The Liz Moody Podcast - New Research: Being A "Good Girl" Is Making You Sick (Really). Here's How + What To Do

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

 Women have been told how we have to show up at work, in our relationships, in our families, in society at large, forever. And it turns out it's costing us way more than we thought. It's making us sick. My guest today, Sara Hirsh Bordo, is a 15-time award-winning documentary filmmaker and somebody who was hit with melanoma, breast tumors, Hashimoto's, and Epstein-Barr all at once. Instead of just treating it, she investigated it. She funded her own research of 1,000 women, the first-ever study on the relationship between empowerment and autoimmune conditions, and what she found was absolutely groundbreaking. Her study was endorsed by a former US surgeon general, and it's an absolute paradigm shift in how we think about autoimmune conditions. Sarah has since completely healed, and we’re going to talk about exactly what she did in this episode. 🎧 What you’ll learn: • The shocking link between being a "good girl" and autoimmune disease • Why eldest and only daughters are disproportionately affected  • The science of epigenetics and what it means for your health today • The biological chain reaction that connects people-pleasing to disease • How Sara healed from melanoma, Hashimoto's, breast tumors, and Epstein-Barr • What to do differently with your doctors For more from Sara Hirsh Bordo: • Book, Autoimmunity and The Good Girls: https://autoimmunityandthegoodgirls.com/#order  • Website: https://www.womenrising.com/  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahirshbordo/  Read the new study on autoimmunity and being a good girl mentioned in this episode: https://autoimmunesurvey.com/ Read the ACE questionnaire mentioned in this episode: https://www.acesaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ACE-Questionnaire-for-Adults-Identified-English-rev.7.26.22.pdf  Check out our NEW YouTube Channel with tons of YouTube exclusive Shorts, exclusive podcast content, and full video episodes: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@LizMoodyTV⁠  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • Puori: visit https://Puori.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY at checkout for a discount and special offer. • Lumebox: right now get 40% off, that's $260 off the regular price of $629, when you go to TheLumeBox.com/Liz. • Midi Health: visit joinmidi.com/lizmoody and book your first Midi Health appointment. • LMNT: head to DrinkLMNT.com/Liz to get a FREE 8-count sample pack with any order. • Wildgrain: go to Wildgrain.com/LizMoody to get $30 off your first box + FREE croissants for LIFE. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 440. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women have been told how we have to show up at work, in our relationships, and our families, in society at large, forever. And it turns out it's costing us way more than we thought. It's making us sick. And we're just at the beginning stages of research that will change how we think about disease forever. My guest today, Sarah Hirsch-Bordeaux, is a 15-time award-winning documentary filmmaker who has made films for Toyota, ESPN, the Gates Foundation, the Wonder Woman franchise. She is also somebody who was hit with melanoma, breast tumors, Hashimoto's, and Epstein Bar all at once.

And instead of just treating it, she did what any great documentarian does. She investigated it. She funded her own research of a thousand women, the first ever study on the relationship between empowerment and autoimmune conditions, and what she found was absolutely groundbreaking. Women were taught to self-silence, to caretake, to put others before themselves. are disproportionately likely to develop autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's and lupus and MS and fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and more. Her study was endorsed by a former U.S. Surgeon General, and it's an absolute paradigm shift in how we think about autoimmune conditions.

Sarah has since completely healed. She did it in a pretty unconventional way. We're going to talk about exactly what she did today. I am so excited for you guys to hear this episode because it's really the beginning of what I think is going to be a revolution in how we think about and treat these things. This is an episode that you are going to want to send to every single woman in your life, and especially the oldest daughters. You're going to find out more about why in a second. Sarah Hirsh-Bordeaux, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that.

Thank you so much, new friend. I'm so excited to have you here. You were so sweet. You're so fun to talk to already. So I almost feel bad because I'm going to be bringing up some intense topics because you wrote about some pretty intense stuff in this book. I did do. We're all living intensely.

We are all living intensely. How are you doing these days? Fantastic. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to get into that whole arc of that journey. But let's start with you being 42 years old.

When you were 42 years old, within 18 months, you were diagnosed with melanoma, breast tumors, you had a Hashimoto's flare up, and you had active Epstein bar all at once. So can you take me back to that year? What was going through your head? Well, not to jump to the end of the story, but I think sometimes that the catalysts that happen for us as reckonings tend to be times that tend to be their most uncomfortable. For me, it was the sequence that was one more and then one more and then one more. And for so many women who were diagnosed with chronic conditions. And I also had breast tumors and ovarian cysts at the same time. It was like my body was screaming at me to pay attention. But at the time, I didn't give it that

voice. I give my body that voice now. So where did that shift for you? You're going in and out of all these doctor's appointments, I imagine, and they're just like another diagnosis, another diagnosis. And I imagine you're, are you feeling physically unwell at this time? Completely unwell. Okay. I was in the middle of another film project that I was kind of the human version of the giving tree. And I think a lot of us that are in an entrepreneurial space, I've been an entrepreneur and owning my own production company now for about 15 years. And there are these times that it's like no matter what's asked, we keep giving more. Because for some of us that are non-biological mothers, these creations have a heartbeat to us. And we care about their well-being. So if my film needs help

or my company needs help, there is no length that is too great to show up for it because it's our contribution creatively. Yeah. At the time, nothing I was giving was enough to my relationship, to my business, to my film. And I wasn't receiving peace back or completion back or reassurance back. I was receiving new diagnoses. And it was very disorienting. I was so angry because for those of us that were raised to be good,

when we feel that we are in any way disappointing anyone on the outside, it is torture on the inside. And for me, these diagnoses were happening. All of the doctors were individual because they were all kind of specialists in their own way. and there was only one doctor that I had visited when I had lived in L.A. Who was able to sort of approach health holistically. And I know you've had a lot of those experts on, and I know that a lot of the community has doctors

in different capacities and modalities, and this was one of those. When I went to him with everything that you just listed, his provocation to me was, why are you killing yourself one wrong choice at a time? I'm trying to put myself in your shoes at that moment, and I feel like I would be angry if somebody said that to me. I was so fucking angry.

