The One You Feed - Jessica Lamb Shapiro

Episode Date: April 15, 2014

This week on The One You Feed we have Jessica Lamb-Shapiro.Jessica Lamb-Shapiro is the author of the book Promise Land: My Journey through America's Self-Help Culture. Jessica Lamb-Shapiro has published fiction and nonfiction in The Believer, McSweeney's, Open City, and Index magazine, among others. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is a graduate of Brown (BA) and Columbia (MFA).We loved the great writing, the honest look at self-help, and the insights that she delivers. This was a really fun conversation that left us with a lot to think about.In This Interview Jessica and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.How positive thinking can become denial.The history of self-help stretching back to ancient Egypt.Using self-help terminology to avoid emotional intimacy.Challenges with the Law of Attraction.The paradox of self improvement: When should you accept yourself and when should you try to change.When is acceptance the right course and when is it settling?How cliches can become meaningless but yet still contain so much truth.Finally being able to talk about her mothers suicide.Growing up with a self-help author as a father.Jessica Lamb-Shapiro LinksJessica Lamb-Shapiro HomepageBuy Promise Land: My Journey through America's Self-Help CultureJessica on TwitterSome of our most popular interviews you might also enjoy:Mike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you communicate that to somebody who needs to hear it? To say stay, to say hang in there. I think it's really important that we think about these things and how we can communicate them. Maybe it's not through cat posters. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to the show our guest on this episode is Jessica Lam Shapiro, author of Promised Land, My Journey Through the American Self-Help Culture. She has published fiction and nonfiction in The Believer, McSweeney's, Open City, and Index Magazine, among others.

So, Eric, why did you decide to have Jessica on the show? Well, I think the theme of being skeptical about the self-help world has been in our show from the very beginning. We had Oliver Berkman on before. And so Jessica spent a lot of time really going through the self-help industry and writing about it in a really skeptical but yet open way. And so I think she brings a lot of insight to the things we talk about here. But our show is kind of self-help like as well, right? Do you think she's going to slam our show in the interview? Probably so. Okay. Probably so. Let's find out. All right. Hi, Jessica. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed your book. It was called

Promise Land, My Journey Through America's Self-Help Culture. And I wanted to start off by reminding you that today is the first day of the rest of your life. It is, thank you. And it's also the first day of the rest of your life, so I hope you spend it well. Does your father still tell you that all the time? He does not still tell me that all the time. He does occasionally mention it, but it's not the everyday occurrence that it used to be when he had me in his grip every day, and he could drop me off at school and pretty much be guaranteed a captive audience. As a, as a parent, I recognize

that desire to sort of say something to your child, to send them out into the world ready, but I resist making my son roll his eyes at me every single day. So I try and keep it reasonable. I think even if he does roll his eyes, it has an impact because I rolled my eyes every day. But I really feel like over time, the accumulation of that saying in my brain did something. I'm not sure what. Okay, well, our show is based on the parable of two wolves, where there's a grandfather and he's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf and represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like hatred and greed and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks and he says, well,

which one will win? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you sort of in your life and in the work you've done on your book. Yeah, I really enjoyed thinking about the parable. When I first read it, I thought, oh, that's so simple. That explains everything. And I kind of had that moment where I was like, oh, I get it now. But when I actually tried to apply it to my life and think, well, what are my, what's my good wolf? What's my bad wolf? I started to get a little bit confused because in a sense, you know, the good wolf for me is having a positive attitude and making sure I get writing done every day. And the bad wolf is sort of like

fear, you know, where I don't go do things because I'm afraid or envy what other people have or just laziness, you know, where I don't get writing done. And in some sense, that makes sense. But, you know, as I talk about in the book, having a constant positive attitude sort of between my father and I didn't allow for discussions of negative things. And that became problematic in our relationship because my mother had died when I was very young. And we just, it just seemed like inappropriate to talk about because it was a sad thing. And we were very focused on good things and staying positive. thing. And we were very focused on good things and staying positive, you know, so that, that is a bit complicated for me, that positive thing. And also because as a writer, you know, I feel like it's my, it's my job to show up first and foremost, but my second job is to kind of explore

