absorb it. And so you get the feeling where if you're just reading a book on pages, you're just stuck with the words. So like I say, anytime I read a book in the future, I'm going to be like, Hey man, where's the pictures, eh? Throw it at the wall if there's no pictures. Next time I have a WAPO co-editor on, they're going to be like, what? Get out of here.

So the prior book was a New York Times bestselling book? Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, that's always good. It's always good to get that thing. They can't take it away. That's true. You can ride that sucker all the way. I have friends that they got one 20 years ago.

They're still banging it. Still talking about it. Yeah. It's, it's hard earned and hard fought. Do you want to give us some titles of some of the essays that you wrote to give us, we'll give some teasers to people. Oh, sure. Maybe some of your favorite ones that you like the most. Yeah. Yeah. There's one I wrote called homesick that I've been thinking about lately, which is about finding home in New York City. And finding my home here is because I, like everyone on the planet, have experienced a lot of loneliness. And that's something that I'm really interested in writing about, loneliness, because everyone experiences it, but we pretend it's something that you can hear or that some people don't have. And so I wrote about how I didn't really feel like I belonged in a lot of everyone experiences it, but we pretend it's something that you can hear or that some people

don't have. And so I wrote about how I didn't really feel like I belonged in a lot of places most of my life. And New York is the city where no one belongs. So everyone belongs. And there's something like really, really special about that. And I think community is something that is so needed these days and we don't prioritize it as much as other things. That's about finding community after a lot of loneliness, not really knowing where I fit. I wrote one, the one that I wrote about my romantic life is called Paper Boxes. And that is one that I was so hesitant to write, but it's the one I got the most feedback about. It was about someone who I dated for two weeks and that was years ago and I'm still recovering. It was such a crushing

experience to be rejected after that amount of time. And I felt so invested in him right away. And I've had relationships that are a lot longer that didn't crush me nearly as much. And so I described it as a deep wound. It's not a wide one, but it's a deep one. And you can have those connections with people really quickly and they make such an impression on your life. And I've been sharing this with people I know, and they're like, oh yeah, I had this guy one week and I could never get over it. And I've been sharing this with people I know, and they're like, oh, yeah, I had this guy one week, and I could never get over it. And it seems like a much more universal experience than we let on. Yeah. It sounds like you put a lot of different life experiences throughout the book. And so people can go through it, and they can see a lot of mirrors of their

lives coming back at them and some of the things that they can. I they can see a lot of mirrors of their lives coming back at them and and some of the things they can i guess a lot of the essay are the essays pretty unspecific or are they fairly specific are they unspecific and more vaguish where people can do a lot more interpretation of of their own thing kind of like people do with music yeah yeah it's great you bring up music because i think the way that I write is really similar to like a singer songwriter. I write stories about my life and they're actually very specific and personal, but the most incredible songwriters write really specifically about their lives. And then the more people can relate to it. It's funny how that works, but it's like the more specific you are, the more

you can really identify that feeling that so many people have had before. And of course, not everyone has dated this particular person for this particular amount of time, but they know the aesthetic of those emotions. And what I wanted to do with each essay, which were that I took from experiences from my life was to say this, this feeling belongs, this emotion belongs. And we live in a society that tells us a lot, how we should feel or what we're not supposed to feel. And not enough, you can feel whatever you want. It's all important. It all matters. The way you express it may be a little judicious about that, but you are allowed to feel what

you feel. And I think the more people who do that, the healthier our communities are going to be. I'm glad you told me that because I was going to run down to HR and be like, I'll feel whatever I want. You can't tell me. Once it gets to the yelling and stomping phase, that's when you have to rein it in a little bit. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. That's what my therapist keeps telling me, but I'm not listening. So that's clearly the issue, but no, this sounds like a beautiful book. It sounds like a beautiful book

for this time because the other thing I've been searching for in this new sort of maybe there's hope. Maybe I'm going to survive this thing. I've gotten one shot. I got to get the second one at the end of this month. A lot of other people got to get this. I almost feel like we're emerging from a cave. And like you've talked about in your book where we're emerging from that night into the light. And I've started to ask myself questions like okay what does this new

future mean do we go does it just snap back you're riding a bike let's go go out and do whatever again or is there trepidation and is only certain parts of the country be open and maybe not everyone's vaccinated and there could be different this this virus is starting to do i forget the term but starting to come up with different variants and and we could be different, this virus is starting to do, I forget the term, but starting to come up with different variants and, and you could be back in was recovering from illness and really felt like I had so many symptoms of PTSD that I'd heard about. And I was learning about how trauma affects your brain and you actually, you get a new brain after trauma. Like you're, the wiring is different. You are a new person. People think, oh, you just go back to normal.