I would be like, these are things happening to me. This is not in my control. Why are you putting the blame on me here? Yeah, I felt that way. And as I write in the book, I was like, fuck you. But that was an inside voice. I didn't tell him to fuck off, even though we're close enough. We're close enough now where he'd feel like.

I feel like more men could stand to hear that in their lives. I love you. Let's get you a cup of tea, you know. I was so furious that someone that I respected was perceiving me as doing wrong. That I was disappointing him, that I was. disappointing the doctors that I was responsible. I was really defensive about it. And I flew home. And it wasn't until about a couple months later that I was able to reflect and look at what I might have done subconsciously, consciously to contribute to the vessel that was holding

all of this dis-ease. And that was basically the start of the exploration for the entire book, which is how we got here. I have so many reactions to this. Are we victim blaming? And what is our power in these things? And what is the mechanism by which trauma can impact our bodies in these ways? And we're going to get into all of that. But I want to hear about when you started to make the connection between some specific moments in your childhood and what was happening in your adult body.

I'm a documentary filmmaker by trade. and all of these diagnoses were happening towards the end of a very, very serious relationship with a former love of my life. And I had moved out of our home. And when he and I broke up and I moved into my apartment, which was also my office, it was white walls everywhere. And the only thing that made me feel in my own power was being locked. in in quarantine. This was all during COVID? Correct. The very, very beginning. So when I was locked in a body with dis-ease, locked into an apartment that had no sense of home, I decided to do what I do, which is let's start peeling back what's happening to me and use myself almost as my own

documentary subject, which sort of felt like I was dressing up. what was happening to me as like pre-production for a job. But at the time, it made me feel empowered that I was able to start doing something. And that was when I started asking the questions. That was when I started basically building a timeline. I mean, like, this was one big wall, and it was just, you know, huge post-its that I just started lining up. And, I mean, it was a little beautiful mind style for those out there who haven't seen

Beautiful Mind. It's a movie. And there are some manic elements to it, which I think I was, you know, delicately touching that as many of us were at the time. Some people did sourdough. Some people were creating literary documentary on their health, on their own whitewall. But for me, I just started doing what I do with a film and a subject and an issue and it's where are the echoes? And to me, the echoes were all ticks on a timeline of all of the biggest diagnoses I had ever received in my life and what was happening in my life at the same time. And what I saw ever since I was eight years old with shingles, which was right after I was sexually molested at a friend's house, which I write about in the book, to when I was raped at 28 and now at 42.

and I just started looking at these echoes of what is happening through me and around me that is the echo with illness. And so you saw essentially that you would have these traumatic life events, and then that would be shortly followed by some sort of flare-up of illness in your body. Flair up of illness, new diagnoses, new diagnosis, new symptom, new issue, repeat of an issue, a relapse. It was everywhere. And what I saw was when I was recovering or dealing with or suppressing a traumatic event in my body

or when I was living in such a disempowered state that I lost myself, I was diagnosed with something new or a relapse every time. And that was across 40 years. So you're sitting there in this white room with the walls covered in Post-it notes. Is that when you began to formulate this hypothesis? Yes. The other piece that was really interesting was that around that was 42, but I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, which is my autoimmune condition, and there are over 140 autoimmune diagnoses on record.

And I have a feeling that there are many individuals in your community who are diagnosed like me. And many who just feel terrible and don't have a diagnosis. That's right. Yeah. I had always found it fascinating. Ever since I was 30 when I was diagnosed for the first time, all of the women around me who were also diagnosed with an autoimmune were either the eldest or the only daughter in their family.

That was like a delicious echo that I couldn't let go of, but I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I knew that there might be something that I would do with it later. Between 40 and 42, I wanted to see if that instinct might be right, if it held more than just this anecdotal reflection amongst women that I was hanging out with. So I did a online survey of 300 women with autoimmune and 70% of them were either the eldest or the only daughter in their family. That's one of the huge echoes that said to me, there is an element to the way that we were raised,

psychologically, developmentally, emotionally, that might be a contributing factor to what's going on. Because the thing to talk about with autoimmune is that across the 140 plus, there isn't a cure for any of them. The researchers around the world, the scientists around the world, it's a race to think about the contributing factors that are happening. There have been some studies that have been put out

about the double X chromosome, and those are findings that are starting to feel like they might be leading. But if you said, can you cure it? The doctors that are diagnosing are going to say, there is no cure, but we can manage it. And in a world like that where I'm just a documentary filmmaker holding space for empowerment experiences for women and girls, I know that I'm not a scientist and I know that I'm not a doctor, to be sure. But I think some of the most powerful shifts of change have been born from the individuals that are living it, not the individuals that are watching it. I'm going to be

speaking with Gabor Mate in a couple of weeks because he also has done a lot of reflection around the nice people are the ones getting sick. And he's, God bless him, taken a very generous support of the book. but I think that we are in a time right now where if there are voices out there that aren't being catalyzed and boosted and championed, especially in a woman and a female body, because we don't want to take a risk, we don't want to look stupid, we don't want to fail, all of these things that it's in our DNA of how men and women compete and thrive and sort of exercise ambition differently. I just didn't want to not continue to pursue it because I was afraid that it wouldn't hold water. There was a part of me that felt like I'm asking questions that other people won't ask.

And let me see if I can actually do that that could be in service of other women. Well, and I think you have this very specific lens through which you're viewing this problem. You have the lived experience, but also you, again, you have this storyboarding. And so you're making these connections. If a doctor doesn't know to ask about, hey, what happened during your childhood? What were events where you felt maybe like you couldn't express yourself or where you experienced trauma? If they don't know that that would be even part of the equation, they're not going to ask that and they're not going to make those connections. Would it be all right before we kept going to maybe just explain a little bit about how an autoimmune disease functions?

Yes, please do. For those that are listening that don't know what the fuck we're talking about. And I wrote the book for women that are diagnosed, but I also wrote it for our loved ones because there are a lot more questions than there are answers to this entire experience. And that can be deeply frustrating not only for the woman who needs help but doesn't know how to ask for it or receive it and we'll get to that. But also for those around us that don't know how to help in the way that they want to help. But an autoimmune disease is, in essence, the body's immune system is at war with itself.