all of, all of the states of mind that I have and that humans have. So that includes, you know, really negative things, you know, anger and hatred. And, you know, I think if I showed up to work every day as a positive writer, my writing would be really boring. And it would also not be kind of fully human, you know, like, it just wouldn't allow for all those sides and all the capacities that we have. So I think for me, it's something about finding a balance where the negative things don't take over. I'm not feeding them, but I can still have some contact with them because to me, it's just important to have that kind of balance and paradox and complication in my life. Yeah, exactly. And I think we'll get into a lot of

that because I think that there were a lot of themes like that, that ran through your book. I'm going to give a real quick synopsis of your book for our readers who may not have heard it. And you can tell me whether I've mostly got it. I did read it. But in the book, you immerse yourself in the self-help culture and you write about it. Over the course of the book, you attended a seminar on the rules, which is like a dating guide for women who want to get married. You walked over hot coals at some sort of new age gathering for teens. You follow your dad as he strangely becomes an expert on a teenage fad called the choking game.

You made a vision board, joined a FIRA flying group, work as a volunteer at a grief camp for kids who have lost a parent. And along the way, you're describing the childhood you spent with your father, who is a self-help author himself. And you work your way, as the book goes on, through the story of your mother's death that happened when you were very young. Have I covered most of the bases? Yep, you got most of them. I mean, you know, I, for the book, I really immerse myself in the culture. But in a sense, I consider myself as always having been immersed in self-help culture, because my father was a

psychologist and a self-help book. And so we always had books around like, I'm okay, you're okay. You know, and those sort of seventies self-help air books. And I think just having them on the bookshelves and seeing their titles, even though I didn't read them, that has some influence on you. Um, and he espoused, you know, so many of the ideas of, uh, self-esteem and positive thinking that that was just always a part of my life. And when I really started thinking about it, I realized that just by living in America, I'm immersed in it because self-help has bled out of books into so many areas of culture, television shows, all those extreme home makeovers and Oprah and Dr. Phil and, you know, Dr. Oz. And it's almost unclear to me, like, what, what isn't a self help show? You know, it just I feel like it's really bled into so many

areas of life that we're all very immersed in it. Right. And I think that it's one of the things in your book that's interesting is you talk about you can trace self help all the way back to the Egyptians. And and that it so it seems that there is a common thread in us as humans to do better to improve ourselves to want more than we have. And so I think call it self help or whatever you want, that's sort of consistent with our with our makeup to some degree. Yeah, it does seem that as soon as we were able to think about how we wanted to live our lives, we became kind of obsessed with that. And, you know, from the Stoics, the ancient China, the Bible, you know, all of those old books are about self-improvement and the best way to live.

So I think that's always been a major concern for us. So in the book, getting back to what you talked about saying that it's sort of a balance between the two wolf theory, you have a quote that says, positive thinking can look an awful lot like old fashioned denial. Yeah. And, you know, that that is so true for me. And I think that in the case with my father and I, it was both, you know, it was, it was positive thinking and it was also denial. Um, and from the outside it would look pretty much exactly the same. So I think, you know, it's just sort of interesting that the attitudes that we put on don't necessarily have only one function. Um, Sometimes they can function in a variety of ways,

and some of them we're not really aware of. You know, I think we did know that we were very positive people and we were trying to be that way. And, you know, another one my dad always liked is the glass half empty, glass half full, you know, thing. So there were a lot of those sort of mantras and clichés just sort of floating around, you know, the daily conversation. But they also kind of performed other functions which were much more subtle, you know, as the things that we weren't talking about, basically.

