We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 92. Chanel Miller Promises: We are Never Stuck

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

1. Thinking of depression as a way of seeing the world … through toilet paper roll binoculars.  2. Why healing might actually just be permission to go.  3. Chanel’s definition of success: refusing to succumb to perfection or exhaustion–and showing up as herself in every moment. 4. The healing moment when Chanel returned to Stanford and was held in sound–which set her free.   About Chanel:  Chanel Miller is a writer and artist who received her BA in Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her critically acclaimed memoir, KNOW MY NAME, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, as well as a best book of 2019 in Time, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and People, among others. She is a 2019 Time Next 100 honoree and a 2016 Glamour Woman of the Year honoree under her pseudonym, “Emily Doe.” IG: chanel_miller

Can Do Hard. Hello everybody. Okay, everybody. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I already said that. I already said that. Okay. So sometimes, well, we always say we're excited about episodes and we always are. Yes. We love doing this. We love our jobs. But the person we're interviewing today, when we started this pad, which feels like about six years ago, I had a top five people list of like, please just these five people. And this person is my top five persons. Yes. People. And I'll just tell you, her name is Chanel Miller. Okay. And so I met Chanel how I meet people, which is through their books. Like, I don't actually meet people in real life. I prefer books because you can meet people without people. You can close them and put them away, come back to them when you're ready for more

peopling. So I met Chanel when I read her book, know my name, okay. And I read the book, which is about Chanel's assault at Stanford University. I read that book because I wanted to be a witness to that story. And I got about two chapters in. And I remember, I think it was probably Liz Gilbert, because that's who I always call with book situations. But I just remember calling and being like, holy shit. Like, I thought I was reading this book to witness a story. And what happened was that I was introduced to one of the great thinkers of our time. Her writing, her artistry, the way she, with such precision, analyzed and viewed the exterior world and explained it to us. And then analyzed and discussed her interior life in a way that I figured out, oh, this person's going to help us heal.

Yeah. Not from just this thing, all the things. This person is a person who has figured out how to heal herself and in doing so because she's sharing is going to help all of us. So, Chanel, I don't want you to feel any pressure. I just, you've got 47 minutes to heal us. Do you think you can do that? Yeah, it's easy, peasy lemon squeezy. Okay.

Chanel Miller is a writer and artist who received her BA in literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Know My Top Five Books of All Time, everyone who's listening to this podcast must buy and read this book. Absolutely. Was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times book review, notable book, and a National Book Critic Circle Award winner, as well as the best book of 2019 in Time, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and people among others.

She's a 2019 Time Next 100 honoree and a 2016 glamour woman of the year honoree under her pseudonym Emily Doe. Chanel, thank you for doing this. Are you kidding me? Thanks so much for having me. It's so nice to be looking at both of you. Let me tell you, when Glennon was reading your book, there aren't many times when

Glennon comes into wherever I am and is like, can I read this to you? Honey, please, can I read this passage to you? And so I downloaded it and I listened to it because I was training for a marathon then. And I feel like I have your voice in my ears, in my brain, in my heart. So thank you for doing that. You know, and also, you are a true artist. I know. And I'm so excited to talk about your art.

Because the last time we had a conversation, Chanel, we talked about writing and healing. And so I want to talk about art and healing this time around. When you were writing, know my name, your therapist told you to focus on pursuing pleasure as part of your healing. So first of all, that's awesome. I love that so much because it feels like. like we don't focus on that with healing a lot, that we keep going back, like we dig backwards towards the trauma. And we were recently doing an interview with Esther Perel where she talked about, you know, sometimes it's not returning to the trauma over and over again, but adding joy and

connectedness with others that actually heals us. So tell us about that time when you're a therapist, she asked you to start going to an art class, right? Yeah. Well, she literally suggested. I go to one of those gymnasiums full of trampoline. And I was like, oh, you really need me to, like, loosen up if you want me bouncing off the walls. So I thought maybe I'll do a dial-down version of that. And instead, I signed up for a narrative illustration class in San Francisco right by the harbor, which is basically comic making. And so after writing, I would take my little Prius.

