The Rich Roll Podcast - Introducing Soul Boom: Anne Lamott: What is the Key to Lasting Love?

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Today I’m sharing an episode of Soul Boom—a new podcast hosted by Rainn Wilson exploring meaningful and inspiring topics that tickle the mind, heart and soul.  Subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts Watch on YouTube In this episode, author Anne Lamott joins Rainn for an enlightening conversation about the complexities of love, spiritual growth, and self-acceptance. Anne shares her insights on the journey of finding love later in life, the importance of community, and the transformative power of radical self-care. Their discussion delves into the profound impact of prayer, overcoming judgment, and the continuous process of healing and personal development. Browse all episodes of Soul Boom: soulboom.com Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

I'm super proud to announce my next venture, Voicing Change Media, this beautiful consortium of thinkers, storytellers, artists, and visionaries all committed to fostering meaningful exchanges and sharing thought-provoking content. Voicing Change Media will feature shows like Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson, Mentor Buffet with Alexi Pappas, Feel Better Live More with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and The Proof with Simon Hill. You can explore this network and all its offerings at voicingchange.media. Pretend you're like the wisest Tibetan monk and you've been living in a cave for 40 years, and I'm the guy from like the New Yorker cartoon clamoring up the side of the mountain.

And I pull myself up to your cave and you're cross-legged. And I'm like, what is the meaning of life? I was like, what is the meaning of life? And you know what? He had an answer. Are you going to keep that quiet until the episode drops? So long, everybody. until the episode drops. So long everybody. Rainn Wilson, good to see you. Rich Roll, how are you? Good, man. I'm happy to be sitting across from you. We have a couple of interesting things to talk about.

We do. The first thing is you and I were in India together. Were we not? We were. It feels like a dream, doesn't it? Just a few months back. It was a little bit ago. I'm curious, has the experience of spending a couple days with Arthur Brooks and that interesting group of people

convening with the Dalai Lama, has it stuck with you? What are the lessons that you find yourself ruminating on in the wake of that experience? Well, it's interesting when people ask me about those sessions with the Dalai Lama and they ask, what did you take away? Do you feel like wiser? Did you have some kind of profound experience?

And truthfully, I did not. I was incredibly moved by the experience and by the trip, however. Being around hundreds of Tibetan monks that since childhood have been practicing being in the present moment, finding joy, being of service, studying what makes human beings human beings

was jaw dropping. I had so many wonderful conversations with the monks. His holiness was an incredible, every conversation that Arthur Brooks and the team of monks that were there had was him turning it toward that most important of all topics, which was love. I mean, Arthur Brooks could ask him about AI

and the Dalai Lama would start talking about love. And that really taught me something that those are always the most important conversations. Yeah, it's a situation in which you go in and think you're gonna get this key that's gonna unlock everything. You're gonna go behind the velvet rope only to find out that it's the same thing

you already kind of knew, but also, you know, an experience in which it just reaffirms that truth, right? Basically, no matter what Arthur true at him, the answer was the same. And it wasn't necessarily a direct response to whatever Arthur was asking. It was kind of what, it was like he was reading the room and trying to figure out what do these people

actually need to hear? And his answer was always some different version of the same response, which pivoted around love, compassion, forgiveness, like these age-old concepts that we all know are the answer, but it was good to kind of have it reaffirmed in that way. It was essentially love better, love deeper, love truer, and all that goes with it.

And so that was inspiring. I got to interview one of the monks, I'm blanking on his name right now. We're gonna put his interview on our Soul Boom YouTube page. But basically the bottom line was, I asked him a question. Okay, pretend you're like the wisest Tibetan monk

and you've been living in a cave for 40 years. And I'm the guy from like the New Yorker cartoon clamoring up the side of the mountain. And I pull myself up to your cave and you're cross-legged. And I'm like, what is the meaning of life? I was like, what is the meaning of life? And you know what?

He had an answer. Are you gonna keep that quiet until the episode's over? So long, everybody. I'm gonna share with you. The cliffhanger. I'm gonna share with you. Master storyteller.

I'm gonna share it with you right now and gonna share it with you. Master storyteller. I'm gonna share it with you right now and trust that your audience is gonna go subscribe to Soul Boom on podcasts and on our YouTube page. Well, that's the whole purpose of us having this conversation right now. Okay, good. So do you promise, do you guys pinky swear?

Everybody's swearing, pinky's up. Okay, very good. It was, again, incredibly simple. He said, the meaning of life is service to others. That's it. He said, when you are a service to others, that will vanquish your own inadequacies, your anxieties, your depression.

It brings you into the moment. And not only that, it makes the world a better place. And there's a lot of people that need a lot of service right now. So shifting humanity's entire focus from self-interest to other interests, you know, instead of selfishness, otherishness was his entire thesis of the meaning of life. And I thought that was, I mean, it just, it's so true. It doesn't get better than that. I mean, ask the Buddha, ask Jesus, ask Oprah.

Yeah, I mean, that is a consistent strain in every spiritual tradition and also a core precept of recovery, right? Service is the ultimate antidote to the self obsession that keeps us stuck and drives so many of our neuroses and our anxiety and some of these, you know, off kilter mental health issues that we all kind of. It's kind of the answer to everything.

So that's what I got to come away from the foothills of Tibet with. And my wife and I got to go to a bunch of holy sites in Northern India, which was amazing. The Golden Temple in Amritsar, we went to Rishikesh, which is a Hindu holy site where the Beatles stayed and studied. Where the Maharishi was.

Maharishi was, but there's beautiful fire ceremonies. And it was really, it was incredibly uplifting. And I was doing it right as we were launching Soul Boom. So that helped as well. So let's talk about Soul Boom. You've got this new, relatively new podcast. What inspired you to get back into the podcasting game? Because this is not your first spin of the podcast.

Not my first podcast rodeo. Yeah, Reza Aslan and I came on your show several years back, four or five years ago, when we were doing one called Metaphysical Milkshake. I've always loved big ideas, big human ideas. That's why I love your work. I love what your network is doing at Voicing Change and what you're doing. And I wrote a book about a year and a half ago called Soul Boom, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.

We spoke about it on here. And I really feel that one of the ways I can be of service is to have conversations about deep real impactful spiritual issues and using spiritual tools for personal transformation and spiritual tools for social transformation it's my passion I've gotten to speak to stand-up comics I've gotten to speak to humanitarian, theologians, musicians, different facets of the same conversation. Cause spirituality isn't like a, it isn't woo woo and it isn't church.

It's just being a human being. You said on this podcast, spirituality is reality. And I think about that almost every single day. Wow. Yeah, I do, I do. And I think what you're creating is a really beautiful offering and much needed right now. I'm really honored to be able to be supporting you

in this adventure. And I've also noticed the level of not just professionalism, but integrity and intentionality that you've brought to this with yourself and Kartik, your producer. You're really attacking it with vigor. Like this is not a side hustle. Like this is like a mission for you. Yeah, it's incredibly important to me.

And you know, was it Dionne Warwick? What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Yeah. Dionne Warwick and the Dalai Lama have said it here, folks. But I love having these conversations. It feeds my soul. And I think we're in an election cycle, obviously. And it's one of the most kind of toxic,

destructive times we've ever gone through. And these are the conversations that give us hope, purpose, meaning, direction, all that good gooey stuff, plus a few laughs along the way. Yeah, your show, as you're always pointing out to me, is much funnier than mine. Yes, it is. But you have these deep thinkers.