So I think it's just very complicated. It is very complicated because I think that that positive mental attitude can be – I agree it can be denial. It can be avoidance of a lot of different things. And yet it's a slippery slope into unnecessary rumination or habitual negative thinking or anxiety. anxiety. And it's so hard to find that, that right balance that I think is, is one of the things that I've been interested in and with the, with the show in general is how do you strike that balance between, all right, I'm in touch with my feelings. I'm acknowledging how I feel about this thing. And yet I'm also to some degree controlling the way I am thinking so that it's, it's moving in a positive direction.

Yeah. No, I mean, I'm really interested in figuring that out too. And if you do, let me know. Yeah, I'm sure. The other thing that you talked about back there, it's on the same theme, but you said in the book that the self-help lexicon had offered me a way to hide. As the daughter of a psychologist and parenting expert, I had learned to parrot the language of emotion. I could talk about feeling sad or scared without feeling sad or scared. While my avoidance may have looked like fortitude to others, it was the easy way out. What's hard is honesty, confrontation, and vulnerability. And that really, really rang true with me. I seem to have this ability to tell you after the fact how I was

feeling about something. Oh, I was upset or I was sad, but it's very hard for me to access that in the moment with any other people around. And yet it appears that I'm very emotionally literate because I know those words and those sayings. I was really struck by what you said there. Yeah, I think that, you know, people around us, that the psychology is very much part of our culture. And so to some extent, we've all become familiar with, you know, making I statements and certain ways that we're supposed to talk to each other. And I knew that as a 10 year old, I was like, I know that you're not supposed to say you did this, that I'm supposed to say,

I feel like, you know, this when you do that. And it's so freaky that I knew that. And, you know, it may be quite strange. I'm probably still quite strange because of it. But in a sense, I sort of use that as a shield, where instead of just showing up and saying, I don't know, a shield where instead of just showing up and saying, I don't know, I'm scared, I'm freaked out, I would have this very rehearsed speech that I would give about, yes, my mother died when I was very young and it was very hard for me, but I really tried to be positive and I try to focus on these things and not these things. And it was so subtle that I didn't realize I was doing it. I was not trying to fool anyone. The person I was fooling was myself. I believed all those things. And to some extent they were true. Um, but it wasn't until I got older, um, and I sort of had a more mature capacity to think about these things, um, that I could look back

and say, you know, I wasn't feeling any of those things as I talked about them and I made them look so seamless, you know, as though it was something I had figured out in the past, you know, at 13 or 14, which is ridiculous. I'd be like, yes, yes, my mother died. I've resolved all of that. You know, um, you know, because I, it just didn't, I didn't know how to kind of show up unformed and a little bit messy, if you know what I mean. Yep. I totally know what you mean. One of the things we talk about that seems to come up on the show a lot is this idea of being comfortable versus pushing yourself into some level of discomfort. And that's where the growth goes. And I think that's a really interesting way to – what you were saying, that's an interesting way to sort of think about that as you're

having the conversation is, am I really here? Am I really feeling a little bit uncomfortable? Am I stretching myself in what I'm saying or revealing, or am I kind of in pretty comfortable territory? Right. And on the other hand, you know, it's useful sometimes to be able to talk about your emotions without feeling them. Right. You know, for instance, now talking about it, it's useful that I'm not about to burst into tears because, you know, we're doing a podcast and, you know, sometimes I would be in school or in a professional setting. And, you know, that kind of control of your emotions is kind of useful to be able to talk about negative things and not always be about to lose your mind. But I think I had gone so far in that direction that I had lost the capability to, in private, experience those feelings as I was talking about them. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition

signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So one of the things in the book that you talk about is the secret, which is a very popular movement as of late, the law of attraction. And I think there were a couple of things I really liked that you said about it. One was when you said, well, it's not really much of a secret because self-help authors have been saying this sort of thing for years and years and years, that if you just think positively good things will happen to you. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you find challenging in that notion. Well, you know, I think what I find challenging in it is that it's partially true. You know, positive thinking does breed positive effects, at least in the very least at the sense that negative thinking will not bring about positive effects. You know, if you think you can't do something, you're definitely at a disadvantage and it's