over there at night and make comics in this class of seven people. And we would just translate what happened in our days into these daily drawings. And that's when I started noticing things that were happening in my present life outside of the story that I was telling at my desk. And that's what taught me to pay attention to the fact that life was still moving forward. And, One of the comics I made, you know, we were fostering senior dogs at the time. And since we were in San Francisco, we lived on a really slanted hill. And a lot of our senior dogs couldn't control their bladders. And so every night they would pee on one side of the house and I'd wake up and it had trickled under the table legs, like through our router under the couch.

And every morning, like before writing, I'd have to move. all the furniture, clean the floors. But then I would do that first. Then I'd sit down to write. And then I'd go and I'd get lost in my court world and dark world. And then I'd go to this comic book class and sit down and be like, what comes to mind first? What comes to mind is that my dog peed all over my floor this morning. And that cannot be lost. And I'd spend the evening, you know, coloring the pee in with highlighter. And that, that's me putting myself back. inside my day, right? And now that little urine, that trickle of urine, bringing that to the front of my mind is what's going to keep me moving. And that's, it doesn't seem like it's pleasure.

That seems like a nuisance, right? But that's the stuff that's grounding me while I'm getting, you know, swept away in these really big themes, like sexual violence. It's like, no, bring it back. To yourself. So that's what you're saying. It's like all these things were happening. You were stuck up because what you were spending your day was writing, know my name, which was about trauma. So going to that art class, was that your way of insisting that you were still there? Insisting that I'm still there and that things are changing.

Because when you're in your past, you feel like you are stuck. And you have to look at the small changes. And even like it's helpful to go on a walk. If you walk the same loop of your neighborhood every day, I would challenge you to look for the certain factors that are different each time you walk. You have to know that life is in motion and that it's impossible to get stuck even if you feel that you are. Wow. It's impossible to get stuck even if you.

you feel that you are. And so that art does for you that. It convinces you that change is still happening, right? The world is still spinning. What else does it do for you? Well, yeah, so art is what forces me to pay attention, right, to these smaller changes. Art also helps me because when I create these creatures or people, I create really whimsical, odd, landscapes and beings. And I think about how if I am to put my pencil down and mute myself and not do anything at all, if I am to give up on myself, I would also be giving up on all of them. And I will never do that to them. I will always ensure that they have a place to play and that they're let out, that they're not cooped up inside of me eternally.

And so protecting them, the things that I make is non-negotiable. And that helps me respect myself and my work. Wow. Oh, my gosh. Like, to have an interior world, I mean, I think, like, the beautiful metaphor here is, like, all of us have an interior world. Some of us don't know how to draw. Some of us don't know how to even create beings or this whimsical world you talk of. But we do have an internalized space that if we don't get out of ourselves, then we are only actually living in our past.

Like we are not able to create a day or create something that could save us or heal us. Like that is so fucking amazing. What do you feel like your art does for other people? because it's just so interesting. It feels to me like you're the kind of artist who would create no matter what, even if no one else saw it. Right? Thank you. That feels very clear to me.

And you also say that there's this byproduct of your art, of all art, which is that art is what creates empathy. That I think you said art requires imagination and imagination is the key ingredient to empathy. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, I'll say this. When I wrote my victim impact statement that I read in court, it was meant to be for about 30 people in a tiny courtroom in Palo Alto. That's it. And then when it was released, it went out,

and millions of people picked it up and changed the course of my life. And after that, I realized for a long time I'd asked myself, doesn't matter what I say or what I make or what I do. And after the statement went out, I learned I had to put that question, doesn't matter to rest. Because the answer is always yes. And it's yes to a degree that is so much bigger

than I'm capable of comprehending. And still today, I don't think we will ever, ever fully realize what we mean to other people. And so we're not allowed to knock ourselves fully or declare our significance or insignificance because all the time, like, I still get in my head, but then I'll be walking through a parking lot

and target this happened to me. And a woman will come up to me and say that she's proud of me or that I changed her trajectory. Like, I just learned that it's what we do in the way we move people is not for us to define or fully know. But that it's just like vast and incredible. All I can trust is continuing to make this work and put it out there