You take yourself so damn seriously, Rich. Oh my God. I know. You've got these deep thinkers. You've got, you know, Douglas Rushkoff and, you know, Kate Bowler and all these interesting people, but you also, you just had Bryan Cranston on. Yep. Sarge Tarkanian?

Sarge Tarkanian. Sarge, I always get his name wrong. Yeah, system of a down. Yeah, super cool, eclectic group of guests. And it's been fun to kind of part-time like work in an office with you. Like I'm sharing an office with Rainn Wilson. That has its own inherent,

like there's some kind of weird joke built into that. It's you've kind of got the Michael Scott office. Like I come in the building and you're in your office behind the computer and I'm coming in. Or I'll be out of town and you'll text me a photo of you sitting in my chair at my desk. Yes, using your coffee mug.

Am I being fired? Anyway, we are doing this because I very much wanna introduce Soul Boom to all of you guys. I'm speaking to you, the listener and the viewer. And so we are gonna share an episode of Soul Boom on this feed to kind of introduce you to Rain's work. Which episode are we gonna be putting up here? We're gonna put up a conversation that I had with the great writer, mystic, humorist, philosopher, creative

artist, Anne Lamott. She's the best. She is the best. I love her. Hysterical, brilliant. Her recovery program is deep. Her creativity, she writes novels and books that are like bird by bird is a classic. One of my favorite books she ever wrote is called Help, Thanks, Wow, which are three different forms of prayer that one can say, help me, thanks, or wow, isn't the universe astounding and beautiful. She's an icon and I thought your audience would really respond well to her stuff. And she's also funny as hell. Yeah, I love her to death.

There are plenty of her books that I have yet to read, but Bird by Bird sits up near the top of my favorite books, particularly in the genre of like unlocking your creativity. Yeah. Her way with words. And I also listened to it on audio and she narrates it. And her voice is so distinctive in the way that she reads her own material

is really wonderful. She's up there with Julia Cameron and Steven Pressfield and all the other like icons of creative expression, I think. Yeah, yeah. So here we go, we're gonna introduce it. If you're watching this on YouTube, we are gonna link in the description below the episode.

So hit that right now, rather than appending the entire video here, you can go to the Soul Boom YouTube channel, subscribe there, and you'll find all of the Soul Boom episodes there. That's right. And go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts or wherever you enjoy the show and click subscribe there because you're going to love this episode. Where else should people go to learn more about Soul Boom? They could pick up a copy of my book if they wanted. I mean, I don't know. That's such a heartfelt strident call to action

to get people to read your book, right? It really is. It's so, it's so crude. No, that's it, that's it. Join the conversation and thanks for having me, Rich. I love being on your podcast network. He said not to plug it, but I'm gonna plug it anyway. Voicing Change has a couple of really amazing podcasts

coming down the pike. And I'm happy to be working with you on this. Thanks, man. That means a lot. And it's been a real honor and pleasure to work with you and to support this mission that you're on. And I mean that from my heart, honestly. Yeah, thank you. All right. And everybody else, enjoy. Enjoy.

You know, I heard someone say, or maybe I read this, maybe you said this. We always like to say that we have a God-shaped hole inside of us, but that maybe God has an anti-shaped hole inside of God, inside of him or her. And that the way that we are going to fill that hole is by finding other people because everyone's got those holes inside of them. And we're going to find other people who are conscious of it and who are willing. If the willingness comes from the pain, where does the solution come from? You know, courage is fear that has said its prayers, right? Hey there, it's me, Rainn Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers,

friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom Podcast. So how old are you? Wow, that's getting intimate right off the bat. I'm 37. You're 37? I'm 58. 58? Yeah.

Wow, you're so young. Oh, don't say that. Yeah. You're going to love your 60s. I know you've had a beautiful, loving, and successful life. There's just something about the 60s that it's like you get free. Really? Yeah.

Well, I did read someone was talking about how the 60s were that perfect decade where you still had your health yeah and your vitality yeah and your wits about you yeah before things start to fray a little bit in your 70s yeah sorry to say i know you're 70 you just turned barely i think i'm in my extremely late 60s really late such so late no, there is something freeing. Like, you know, all that hustle and con just quiets down. And you can go either way. It's not like that thing, that clench anymore. And it's just like you've thrown so much shit out of the plane,

your psychic plane that just kept you flying really like caring about certain stuff that at 60 you just you think you know whatever you know I don't care anymore and and um and and then that just gives you you back in a way that I hadn't experienced so I have a lot of things I want to talk to you about. Okay, great. Have we started recording yet? No. Okay. We're not going to record any of this. This is just a conversation that's going to live.

It's going to live in our memories forever. That's a lot. Okay, I don't care what we talk about. I have really moved by your new book somehow and how audacious it is for you to be tackling something as enormous as love. And to start with that, I got to meet Neil, your new-ish husband. How long have you been together? Been together almost eight years, but we got married three days after I started getting

social security. So that was five years ago. Okay. That's a great marker. I have so many questions, but let me put it this way. Okay. That's a great marker. I have so many questions, but let me put it this way. Okay. In my book, I talk about love a little bit and I talk about how limited that word is because in the English language, there's like one word for love, whereas like Sanskrit, there's supposed to be like 97 words for love. And in English, it's like, I love my skateboard. I love Nantucket. I love God. I love my grandchild. And it's just like one word that is so all encompassing. And you even reference in here, like the ancient Greeks had agape for like divine love. And they had a word for romantic love and for filial love, kinship love. You have a word for pet love. What was that one?

Mascotus. love, kinship love. You have a word for pet love. What was that one? Mascotus. Mascotus, the love for one's pet that she invented, trademark Anne Lamott. Brilliant. Love that. Devotion to one's pet. Devotion to one's pet. How did this recent kind of romantic love transitioning into marital love in this phase in your life, what has that opened up for you? Let me go back a little bit, okay? Okay. Okay. So we go back to my early 60s, 62, and I'd always had, I'd always sort of known who the

next hostage was, right? There was someone there that had a nice accent or was smart or well-known or cute or we kind of grokked each other and I would just be with them. But I knew I had a secret, which was that if they were a woman, I knew they wouldn't be my best girlfriend. And that was what I wondered if I might find in the world, a man who, if he were a woman, would be my best girlfriend because he was so rich in spirit and in a listener. Now, I mean, no offense to your gender, but there, I've been with men who had tiny listening issues. They like to talk more, right? And they like to, yeah. And so I, um, some men have a micro penis.

Some men have a micro listening. Some men have micro listening issues. Tiny, tiny listening issues. Hardly worth mentioning. And so I went on Match because I'd been single for a while. And I had a year. We can save your listeners the price of buying any of my books because they can just go to annelamottmatch.com and there's an essay from Salon that is probably everything you need to know about me and how I met Neil because what I did was

a year of dating. Every week I went out with a different man who seemed like he might be nice, not knowing he had a Beavis and Butthead laugh. Three of them, and I'm not making this up, you know, I'm a believer. I'm a Sunday school teacher. Would not lie to you, Rain. Three of them brought me manuscripts, right? But what I learned to do was to date. And my son, Sam, has on his forearm the tattoo, we never give up. And I just didn't give up. And I kept thinking, maybe there's a man out there. What did you learn about dating? What is dating? I learned how to say no. I learned that no is a complete sentence. I learned that I could show up, you know, before I turned on Woody Allen, he used to say 80% of life was just showing up. And I learned to show up, you know, instantly,

you know, three to four seconds, whether it's going to go well. Isn't that a problem if you have a coffee date or even a dinner date no I never would have a dinner date no I don't even have dinner dates with Neil and I've known him for eight years I don't really like to eat with people except on the couch with the animals and like TV on like below deck or something

so I would never have a I wouldn't have a dinner date with him for two weeks. And we saw each other every single day. This episode brought to you by Match.com and Below Decks. Back to Anne Lamott. So anyway, I learned to say no. I learned to be, you know, Baha'i and the Dalai Lama saying my only religion is kindness.