The immune system can't recognize healthy cells from unhealthy cells. So it begins to attack itself. And to me, I found that as a storyteller, again, fascinating. If my body couldn't recognize itself, what was that saying about the woman, in this case, me, who was living life in that body. When I started peeling back all the way to the beginning, and I knew that so many of us were eldest and only daughters, I knew so many of us were raised to be a bit more dutiful than a bit more true.

I knew how many of us were raised to people, please, because that helped us feel safe and loved. And I approached it all with the Sarah that I have been for decades. Is she me? Or is she a character that I crafted because I knew that that was the Sarah that was very loved and championed by my family. But I wasn't always that way for three and a half years before my brothers were born. I remember having two hands to hold. I remember holding my mom's hand on one side and my dad's hand on the other side.

I remember being super playful. I look at pictures of myself, and this is such a good activity for all of us. To be looking at the pictures of the little uses before there was a reckoning. Looking at the three-and-a-half-year-old Sarah, she felt really loved for just breathing. But when my brothers were born and my dad kind of took one and my mom took the other, I remember I didn't have any hands. And I remember my hands feeling empty. And I remember that instead of feeling love for being, I needed to be mommy's helper.

I needed to be a good girl and be a good girl. and be a big girl and and and fill it all the way down with every activity from morning until night. And I remember thinking, the less I need, the more they like me. And the less I want, the more loved I feel. And that is when I feel like so many of us have what I call in the book an interrupted girlhood. because there's a shift in identity. So going back to autoimmune disease and how it functions, when I reflected upon the operating system, right,

of an autoimmune condition, doesn't recognize itself. It's in identity crisis. So if my immune system is in identity crisis, I had this aha, why would it ever know who it was if I didn't know who I was. So that's when I really kind of put at the top of my wall, a self-in-compromise is creating immunity in compromise. And that felt like it had a feeling to it.

It had like a m-hmm, kind of. And that was sort of the birth of this now multi-year kind of literary documentary, which is my book. but for the first time the arc of this personal journey instead of Lizzie Velasquez or Alexis Jones or Shelby Haddon or all these amazing stories that I've been able to tell

it's mine and that is super terrifying and uncomfortable. It's putting a lot of what you're preaching into practice though. You're letting yourself be seen. You're letting yourself be heard. You're saying I deserve to take up space.

Yes. And There's nothing wrong with it simultaneously being really uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. I'm scared every time I do a podcast. I'm scared every time I go on TV. I'm scared every time I do a live speaking event. And this makes up the bulk of my job. All of these things combined.

Indeed. And I'm scared all the time. And I don't mind it. I find that pushing myself to the edge of my discomfort in a way that's still exciting and energizing to me is enjoyable. Yeah. And for me, if I could have cast you as Sarah Hirshbordo to go on this journey, you would have been a lovely choice. I would have been very... We're both brunettes with the eyes. I can slip right in. I'm green. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I know that green-eyed people are very like, we are the few in the rare. Please recognize that they're green-eyed. Oh, that's so funny. I don't know very many other green-eyed people, so that's the first time.

Yeah. Well, that's generous. You are the few in the rare. Okay. We'll get into the few. some of the mechanisms by which this hypothesis could bear out, this idea that by silencing ourselves, by being the good girl, we would have these felt impacts on our bodies. But I'm curious, first, did it change your relationship with your parents to have this realization? I'm putting myself in the position of one, the parents listening who are like, Jesus Christ, is this another way that I might be scaring at my kids? Like, I'm doing the best that I can, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm putting myself in the position of all the adults listening who are like maybe this is giving words

to some of the things that I felt in my own childhood. First of all, I think that compassion and acceptance, they can live in the same world as blame. And I danced in and out of that for a while at the beginning. More because if I could go, back and help little Sarah or give her tips or hold her hands through that time. I would have liked to.

But we don't get to do that then. What I feel so connected to is this, like she's been with me the whole time I've been writing this book. And I think that so many of us are nervous to open that basement up because of how much feeling there is there, but there's also so much healing there, too. I get to bring her in. I get to give her some attention in a world of my own that she's been waiting for a really, really long time. I think a lot of us with missing girl parts, missing little girl pieces. It's never convenient to unbecome all the way to the floor.

But I've learned that in the unbecoming, we are rebuilding ourselves in a way that can lead to healing because a bit of a spoiler alert, like I don't have any of those diagnoses anymore. We're going to get into that. That's a crazy story. Crazy or exciting. Oh, it's crazy exciting. I have had many conversations with my parents since I started working on the book. And at the beginning, it wasn't a book. At the beginning, it was curiosity, passion, inquiry about if I can actually untangle some of this and I can support it,

then maybe it can be in service. And I didn't have any attachment to what it could achieve. I've never done anything ever in my career that is attached to an ambition or an outcome. I just do it because I think it's fun or because it's like a problem that I haven't solved it or a story I haven't told or questions I haven't asked. There's an anecdote in the book. My mom called one morning and she was talking about my niece and nephew and my nephew's a bit older and he was struggling because the attention of my niece was was getting a lot more.

And my mom very, very harmlessly was like, oh, you know, you had a hard time when the boys were born. I was like, no fucking shit, mother. Obviously, I did. And she was telling me this anecdote. And it was painful to hear. It was about how I was crying. without words, needing attention.

And my crying was making the boys cry. And so what made that moment easier was for me to go to my room. At the time when all these memories started coming back and it's wild how the psyche holds these memories in a bank, they're related to one another. and the second that one of them comes out, it's like a tidal wave. And then we've held them from ourselves because they hurt. But when we start to actually say, I'm going to be here, I'm going to hold them, not going to judge, not going to freak out, let's do this.

All of a sudden, the stories and the memories start presenting themselves and we're able to hold them without judging. because I can't imagine having three kids under the age of four. So for me and the relationship with my parents, I'm so grateful that they have seen their very renegade daughter lives a very different life than the rest of the women from my Lebanese family and the rest of my kind of southern community feel most of the time no one really knows what to do with me.

Because like you, I started exploring young. Sometimes it felt I belonged more outside of the home than in the home. But for the parents out there, it's been really humbling to hear how those dads of girls have told me that this book actually has helped arm them with ways to ask and listen to their girls more in a way that if they're quiet, they're not fine. Because being quiet made me good. And being good made me loved. And being loved made me safe. And at the end of the day, we're all just here to find belonging and safety within the people that we come from. And to add to that chain, what you were adding now to that chain is all of that made me sick. Correct. The tail end of that

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Liz Moody. That is join midi, midi.com slash Liz Moody. Do you forgive your parents? Yes. Was that hard for you to come to? Hard, no. Patient, yes. Both of my parents are eldest children in their family line. I come from a long line of, quote, good kids.