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talk about. Do you feel that the world has seen who you are in the way that you want them to, or do you still feel too tied to what happened to you instead of who you are? I think, yeah, with identity, you think it's going to be a bad thing that you're tied to. And I realized over time, there were so many good qualities that I'd built inside the realm of the assault that I was proud to be tied to. And so I wanted to say, that's me. And I felt so proud that I had finally come to a place in my life where it wasn't like, please, nobody find out that my name belongs in that news article. It's like, no, that's me. I did that. And I'm still here. And And I feel so honored that I've been able to claim that identity.

But yes, I do still struggle with fully flushing myself out. I was going to ask you all because I'm like on the cusp of 30. And I know that's so like heck a youthful. But I am still so nervous. I don't know why. I think my 20s were so fragmented. I was forced to grow at a really exponential rate. Like, everything felt so raw.

And then when you're 30, it seems like you just have to make even bigger decisions than you did before that have even longer term implications. So I'm wondering where you all were at at 29, like what ideas you had about your life, what you got wrong, misconceptions. because I, thus far, I've pretty much had been figuring it out right now. I'm like on this thing. I really don't know. I kind of came here to ask you. That's so funny. For me, I think that the beginning of a new decade always forces us to kind of analyze

and evaluate how the previous decade went and also like, oh shit, I've got a whole another decade ahead of me, hopefully. Yeah. And so it's daunting to go from one to the next. I can tell you that I was doing kind of abnormal things at 29 going into my 30s. She was like winning gold medals. Playing soccer. Yeah.

But also what people saw on the outside was not what I was going through on the inside because I think that I had this notion that I was supposed to have it more figured out than I did. I was pretending to have it more figured out than I did. And that caused a lot of suffering inside. And so I was drinking way too much. I developed alcoholism, probably had it through my whole life, if I were to be truly honest. And so I didn't know anything. I thought I was building this life. I thought that I was doing it correct. And then when I hit 35, I surrendered and got sober and realized, actually, I don't know shit. And we still don't. Yeah. So I have these days last week, Thursday was my best day because my Thursday was think about Chanel Day. Wow.

So I, because this is such an exciting different thing for me, like interviewing people. And I find it such a ridiculous honor. And so I just get sometimes when I'm really, really just excited or honored about someone coming, I just have a full day where I'm like, just think about this person, you know, read them, think about it. I went for a walk on my beach here. I went for a Chanel thinking walk. Okay. Literally. And here's what happened during my little walk.

Okay. There was this little girl and she was digging into the sand. And I got a little close so I could see. And she wrote, Melody is here. Okay. Melody is here. I think she meant Melody was here. Yeah.

But it was so beautiful. Melody. And I thought, oh, there's this little girl. And she is, she needs to see herself. Like she needs to, I was here. Like, melody is here, right? And that reminded me so much of you, just like the, the inner stuff, putting it on the outside and how beautiful it is. And then a couple feet later, there was this woman and she was carrying around a plastic bag.

And I've seen her many times. And she just walks this little thing and picks up trash. So, because that reminded me of you. I stopped her. I said, what are you doing? and she said, well, this is just like my little block. I just keep my block beautiful. And it reminded me of you because, you know, you always say,

when I get overwhelmed, I just remember my little corner. What can I do to make my little corner of the world beautiful? And then, Shno, five feet later, I got stung by a fucking bee. Do you remember when I called her and was like, I was having this beautiful, like, Chanel moment. Spiritual Chanel metaphor. And then I got stung by a fucking bee.