I thought I'll show up 80% of life, never going to give up. I'm going to be kind. There's a story we tell our Sunday school kids, and this fits in, of a little girl who's scared to death to sleep. And her mother keeps coming in. You know the drill, just more and more irritated. But the mother keeps saying, God is right here. Jesus is here on the bed with you.

Just go to sleep. You're not alone. Goes on and on. And finally, she comes in for the last time. I need someone with skin on. And I believe my faith tells me that that's who I'm called to be, is I'm God's love in expression. I'm God's love with skin on, right? So I'm going to show up for these people, these men on match, and I'm just going to be God's love.

And I'm going to get out God's love, you know? And I'm going to get out of there if I need to. And I'm going to say, you know what? I'm really glad we got to have a cup of coffee. I know that we're not a good match, but you take care, you know? And so I did that for a year. Were some of them disappointed? Were they like, oh, boy. A few of them.

The ones with the manuscript. And the guy who wonders. Can you still read my manuscript? Right. Well, one of them who was so handsome, he had an English accent at the end. He said, I'm going to confess that I really just wanted to get a selfie with you. And I was like, well, thanks for sharing. You know, I hope that you're bitten and killed by snakes.

But I mean that in a warm Christian Sunday school way. And then maybe devoured by your pets because that happens. Yeah, but after the hemorrhoids, and this is the Christian way. And then one guy asked after a great two dates, if it was too soon to bring a plot treatment. Right. So that's what I did for a year. So then I took a little time off because I'm into radical self-care. And I took some time off. And I started to feel my feelings, which has been part of the path of recovery for me. And I realized I felt really sad and empty.

And I was pouring my life into my son and my grandchild, who was young at the time, who was six or seven, six, I guess. And into my church community, into my recovery, and into the neighborhood. I just am this way. I'm God's love with skin on. I'm blessed. I just came this way. I was way more anxious than the average bear and really loving. That's just how God made me.

And I longed for a partner. And so one day I expressed this to my older brother who was staying with me who's a fundamentalist Christian I adore him but he used to be we've kind of ruined him but um and he kind of handed me this Christian bumper sticker bs crock of shit well God never gives you more than you can handle it's's like, bore me later, you know? But it was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I had to leave the house. I got in the car, started crying,

started hitting the steering wheel saying, God, I'm so sick of you, Sam and Jackson, and both of my brothers, and mom and dad, I can't believe you gave me such a crippling, pretzelizing idea of love is pouring all my life force into the entire world trying to get a sense that I'm of value. I did this for 40 minutes. I'm not kidding, right? There to the woods and back. Then I have had a mentor since I got sober.

So for like 37 years, Her name is Horrible Bonnie. And I pulled over by the side of the road, and I called her, and I said, I hate everyone. They're users. They just are takers. I'm sucked dry. And there was one of the silences, the reason I call her Horrible Bonnie. And she said, dearest, this is what we paid for. And she said, you're no one's priority. Do you know why?

I knew what she was going to say. She said, you're not your own priority. And what you're going to do for three months is you're going to do this radical caring self-love of being your own priority, beginning with going to the health food store on your way home and getting the overpriced homemade tamales. Yeah, they're so delicious. The tamales are where it began. The Air One is right down the street. Have you been to the Air One? No, but we will.

And Neil has your car and he may be there as we speak. He might be there. He might be there. Talk about like, you know, they're like $27 tamales and they're the most delicious you've ever had. Okay, and that's what she said. She said, you're gonna get the homemade overpriced tamales.

And I did. And I did this love. I was putting lotion on the flabby situations. I was putting tattoos on my thighs. I was having only food I love. I was having only spiritual people. I was saying no to people that were a little toxic for me that I'd always sort of sucked up to because maybe they had something I wanted or, you know, could further my career and whatever. And I just said no. And about three or four months after I had that conversation, Neil came up on the match

thing that's for older people, which is called Our Time. Our Time. And I met him. And it was funny. I could have come up with a better name for a senior dating, like Golden Decades. Golden Decades. How's that? Right, I know.

Final chapter. Right. Hello, death. Right, yeah. What do you think? So anyway, it was, so anyway, but I'd already rejected him because he's overly educated

and he was allergic to cats. That was not really the main thing. That's a deal breaker. Right, for me. And because I sleep with my cats. The only reason I'm semi-okay most days is because of my cats and my dog. Yeah. And I thought-

You just shave them. I know, right? Or get those bizarre Mr. Bigglesworth cats, you know, that are kind of- Yeah, the hairless. The kind of cats in the loosest sense of the word. Do they make little hazmat suits for cats? Because you could put a cat in a hat. You could do that.

A cat mat, hazmat suit, and then they would be not toxic to Neil. Anyway, so you had tried to date Neil. And he was like, I don't know. And I also, by then, because I was doing this radical romantic self-love with myself, I didn't feel like a lot of urgency. And I kind of let it go. On our time, I see this guy. You've seen him.

He's tall. He's great looking. He's dear. He's smarter than shit. I like Neil. I like Neil too. Immediately. He's smarter than I am.

We have a dog, very smart dog, who's smarter than I am, but not smarter than Neil. He's got this kind of crystalline intelligence. But anyway, I saw him. I liked the profile, and I wrote to him. I said, oh, I wonder if you might want to have coffee. I like your profile. And he said, you've already rejected me. I think it's because I'm not Jesus-y enough.

I could care less whether someone's Jesus-y or not. It's just my thing. It's like— He's way too tall for Jesus. Right, exactly, right. Jesus was probably like 5'1". Probably, and he's got like size 14 shoes, right? And Jesus got like little sandals, little 10, size 9.

Jesus would have a hard time washing Neil's feet. They're so big. Correct, correct, exactly. He might've drawn a line right there. It's like, I'm gonna wash Judas's feet. Neil, I'm sorry, they're just too big. Yeah, have drawn a line right there. It's like, I'm going to wash Judas' feet. Neil, I'm sorry, they're just too big. Yeah, I draw a line. Peter, Paul, Matthew, Tim, Scotty, come over here.

Wash Neil's feet. Then we got together for coffee because I don't have meals with people. And we just grokked each other. We wanted to keep the conversation going. That was the thing. I know, right? That's so exciting. And it's real life.

And it gets very lifey some days. Can I read a quote that I read of yours this morning? You said in an article, if you're paying attention and making your own life as beautiful and rich and fun as it can be, you might just attract someone who's doing the same thing. Yeah. You can give up on tracking someone down with your butterfly net. That's right. You do the work. You do the healing. A lot of people ask, what do you do for your teenagers? My son got very, very lost in drugs and alcohol.

