We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 209. How to Make Betrayal Beautiful with Maggie Smith

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

For the first time, Glennon requests a one-on-one with our guest – author and poet Maggie Smith – in this deeply honest conversation about: how to tell the brutal truth without betraying our people, how to reclaim ourselves after infidelity and betrayal, how the shaming of women who dare to tell their stories keeps us powerless and isolated, and how they both have embraced acceptance instead of “forgiveness.” About Maggie:  Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change.  A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. TW: @maggiesmithpoet IG: @maggiesmithpoet

Welcome to We Can Do Hard things. Today we have the Maggie Smith. Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of its own poison, lamp of the body, and the national bestsellers, Golden Rod, and Keep Moving, Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National. Endowment for the Arts, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Maggie Smith, poet. How are you? I'm doing well. It's good to see you. You two.

Have we ever spoken to each other face-to-face because I've read your work for so long that I feel like I know you, but this is our first time, huh? Same. Yeah. We've just been sort of communicating via our books and the internet. Yeah. Yeah. So the Pod Squad should know this is an unusual day because I have requested from my team to have a conversation with Maggie by myself.

And the reason for that, Maggie, is the minute I finished your new book, you could make this place beautiful. I knew I just wanted an hour with you by myself because the book is so beautiful. It's so honest and so deep and searing. And I personally related to every single page. The reason I wanted to talk to you alone is because I felt as I read your fierce commitment to truth on your own behalf, and it felt like on lots of women's behalf. And at the same time, this tension of equally fierce protection of your babies. And that is why I felt such solidarity, whatever the word for protective without like a patronizing vibe to it. And I DM'd you and said, okay, you did it. You did the thing where you did both in writing.

But then what happens is you have to go all over the place and talk about the writing with people who don't feel the deep respect that you had for your family and the words who are cheapening the things. And so it's a different beast talking about it than writing it. I just remember thinking, can you just read it? I already wrote it the best I could. I know you know. And it's hard and scary. And so I kept thinking, okay, I just want to sit with Maggie and let's just talk about it and figure out how to talk about it together and practice answering in ways that don't make us want to stick our forks in our eyes later. Oh, bless you.

And is honoring right to the truth and the art and to our babies. I love this. I love this. So let's talk, Maggie. Set the stage for us. Your handful of years ago, you've got this precious little family in Ohio, two babies and a husband. Yeah. And a dog. Well, we won't leave out the dog. The dog counts. Yeah, the dog. You're right. The dog. You had a dog. And your husband comes home from a work trip. And you say, I think your words in the book are things had shifted slightly. And so what did you do? And also, what does it feel like in a home? Because I knew exactly what you meant. Like, when things just have shifted slightly so you know some things up in your bones. Yeah. I mean, I think if you've lived with someone for a number of years, you sense the weather

change a little bit. Like, it's like a low pressure system coming in. You sense the like distance or lack of eye contact her. I honestly at this point, maybe mercifully, don't remember exactly what that felt like, but it definitely felt like something was just a little off for me. So then what happens? So I snoot. And I hate that. I wish that it had happened some other way, so I could have told the truth and not been a snoop. But alas, when we write about our lives, like we have to, I I don't know, be accountable and honest and open and brave. And so that means owning your stuff. And so I snooped and found something without too many spoilers that let me know that sort of my marriage wasn't exactly what I thought it was. And I mean, we are going to have to tell them, Maggie,

since this is a full interview, that it was betrayal. It was infidelity, right? We're not going to give away most of it because, wow, is there more? I had a very similar story. I found out that my husband had been unfaithful to me 10 years into our marriage and that it had gone on for a very long time. But was different than yours because it was sporadic. It was a bunch of different people.

And yours was a relationship, which I'm sure has completely different vibes to it. you said, I loved this moment. You were talking about a scene in the crown when the queen goes into her husband's bag and finds a picture of a woman. And you say, she kind of steals herself and just puts it back. Because of her role, nothing could change. And I remember feeling that way. I remember feeling like, oh my God, the crudest thing about this is it doesn't matter. because there's nothing I can do. And of course there was something I could do, but the babies were little. We had no money. I know this, but I can't let myself know this because my role can't change. Nothing can change. Yeah. No, I totally get that. Finding a postcard addressed to someone out of state,