And I couldn't, I was limping. I was so dramatic. And that's all I can tell you, Chanel, about life. Is like, say I am here in one way or another, like, reveal yourself. Clean up your little block. And no, you're always going to get stung by a fucking bee anyway. That's so funny. What you said was kind of really interesting to me that the melody wrote,

Melody is here. And oftentimes we are so focused, especially as we get older, to have some sort of legacy. And so when we get older, we write or we think Abby was here. And the idea of having a child's mind of. about our lives is I think so important that we are here now in this moment. So Abby is here. Chanel is here. Glennon is here.

I think that that is here now. How are you that little girl now? How are you each day saying Chanel is here? Okay. Well, I wish I had a beach, but I don't. Manhattan. That's something that I'm still figuring out. And okay, well, here is a loaded word because I take pride in being here in any way.

Like even showing up to court, one of the best things I did for myself was lower my standard of success to presence. Like presence was success. And it didn't matter what it looked like. It didn't matter if I flubbed up my words, which I did a million times. What mattered is that when each time I was summoned, I drove to the courtroom, I had a semi-wrinkled sweater on, and I would go in and speak the truest thing I knew. And I kept doing that. And I did it imperfectly, but I never went away. And I realized so much of what court was, it wasn't even about getting it right.

It was so much more about endurance. And I realized that so many of the oppressive forces in the world are just waiting for us to give up. And if I just keep showing up, even when I have a horse voice, like, I'm still always going to be here. And you can't make me feel shame in any form that I appear. So that should be pretty intimidating. Because I just feel deeply comfortable with myself in all the hears that I am. I will always just keep showing up as I am. As I figure it out, like I said, I'm 29.

I have no flipping idea what the next decade holds. I feel like I just figured out the last one, kind of. But that's all right. And I think it's cool that now I have this time stamp. In 10 years, I can listen to this and think like, wow, I didn't know so much. Yeah. Wow. I mean, just as long as there's no supposed to, I think the supposed to's of the decades are what screw us.

Right? You're like, oh, I'm in my 30s. Here's what's supposed to happen in my 30s. I think when we make decisions from supposed to, that's when we get all screwed up because we force it, you know? Yes. So when you talk about heerness being enough, presence being enough, it makes me think of your mural. So to those of you who are new to Chanel, Chanel had one of her art pieces, which correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's a 75-foot mural titled I was, I am, I will be. in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco where Chanel's mother used to take her when she was little.

And I love it so much because it's such a beautiful description or illustration of the healing process. And I love so much how you talk about the healing process as something that is just absolutely cyclical and always happening. Can you tell us about those three characters and kind of take us through them so people listening can get the gist of, what you were trying to teach us with that. Yeah. So there's a few characters. There's I was, I am, I will be. And the character begins reclined with these tears coming out and slowly sits centered

and then kneels and gets up and walks away. That's what the gallery looks like. And the characters are very simple. And I want to tell you that when I was asked, to fill this wall. I went off and did really intricate drawings to fill the wall because I thought this is my one and only chance to show you that I'm an artist, right? Flesh out my identity.

And so I did like elaborate plants and people and character design and they said, well, look, it's a really big wall. it's covered in glass so you can see it from the street. So it needs to be really simple, like a billboard. And they showed me an example where this artist had done like one stroke of black with like three letters. I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot. It's so I don't have that yet. It's too simple to just say, yeah, this is what I did and I'm an artist.

Like I felt like I needed to show you, like look at all this. things I can do, look at my skill set. And so I want you to know that just to strip away all of those elements, to get to the very simple piece that is up now took so much work in confidence and trust that this will not be my only time to exhibit my art, right? So that's a part of the piece too, is that the simplicity of that bold black line, the fact that it's only two colors, means that Chanel also trust that in the future she will make more work. Wow. It makes sense.

It makes sense. It's the plight of all women everywhere. Right? It's like, I got to give you everything I've got to make sure I can stay here. Yeah. But what a beautiful lesson to say, no, I have more to give. And I have to trust in that future self to be able to give more. more when it's asked of me.

It'll be there. Yeah. It'll be there. And in doing that, it's such an interesting thing because it was up for the whole pandemic. So everyone walking by got to see the process of healing of we are now on the ground. We are sitting in the present. We will be standing up again. And it was probably the simplicity that healed so many people of it.