And I think the one thing that I'm so excited by, and I think you are very much at the bow of that ship for your own line, is that whether it's socially, astrologically, shamanically, historically, historically, we are in a time of female chainbreakers. We are supported on like 10 different levels of helping end stories that have not advanced us well. And when I think about the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that little Sarah told, and I think part of me getting very choked up and I welcome the tears, sorry I'm a crier, but I love it because it means that I'm in it and I'm not suppressing it.

And they're all here. Stories are made to be rewritten. We aren't here to hold the ancient ones that don't serve us or serve the women in our family or serve the fathers in our family. We are here to innovate, heal, and rewrite. That engine, if you will, is what was very, very much comforting to me about realigning the relationship with my loved ones. Can you talk to me in specifics what that looked like? Did you have a conversation with them? Did you need them to say anything specifically?

Did you need to say something specifically? I think for me what I had to empower myself with was, again, a detachment from the outcome. A wise person once said to me that we hear things from the weakest part of our nervous system. We don't hear it from the peak of our nervous system. We hear it from the place where the wound lives. All of us, which means you saying the things, but also your parents hearing it. Exactly. So if I knew that me saying it was part of my own reckoning and sort of my own re-empowerment,

then it didn't matter how they responded. So it was a combination of letters and emails and calls and visits in person and being really, really clumsy. I have been so clumsy along this journey, but that's part of. of the road of getting clear is that we get clumsy before we get clear. And anyone that says that this depth of inner child healing and rewiring this good girl compulsion and all of these elements that make us us, they are absolutely here for our attention and our time. But it doesn't mean that it's easy or fun, but I do believe that our bodies are listening to every word that we

are saying or not saying about ourselves and the kind of relationships we deserve. And if you believe that the mind and body have a relationship to whatever degree that you believe, then feeling that you're worthy enough to speak up is a huge step, regardless of the outcome. And so many of us raised to be the caretaker or the good girl or the nice girl. Speaking up was always inconvenient. It wasn't invited. Conversely, I interviewed many middle and youngest daughters for this research and the book. And they are operating on a completely different articulation system. What are they doing? They don't have any problems speaking up.

Okay. They don't care. I'm picturing my little sister. I think for so many of us that are in this good, nice caretaker category, the sense of value and worth is very much related to not who we were, but what we did. What we offered, what we contributed, how dutiful we were. And the youngest daughters that I interviewed, they have this deliciously free DNA strand, which it's like, yeah, we got to be little.

I mean, sometimes we were a little bit more free and loose than maybe would have been nice to have. But they had a very wide birth of volition to be and feel free and little. Like kids. Like kids. The only difference that I saw with that is there are because of not just birth order, but the spans in between, that a lot of youngest daughters can actually identify as the caretaker for their parents. And in that world, that archetype is the same as the archetype I'm talking about in the eldest and the only. It is this caretaker archetype that is where. the selflessness, the dutiful compulsion and sense of value and worth in my research is the most

dangerous. Okay, I want to get into some of the science behind this because I have to confess, I was skeptical when I first heard this. I was like, how could not speaking up as a kid or feeling like you had to be a good girl, how would that impact the way that your cells are behaving in your body? How would that impact your immune system? So I would love for you to explain this to me in the simplest terms, how does being raised to never have needs literally change your immune system? Like, what is happening in your body? The best way to talk about it is as it relates to epigenetics. Epigenetics comes into play when just talking about genetics isn't enough to describe the situation that we're in, when there must be something beyond the DNA going on. Think about them as happenings

outside of a body that doesn't alter your DNA itself, but alters the way that your genes are turned on or off. So when you think about epigenetic inputs, they can be positive, but they can also be negative epigenetic inputs. And within our DNA and the genes that we have, genes are turning on and off throughout a lifespan. For somebody who's new to the concept of genetics, I do think that's a crazy thing to get your head around, that you're not just given your genes and that's your genetic code for the rest of your life. You're given your genes, and then they are turned off or on by environmental factors throughout the course of your life. That's it. So are you familiar? I know you are, but the ACE study. Yes, but tell us about it.

Okay. The ACE study, it stands for adverse childhood experiences. And it was originated by two gentlemen who began a list of experiences that they saw in their early research more qualitatively that began to render almost a bit of a Bible around experiences that boys and girls, it wasn't gender specific, that was the higher the ace score, it's a series of questions, and they're a yes or no question, the more likely that child was to developing heightened disease later on in life. Okay, so the more adverse childhood experiences that a child has, the more likely they are to develop disease later on in their life.

And that's a well-established connection through this ACE research. So created in 1995, by the way, for anyone that wants to look at it, it's the ACE questionnaire. And what I found interesting, though, was that the questions that are asked, and it's everything from a parent or adult swore at me in my home, I experienced the death of a parent, I felt no one in my family loved me or thought I was special, I lived with someone who was depressed, mentally ill, or attempted suicide. I lived with someone who drank or used drugs. I experienced unwanted sexual contact. A parent in my home hit, beat, kid, kicked or hurt me. I lived with someone who went to jail or prison. I didn't have enough to eat. I wanted to read them because that is what's happening in your environment. That is happening outside of you. What was very interesting to me was, which I learned, was that 80% of my group, of my thousand women that I talked to, 80% of them had at least one ace, 47% of them. And so,

of those thousand women had four or more. But I wanted to go a little bit deeper in my construct of the research because the list that we just went through, it's very physical, but to me, those almost felt very big T trauma. And I had lots of curiosity after speaking to so many women around me

who also had autoimmune and who also were either the eldest or the only daughter. So in my research, I tested the ACE list, which is the industry standard, which I felt would be the right thing to do. But I also asked questions that I felt were specific to girlhood. That to me felt like that's more of the story happening. Maybe not more, but just as valuable.