And grace of God, the sober men in San Francisco fished him out almost 14 years ago. But he got very, very lost. And people say, what do you do? My kid's lost. My kid's furious. My kid's—so you do the healing. You do your own work.

You become a person of wholeness. You become a person who's not projecting your own shame onto your kid, your own desperation to achieve in the world onto your own kid. And I'm a Sunday school teacher, and I had a failing church. So I might have two nine-year-olds and two teenagers in the same class. But the teenagers, in so many cases, they look at their parents, and the parents are racing around all day every day with these meaningless to-do lists, getting more and more done, trying to achieve, trying to keep their weight down, trying to get to the gym, and the kids just grieve. They think, I don't want to be like that.

I don't want, is that what life is like? And you go, no, you know, I'm clean and sober. I have a spiritual path. I live to get back outdoors every day. You know, I have my pets. Yeah. And I love my life. And it gets very lifey. And there are some tools I can share for you for when it gets tough. Right.

That's what I teach my Sunday school kids. Right. And so with the parents that come out, you know, to talks or lectures or something, I say, do your own healing. Get yourself back. Yeah. Get yourself back. Hi, friends. Simon Hill here, friend of Rich Rolls. Allow me to quickly tell you about my podcast.

of Rich Rolls. Allow me to quickly tell you about my podcast. One of my favorite things to do in life is sit down with career scientists, experts on very specific topics, and learn about their research. The proof hosted by yours truly is how I share these insights with the world. We explore things like the health, fitness, and longevity benefits that come with mastering exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, recovery, sleep, and more. So if you're down for slightly nerdy science chats with a healthy dose of humor and humility, tune into The Pro and more. So if you're down for slightly nerdy science chats with a healthy dose of humor and humility, tune into The Proof on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. That's enough from me. Back to you, Rich. I love this idea, love this idea, because your ode to love is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. I recently

had the incredible bounty of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Northern India with Arthur Brooks. And Arthur Brooks was asking all these probing questions about the meaning of life and transcendence and modern society and what humans need. And every single answer the Dalai Lama just, it's almost like he didn't hear the question and he just unfolded a different chapter about love. Just profound, deep, searing, all-encompassing, that there really is no, that existence is love. God is love. The hippies were right about that. So was Jesus. God is love. Love is in the scintillating molecules between us. I'm wondering about those barriers to love, because it's something I think about with myself a lot. I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly

loving person. And even in the 30 some years I've been with my wife, like I kind of learned how to love her about 10 years ago. You know, it was, it was rocky to say the least. And because my love, those barriers to love for myself had to be unpacked, not bird by bird, but brick by brick from the destructive circumstances of my traumatic childhood and terrible love being modeled for me by my dysfunctional parents. And I really was like in my late 40s that I learned really what love is.

And therapy was a very valuable process. I'm also in recovery, 12 steps, a very valuable process for unpacking that as well. But I still wonder to this day, like, why am I, what would it be like to just live in a total love vibration? Like just, can we do that? Can we be St. Francis of Assisi? Can we be the Dalai Lama? Can we be Father Greg Boyle? Can we be these people that just vibrate loving joy in the Baha'i faith as Abdul Baha is the perfect kind of embodiment

of a loving way of being in the world? So many great Hindu gurus and Swamis and thinkers have been able to tiptoe toward that. But what are the barriers for us for love, Anne? And how can we be total vibrating love machines? Well, I'm not positive that this side of the grave I'm going to be a total vibrating love machine. Okay. But I think you exude love. I'll stop.

You exude love. I mean, I can see you just being brought to tears by people being tenderhearted with you and letting you be really vulnerable. I can see who you were at six. I can see who you were at three. And I can see who you are at this age that your love would skin on. And I feel like, you know, this horrible Bonnie said to me 37 years ago, Annie, watch the self-talk, you know, because my self-talk, I harsh myself and I wouldn't harsh you. I would, if you handed me something to read, I wouldn't go, God, rain, you know, put it

away and let's revisit it in 2025. I would be so amazed that you had produced something and that it was your heart and soul. If you're handing me something to read, it's the very best you've got of your heart and soul and your brain, your experience, your strength, your hope, and you hand it to me. And I would receive it that way, but we're not that way with ourselves. And I'm not that way with myself. But one thing that has helped me a lot is something I heard in recovery,

which I'm sure you're familiar with, which is Chuck C telling the story of the priest who helped Bill Wilson get the AA off the ground in the 30s who said to Bill, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses. And I was on the road for three weeks just until a couple of days ago and I'm on a book tour and I brought two pairs of glasses that are the same prescription so that when I was being a certain judgmental way or having shame because of like a review or anything,

I just change glasses. I would physically change glasses. And I think, let's put the good glass, let's just see the love everywhere. And it's like another love person besides the Bob and, you know, the people that we've mentioned that are just seem to be the embodiment of love is was brother lawrence and he talks about practicing the the presence of god and that was his path that you practice the presence of god and that what you what i'm normally practicing are is uh you know who's to blame is something i'm good at and um whose fault this is that things aren't going better and how I have got to get away from this or that or a person or whatever.

Or I'm thinking about, because the two things I think that you started this part of the conversation off on are what are the impediments? And I would say one is just, for me, I think you're fine. You really do exude love. You're like a child. And it's that endless judgment. This is good. This is bad.

This I need. This I don't need. This I got to go. This I'm out of here. This I have two to three minutes for. This I could, you could, I know you and I could talk for the rest of the day, right, if we wanted to. Let's do it. Yeah, and that endless snap judgment.

This is good, this is bad. He's a bad guy. He's a bad guy. Grace is spiritual WD-40. Grace is unearned love. Grace meets you exactly where you are, but grace doesn't leave you where it found you. Marjorie Taylor Greene is loved exactly as much as the grandchildren you'll have someday. Go figure, right? But figure it out is not a good slogan in the spiritual world.

Sorry to interrupt, Father Gregory Boyle, who is one of my top three heroes of all time. He said, Top three heroes of all time. He said, God is enamored of everything you are doing all the time. All the time. And he says that to the gangbangers in his program. Yeah. And just like that idea of like being watched and someone watching you with delight and adoration. Every choice you're making, good or bad, like, oh, they did that. Oh, that's okay.

They're doing that. Oh, my's okay. They're doing that. Oh, my goodness. I know. No matter what. Yeah. 100%. I mean, when my son was out there on meth and alcohol, there was literally, I mean, it was a nightmare. There wasn't a moment when I didn't feel this unconditional love.

He was my child. Yeah. And that's how God feels about us. It's unfathomable love. I always, on that, I always think about people who, you know, part of the book in Soul Boom is, I have a chapter called The Notorious G.O.D., which is kind of a re-imagining of God from the ground up or from the sky down.

But this idea of a judgmental, what I call sky daddy, which is so pervasive. There was a, I think it was a Michelangelo painting and it was Jesus and the father and the father was embracing Jesus. And the father was, and God was like larger than Jesus had his kind of arms around him. And God was balding.

And I thought that's an odd choice. God can have any hair that he wants. Why would God choose to be balding or someone choose to, if I was, I'm losing my hair, I would have a magnificent head of hair, a little more Zeus hair, Odin hair, rather than the Michelangelo God hair.