Right. So it's like there's a form of art that's like, look at it. me look what I can do and then there's this other form of art that is truly service because you know this idea we say that writers say make simple things seem complicated but like really good writers make complicated things really simple which is that piece is so beautiful and by the way like Chanel is also that as a writer yeah the best writer in the world you can do all these different mediums of art just is mind blowing in fact we we were reading all the things about you.

And can you tell us about the time in college you have friends, your literature friends, and you would do metaphor battles? Oh, so good. It's like eight mile, but like make it nerdy. Yeah. So we would be walking to and from class and we would have these metaphor battles. So I would like point to a street lamp. And my friend would be like, oh, glowing pineapple or like moon holding its breath, like sucking it in so it's an oval.

Or, you know, it's like I love doing that because it kept your mind super elastic. And it was so fun. I mean, even writing the book, feelings, awful feelings aren't fun to have, but they are fun to figure out how to describe. because then it goes from something that's just festering in you to an actual challenge. You're like, ooh, can I put this into, I have 26 letters, can I rearrange them in a way that's going to replicate this feeling in somebody else? Like, that's so cool. It is so cool. You're able to harness that and do that.

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What are some feelings you're having lately that you're trying to figure out how to describe? Like, what is it like to be you? Typical day. What are you feeling? these days? Well, I will say, there's been a lot of anti-Asian violence, and that's been really with me. And I've been thinking about how growing up I was, I was only given like a sliver of visibility in terms of Asian representation. And then all of a sudden, you have all this visibility. You can see, I see, oh, that looks like my grandpa on the news. That looks. like my mom, but it's a visibility paired with violence. And I'm trying to understand what it does to me to not have been given images in the media about my family or me and then suddenly be

inundated with them, but they're paired with violence. It's something that I don't know or understand yet. And I've been called on many times throughout the last two years to name this feeling. and to speak to what's happening. But I can also sense that it's still cooking in me. Like, I swear, I have a little dinger. It goes, and it'll tell me when it's like, okay, I'm ready to take this out of the oven and, like, share it with people. But until then, I just know that it's important to stick with this feeling.

I will figure it out. But I'm not going to figure it out on a news timeline. I'm going to figure it out on my timeline. And then I'll write about it. that's been something I've been thinking about. Wow. You said that in the courtroom, you felt underestimated as a Chinese woman, that the world thought you'd be easier to dismiss, that you wouldn't cause an uproar.

But then you said this, which, it's because of my mom that I'm not afraid to fight. She grew up under a communist regime and fought for her right to speak freely and came here because she wanted to do that. If she can fight forces much greater than her, I can fight for me. myself in this stale little courtroom. So talk to us because I hear what you're saying that you're not cooked about the effect of now seeing representation having it be, I can't wait until you figure that out. So yes. But can you talk to us about the harm of this model minority myth and how it has such an effect on Asian Americans? I'm having this discussion with my son, who's Japanese. he, I raised him with no context.

It's shocking to me. And so I sent him out. I just had this conversation similar to this with Ocean Vuong, who I know that you love. But he's just starting to talk to me about this part of his life that I didn't help him with. So talk to us a little bit about what it's like to be under us. estimated as a Chinese woman and what all of that means. Yeah, I think same with my mom.

Like English is her second language. So I've seen people who don't take her seriously or they're more quick to dismiss her because her language isn't just so neatly presented. And that always bothered me because I'm so aware of her. complexity and humor and depth and aware of what they're not seeing. My mom is so incredible. And she would come to these meetings with me with my attorney. And a lot would go over her head. Like, I'd be the one taking notes, but my mom knows, like, this part of your hand is a pressure point to alleviate headaches. Like, she knows that. So while I'm taking in this information,

she's pinching this part of me. She's regulating my body, right? She's the one who is keeping me fed. If I'm studying transcripts in my room, she leaves a bowl of steaming noodles outside. I would like open my door, bring the noodles inside, like steam my face, and then be looking at my transcripts on the floor.