extremely unlikely that you will achieve something if you're sitting there thinking you can't do it. And I think that, so in a sense, the fact that there is this real grain of truth there makes it difficult to discount entirely. But I think some theories, and it has, you know, over the past 120 years, a lot of people have talked about the law of attraction. They've called it different things. You know, this is our most recent term for it. it. And some of them are pretty modest about the claims they make. You know, they basically say, if you think positively, there's more chance that, you know, you'll be open to things and you'll recognize them when they see them. And then some people go really far out and they make claims like, if you think of a car, you'll get a car. And to that, you know, when it gets to that extent, I just, I just don't believe that. I just can't make myself believe that that's true. Um, so I, I like to kind of, there's a spectrum and I like to kind of dial it back so that you're in a more reasonable territory. And I get irritated when, you know, people start extending something that is generally true, um, to something so specific and outrageous that it starts to become a lie.

to something so specific and outrageous that it starts to become a lie. Yeah, you use the word magical thinking, which is one that I use a lot, which is this idea that if I just think a certain way, I'm going to manipulate things in the world, which I agree I also think is silly. I think anything good in life that comes through effort. And I do agree that positive thinking can make us more attractive to other people. It can make us more friendly, more open to things, and good things can happen as a result of that. But to think that there's some magic out there that is occurring, the idea that the universe only wants good things for us, I'm skeptical of because the evidence out there is really that for a lot of

people, that's not what happens. Yeah. And that's actually another really troubling part about the law of attraction for me is that if you have the positive side where positive people attract positive things, you also have the negative side where negative people attract negative things. And there are some really horrible things that happen to people. And it bothers me to think that those – to basically blame those people, to blaming the victim and say, well, those people must have attracted it because they weren't thinking positively enough. And as somebody who had some amount of tragedy in my life, certainly on the grand scale of tragedy, not the worst thing that could have happened. You know, I kind of resent that. You know, I was a baby. I don't know how negatively I possibly could have been thinking or, you know, my dad was thinking, you know, it just seems too pat an explanation. Right. Well, it's, yeah, it is really, it's pretty difficult to stomach the idea that, you know, a genocide that that entire group of people

brought that on themselves. Or I've seen people who think that they have, you know, they believe so strongly in that, that the cancer they have, they have to think their way out of it somehow. And if they think it all negative, the cancer is going to get worse. And it's just a, it's just a bad spiral. Yeah, you know, and I'm sure there is some correlation between thinking positively and, you know, medical health and even maybe even being in cancer. But it's not, again, it's that spectrum, you know. It's not going to cure your cancer to think positively. It just might help.

Right. But you also need to avail yourself of all these other things that are available. You know, and an interesting thing about the law of attraction is that it doesn't allow for the element of surprise. about the law of attraction is that it doesn't allow for the element of surprise. It's sort of this idea of putting on a poster or some poster in your mind, everything you want, you want this car, you want this partner, you want this house, you want these kids. And then even if it were true, the fact that then all those things just happen, to me, there's something very kind of lifeless and boring in that. You know, I kind of like when maybe I set a goal to do something, and then it turns out that something else happens that's also kind of delightful

and that I'm happy about but that I actually couldn't even have imagined or anticipated for myself. You know, in some sense, this book followed that trajectory because I thought I was writing a book about self-help. And in the middle, I kind of surprised myself by realizing that I was going to be talking about my mother's death. And, you know, I really had not seen the connection there. And to me, those surprises, they're always good. They're always good surprises because,