which was all that I knew, but I knew something was up. I didn't have a full picture. And I still, full disclosure, do not have a full picture. picture. But I knew what I found and I knew it wasn't nothing. And so that sort of, in some way, started a chain reaction. Like the thing was rolling and there was no way to sort of undo it. Because maybe your role can't change or maybe you think it can't change, but you also can't unsee what you've seen or unknow what you know. So it's going to have an impact regardless of what decision you make about what to do in that. that relationship, whether you bring it up, whether you don't bring it up, whether you act like

you don't know, whether you act like you do know and don't care, whether you force the person to therapy, no matter what happens, it's never going to be the same. There's like a demarcation of before that knowledge and after that knowledge. And that is not to say that everything was peachy keen and perfect before that knowledge. It's just to say that that felt sort of like just a different kind of shift because suddenly it wasn't just us. Yeah. And it's so infuriating because, well, for a couple of reasons. You said, God, I loved this.

You said that when you lose your husband or your idea of it, it's not just the loss of the husband or the relationship. It's the loss of the knowledge of your future. And you say everything goes from like a period to just a bunch of ellipsies. Your future. Now for a writer, like all of your writing metaphors, it makes me so happy because I only understand things and compare it to a paragraph and I can get it. And I used to think of that like, I don't think I wasn't, and you know, Craig and I talk about this. So it's fine.

But I wasn't deeply in love with my husband. We got married because it was the right thing to do, not because we were the right and we were great co-parent. And so there wasn't a lot of passion there. When I found out about the infidelity, I wasn't mad like a lover's mad. I was mad like a memoirist is mad. Like you fucked up our plot. The story, plot twist. This is not how I had mapped this out.

I thought I was one character, but now you've written me into a new role that I did not sign up for. Yes. Yes. Like finding out that you're not the director. of any of it and somebody else has taken away that power from you, which, by the way, you never had. Right. I mean, the idea that the future was certain was a lie all along. I mean, the future was never certain. Nothing was mapped out. No decision that you make, I mean, for me and my 20s, like no decision that you make in your 20s about starting a family with someone is promised to you

frozen in amber for all of time. But of course, that hadn't occurred. But of course, that hadn't occurred. to me just yet. In my mind, this was all completely permanent and irrevocable, and this is not what happens, and this is not what we're going to do, and this is not my story, and I sort of refuse it. Like this, no, this is not happening, but of course it was. Yeah, I always felt like you took our future, you took my future, but that's not what happened. we never had a future. It was just, you took my idea of what the future was going to be. Yep. It was always blank. There was nothing there. There was nothing there. We were just sort of projecting our own wishes and hopes. Here's a writing metaphor. It's almost like copy paste.

Right. Like you have a good day with your partner and you think, well, I'm just going to copy paste this into infinity. And the rest of time is going to be just like this. Well, of course it's not. People lose their jobs or get promoted or have kids or lose kids or meet other people or don't meet other people or have to move or fall out of love. I mean, there is no copy pasting, period. So no, no one stole the future from me. They just sort of made me realize I didn't have much control, which is a firstborn daughter's not an easy thing to give up. Same firstborn daughter. Yep. You start the book with the Emily Dickinson line. What is it? I am out with lanterns looking for myself. I'm out with a lantern looking for myself. Yeah. Which really got me because I'm just always so confused about life,

period, but specifically the idea that I'm supposed to be the detective and the mystery. That's perfect. Like I'm one of those cats that's just like chasing my tail. I'm almost there. I'm almost there and every once, so I kind of get it. But then my mystery self is just a step ahead all the time of my detective self. What did you mean when you chose that epigraph? I'm out with the lantern looking for myself. Well, I think I realized in writing Keep Moving, that was the book that I was sort of trying to push forward through, right? That was me telling myself, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, keep going. During the divorce, during all the trauma, right? And so this book was really more of a reckoning with the past and looking back and trying to think like, where did I go?

And it really ended up being not about where did we go wrong or how did he do that or how did I allow this to happen? The big question, and I didn't know that going in. The epigraph wasn't the epigraph, the beginning of the book. But, you know, a portion of the way through writing this memoir, I realized the big central question is, where did I go? And how do I get myself back, more importantly than that? If midlife crisis is one thing, what's the opposite of crisis? Recovery, return.

So how can I have a midlife recovery of self, a midlife return to self? brought on by crisis, absolutely. But how can it also be an opportunity for me to figure out where did I get lost in this, not even just this relationship, this relationship, this family structure, this town, this job, this, the whole shebang. Like how many pieces of myself have I been snipping off

and sort of bargaining away? And how have I come? compartmentalized myself and stayed small in ways in order to accommodate other people. I know you get it. And I also very much get the midlife recovery of self. That's what I'm in right now. That's what I think I've been in since my infidelity revelations. I just read a recent poem of yours about embodiment.