But I guess the point is that that that idea of judgmentalism, like I think about my son. That's the first thing, but go ahead, tell me about that. My son, Walter, and you know, like when you have a child, it opens up a new door to love. Like you think you know what love is, and then you have a kid and it's like, oh, there's a whole new world of love. I you, you think, you know, what love is. And then you have a kid and it's like, oh,

there's a whole new world of love. I had, I had no idea. It was like Alice peeking through a little door and there's a, there's a whole other garden back there. You're like, oh, I thought I was just falling down this rabbit hole and there's a beautiful garden. I want to get to that garden to quote the hippies. And my adoration for Walter, even when he's making mistakes, just my love for him is so vast. Can you imagine God's love for us as his children in that sense? Because it's times a bazillion. So how could there be judgment? How could there be kind of like a snarky condemnation from Sky Daddy in that kind of paradigm?

Yeah, it's not possible. As I wrote about in somehow, God doesn't have an app for not love. No, we would feel, I would express that not love is killing us, right? And so the crazy experiment might be in love, right? In practicing the presence of love, of putting the good pair of glasses on,

which are loving, which see that people aren't, everyone is engaged in an invisible struggle that we have, no matter how arrogant or destructive they appear on the surface, they're engaged in a struggle that is just devastating to them. But that endless judgment of he's an asshole, she's a this, that's like us projecting out the endless judgment of ourselves that we've squandered our time, that we didn't pursue this or that, that we've wasted so much of our life on what other people think about us, trying to get certain critics to adore us and give us the FDA stamp of approval.

Well, it's an inside job. You know that as well as I do. The self-respect and the delight that we know God feels towards us because we feel it towards our kids. But so that endless judgment and you practice catching yourself. You go, oh, I'm doing that again.

Like my husband's work is with the inner critic and he teaches you when this voice is telling you that you shouldn't try that, it's too scary. The New York City critics won't like it. The Hollywood critics won't like it, blah, blah, blah. That you just say to it, oh, it's you again. You've had it since you were a little child. And you do the practice of saying, oh, it's you again.

But with the judgment, you just go, oh, it's you again. It's what my parents did. This is how they taught us to feel that we were of value, even though they couldn't stand each other. There was alcoholism. So getting rid of that judgmental, that incessant judgmental voice. And as you know, in recovery, we do character defects. And top of my list of especially my top five is judgmentalism. Me too. I can be very judgmental. But the judgment and that endless judgmental voice, I've recognized because of the path I've been on.

It's like a toxic comfort zone because you know what it is? It's home. You know, mom and dad might be nearby, and this time they got help. You know, I had OCD. I was turning off my light switch 17 times off and on every night before I went to bed. I had migraines at five years old. They didn't notice something was wrong with what they were doing to their children. They didn't notice what they were doing to their children or they let it go.

And so for me to be in this energy that is toxic, that is judgmental, that is total separation from me, you, God, from everything, from all of life. It's home, right? And you have to find a new home. You have to find a home within yourself, this glade inside of you where for me, it's me and Jesus and my little one. And that's my glade. And then right outside that, like outside the bullseye circle is Neil and my son and my three best friends and my younger brother. And they're the first ring of the bullseye, right? And the second

ring is like a bunch more friends who I really love and trust. About six rings out is standing at a podium and saying, I think you all have this. I think you all have probably equal proportions of grandiosity and raging ego and self-doubt or even self-loathing. And so you begin to

say it and it breaks the trance. But that's how you wear down the judgment is you stop doing it to yourself so much. You know, you put the, you notice that you're projecting it out onto other people. The fact that you, I never looked right. I had this frizzy hair. I didn't look, I weighed zero pounds. I weighed like 30 pounds in seventh grade, which is, you know, in operating instructions,

I go into this existential despair because I've given birth to someone who's gonna have to go through seventh and eighth grade, which is like the sixth ring of the, right? Yeah, Dante's infernal. I didn't ever really bounce back from that. And I've made- And now, and add social media to that.

And add social media to that, yeah. People are not liking your photos and posting all of their sexy photos. Right, right, and their bikini photos. But so one tool is that you start doing Neil's work of just saying, oh, it's you. It's how I survived a really terrifying childhood was by thinking I was the problem, right? If I'm the problem, then I have some control over this situation because I can do better. If I think I'm the reason mom and dad aren't happy, there's a solution, and it's for me to do better.

It's for me to need less. It's for me not to cry. We got sent to our, I had an English mother. I had a father raised in Imperial Japan in the 20s by Christian missionaries. And so you don't cry and you don't get angry. And all children of alcoholics agree at a very early age not to see what's going on.

So some of the work is that you learn to cry. You learn to do your anger with someone healthy. And you agree if you're going to be a writer. You have to do this to start to respect yourself as the narrator of your life. You unsign that contract where you didn't see it because it made your parents, your dad, feel so bad about his life so that you take it on. You put it in your own backpack. You do the work with a mentor or a therapist or a whoever to start taking that stuff out of your backpack that was your dad's and your mom's. The endless, endless judgment. Is the person I'm loathing or judging or rejecting some kind of funhouse mirror for me?

Right. Right. And in the last book I wrote, I used that wonderful line of Martin Luther King's, like, don't let them get you to hate them. Because if you let them get you to hate them, you've lost that glade of love and the sweetness that you can see through the glasses that they're a child of God. Trump, for instance, is a man who was never loved, not even once until he had a daughter, never once before or since. I don't think he knows his grandchildren's name, but that's just me. That's judgmental, but I wonder. Well, I can say that I think Trump is a textbook walking definition of narcissism. And I can say that I also am a narcissist.

And so am I. And a narcissist is not, as my therapist pointed out to me, it's not someone who is grandiose. It's someone who is either at the top level of grandiose, or else the biggest piece of worm shit on the planet. And you're in those two extremes, like I'm greater than everyone or I'm less than everyone. And the hardest thing for a narcissist is to just be another bozo on the bus and to just be, I'm just regular old person man.

And I can recognize myself in Donald Trump. And if I grew up with a gold-plated toilet and nanny and never saw my father, and I was never hugged, and my only kind of self-worth came through sexual conquest and wealth, then I could see me being exactly in his shoes. Yeah, me too. In that book where I wrote about the Dr. King line, I thought, I'm a narcissist. I'm a blowhard. I can be bombastic.

I'm sure I'm right. My friend Tom W., the Jesuit priest, says, I never ever noticed I was angry, just that I was right, you know. And that's me and that's Trump. And I am, you know, and I have more sympathy towards him than most people I know. And because all truth is paradox, I'm going to work for the next six months to cut off the head of the snake because that is going to destroy democracy if people are going to support the policies and what he has said about what he will do. You know what? Democracy has been destroyed for a very, very long time. Oh, I don't know. No, it's limping along. It's so corroded and filled with hundreds of millions of dollars and an apostle of politicians all tearing at each other's faces

and stabbing each other in the back. That's been going on for a good 50 years. So the mourning of like the possibility that if the Republicans win the election, that's gonna destroy democracy. Democracy is already pretty much destroyed they would just kind of tear down the remaining kind of termite infested foundations well you get to think that that's not my belief so now let's go to the second impediment in my experience with um with being in

love and just looking around the way god might. But the other second, the second impediment is the shame, the toxic shame of having grown up. And I know many, many of your listeners are just fine. I wasn't. I grew up in a really frightening situation of parents who couldn't stand each other. And I internalized their shame. And so what the natural reaction to that is to figure out who I can project this onto to carry. That's what the whole Southern white racist is about, is that like gays or black or somebody is at least they're not gay, you know, or at least they're not people of color.