And those were you were raised to be the caretaker, or shifted. from being a little girl into mommy and daddy's helper. You felt a connection between being good and being loved. You had difficulty understanding and expressing your needs and wants. These are very feminine behavior. These are very feminine indicators and experiences. And specifically what we are socialized to be as girls and women. That's exactly right, which is kind of what I feel is part of this chain-breaking moment.

you felt forced to grow up before you were truly ready. You felt your needs and wants mattered to your parents more before your sibling was born. More than half of my thousand women identified as the caretaker. And when you start thinking about how many of us, in this caretaker archetype that we were talking about earlier, how many of us are hardwired to please and hard-wired. and hardwired to equate worthiness to how well we are caring for the outside. All of that suppression or selflessness is heralded in so many homes, cultures, regions. Part of me was hoping that the good girl phenomenon was just an American thing, but it is not.

What's coming back to the epigenetics is that the genes that are turning on and off are responding to inputs that we are giving our own DNA, that the body is listening to what we're doing, what we're choosing, what we're opting in for, what we're not opting in for, what we're hiding, what we're expressing to go back to the youngest daughters that I was talking about a second ago, the entire group of youngest daughters were cancer-free, chronic illness-free, and autoimmune-free. They were all healthy. So that was this other layer of how epigenetics are playing into what our genes are turning on and off. Yeah. I mean, I think it's fascinating. And I was looking into some other research around why these adverse childhood experiences create this state of disease later in the body. Have you looked into the HPA access situation at all?

No, please share. It's really interesting, this excessive state of anxiety or stress or internal dysregulation between what you want to say and what you are not saying, that self-silence creates this state of activation in your HPA access, which creates this heightened state of cortisol and inflammation. And then that long-term inflammation is part of the concoction that is making your body attack itself. Yes, it is. Yeah. It's helpful for me to understand the mechanisms behind.

this because it's a real paradigm shift in how we're viewing disease. It is. And I don't think that you're saying this is your fault in any way. I am not saying that this is your fault. And I had to approach that reckoning with myself because I absolutely had my own victimization issues. Why is this happening to me? Look how good I am. Look how much I'm doing. Look what I'm trying to do for the world. Look how I'm trying to make it better. I spent all of this on my savings. to finish this project so that more people could have their voices heard. Haven't I been good to my family? Wasn't I a good wife?

Wasn't I a good girlfriend? Wasn't I a good stepmom? All of that, it's like kryptonite to a girl who was raised to be good because nothing hurts us more than feeling like we have disappointed anybody. But when I started to put these pieces together, I forgave myself for the victimization. And I was fucking angry. People that are committed to doing so much good, we don't deserve that.

And at the same time, I said to myself, if a life of disempowerment and playing out a character to be good might have contributed to me being this sick, then could a rewiring of my empowerment system, not from quicksand for outside pleasing. but for inside authenticity. I mean, I was my own guinea pig. If I can try to rewire it and rebuild myself, in essence, remother myself, what could happen

epigenetically about that? And we'll get into that in a second. But I just want to make this connection super clear for anybody listening because, again, it took me like a little bit of time to get my head around. So you correct me if I'm wrong here. But I'm so curious about the microbiome because we know about the gut-brain connection and we already know that our microbiome in all parts of our bodies, all of our various microbiomes are impacting how we feel on a day-to-day basis. So I'm like, is that being impacted? Is that part

that we're not even, we don't know yet. But from what we know, we have some pretty clear mechanisms at play. You are given your DNA, you have your genes, but the environment that you're in throughout your life is turning on and off these genes. So you might have had some sort of genetic predispos to something like Hashimoto's to something like melanoma or breast cancer, any of the other things that you've dealt with, but something in your environment turned those genes on epigenetically. And one of the things that can impact our environment is this state of dysregulation within ourselves, from what we want to say, who we want to be, who we feel like we really are, and what the world is telling us we can be. That's creating this internal state of stress

that is impacting our DNA essentially turning on or turning off. Yes. And what we feel the world needs us. to be. And what we feel the world needs us to be, who we are being told to show up as versus who we feel that we really are. If we have friction between those two people, that friction is living internally as a state of stress that is epigenetically affecting us. It is impacting our HPA access, which is having these downstream effects that is causing a chronic state of inflammation in our body, which might be a contributor to things like cancer or our body's attacking themselves. Was that correct? Was that a good summary?

For anybody listening, I just feel like I picture the person listening to this podcast and then they go and tell their friend about it. And their friend is like, there's no way that your childhood being hard, like, caused your Hashimoto's or contributed to your Hashimoto's as an adult. And I want to make sure that they like can say, no, actually, this is how it happens. And it's pretty scientifically established at this point. It is. Yeah. Okay. Tell me some of the other findings from your research.

You did this big study. I mean, it's so fascinating. The eldest only daughter statistic is just mind-blowing. I actually identify as both because I have two half-sisters and they were born when I was six and seven. And then I would live with them during the summer and then I'd be an only child during the year at my mom's house. And so I have both.

You were steeped in both. Yeah. Which is interesting. And in my only child role, I lived with my mom who I had a lot of parentified interactions with. And honestly, on my dad's side, I had some stuff too. I got it all over. Yeah.

Should I consider myself lucky I don't have an autoimmune condition at this point? What's going on with me? I talk in the book about how I think identity and immunity are working together. Permission at the bottom level, epigenetics on that second level, authenticity on the third, and coherence is the peak. I think that most people are living from a set of permissions that they were given as little girls. and I know a little bit about you to be dangerous. And I know a lot about you to really have paved a very sovereign path for yourself.

I talk about sovereignty a lot in the book. And what I think is sort of this holy grail of authenticity no matter your birth order is that if you are living from a place of permission slips that you, you in essence have given to yourself or have kept that work for you from growing up. Second layer, epigenetics. I'm laughing because one of my most mottos that I'm known for is never be the one to say no to yourself. So I have a whole stack of permission slips.