And that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. And all of the imagery in the book about ghosts and it really, lot of like references that made me think of Virginia Woolf's angel in the house to to just appearing as a body in the world is like what we as women are trying to do in our 40s. It's just stop being ghosts. Oh, amen. Yes. Like not being invisible anymore. We're trying to fold ourselves up incredibly small to not get in anyone's way. This time of year, I am always looking for my sweaters. Luckily, Quince has all of the staple sweaters covered, from soft Mongolian cashmere

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You describe it as when there's betrayal, there's an explosion on one side of the street. So it keeps anybody from having to look at the other side. Yeah. So let's go into some foreshadowing. Because honestly, Maggie, in some ways, it was copy and pasting. The stuff in the beginning that was the problem turned out to be the problem in the end. Like, for example, I was sitting up, I don't know, a little bit after the infidelity happened. And I had a memory of Craig telling me to my face that he did not want to get married.

Maggie, sitting on my front porch that I was living with my friends and saying, nope, I do not want to marry you. And I was like, I wonder what he means. Exactly. I was like, I don't, but we can unpack that later. But like now I have to order a dress. So if we could just end this conversation. Wow, did we end up unpacking that later, Maggie? Yeah.

You say you convinced him to marry you. Like he did not want to get married, right? It was not his path. Well, it took a while for us to get engaged after we moved in together. And I remember feeling kind of crotchety and impatient about it. But it also, we started dating in our early 20s. Who should be getting married when they're 12? when they're 22. No one. So actually getting married at 28, even though it felt like on my watch,

it took a while, you know, quote, took a while, was actually appropriate. And now I'm like, well, maybe 30s are a better time because you're fully kind of getting what you need out of life. You understand yourself and your needs a little bit better. I mean, who knows? Our frontal lobes aren't even fully developed when we're 22. So I wouldn't say that I sort of pressured him into it, but he knew it was what I wanted. I always wanted to get married and have kids. And as a 22, 23-year-old guy, he was like, yeah, I don't know. And I think about that now. And on one hand, could you see that as a red flag? Maybe. But on the other hand, how many 22 or 23-year-old guys are super on board with the idea of marriage and kids with someone they've just

started dating in the last year or so, probably not many. And so that doesn't seem at all odd to me. What's maybe more a red flag is that I was in such a hurry. Like, I can own that. And that's the thing about, you know, betrayal being neat is that it invites you not to look at your own stuff. It invites you not to think about the ways that you were not completely showing up for the other person. It makes it really easy to fingerpoint. And I have no interest in doing that because I just, I don't think it's true mostly. It might feel satisfying. And maybe I might do it like over a happy hour with a friend, but not in a book. So much of trying to get my whole self back through just,

the time of the last few years and in the writing of the book is also thinking a lot about having integrity about how I do that. I mean, integrity means wholeness, which I love. Like, I'm such a word nerd. But so when we're thinking about what does it mean to have personal integrity, it means like showing up is your whole self. And news flash, that means not being always cool or perfect or good or right, it's probably going to mean sharing some things about you that you don't love if you're showing up as your whole self. Yeah. And showing up as your whole self in a marriage is interesting. Explain to the pod squad why one of the repeated lines in your new book is you and he met at a creative writing workshop. Yeah. It's. It's

It feels, this part feels so freaking important and a theme that my friends are repeating to me over and over again in different levels about what is happening in their marriage. Oh, okay. So now I need to hear about that. Yeah. Well, okay. Not that they all met in creative workshops, read it right in workshop. But you say that something about the most wonderful things that ever happened to you individually were the worst things that ever happened. in your marriage. You say that there is a type of situation where a man in a marriage can be very progressive on the outside and say the right things and vote the right way and wear the right t-shirts. But when it comes down to what's going on on the inside of the house, the deal, the unwritten deal, is that the man's work is real and important and that the mental load of the family will be carried by the woman. And when you said, Maggie, that you would be out working and when you called home to check on the kids, you would feel like you were getting in