I don't know, I think that the world has so much greater capacity than we're capable of imagining or putting on a poster, it's nice to be open to that. Yeah, we had a guest on, one of our earliest guests was Oliver Berkman. I don't know if you're familiar with his book. He wrote a book called The Antidote, Happiness for People Who Hate Positive Thinking, which is a great book. But he gets to the same point at a certain idea, which is that if you knew everything that was going to happen in your life, even if it was all good, you've drained the mystery out of life. And that mystery and that sense of awe and wonder is a key part of a healthy mind. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, if you know everything that's going to happen, just die now. Like, what's the point? You want something to find

out. Yeah, I actually that book is on my list of things to read now that I'm done with my book. I had to avoid it while I was writing it because I didn't want to contaminate unduly contamination, cross contamination. Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely a really good read. You hit on also, I think there's so much paradox throughout your book and so much contradiction in trying to balance these two different things. And, and you near the end, you really hit on the question that runs through my mind all the time as we as we think about these sort of things. And, and you said, to what extent should you accept yourself for who you are? And to what extent should you attempt to better yourself?

And I think that is such a fundamental, you know, I refer to it as like my koan, you know, my Zen koan of life, which, you know, how do you strike that balance of accepting yourself versus bettering yourself? Since you've written that, have you gotten any clearer ideas on that? No, I have no idea. I mean, that was such a genuine non-rhetorical question. Right. No, I have no idea. I mean, that was such a genuine non-rhetorical question. I really don't know. I think that obviously there's a limit to self-improvement. I do think that there's such a thing as too much self-improvement. It's sort of like being on a never-ending treadmill where you never get to rest and something about, okay, well, I've improved this part of my life and I have to move on to this part and I'm never done. okay, well, I've improved this part of my life and I have to move on to this part and I've never done, you know, there's something that I find exhausting about that. And it just seems a little bit too much like work and not very fun. But yeah, on the other hand, I don't think that we should accept everything about our lives. And if there's something that you don't like and you want to change it, I think that's a valuable thing. So that's a really tough call. Yeah, I do not know

the answer. Yeah, it always is. And I think it goes beyond self-help and self-improvement to just life in general. At what point are you able to be happy with what you have and accept what you have? And at what point are you settling or selling yourself short? And it's a really big dilemma. I heard a quote the other day that I loved. And I think it was some hip-hop artist. And he said, let me see if I can remember it, never satisfied but always content.

And I thought, wow, that's really interesting because he's always wanting to get better, and yet there's an underlying contentment to it all, which sounds like some sort of magical formula that seems really hard to achieve. Yeah, was he saying that he had achieved that? Actually, he just wrote those words. It was a, it was a Twitter feed and he just wrote those words. I was really struck by him. Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, in a sense of the answer to that question is the question, um, just being aware that you need to find a balance and that there is such, you know,

there is too much of a good thing. Um, and to be constantly asking yourself that question is, I think the way that you find a balance and that there is such, you know, there is too much of a good thing. And to be constantly asking yourself that question is, I think, the way that you find that balance. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah really no really go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed jason bobblehead

it's called really no really and you can find it on the iheart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In the book, you, you have a real, um, you, you talk a lot about the language of self-help books and you're clearly a very good writer and some of the writing there is not so good. And I think the cliches, uh, get, get tedious. I'm a member of, a 12-step recovery program the cliche is driving me crazy except for the fact that they're absolutely true um man i was struck by the the cover of your book has a picture of a kitten hanging paris perilously from a branch and it it comes from a poster that says hang in there on it which is such a one of those things that we all look at and think is kind of silly and it's kind of cute and of meaningless. But I was really touched when you went a little bit further on that and talked about how you wish that's what your mother had been able to do.