They're white American patriots. Right. You've got to find somebody to project it onto. And the shame is the most excruciating feeling I ever have. I make a small mistake. I got a terrible review a week ago in the New York Times, the worst review of my life, that actually mentioned my hair and referred to some of my work as embroidered throw pillows, I so went into the shame spiral as if I'd never gotten sober or had 30 years of therapy and love. And you know, my friend Tom, who I just mentioned, Tom Weston, he told me the shame secret 30 some years ago.

He said, there are five rules of being an American adult. First, you must not have anything wrong with you or different about you. You just need to pass in any circumstance, right? Wow. Rule two is if you do have something wrong with you or different about you, you just have to correct it. I mean, you just do, okay? The third rule is if you can't even correct it or fix it or change it,

you just should pretend you have. It's like a silly old thing that is from the past. You don't do it. It's not a problem anymore. The fourth rule is if you can't even pretend that it's not an issue anymore, you should just not show up because it's really painful for the rest of us when you do. Wow, that's great. And the fifth rule is if you're going to insist on the right to show up,

you should have the decency to be ashamed. And that is what we internalize by kindergarten. You know, don't have anything different or be wrong. Fit in. Be, look like Betsy Steiger, who had soft blonde hair. I didn't have soft hair. Be like that. We didn't have enough. We've got Betsy on the podcast next week, actually. Ask her about me. Okay. Narcissistic question right there. Right, right. And, you know, if you were different, if you looked wrong,

if you were too big or too heavy, too tall or too short or too whatever, you didn't have enough money or you had, you know, there was a girl in my seventh and eighth grade class whose dad was mafia, big mafia king in the city. Tremendous shame. We didn't have enough money. Tremendous shame, you know? The restoration to become the child you were born to be before they, in the paranoid sense of the word they, and the world, the culture got its mitts on you. But that is the impediment is that internalized shame about who we even are. That's beautiful.

That's my understanding. you are listening to this podcast because you care about improving your health and your well-being but this quest is incomplete if you have yet to add my friend dr rongan chatterjee's feel better live more podcast into your listening quiver an rrp favorite and someone I'm personally quick to call when I'm in need of good advice. From nutrition to mindset, fitness, and relationships, each episode is packed with the tools you need to become the architect of your health. Subscribe to Feel Better Live More, available wherever you get your podcasts, and explore other groundbreaking series at voicingchange.media. One of the things I struggle with, with the kind of Western world, with the liberal world,

with the secular world, and with the kind of like moss chomping yoga chakra embracing West Coast is you've talked a lot about heal yourself, forgive yourself, self-care, you know, stopping the judgmental voice against yourself. And these are all healing your internal trauma. All of these are the barriers to love. And you've talked about them in great length and they're super, super important. But I think for a lot of people that I know in this particular cultural milieu

that I find myself here in suburban Los Angeles is it stops there. It ends there. They do that work and like, I want to feel better. So I'm going to heal my trauma. I'm going to stop the self-judgmental voice. I'm going to open myself up to love and like, ah, I'm feeling a little better. Mission accomplished.

Right. Pull up the ladder. I got mine. Yeah. And what I love about you and your work and what you do is you never end it there. And it's, it is, you don't write about this very much, but it is very clear as a thread through your texts that you are of great service to others and that you heal yourself so that you can teach Sunday school and bring a macaroni to the potluck at the church

and feed the homeless and clean up and register voters and be a part of your community and help heal the woods and be a vibrant and necessary kind of servant among servants. So how do we help folks bridge that? Because I get pretty darn frustrated that spirituality, therapy, trauma work, and healing kind of just ends once some of the anxiety has lifted. Well, you know, I'd say a third of the book is about community, and it goes with Duncan's thing about when you first meet him,

you're meeting his bodyguard. But a lot of the book is just about finding a group out there that moves you, that touches you. The beginning bird watchers, the people who clean up litter, the people at the food kitchen, the people at the soup kitchen, the food pantry, the soup kitchen, the people, the hikers, the, you know, there's this old guy where Neil and I live named Jesse, and he is so frail. He's 93 and he walks down the street every single day to be outside, to hear the birds, to be underneath the sky, to see his neighbors because that's his path of love. And you always see him with different people because people swing by to be his walker

that day, you know? And that's one way to go onto next door and to find somebody who needs somebody to help them walk every day. But there's a piece missing in what you're saying, which is you have knowledge, you have volition, and you have action. You're talking about knowledge and action, but how do you find that volition? How do you find that will, the will to walk, Neil, the will to clean up the trees, the will to go to the soup kitchen, that missing piece of like, ah, I have soothed this anxiety through these therapeutic and spiritual tools.

How do you then find that internal mechanism that goes like, now I need to do something else outside of myself? Well, I'll tell you the answer. I love answers. Young man. Yes. I bet you have heard in your years in recovery, the most basic step zero.

Step zero is this shit has got to stop. Whether it's with your drinking, your gambling, your black belt codependence or whatever, this shit has got to stop. And the willingness comes from the pain. We don't have the willingness if everything's floating along and we're just feeling really fulfilled and that we found our purpose as a tribal person but the willingness to come into community will arrive most of time from feeling

that swiss cheese inside of your soul that you are you, you're doing your three hours of hot yoga every day and you're with your therapist, you're with that, you're doing this and you just feel, you're going to feel, if you're not in service, you're going to feel empty. You're going to feel, you know, a guy told me, I got sober in 1986. He said, I came into this as a hot shot

and the guys helped me work my way up to servant. And the Swiss cheese holes in your soul are not going to be healed by kind of fine-tuning your own life and getting a much more attractive and enviable life. They're going to be, you know, I heard someone say, or maybe I read this, maybe you said this, that we think, we always like to say that we have a God-shaped hole inside of us, but that maybe God has an anti-shaped hole inside of God, inside of him or her. And that the way that we are going to fill that hole is by finding other people, because everyone's got those holes inside of them.

And we're going to find other people who are conscious of it, who've hit that bottom and who are willing. If the willingness comes from the pain, where does the solution come from? It comes from the courage to try to knock on a door and to go on into a group. Courage is fear that has said its prayers, right? You're going to do it afraid. You're going to go to where the birders meet. You're going to go to where you've heard that sober people, the recovering Catholics meet. You're going to go to where the Course in Miracles people meet. You're going to go where the people that pick up litter every day meet.

And you're going to at first think, well, this is ridiculous. I'm very, very busy. I'm important. I have all this stuff to do. And then you're going to go in anyway because maybe the Holy Spirit nudge on your shoulder and you go in and you feel shy and arrogant at the same time. And someone comes over and they say, hi, my name's Rain.

Can I get you a glass of water? Who are you? Come on in. And you go in and the miracle is if you get back a second time. I just thought of something for your next book. Okay, good. You said the Holy Spirit and you're talking about the God-shaped hole. The God-shaped Holy Spirit.

The God-shaped Holy Spirit. Like Holy Spirit. Get it? Like Swiss cheesy spirit. I got it. Yeah, that tug on your sleeve. You can use that. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Do you write every day? When I'm writing, I write every day. Yeah, I write five days a week. My dad was a writer and he taught me, he sat down at his desk at 5.30 every morning and he wrote till seven and you heard tap, tap, tap. This is the 50s, you know, in the early 60s, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then he got us three up, there's three of us, he got us up for breakfast and made breakfast for us. And he taught me that you don't wait for inspiration, that no one's ever really very inspired, and that you do it by habit.