trouble, I felt that. Yeah. Talk to us about that vibe and why it was that the best things that ever happened to you individually were the worst things that happened to your marriage. Well, I think probably most people who are married or who have been married would say that the biggest stressors on their marriage are kids and their work, right? Those are the two things that take the most time. They also change your relationship with your partner. It is not the same when you have small kids and you're just trying to get through bedtime, bath time, who's napping, who's not napping, who picked up the acid reflux medication, who did. this, who's doing that? It becomes so transactional. You're almost like co-workers in a project, and the project is the children. And yet, I wouldn't trade that for anything. I mean, I wanted to be

a parent since I was a child myself, and they're the loves of my life. And I wouldn't take it back. The other thing is my writing. It's incredibly important to me. Those two things are the things that make me feel most realized as a human being, spending time with my kids and writing. And writing ended up being a pressure point in my marriage too, in large part because once my poem Good Bones went viral, I had opportunities to leave my house more often. And up until that point, I was working full-time in an office for a while, but for a while I had been self-employed, and I still am to this day. And so I was really home. You know, if a kid couldn't go to school, it was fine, because I was working here and I could juggle to make sure that I could keep an eye on them

and take them to the doctor. If somebody needed something, if someone had to go to a doctor's appointment or the orthodontist or, you know, needed a volunteer to come to story time or whatever, I was the one who was available because, A, I worked in. in my house. And also my work didn't pay as well and wasn't, frankly, essential to our family. It was essential to me. Which meant it was essential to your family because your children needed to know who you were fully. So it just wasn't essential financially. No, that's true. It wasn't essential financially. And so it was more of an inconvenience when I had to be gone, right?

My invisible labor was made painfully visible when I was not here because the laundry doesn't just float from the washer to the dryer and then float folded up into the children's dressers. It does by the ghost in the house. It's the ghost in the house. It's quite amazing how all of these things happen.

And I don't think that for people who work outside of the home, especially if they have a partner who works inside the home, there's not necessarily a lot of cognition about how things run so smoothly. Like, it's not accidental that that happens. And so it became a problem. It became a problem if I was invited to do a two-day visit at a university to give a reading or three or four days at a conference or every once in a while a week,

you know, teaching a workshop. It was a problem because I wasn't here to do my other job. And there are so many things that you can do to kind of maneuver to help take the load off of your partner when you leave the house, like setting up playdates and making sure that everything is like done, done, and typing up things and making sure the Tylenol dosing is clear. know there are people listening to this who know exactly what that's like to be trying to manage things

from a distance or pre-manage them when you know you have to be gone. But of course, when my then-husband traveled, he didn't have to do any of that prep for me, not just because I was home, but because I knew all the stuff. Like that institutional knowledge lived in me. And I had to somehow pass it all off whenever I left the house. And it became a sore spot, I guess is the best way to sum it up. And Maggie, do you believe that that was it, though, because it feels to me that it was also about ego? Well, because, you know, there's the moment where you're signing in a signing line, signing books. And one of your friends says, I'm going to take a picture and send it to your husband and you say, no, don't, that will make everything worse.

So it wasn't just that you were away. It was that you met in a creative writing workshop. Okay, fine. That's fair. That's fair. I accept that. Yeah, you know what? It's double.

I've thought about this. I'm a ruminator. I've thought about this a lot. And I've thought, you know, what if I was a pharmaceutical salesperson? And I made a lot of money traveling. So it was actually really contributing to the family income. And also it was true that I had to be gone a lot, but it had nothing to do with creative work

and didn't seem, quote, fun or interesting what I was doing. Would it have still been a sore spot? The answer is yes, it still would have been a sore spot. I don't think it would have been as sore of a spot. Like, I think it was sort of the perfect storm. And yet I'll never know because it only happened the way that it happened. And part of what I'm really committed to is not projecting into other people. So I can only speak for myself and say, well, this is what happened and this is my experience. But I don't know what could have happened differently or what was going on inside everybody else's thinking at that time. And I think that's a beautiful thing for the pod squad to hear because people are always asking me, how do you write about other people? Like, how do you write about people you love? And that, with that consciousness is how you do it, which is that you, like, for example, you say, every time good news would come about my writing, I would sense him cringe or I would sense him wince inwardly.