See? Yeah. But that is a reclamation. And a lot of us were given permission slips about how we're allowed to operate in the world that are based on family tradition, family need, cultural need, and they become the stories that create a character. So even if you are born into this set of circumstances, one of the things that can lessen that friction that has all these downstream effects is how free you feel to be your authentic

self. Completely. Okay, so tell me about some more of your findings. There's so much interesting stuff here. So first of all, you ran this big. research study. You started with a group of 300 women, but then you expanded it to this proper, large, thousands of women research study. Yes, I did. Which is so cool. Thank you for contributing this. We need so much more research on women. I'm still paying it off. I love it. It is a thick,

credit card bill, but I did decide to make the key findings available for free. So for anyone out there, if you're not a book person or an audiobook person, you are able to get the data for free. Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. What I found the most potent was in our caretaker community. And I asked questions about the girlhoods. And I also asked questions about our womanhoods. So if a girlhood caretaker had certain experiences, what are those experiences shaping now? In essence, how have those permission slips or lack thereof?

graduated into your womanhood life today. So 94% of my women with at least one autoimmune condition, and again, this was a U.S.-based survey. Yeah. A thousand women. But I just want to emphasize, like, properly done. Properly done. You put the money behind it. You did the real research. Yes, indeed. Yeah. Out of the 52% as caretakers, 94% say, I find it easier to give or caretake, then receive. 87% say, I feel I've put myself last regularly without even knowing it. 87% say I often suppress my own needs and wants with loved ones because I'm more comfortable being responsible for others.

And everybody in this population that you were surveying has a diagnosed autoimmune condition? At least one. At least one. So these thoughts where you're saying 87%, it's. 87% of these women with autoimmune conditions are identifying with these statements. That's exactly right. Which is very high. It is very high. Yeah. There are a handful of others. I find it uncomfortable to receive help. I struggle with the fear of disappointing others. That's at 79%. Another 79% which I think is really important. I quiet my own pain or suffering with loved ones because I don't want to be seen as being too much trouble.

and the sort of B point to that at 47% I quiet my voice with doctors because I don't want to disappoint them. So the layer I want to peel back with these and beloved friends out there, all of this is available. You can download and spend more time with it. But the area of this that frightens me the most, that I feel is the most dangerous and I saw this in myself and I had to kind of, again, give myself a new set of permission slips, was that it was so hard to begin to receive help or care or support during all of these diagnoses. It was a very vicious cycle. Yeah.

The reluctance and the resistance to receive. And I'd like to just sort of call this receptivity as a whole. That is me saying to you, oh my God, I'm in love with that sweater. And you, if you're a part of this community. Oh, it's... This old thing. This old thing. I have trained myself on this in my life to just say thank you.

Thank you. Beautiful. Okay. That element of receptivity is a human truth. We inhale and we exhale. They work in harmony with each other. But the good girls and the caretakers, the discomfort is visceral when you have to start receiving care. And to me, I really wanted to unpack receptivity, where we have lost our way, how we have been trained,

but it again starts as girlhoods. If we believe that we're more comfortable and happier and more dutiful and being good when we are in service of other, people, then we have removed our personal needs and wants from the dynamic. We've taken us out because of the fear of disappointing other people, because feeling loved is more, we're starving for that. Well, and to the point of one of your questions, that gets really scary when we're trying to please our doctors, and we're not letting our doctors come. and offer care.

And we're like, oh, no, I feel fine. I feel okay. Or I think I might have an idea of what's happening, or I think I might have this bad reaction to this drug, but I'm not going to tell him or her, because if I tell him or her, then they're going to be disappointed with me. And if they're disappointed with me,

then I'm not going to get the right care. And it's already hard enough to get in here. This is what's happening in the back of the mind. I've had conversations with doctors about this data. And I feel what is really starving for a reckoning is a new patient onboarding system. What would that look like? Well, I believe that there are between the ACE survey and some of the little T trauma questions. When I have talked about this one-on-one with physicians, they have said,

so you're telling me that if I know they were raised to be a good girl, then they're not going to tell me what they're feeling. They're telling me what they think I want to hear. And so that is a part of the journey ahead that I'm really going to revel in. I also think it is, excuse my language, fucking terrifying that 55% of my sisters here said receiving my autoimmune diagnosis changed the way I prioritize my own needs from the way I did before being diagnosed. So only, only 55% of women said that they changed their own permission slips when they were diagnosed with an incurable illness. I actually know people who have been diagnosed with autoimmune conditions and they feel

guilty for the impact that that has on their family. Yeah. Because of the, quote, trouble. Yeah. And what I'd like to say about that is that so many of our wiring is from girlhood. The fear of upsetting people and the need to feel that we're perceived as good or liked is a driving force that is very insidious to how we hold permission for our own lives. I've been drinking Element every single day for literally years. I usually use one packet a day, but I break it up and I kind of spike my water throughout the day.

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it actually younger. One Skin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at OneSkin.com. CO slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.co with code Liz. Do you think awareness is a big part of the battle here? If we know that the way that we're interacting with our family, our friends, et cetera, is going to impact the way that our cells are literally behaving in our body. Maybe we will behave differently. How much of the equation is just that awareness? Well, we don't know yet, do we? For me, it was an exploration that yielded awareness, that yielded healing.

If this can offer any salve or permission from an outside source that wants these women well, wants my sisters emboldened and sovereign in their own lives and in their own needs, I think it starts with permission that is reclaimed. We started this episode by talking about the list of diagnoses that you experienced, which range from Hashimoto's to cancerous tumors. You have healed all of these things. That is insane. It is so inspiring.

It offers so much hope. I need as specifically as possible what you did to experience this transformation. Half of it is internal and half of it is external. So the internal piece of how I have regained my health, half of it is internal, which is about the permission I give myself, about the spaces that I live in and have experience in, the kind of language I don't allow anymore, how authentic I am to my needs and my wants, and how much all of that is living at one body at the same time. To bring us back to the mechanisms that we were talking about earlier, that would lessen

that internal friction that would be causing these epigenetic stressors and be causing this HBA excess effect, which would be impacting you on a cellular level. That's exactly right. Okay. Now, as it relates to the prescriptive bits, how did I do this? I looked at the permission piece as I went along. There was no manual for this. There are amazing self-growth books and self-awareness and parenting the inner child.

And I had to find my own way with all of that. So that was happening at the same time. What does Sarah even need? What does she like? Taking myself on my own dates. Being my own company. Enjoying my internal dialogue. Creating spaces that actually felt good.