Once you have this traumatic experience, just go back to normal. But there's no back to normal. You actually become a new person who you don't really know yet. And that can be an incredible opportunity. And it can also be really scary. And I think the processing takes much longer than we want to admit. I've been reading so much poetry and writing this past year from World War II, and most of it happened 10 years after the war.

It wasn't like these quick social media reactions where you just say your first emotion that comes to the surface. You actually really sit with those for a while and then you start processing and thinking, whoa, that was a really big thing I just went through. What does it mean? And what does it mean for a society? And maybe we're probably going to end up doing that look back where we go, what was that all about?

And I guess we'll have to pack it away and process it and put it in its place and seek some sort of closure on all that stuff huh yeah definitely and then there'll be something else and then there'll be the next thing exactly exactly oh 53 i'm getting tired can there not be a next thing can we just i know can we just call it a day i've been through enough things already i've been through enough things already the uh all that good stuff so it sounds like a beautiful book and it sounds like it's the perfect timing to deliver this baby right to the market because we all kind of need some extra help right now. Oh, we'll take all we can get. Let's plug your, let's pull your prior book just a little bit.

It's called, uh, am I there yet? The loop de loop zigzagging journey to adulthood. Yeah. And that's pretty wild. It's got artwork in it. You go through it. Was that targeted to what type of audience? I was 28 when I wrote that.

And I wanted it to be a sort of guidebook for people entering their 20s and in their mid-20s and saying, what is this? What do I do? And what was harmful to me in my twenties is this narrative that I had to have things figured out and that I had to be somewhere. I, that I was somehow falling behind. And I kept thinking behind on what, like, where am I going? Actually, what is the, what's the goal here? Because when I get something I want, I just want something else. So like, when do I finally arrive? And I was a person in my twenties who, unlike a lot of my friends, had no idea what I was doing, no idea what I wanted to do, where I wanted to live, who I wanted to be. I was always exploring. I was so uncertain through the whole time.

I always had like overlapping jobs and like never really figuring it out. And I just really wanted to validate that for people. And the most meaningful feedback I get from that book is from people in their 60s and 70s who say, I still don't know what I'm doing. So this I still relate to this. And I feel like I relate to that even more than I did in my twenties. That was a joke. I was going to say, it's not a joke. It's even at 53, I'm still reinventing myself, but you bring up a good point. It's not like somebody's following you around with a clipboard going, you are behind right now by five meters. Now you're 10 meters. Now you're, you're seriously not keeping up with the Joneses. Although there are people that they focus on that, but there is no big, there's no coach. I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say. It is interesting. Like the first line from your Amazon page,

it starts out in the journey towards adulthood about the book. And I'm like thinking this book is probably for me because I'm still working on the adulthood part. So there's that. Still training there, yeah. So that's that. Still turning there, yeah. So that's that. Before we go out, is there anything more you want to plug about the book

or throw in for people that want to pick this book up? I'm just so grateful to be here and so grateful for all the support. I've been tremendously fortunate in my writing career and just really so touched by people who are connecting with it. Yeah, I'll bet this is just the real time where I think we've all, we've all hopefully maybe, I'm not sure all of us have, so touched by by people who are connecting with it yeah i'll bet this is just the real time where

i think we've all we've all hopefully maybe i'm not sure all of us have but hopefully more of us will have learned about ourselves the value of life the value of the people in their life i certainly did i it came right to a point where i'm like crap man everything's going off the rails what are the most important things in my life my mom mom's and my sister's. My mom's? My mom's and my sister's. I actually do have two moms. So my mom's and my sister's. And it came down to a real focal point where what do you want for the next year? I would like to have them be alive and be able to keep them. Selfish that way. I think most people feel the same way. And so it's been an interesting journey. And so I think people picking up your book will find a great thing to walk us

through this because there's still so much of this journey we got to go through after this and what we've talked about today. You're right. Lots of uncertainty to go. There you go. There you go. I'm just, as long as they can give us some space before the next big uncertainty thing, like a little holiday time out. Yeah. Yeah. send us all to an island vacation for a while and then bring us back yeah give me another 10 years before the next recession sort of thing there's 2008 than this it was wonderful to have you on mari i certainly appreciate spending some time with you thank you for being with us today and sharing your wisdom it's so great to be here thanks chris thank you very much guys check out check out her book, her books, actually.

Get both of them. You can go to your local bookseller or Amazon. My Inner Sky on Embracing Night, Day, or I did that wrong. My Inner Sky on Embracing Day, Night, and All Times in Between by Mari and Drew. Just barely came out March 2nd. So you can order that baby up, get it in there. And we all need that sort of inspiration, so it might be an incredible gift to give to somebody

or yourself or just buy 10 and give them out to everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, force.chrisfoss, hit that bell notification button, and go to goodreads.com, force.chrisfoss, all the groups we have on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and all that. Wear your mask, stay safe, be nice to each other,

and we'll see you next time.