What you don't say is he winced inwardly. You don't. don't take on a subjective voice on behalf of him. You are saying what you sensed because that sensing could be real. We all know it could be projected. You are very careful. I respect it so much from you. But that's how you do it. You take your side of the street. You tell it as truthfully as possible and you do it in a way that makes it clear that you don't really know what the other person was experiencing. But you do know what you were and you get to tell your story. You do. You do. You get to tell your story. And as long as you're not sort of ventriloquizing right through other people, I think that's, that for me was one of the big, the big boundaries. I can only talk,

talk for myself. I can only explain how things felt for me. That doesn't mean it's the objective truth. It just means that was my experience. And I mean, I say on the first page, this isn't a tell because tell-alls don't exist. Like, it's not that this isn't a tell-all because those exist and this isn't one. It's that even a book that is marketed as a tell-all is by nature not that because we only have access to our own stuff. We can't ever give. It's not like, you know, a cubist painting where you're going to see the face from four different angles at one time. We can only ever show our own perspective and what we've seen. And so while there are objective facts, there aren't really objective truths. No. P.S. It's tricky. I mean, forget it if you think

you can do that with other people. I can't even do it myself. Maggie, I wrote an entire book about love and sex and figured out a year later I was queer. We can't even really tell true stories It's about ourselves. We can only tell like, this is what I can see right now. And then it shifts. And you're like, oh my God, wait, I can see more from the, it's like I can put on this perspective and tell you the story. But I could put on another one and tell you a whole other story. 100%. Someone asked me the other day, do you think this book would be different if you had waited five or 10 or 20 years to write the book? I'm like, of course it'd be different. Of course it would be different. And the fact of memoir is, and what you just said illustrates this perfectly, the book ends. And the life doesn't. If we're lucky, right? So what lives between two covers is a time capsule of your consciousness, your thinking, your cognition, your ability to sort of process and metabolize that experience at the time. And then you send it to your editor. And three weeks later, you could have some middle of the night sit, bolt upright in bed revelation about something or while you're washing your hair if you're like me, the shower.

Amen to the shower. It's where I do all my best thinking. It's too bad. We're not doing this. Just like with frosted, everything blurred out in the shower would be such an intimate It's a portal. It's a portal. But it's also, Maggie, just the only place where no one's yelling at us. It's the only place where we don't have earphones in or children are asking for like, oh, please. No, that is not true. That is not true. Are you kidding me with this? I have kids coming in with math homework while I'm in the shower. Can you look at this long division? I'm like, no, I don't understand it when I'm dry.

Correct. No, I don't want to look at the long division in the shower. I'll be out in a moment. So good. No, you're right. It's a complete time capsule. It's, and that's okay. It is. The gift is that we get to keep living and processing and expressing. And if we feel differently later, we can write that too. That's right. We're not done. Because I think when people hear life goes on after the book stops, what they think is, so more stuff happens to you. And that is correct. But it doesn't just mean that. Life goes on doesn't just mean more stuff happens. It means life goes on, more stuff happens, so you understand the past differently. Yes. You keep understanding your past differently, the more life goes on. Thank God you wrote this book now, and I hope you write it again in 10 years. But like, we need people to do it close to the truth because we don't want 10-year perspective

all the time. Because a lot of people are going through it right now. So we want to see ourselves in the nowness, the freshness. of what just happened. We don't always want 10-year wisdom perspective. Yeah, I think Kate Bowler said to me, it's the messy middle. And I said it 100% is the messy middle. And I understand this because it's comforting. I think we have a kind of preoccupation with before and after, which I actually am really interested in because I often prefer the before picture. Like, whether it's a kitchen or a hairstyle, I'm often like, which one's the improvement?

Or why did you spend all that money to do that? But I think we like stories where first this happened and then, you know, Q metaphor of chrysalis and butterfly emerging. And then I figured this out and I was completely transformed and I was a new, better person and it was all worth it. And we can kind of wipe our hands of it and move on. And I think that's not necessarily accurate, would be the very euphemistic way I would say that, you know. Most of us live in the messy middle for a really long time.

And if there is transformation, it might not be one giant one. It might be lots of little incremental changes that you kind of feel yourself recalibrating in your life and noticing things differently and making connections. between things. And for me, writing a memoir was so deeply contextualizing. Because as someone who writes essays and poems, everything's a one-off. Like, oh, I wrote a poem, and I'm just done with that poem. And then in three more days or in three more months, I'll write another poem. But really digging deep into a project like this and looking over years and years and also looking at the different parts of my life, the mother. parts and the partner parts and the sister and daughter and writer parts, it was almost like cartography.