Saying no when I was lifelong terrified to say no. Leave parties early. Apologize less. speak up more, give myself and sort of that little Sarah from the beginning the time to really learn who she was. I have learned about myself that I'm probably on the autism spectrum. I am hyper, hyper sensitive to smells, I'm hyper sensitive to sound. I'm extremely sensitive to texture. There are pieces of me that I thought were inconsistent.

that I suppressed for a really, really long time. Now, harnessing that neurodivergence, harnessing the elements of me that are sensitive, it's now what is a new gear in my filmmaking and my storytelling. Harnessing the pieces of me that for a long time I felt were inconvenient are actually new gears and gifts that I get to weave into the work that I love. That must have been hard, though. Like you've spent your entire life not speaking up, not leaving parties early.

Is there anything that you did pragmatically that helped with the discomfort moment to moment as you're trying on this new way of living? I would say that we've all heard the word intuition. Sometimes it sounds a bit witchy. Sometimes it sounds or feels like an out there concept or something that is. is, again, an idea instead of an embodiment. All the way back to rebuilding myself on stone instead of quicksand, where I was constantly balancing for the sake and the pleasure of other people. I had never met her.

That interior voice, she has a sound and a feeling, and I never was in partnership with her. Intuition is a layer of our body's voice that now I am more in touch with my intuition than I ever have before. I actually ask myself, do I want to do this? How does that feel going to that party? Ugh. And what about when the person who's throwing the party is like, well, Sarah, I'm really disappointed you're not here or that friend that canceled plans.

How do you deal with the real life repercussions of choosing yourself? I was told by a male family member that my newfound feminism was putting our family in distress and that I needed to apologize. I joke in the book that I didn't apologize. I got a worldwide book deal with Harper Collins instead and wrote this. But still, like, that's empowering. But like in the moment, as somebody who's been talked to people plays your entire life. in the moment I felt excused from a table that I had been sitting at for my whole life.

And it has taken time. But the real Sarah is in charge of this body now. The Sarah that knows what she needs, what she wants, and she's got language for it. And I'm showing up for myself in a way that I was just a really good giggler at the table and a yes woman to appease because that's who I needed to be my whole wife. I'd also imagine that the more that you genuinely love your authentic self, the less you need validation from other people. Yeah, but I had to give myself permission to even have an authentic self.

That wasn't invited. Again, the younger daughters that I have interviewed, they have a natural sense of authenticity that is birthright. Most of us raised as the consummate lifelong caretaker, we are missing that input. And that is the reclamation that I am the most passionate about this book holding the hand of a woman beginning this journey so she isn't alone. I looked far and wide for tools. I tried on everything. Cross modality, across spirituality, across

science. And for me, this book holds an evolutionary partner that I wish that I had had when I began because we're praised quite often for being reliable and consistent. We're not praised. raised all that often for when we have a complete identity shift. But I believe that that identity shift and reclamation to a place that was authentic and real that was unafraid to say no is what walked me home to my healthy self. So that looked like in the moment you just constantly asking yourself, do I want to be at this party? Do I want to eat this food? Do I like you're kind of... Do I think that joke is funny? Okay. Am I laughing because I know that they want me to laugh or am I laughing because I actually think it's funny? Most of the time, I didn't think

it was funny. I just picture the person like sitting in there like, oh, that was what happened I love when they, they're like, what, you must not have heard I made a joke or then they start to explain it. They're like, actually, here's what's funny about that. You're like, no, no, I got it. I got it. Yeah. I think that the fear of change can hold us. in places that have expired. And I don't think we have to do that anymore. Okay, so that is the internal piece. Are there any other pragmatic internal steps for that part of the equation? Sure. Or should we move on to the external? I lean on a lot of divine, feminine stories of transformation because women are hardwired to transform. But a lot of us aren't given the, let's say, room or encouragement to do that,

There is a construct and story called the hero's journey. We've all heard it. It is a concept that makes sense. But the heroine's journey is different. The hero's journey is a male adventure that is far and wide and vast and has monsters and dragons and it's dirty and dusty and it's engaging with a ton of people and it's crossing miles and miles and miles and lands and lands, the heroine's journey is the opposite. It is internal and it is deep

and it is downward to then walk back up a truer sense of ourselves. It is solitary. It is still. And that's the walk of the book. Okay, talk to me about the external parts. What were the other things that you were doing at this time to get out of this place that you were in with your health? The internal journey was happening while simultaneously we're still living in a world. We're still living with other people and the expectations they have of us and the needs they have of us and me being a director on set and working on my own self while I'm listening differently. I became very vocal when I get on set. I'm neurodivergent.

I was raped in my 20s. I'm a sexual assault survivor. And here are the things that set me off. That was so terrifying to do on the outside. But what has been really a gorgeous surprise is that crew members will come up and they'll say, me too, across the board. I think that embodiment and language, when we use it on the outside,

becomes the permission slips for other people. Within my family on the outside, we're in a much, much, much, much, much better place than we were a few years ago. I believe that what has been the honor of that is that I hoped that they would like the Sarah that was born, but I didn't know. The Sarah that played the family game, the traditional game, the lineage game, she fit in perfectly. I fit differently now.

But it doesn't mean that it's better, and it doesn't mean that it's worse, but it does mean that it's true. Epigenetically, within the outside part of the journey that you're asking about. think about it like the five senses. That's how I approached it. So sight, sound, taste, smell, right?

You're becoming basically the baby and the mother and the dula all in your body at the same time. So you're hypersensitive to being in the world in a way that is now true for you, but it might be against the way that your home is, looks, feels the way you're relating to your friends. It's looking at life from a standpoint of, do I like it because it's here and because it's always been here or do I want to keep it because it's true to me now? And I think that for so many of us, this idea of becoming someone different can be very, very scary because we're afraid that we won't be accepted or that we won't be welcomed.