Yeah. I mean, definitely. You know, when I first wrote that passage, it started almost as a kind of thought experiment because I was I am really interested in cliches. I don't like to just dismiss them as stupid. I think that they are around for a reason. They do mean something to people. And at the same time, they can become meaningless through too much repetition. You know, like today's the first day of the rest of your life. You get used to hearing it, you stop thinking about it. But if you do, if you can stop yourself and really think like what that means and appreciate it, you're bringing some of the meaning back to the cliche. And so that's kind of what I was interested in doing with the phrase hang in there and that poster to a certain extent. You know, I thought, you know, what is the

most kind of ridiculous manifestation of this problem that I'm having with the language and the hang in there and the kitty cat was it. So I said, okay, I'm going to think, I'm going to just think my way through this until I figure out where the meaning is in this. Because to me that had just totally lost me. It was like, oh, the cat hang in there. It's cute. It's fluffy. It's hanging. You know, it, I had seen it so many times. It was just completely boring to me and cliched. But when I really forced myself to think about what it was saying and really the meaning of hang in there and the fact that in life there are times that are really difficult and that we don't want to hang in there. And, you know,

my mother committed suicide and in some sense she was in that kind of moment, you know, my mother committed suicide. And in some sense, she was in that kind of moment, you know, I don't know exactly what her state of mind was, obviously. But once I really put my attention on it and thought it through, I mean, I was in tears by the end of writing that passage, like that I was kind of so moved by the sentiment. And that was really surprising and fascinating to me that, you know, I was able to kind of take that phrase and put some meaning back in it for myself. So I'm so interested in the way that language can kind of get emptied out and then get filled in again with meaning. It was a very touching part. And one of my sons had a classmate who committed suicide recently. I've got 15-year-old boys. And I was just really struck by that idea, too. I think the word in my mind was like, just stay. Just wait. Because as you say, things change. Things will get better for a period of time. And that's such a permanent solution to what's a temporary problem. Yeah. And I'm really sorry to hear that. And yeah, a lot of it is how do you communicate

that to somebody who needs to hear it? Right. You know, to say stay, to say hang in there. If you want to so badly, and it's such a powerful message that I think it's really important that we think about these things and how we can communicate them. You know, maybe it's not through cat posters, but maybe it is. I don't know. But like, that we really want to communicate these things to people and we want to hear them ourselves. So there's a real life or death importance in it. Right. So throughout the book, you talk about your father, and we touched on it earlier. Your father is a self-help author. He's a parenting expert. And you guys yet were pretty much unable to ever broach the subject of what had happened with your mother throughout your

growing up in your life. And there's a really another touching scene at the end of the book where you and your father finally go and visit your mother's grave. And your father starts to cry. And you realize you start to feel in you that that uncomfortable feeling of Oh, here's emotion, this feels uncomfortable. I don't really want to be you know, you start to try and distance yourself and, and the thought came into your mind of pull yourself together, which we typically think of as a pull yourself together, you know, stiff upper lip, you know, keep, keep yourself together. And in that moment, or maybe it was in reflection later, that phrase twisted again, talking about how language has a lot to do with how we interpret things. And you came to pull myself together, the part of yourself that wanted to run so badly from that moment, and the part of you that wanted to hang in there and be present to

it. And I thought that was really a powerful metaphor. And the scene sort of ends with you and your father and your mother, and it sounds like you crossed a bridge there. Have you and your father been able to talk more about that stuff now that you had sort of that one seminal moment? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think to his credit, you know, he also really wants to talk about it. And we just didn't really know how. And it is something that just came up naturally from writing the book. And I did end up talking to him about it.

And he seemed very happy to talk to me about it. about it and he seemed very happy to talk to me about it. Um, so it's been a really interesting new chapter in our relationship where we're changing the way that we relate to each other and how we talk to each other. Um, which is kind of great. Yeah. Your father sounds like such a great guy. He's, uh, there was a couple of stories you told about some funny things he, as he did as a kid when, when you were a kid, can you maybe share a couple of those with us so the listeners can get a sense of your dad? Well, I mentioned that every morning when he dropped me off from school, he said, today's the first day of the rest of your life. He also once, and he's going to be sad that I'm telling the story again, but it is in the book. He showed up dressed as a gorilla.