I remember going to France for the first time and then coming home and being like, I was that close to Spain? Like seeing a map later and finally realizing where I'd been because I didn't really have a clear image when I was there of where I was in relation to other places. And so writing a memoir for me was like, That was like getting to lay the whole thing out and see the sort of echoes or like idea rhymes is how the poet me thinks of them between different parts of my life. And it was not an easy writing process. It was painful at times. But what a gift to get to really contextualize some parts of your life. It's a new year. And instead of trying to do. reinvent myself, I've been asking a simpler question. What would actually support me right now? And honestly, a big part of that answer is my home. I want my space to feel calmer, more functional, and a little more like a place that can reflect my goals and energy for this year, which is why I've

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if this is what it takes just to talk to someone, no wonder people give up. So when I found Alma, it felt like someone finally turned the lights on. Alma, ALMA, is this beautifully simple way to find licensed in-network therapists without all the runaround. You can browse without even making an account and you can filter for what actually matters. The therapist's approach, background, specialty, lived experience, whatever helps you feel understood. Nearly everyone who

finds a therapist through Alma, 97% say they felt genuinely seen and heard. Better with people, better with Alma. Visit hello alma.com. slash we can to schedule a free consultation today. That's hello-a-l-m-a.com slash W-E-C-A-N. I think I've been contextualizing, but honestly, Maggie, I don't freaking know. I don't know. Because truly, like sometimes I think we are such desperate meaning makers. I remember handing Craig Love Warrior.

and him being like, what is this? What am I about to read? And I was like, so I took the shit you gave me and I spun it into gold. And that's what women are always fucking doing. It's like, here you go. We took the shit you gave us and we spun it into gold. So the question is, are we, I never know if I'm writing my life or I'm living my writing. Like, right?

And noting to take to my therapist right now. I don't know. Yeah, noting to take to my therapist who's always saying you're intellectualizing, you're intellectualizing. You need to get back into your body, which takes us right back to where we began. I write a lot in this book about the idea of material. And this, like what you just said, like the idea of turning, you know, lemons into lemonade. I love that part.

And like, oh, thank goodness. You're a writer. So these things weren't wasted on someone who wasn't going to write about them. Or thank goodness, this happened so that you could write a book about it. And at least you got a book out of it. Someone said to my friend Kelly, writing about her abusive marriage. Thank goodness you got a book out of it. It's like we are writers.

We would write about anything. If none of this had happened, I would have written another book. I don't need trauma. or grand upheaval or disappointment or disillusionment as material. Like, I can write about birds. Yes, you can. If I want to. You can write about anything.

It's so interesting. It's like, did it mean all that? Did it mean all that? I'm so desperate. And it's real and true. It's a real need for redemption, need for meaning. But that's why I haven't written since Untamed because of the fact that the observed thing changes the thing. Like, do you know what I'm trying to say?

I know completely. My daughter just said to me the other day, when someone watches you do something, it changes what you're doing because you know you're being watched. Okay, so your daughter said it. That's what I meant. She's 14. We totally know. Like, yes, if you're being watched, you behave differently. If you are crafting something for an audience, you're doing. You're doing. doing it differently. I agree with you. Like it makes me nervous and I don't ever want to be feeling like I'm being performative or trying to put a positive spin on something that's just hard. Like it's okay for it to be hard. Yeah. It's okay for it to be ambiguous. It's okay not to necessarily be the sort of hero or heroine of every encounter or every narrative. It's okay even to

not be the good guy every time. I love that idea. The idea of putting away the need to be the good guy. If you still believe you have to be the good guy, you can't write. No, you can't. It's so obvious. You can't. And honestly, a big part of sort of like being out with lanterns looking for myself is really rethinking what it means to be good. Oh my God, Maggie, me too. You know, like what does it mean to be good. Women are so self-sacrificing. So you're feeling guilty about having a life outside of your kids, which your male spouse does not feel guilty having a life outside of the children, because it's not a cultural expectation that the bulk of their identity would be pulled from mothering. And so, yeah, oh my gosh, I've been thinking so much about this. And the idea of like

phrases that are so, I mean, the whole thing is so gendered. It troubles me deeply. But the idea of like getting too big for your britches, which I realize is a very Midwestern turn of phrase. I can't help it. But just this idea of having to keep yourself small, less anyone think that you're trying to get too much out of life, which is no man has ever been. too big for his britches. No. It's so amazing. You talk about just folding yourself up smaller and smaller.