You do it as a debt of honor because you have this thing inside of you that wants to write, that wants to share some stuff that you thought was worth passing along that might be illuminating, cast a tiny bit of light in this cold, weird, dark world, or that was funny, that would make people laugh, laughter being carbonated holiness, or that might be a story you just wanted to remember. Because you don't want to lose it, because you want to give it to your grandchildren. When you lived in Olympia and you knew the name of every single dog in your neighborhood, right? Right. When you lived in Olympia and you knew the name of every single dog in your neighborhood, right? And so he just taught me, you know, like the Nike ad six years later, you just do it.

So I sit down. I sit down at the same time. What time do you sit down? I sit down at nine. How much caffeine do you have? I have two cups first thing in the morning. I wake up, I say my prayers. I fish around for my glasses.

I let the dogs out to pee, I have a cup of coffee. That's my writing system. Okay. Yeah. Nine is a little late. Well, it is, but I have a grandchild at home. He's almost 15, but they're usually in, he needs food, he's getting ready to go to school, he needs breakfast, and we've got the animals. He needs screen time. He needs breakfast and we've got the animals and he needs screen time. He needs screen

time. And I also, I'm not in a hurry anymore, you know, and nine works for me. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get up early, but if I'm in the middle of something, I'm up very early a lot. And I write really late. Like when you are really young, you know, and you get it, you get the solution late in the second wind at like 10 at night or something like that young, you know, and you get the solution late in the- Yeah, second wind at like 10 at night or something like that. And you step, I just finished a piece, you know, I'm writing these pieces on getting older for the Washington Post. Oh, wow. Yeah, I've written eight of them.

And the other day, I was actually on the road, and at about nine, I was wasted. I was on California time, but I was on the East Coast. And I got, it's like this solution floated into my head like a goldfish that was a structural change that I could do. And that was actually fun. I rarely, very rarely say those words. And I worked till midnight, you know, and I just was caffeinated on ideas. On ideas, yeah. And I nailed it,, you know, and I just was caffeinated on ideas. On ideas, yeah.

And I nailed it, right? That's awesome. Yeah, so that happens. But in a regular day-to-day, I worked from about 9 until 2, but see, and then I saw for lunch. And I do the same thing I did while raising my child, which is I operate on bribes and threats, which is really the only thing that's ever worked. I'm sure you'll agree. So I'll say to myself, Annie, if you finish this passage, we'll stop and we'll have a peanut butter sandwich, the food of the gods, right?

Sure. The bread of heaven. Yeah. Or I'll say, if you figure out the end, this last graph, then we're going to watch MSNBC for half an hour. And I- I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No, I do. I know it's a sickness, but it's my sickness, right?

Okay. Yeah. And so, or I'll say, if you finish this draft, this unbelievably shitty first draft, then we're going to go for a walk. Oh, nice. With a dog. Yeah.

Yeah. I love carrot and stick, but that's a lot of carrots. Yeah, it is. A lot of delicious carrots. Yeah, yeah. What time do you start? I found that I was really only good from around 9 or 9.30 till about 12 or 12.30. Yeah.

Well, here's the thing. 9 to say 12, three hours, that will buy you. I happen to know these things, that'll buy you just over two hours of real writing because there'll be 50 minutes of squirm. I would say less than two hours. I would say an hour and 20 minutes. No, I'd say an hour and 45.

You're gonna squirm and you're gonna be eight years old again and wriggling and feeling bitter because you'd rather be outside and whatever. But so that's the grid. That's what I teach at a writing room that you give me three hours by prearrangement with yourself. You don't say to yourself, well, I hope I get some work done tomorrow, right? You won't. But you say, I'm going to get some work done tomorrow. I can put in two hours. You know, anyone can watch the 10 p.m. news, right? So 10 o'clock news, you start at 9, you go through 10,

you're done at 10.30, you say an hour and a half. That's going to buy you 50 minutes of writing. You might get two pages done. It's amazing. You might get 500 words done, you know? And so that's my system. Are you a word counter? I was definitely a word counter,

which is not a healthy habit, but I was kind of like- But it's your habit. Yeah, I got 350 words today, or, oh, hey, I got 900 today, or I would run to my wife like, I wrote 1,200 words today. Yeah. But what my wife does, and I know you're also a fiction writer,

she writes fiction, which is very different because you're just creating a whole other world and you're listening and fishing for other voices and you're waiting for those muses to let those voices talk and you're seeing how this world unfolds. Yeah. And that's much more challenging than writing like Soul Boom was like, here's what I think about the world today,

which is a little bit more of like, it's like what I'm doing right now. So I'm just transcribing thoughts like think, think, think, write, write, write. But it's much. Novels are tough. Novels are three and four years because you've got to keep so many plates spinning in the air. You've got all your characters. And also, you don't know what the book is until you finish a first draft of it. That's 300 or 400 pages.

There's no other way to know who these people are and what they do, what they're capable of, what they refuse to try, which would, in your your mind be the best possible thing for them to do. And they're not going to what you know, and you can't get them to, you've got that for at least a year. And then you end up with an incredibly shitty first draft. And then you feel despair and hopelessness and you realize what a loser you are. And then you do that for about a week or two weeks, and then you push back your sleeves. And that's when the fun starts. And I know your wife would affirm this, is that when you have a first draft, you no longer have that unassaulted ice flow of blank paper. Then it starts to be like Swiss watchmaking. You push back your sleeves. You're going to have to take out a quarter of it. There's that great Jessica Mitford line that you have to kill your little darlings.

Right. You have to take out little passages and little moments that you just thought were so terming and funny or erudite, in my case, made me look more educated than I am. And you just have to take out all the BS. You have to take out the lies. You have to take out the pyrotechnics and the showing off and stuff. And you have a second draft there and you get to work it. You know, it's fluid.

It's like you've pulled this big armful of rich black clay out of the river and you get to work it. You get to play with it. You get to take a lot of it back off the table. Use it somewhere else. That's what I tell myself when I'm throwing something away. But a novel's really, really hard. What we do, what we've been doing is kind of like, how am I doing on any given day?

Well, it's a little disappointing or I'm having a kind of a small miracle. I'm okay again. And it really wasn't yesterday. That's a good story. What happened? Good start with that, yeah. Yeah, yesterday you slipped on the cosmic banana peel and you landed on your butt and it hurt and people saw.

That's what two of the stories in Somehow are about. Now what? That's a good story, but it's a lot easier than fiction. And your book, Bird by Bird, is, you know, maybe with the artist's way, like the most important book on writing in the last 50 years. Julia Cameron also, I teach at a writing room and Julia Cameron did a three-week workshop. So what is this, a writer's room? What is this, a writing room? A writer's room.

Is it a writer's room or writing room? No, it's called a writing room, but it's a writing room. It's not the writing room who are our rivals and who suck. This is a writing room.com lowercase. And it's a collective with teachers. And I did a book club. We can send it to you where I took people through bird by bird 30 years later. You know, it came out 30 years ago. Yeah, amazing. And I did something about a month ago called, I think it's called Unblock 101. And it's 90 minutes on everything that might help when you're stuck and when you've turned on yourself.

Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And when it's all hopeless and doomed and, you know, usually right after your parent has come in to ask if you've gotten an agent yet, you know, which they will do. And Julia Cameron also taught there. And she did, I think a three week workshop because she has a new book out. I forgot what it's called. It might be called a writing, the writer's way, Writer's Life. Okay. Yeah. I mean, but she's magic, right? The only reason I wanted you on this show is so you could connect me with

Julia Cameron so I could get her on. You're in. I can do it right now. Arritingroom.com and your son is part of this and it's a collective and there's also workshops and just a support structure for people who wanna write. I love that. And they support each other and there's a prompt every day. Don't let me tell you the best prompt. I can save you some money. So you don't have to sign up.

I love a prompt for free writing. A prompt, okay. Yeah. Okay. There was a tree. Okay, just get really quiet. There was a tree, Rain. So now tell me about your tree. Okay, just get really quiet. There was a tree, Rain. So now tell me about your tree.

Right. There was a tree. Where was your tree? Yeah. Did you see it? Was it the tree that your little kid fell out of and broke his wrist? Was it a tree where you first fell in love? Was it a tree where there was shade on one of the worst days of your life when you had just gotten rich.

But you know what? There was a tree. Tell me about it. I have two trees that popped up from my childhood. One was we used to live in Olympia, Washington back when there were like woods. Yeah. So do you remember when there were woods? I do. So it wasn't all housing developments and cul-de-sacs. Like we had a little rental house and the backyard just went into wood. I don't know who owned the woods or what they were doing there, but there were just trees and gullies and creeks.

And so it was amazing because I would just run around in the woods. Yeah, right. And one time I really had to poop and I pooped under a tree. Yeah. And then time I really had to poop. And I pooped under a tree. Yeah. And then I think the next day I was walking with my dad back there. And he's like, he looked at it and immediately knew it was me.

He's like, Rain, why did you poop under this tree? And it might have been my first lie. It might have been my very first lie. And I was like, I think a dog did it. And he's like, that's way too big for a dog. Now clean that up. I was like, oh no. So that's not a very inspiring story. What was the other tree that came up? I had a, there was a plum tree in the back of our yard of our other rental house in suburban Seattle that I used to just climb and sit in a lot. And then it would produce once or twice a year. I don't know how often plums bloom, like an insane

amount of plums, like gobs. I know what you mean. Like just like, no, I know. Chaos. Chaos of plums. Yeah. Yeah. We have that too. They, they bloom in the spring typically, and then they turn into plums in the summer. Yeah. Yeah. And we would just have bowls of plum and giving plums away. And I would just like gorge on plum. I know. Plum juices were running down your chest.

Yeah, yeah. But I had a relationship with that tree. Yeah. And I would sit in it and kind of ponder the universe and my own existential dread, even at a young age. Yeah, the nightmare of it all. But let me tell you another prompt you'll really love. Okay, tell me 10 things you've forgotten. You sit down with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil, Bess.

I see you have a pencil. Graphite, the sound of graphite connects us with antiquity, right? With 100 million thousand writers scribbling down their ideas, their memories, their visions, their dreams, their hopes, the catastrophe of it all. Tell me 10 things you've forgotten. But you can think about it. You don't have to do it right now.

I don't mean to put you on the spot. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. But prompts every day. That's a tricky one. Okay. So my wife is a creative writer, fiction writer,

and went to the Iowa Writers Workshop. Wow. Has a couple books and stories out in lots of different magazines. She's finishing up a new book of short stories. And she, right on her shelf since I've known her, is Artist's Way and Bird by Bird, just right there, writing down the bones. That's another great one.

You've read the George Saunders book that came out and the Rick Rubin, both of them. Yeah, Creative Circle. And the George Saunders, what's his book on writing? It's going to blow your mind. You're going to forget you ever knew me. Oh, my goodness. Seriously. Yeah.

It's called Something in the Pond in the Rain. Oh, Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Something in the Pond in the Rain. Yeah, about the Russian authors. It's going to blow your mind because it's about the Russian authors, but he uses it as a way to teach his classes. And so he teaches you through a Chekhov story, say, the power of an absence. You know how the absence might be the most powerful character in the story.

Finally, I want to end with my favorite book of yours that I reference a few times in mine is Help, Thanks, Wow. And I really, it just put on a new pair of glasses for me. Oh, good. You know, and it was, sorry, I'm tearing up a little bit. I tend to do this sometimes. It meant a lot to me. this sometimes it meant a lot to me it really uh showed me uh the necessity and purity of of prayer and the asking for help and and coupling that with um both gratitude and awe and wonder. And I'm just wondering what your prayer practice is right now.

And has it changed since you wrote that book? If you are writing version two, that's like a 20-year-old book. Would you add something, help, thanks, wow? Would there be another instruction? Well, I love that. My prayer life is I wake up and I say my prayers and I pray to be relieved of the bondage of self and I pray for the people I know who are suffering.

I pray for the children of the pariah nations because for them it's like a triple whammy of being hated as a whole nation. And then all day, every day, I have this completely unsophisticated sense of Jesus. You know, it's like Casper the friendly ghost, you know, it's like, and all day I'm just saying hi. And I'm saying thank you, because you get so many breaks in the course of a day if you notice it. And I say, oh, God, thank you. Or I say what I said to you a while ago, I'm in a hole that's too deep for me to get my way out of. And then I just

wait and I get my answer. The phone rings or the text comes, email comes. And then I say, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'll tell you, when I got sober, you know, they're these sort of flowery prayers in recovery. And you say them in the morning and they're beautifully written out. And you say them at night. And this old-timer said, you know, I wake up in the morning and I say, whatever. And then he said, you know, I kind of thank God all day. And then I go to bed at night and I say, oh, well. So I kind of thought the fourth great prayer would be whatever. Like Krishnamurti famously said when asked what was the source of his peace of mind,

he said, I don't mind whatever happened. He said, I don't mind anything. And I thought, God, I mind him saying that or feeling that because I mind everything. So his peace of mind, he said, how do you find a peace of mind? He said, I don't mind anything. And that's pretty much where Neil lives is I don't mind anything. And that's pretty much where Neil lives, is I don't mind anything. It's kind of theater. It's Grisper the Mill.

It's what's going on right then. And my reaction is what's going to cause me to have pain. You need to turn off the MSNBC because that's making you mind the wrong things, young lady. Do you hear me? that's making you mind the wrong things, young lady. Do you hear me? Nothing against that particular network, but I think that the minute-by-minute kind of monitoring of the cycle of dysfunction

is not going to help anyone with anything whatsoever. Anne, thank you so much for coming on The Soul Boom. You've brought extra boom to the soul. Oh, rain. My wish for you and my gratitude for you is that you are an incredibly complicated person. And I mean that in the best possible way. And I said that to my wife the other week. I was like, Holly, you're very, very complicated

and interesting. She was like, fuck you. What is that? I'm like, no, that's my highest compliment. Yeah, yeah. Because you get to share your complexity over 20 or 30 books and interviews and articles. And we all benefit from your delightful roller coaster of life.

And I've benefited so much. So thank you. And thank God for baking you in a complicated oven of interesting complexity. Thank you, Rain. Yeah. Thank you. Like a pretzel. Like a pret Rain. Yeah. Thank you. Like a pretzel. Like a pretzel.

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