He had a gorilla costume for some. My dad was always kind of a practical joker and his dad was a practical joker. And part of our positive thinking was actually humor, you know, making jokes and being silly. And he feels, he feels so much worse about this than he should, because apparently the look on my face was just complete trauma because, you know, like a man shows up in a gorilla suit and you know it's your dad. That's already weird. It's like you just know, like couldn't see his face, full gorilla suit.

But just immediately. But I was like, that's obviously my dad because my dad owns a gorilla suit. And my dad would do this, you know. And I ran into the bathroom and hid until he left. And I think he felt so terrible. He said he thought it would be funny. And then when he saw my face, he just knew he'd made a terrible mistake. And it was not very traumatizing to me. You know, now I think it's a really funny story, but he still feels so bad about that. How old were you? I think it was in third grade. So eight, nine. He should have really

a very like prone to humiliation age anyway. Yeah. He should have waited until you were 14. I think that really would have been the perfect age to do it. Yeah. For maximal humiliation. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe at like a school dance or something. And you talk about how he insisted on paying at all the toll booths with a sock puppet of some sort on his hands. Yeah. Different sock puppets that he kept in the car for this purpose. I mean, and it made me laugh hysterically. I thought he was so funny. You know, it's just looking back on it, and I think, well, it's a strange choice.

And you said that only one toll agent in all this time ever thought it was funny. Was there anything particular about that toll agent agent or did he just kind of laugh? You know, it might have been the hand puppet that actually broke the toll agent because this one was a dinosaur that was in a cage. And so it was a complicated hand puppet because it was like the hand was in the cage. And I mean, it was just like this really elaborate hand puppet. It wasn't just like a sock monkey or something. And I think the toll agent just said, like, I don't even know what this is and just started laughing out of maybe confusion or, you know, some kind of delight, you know, having the monotony of being a toll agent broken up. But mostly just annoyance from toll agents. Or confusion, you know.

Yeah. I didn't know. Maybe they thought he was making fun of them. I have no idea. I'm still not even totally sure why he did it myself. Well, he sounds, you know, again, throughout the book, even though you may say your father feels uncomfortable with some of those things, I think you painted a very sympathetic picture of a really kind man who really loved his daughter. I mean, that was very clear. Oh, he really did. I mean, anything he ever did, he was trying so hard to do the right thing. So I have to really appreciate that. So what's next for you? Do you have any idea what your

next writing project is or what you're interested in now that the self-help world is not the focus? interested in now that the self-help world is not the focus? I'm so excited to give away all my self-help books. I have stacks and stacks. If you want some, let me know. I'm working on a novel that is partly autobiographical, but it's in the very early stages and it has nothing to do with self-help. Well, I think that's about all I had question-wise. Is there anything else you want to talk about on the theme of the two wolves? No, I don't think so. I really did have fun thinking about it, though. Excellent.

Well, again, I really enjoyed the book. We'll have information on the website where listeners can get links to it. And thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us. Thanks. It was a really interesting conversation. Great. Thank you. Bye. Bye. You can find out more about Jessica Lamb Shapiro and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Jessica Lamb Shapiro. Normally, Chris does the end part here, but I wanted to be the one to say goodbye this week.

And I mainly just wanted to say, I know there are a ton of podcasts out there. There's a lot of choices. It's so frustrating when you can't wrap the deal. So thank you very much for listening. We appreciate it. I'm just going to start from the beginning. Okay, I won't do it, I swear. I'll leave all that in there. Sorry about that. I was bummed that I didn't get to get to the...

So ridiculous. All right. You got to hit record. Oh, it's going. Oh, okay. Chris is normally the one who says goodbye, but I wanted to be the one to say goodbye this week. And I mostly just wanted to say there are a ton of podcasts out there. I know that. I know there's a lot to listen to. So really do appreciate you listening to us when you have so many other choices. And I wanted to give a special thanks out to Mommy Michelle 9, HBirds, Savasava, 719Sign, and IfMamaAin'tHappy for really nice iTunes reviews this week. So thanks. Bye.