And this is in reference to your marriage where there were ego things and you were trying to not, I don't know, de-masculate, I guess, but the folding yourself up, and I think you said you folded yourself up so small that you could fit yourself under your tongue and then you tried to bite your, I mean, just the staying small of all of it so as not to disturb anyone else's ego. Yeah, you don't want to take up too much space. You don't want to upset people or make them feel bad or come across as demanding or as self-important. I mean, all of these things, a lot of it is like I'm a, I'm a Midwestern mom at my core. And so I'm supposed to be what?

Like, what is the story? I'm supposed to be accommodating, self-sacrificing, available. I'm not supposed to want too much. I'm definitely not supposed to be too demanding. I'm not supposed to be angry. I'm not allowed to be sad. I need to be grateful. You need to be a ghost.

And I need to be a ghost. The good thing is so fascinating. Abby and I are talking about this, stop because that's another thing that I'm always trying to figure, am I a good person? And I'm making all my decisions based on this idea of a good person. What would a good person do? What does that mean? Is there any such thing? And is anyone good and bad? I think not. And aren't we just like a big bunch of wants? I think we are a big bunch of ones. Are we just a big bunch of like parts of ourselves? The parts conversation helps me understand myself. There's a part of me that wants this. There's a part of me that

wants this, as opposed to there's one single self that is good or bad. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think there's a lot more nuance that we are not opening ourselves up to. Like, it's not bad to want more in some aspects of your life. It's also not bad if you're satisfied with your life the way it is. And I think writing about this stuff has been challenging and talking about it has been more challenging. You're right. Because I just, I heard someone yesterday say something like, she just doesn't seem angry enough. And I've never heard that one. That's what I haven't gotten. Yeah. And I thought, I can't win. Honestly, I can't win. Because if I were as angry as that person wanted me to be, I'd be way too angry for someone else. Yes. And that person,

who wants me to sort of seek peace and acceptance and forgiveness and, you know, sort of equilibrium would be completely turned off by just like self-righteous fury. So I don't even know what the measuring stick is for goodness because it's not the same for everyone, according to whom. Yeah. I think one of the reasons I'm so grateful for your work is that there is a shaming of women writers, artists, all women, that when we dare to tell any truth of our lives, it is shamed back to us in terms of, why are you airing your dirty laundry? You mentioned that in your book, and I have heard that 49 million times. And my male counterparts who talk about their lives, talk about their families, they never, ever, ever hear it. But there is a strategic shaming of women who dare to tell the

truth about their lives by saying you're bad in a million different ways. You're bad for telling the truth. And they'll call you bad mom. Why would you say these things about your family? Your kids will one day read it, whatever. But it's what keeps us alone and lonely because we don't read our lives. And anything that true that happens to us is considered shameful and dirty. And so I'm so grateful that you are in such a beautiful way telling the truth because just have you gotten that yet? You know, I haven't, although I'm sure I will. So we'll see. Well, is there anything more dangerous than a woman who will just tell it like it is?

I don't know. I mean, I think that's a threatening thing. I asked myself the question over and over again in multiple contexts. who does silence serve? Who benefits for me keeping my mouth shut about this? This could be something personal, it could be something political, it could be anything. Who does silence serve? The answer to that question almost always encourages me to run my mouth or pick up my pen

because it's not me. And honestly, it's not my children. My children are watching what I do, and I'm modeling for them living a whole life with integrity and doing it with care. So who does it serve? Who benefits from women being quiet? And the kids thing is so, it's like the only people who talk about the truth done with grace and grit and respect hurting kids don't know shit about kids. because family secrets are cyanide. Truth might be a little punch.

It might be a little bit painful at first, but it is freeing. The secrets are the cyanide. Every child therapist knows that. That is what the underground things that are never said. It is not the messy truth that is said that hurts them in the long run. Oh, 100%. I think secrets are so toxic. I think age appropriate in time, real, gentle, honest conversations.

Like, honesty is care. I think it's caring for ourselves. I think it's caring for the people in our lives. Kids are pretty intuitive. They don't actually appreciate being gaslit. That's right. So we'll see. I'll touch base with you and let you know how.

how that shapes up. It's funny. I think in part, I wrote some of those questions into the structure of the book as a form of like, I'm going to go ahead and just head you off at the pass. I loved it. Because I know people are going to ask, what about your kids? I know people are going to ask, why air your dirty laundry, or was it always like this or why this or why that. So let's just avoid having those conversations. Because it's just, in the book now. I can just say read page 72 if someone asks. Please do, because they will. They will still ask. Yeah, they probably will. You're right. You did say, when you were talking about the dirty

laundry question, you did say, as only a poet could, who says it's dirty anyway? It's just lived in. And I think for me that gets at the core of it, which is like, I see all your shaming stuff, but what we're always only talking about is life. I can promise my

children one thing, which is the only things that have ever happened to us are life. The only things that we have done are things that humans are capable of. Yep. There it is. One category. Right. There it is. Life.