I believe that we're in a time where self-growth and self-awareness, it's never been higher than how it is right now. I have four patient friends who have memoirs coming out in one month. The amount of women speaking up to their lived experiences in the hopes of inspiring other women, we've never been here before. This is the time,

the energetic support for us to shed to become. It's all right here. Another piece very practically about my medical community and who I look to and who I feel serves me best. I let go of half of the doctors that I was working with and narrowed it into doctors that feel that they're listening to my wholeness, not to. just my blood work. We do not have a health care system that is really encouraging that kind of transformation within your own health team. And the amount of women that I know, work with,

speak with, we're all kind of at the mercy of our health insurance. I wish that all of this was very different. But right now it's not. There are a lot of us who are very limited in the physicians that we can see or have access to and how often we can. Also within the autoimmune community, there are, you know, more than 140 autoimmune diseases. All of these have very different levels of chronic pain and access and healing attached to them and soothe. For me with Hashimoto's, I was not diagnosed with some of the autoimmune diseases that keep women bedbound and homebound. and I do not pretend to have that lived experience. I only have my own.

So you've kind of remade your treatment team on the Western medical side. Do you still take medication for your Hashimoto's? Did you treat your cancer with chemo or radiation? Like how did that side of things fit in? I had surgery for the melanoma. Okay. And I come from a family that has a lot of spots and moles and the like. I'm now eight years without any new places of worry.

There was no chemo or radiation needed. As it relates to the Hashimoto's, I am on a supplement that I take for my thyroid. I also am sort of supplement mad. I love it. And certain things I have tried and weeded out and leaned on and I have a mix that works for me now. Inflammation is a very real relationship for a lot of us that have had chronic conditions. For me, I don't drink. I do eat gluten.

I do eat sugar. Which a lot of people with Hashimoto's particularly don't do gluten. Exactly. Because the way the gluten molecule mimics the thyroid molecule in your body. And I was gluten-free for about 18 years. Oh, wow. Yeah. That first piece of bread must have been delicious.

It was completely delicious. But I think for me, I have just found a world that has been product of trial and error. and experiencing things and allowing me and my body to speak an answer of do I want to do that again? Did I like how that felt in my body? I was raised that women don't sweat, that it's unladylike.

My now new favorite thing, I love an infrared sauna. I can't get enough of sweating. There are things that were true because they had always been that doesn't mean that they get to stay. Part of that permission is it's okay to try things and not like them. And it's okay to try things and they don't work. It's okay. The health journey is not a polarizing yes or no. It is experiential.

Well, and what I like about the work that you're doing is you're not saying like if you have cancer, don't get chemo. If you have an autoimmune disease, don't go talk to your doctor. You're saying, if you work on this part of being your authentic self, of not self-silencing, you'll be able to show up at your doctor. appointments in a completely different way that's going to exponentially maximize your results that you're going to get and speed up the healing. So they really work hand in hand to me in a beautiful way. It's a partnership. The only thing I took out of the equation was the false Sarah. What would you tell a parent listening who wants to protect their children as much as possible from these later in life adverse outcomes? I believe that it's very common for little girls in a family

to sometimes quiet needs wants truths. I think that finding authentic ways to connect with your children one-on-one, I really wish that I had had that. I think for me, reconnecting with Sarah and giving her the full permission to be human instead of being good or dutiful, Just because our little girls out there are quiet, it doesn't mean they don't have needs.

Just because they say they're fine, could that be tied to them not wanting to disappoint you or add more work to you? They're feeling a lot of feelings. But because they're listening to what the family needs, they might be suppressing truths that given the right safe environment and inquiry might allow them to come up for error, I believe that that kind of trusted stillness with parents and children never underestimate the power of that. And it doesn't need to take a ton of time. You know what I mean? I think it's about how are we spending the time that we're spending? Because I'm always cognizant of parents are very overstretched.

I mean, I think all people are, and parents especially are very overstretched time-wise these days. Especially now. Yeah. And so I do think that saying, like, this doesn't need to be a big thing. It's a shift in kind of all of the interactions that you're having with your children. I think that's right. They're picking up on how happy you are as the parent. I think innately, especially this younger generation, they have a lot of feelings.

They have a lot of sensitivities. And I think that allowing them to breathe and be seen without being considered trouble or high maintenance or asking for too much or needing more attention, that space would be really sacred. We always like to end with a very clear takeaway for people. If somebody listening wants to do one pragmatic thing today to begin to heal their inner good girlness, what would you have them do? My advice and my championship would be to give themselves the permission to have a voice that's for their own wellness, not for outside. I think that the simple permission to say, I'm ready for something

to change a little bit. I don't know what that is, but I believe that there is a version of me that is truer and giving it her time to be now, that's what I would love, is just to encourage a place of readiness. And then just because we're talking about such a paradigm shift here in the conversation around autoimmunity, we're sort of flipping everything that we have previously thought about autoimmunity on its head. What's one myth you would like to bust about autoimmune conditions? What I have found in the work that I've done,

not only personally with autoimmunity, but in the research and the space and the conversations with others, is to realize that when our bodies are out of balance and our immune systems are not able to recognize themselves, to me, the mirror to that

is that it's a sense of self and compromise that is simultaneously contributing to an immune system in compromise and that when we are aligned as a sense of self, it can help align our immune systems. I want every doctor, every parent, every older sister, every person who is going to be impacted. It is a paradigm shift. I want so many people to hear that message. Sarah, can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book, autoimmunity and the good girls? Oh, golly. Autoimmunity and the Good Girls, how the permission to put ourselves first has the power to keep us well,

is my personal contribution to the conversation around why so many women like me raised to be good are getting sick. As a lifelong storyteller and documentary filmmaker, I approached it like a literary documentary. It's got a journey of a woman or a girl with the first time that's mine, combined with experts spanning science to soul, research amongst a thousand American women that I commissioned myself, one-on-one interviews with a lot of eldest daughters, middle daughters, and younger daughters to feel into that contrast of how so many of us were raised differently and how those might be echoing or not echoing illness later on as women. And lastly, just a little bit of magic, which always shows up in the room somehow, which in this book, it's introducing several stories of

divine feminine mythology and stories of transformation to reinforce that we are hardwired to become something new. It's a beautiful book. And I really appreciate the work you're doing, the research on women, again, so important and so appreciate it. And you're putting your own money behind it, which is just like, thank you for that. And thank you for this conversation. Thank you, friends, so much. I'm really honored. Thank you. That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening on Apple or watching on Spotify or YouTube. You can subscribe or follow so our next episodes get sent directly to your feed.

If you like this episode, leave a comment or better yet, send it to a friend, a coworker, a parent, or somebody else that you think might love it. All right, I love you. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment. purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist,

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