Just life and humans is what we have experienced and what we have been the whole way through. And the beautiful thing about you knowing all of our human things is that when you get to these human things in your life, you will not feel alone and ashamed because you will know that all the life that happens to you and all the humaning you do and all the things that humans do to you are just human things and just life. There are nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to be ashamed of. Let's not compound the difficulty by being ashamed on top of everything else we're feeling. It's also just completely unnecessary. My hope for this book honestly is so small and it is just that someone,

One will read it and say, I feel seen. It's such a small thing and maybe feel slightly less squishy or shameful about giving language to something that they're needing to sort of offload and process. Well, that's done because that's happened. That's what already happened with me, Maggie. Oh, so I'm done. You're done. You can stop doing it. Have you ever hit a point at work where everything just feels heavy?

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And with a new year starting, it's the perfect moment to rethink how you want to feel. You can get matched with a coach in just a few minutes and sessions are flexible, private, and built around the reality of your life. Go to strawberry.comme slash we can do hard things and try a coaching session for 50% off. Strawberry.comme, because your career should feel good again. In this last five minutes, I want to talk to you about a thing I don't understand and I've never understood, which is forgiveness. First, I don't know what it is. I still don't believe that anyone else knows what it is because I ask everybody and they just say words, words, words, but nobody is.

Nobody is able to tell me what it is. I was so hoping you wouldn't ask me to define it. So don't ask me to define it because I can't. I won't. Yeah, I started writing this book and I write pretty early on. gone by the time I write, I get to the last page of this book, I want to have forgiven. Like, I really want to be in a place of forgiveness. That's my goal for this book. This book is not a finger pointing, angry book. It's a book about me trying to get back to wholeness and peace. That's what I want.

You can choose war or peace. I choose peace. And I'm not sure I got there. But I also realized by the time I got to the end of the book, I don't actually know that that was a reason. or necessary goal. And so I got to something that is a little texturally different from forgiveness, and it's something I call acceptance. Yeah. Which is that happened, period. Oh, thank you.

So that happened, period. Yes, humans did things. All of it was life. It happened. I learned from it. I would have learned from anything that would have happened. happened in those years. I didn't need it. Nope. I didn't need it to learn. But everything is an offering. Everything is a teacher. If you let it be, if you keep your antenna up. And so I'm not

going to pass up the opportunity to gain something from it because I think I deserve at least that. Amen. It happened. It happened. Period. Moving on. Moving along. Thank you for that. Well, and with this, I loved so much when you were talking about feeling a bit of a cringe or uncomfortable feeling with, I think it was your parents, somebody's parents were celebrating some long anniversary. My parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary next month. So it was, I think, they're 48th when I was reading the book. And there's this beautiful thing. that pods, what I want you to listen to, I think the part is called Golden and about like the loss of that long relationship and all that that stands for in our world. And that's a beautiful

accomplishment. But Maggie talks about also, she says, when my sisters turn 48, I will have had 48 years with them. When my children turn 48, I will have had 48 years of being their mother. And she goes on and talks about the other long-term relationship she has in her life. And she says that's as golden as it gets. Maggie, it's just so beautiful. Why do we only celebrate the longevity of romantic relationships when these other relationships are what have carried us? Oh, my gosh.

Honestly, the most sort of fortifying, healing relationships of my life, I realize have been both my relationship with my kids and particularly my female friends. I don't know why we aren't, like, leaning more into that. Talk about being a lifeline. I wrote something to somebody. I think I get weird after I get excited about an idea. So I wrote that my sister and I were going to be having some kind of golden anniversary coming up. I was like, I am embracing the shit out of that. And Maggie, so much of what you give us is just a whole new, fresh, deeper way of looking at our own lives. And it's glorious. Your book is glorious. I

love it and it's going to make a lot of people feel seen. And thank you for telling the truth so that we can just remember that we're humans having a life. Thank you. Love you. Love you too, Pod Squad. See you next time. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you, because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most

important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle. I came out the other side. I chased desire I made sure it's mine. I continue to believe that because I must.

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