But her ways of nurturing were so incredible during that time. I feel like when they saw my side of the courtroom, They didn't see people who were ready to, like, explode on the scene or people who were equipped with the language to observe and unpack everything that was happening. It just reminded me, like, they have no idea, but I do. And that's why, like, as an artist, it's my job to keep telling these stories about me, about my mom, about what it means to move through the world as Asian women. And yeah, my mom's incredible.

Even, like, she one time texting me and said, do you have ski goggles I can borrow? I said, yeah, like, where are you going? Like, are you going to snow? Like, what is this? And she was like, I'm going to Burning Man. No. I was like, oh. No way.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And she went to Burning Man. And then she said, now I'm looking for my wedding dress. I was like, why didn't need your wedding dress? She's like, oh, I'm going to marry the desert.

I was like, okay. She's like the, you, like, I can't even, that's what I'm saying is like she's so, well, full of surprises. And so are all of us. Like, we just possess so much curiosity that, again, it's something I'm still learning to articulate. All I know is that there's so much there that was never seen. And that it's my job moving forward to make it known and seen. So, Shana, we talk a lot about mental health on this pod for many different reasons, mostly because it's a huge journey in my life. And one of my favorite million things that you've said is you describe, I think,

the fluctuations between depression and what normalcy, whatever that is, as running with slugs or horses. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. First of I love that. Chanel decides if she's having a depressed time. She's just running with slugs. And if she's not, she's just running with horses. Now, consider the impact of this. It's not Chanel's problem. She's either got a slug or a horse that day. All right. She's going to do the best she can with the animal she's been given. Talk to us. Does depression still affect you? What does it look like in your life? This is something I'm sorry to tell you that didn't magically go away in my 30s. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Yeah, something I like that my dad said is that when you're depressed, your vision narrows. And that to me was a very clean way of looking at it. And then I thought of another thing, which is like, oh, my vision narrows. So it's like looking through a little toilet paper tube like this.

And suddenly, instead of seeing the whole scope of your life and your future and your past, you have this very narrow vision and you can only see just a little bit. And your focus is just in one spot. And so now when I'm depressed, I think my vision has narrowed. I can only see outside of a little toilet paper tube. And when I'm in this state, I'm not. allowed to make any big decisions, and I'm not allowed to draw any grand conclusions about who I am or who I'm going to be. And those are just my rules for when I'm in this state. But I also like it

because if you think of the toilet paper tube, I think of it, maybe you can put a little shoe lace through it and hang it around your neck, like binoculars. And then you know that depression is not just a state, but it's just a different way of seeing. And I know it's always going to be on my neck. I know at times it's the only way I'm going to be able to see things. Other times it's just going to be dangling and it's fine. But I prefer seeing it as this is an altered way of seeing versus just like a state that I'm stuck in indefinitely. I feel that. Do you see there's benefits of the time where, because a narrowed vision can be negative and that you can't see the periphery and maybe we shouldn't make decisions because we're not taking the whole scope in, literally. But is there a superpower in the narrowed

vision time? Yeah, because that's all the information. It's not for nothing, right? It's not just random punishment. There's signals telling you something is wrong. I think the best thing we can is equip ourselves to investigate it and not abandon it or just wait for it to be over. Yeah. Because there's so much there. And it makes a lot of sense. Like, of course, it's almost like more surprising when people aren't depressed at this point. Yeah, I find them insensitive.

Glenn and says, I just think that people aren't paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. If I weren't depressed, I wouldn't go around talking about it. What do you want for your 30s, Chanel? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, so yeah, there's the pressure to produce offspring.

And the way writers pump out books, it's like book, book, book, book, book. Oh, my goodness. Before I make a decision, I try to identify the origin feeling of what's pushing that decision. and if it's finicky panic, then I have to wait. So I'm in a state of finicky panic, and I need to wait for more grounded times to make these big decisions. But I don't know. I'm still like so fresh to myself, truly.

We'll see. Fresh to myself. I love that. We should strive for that. That's good. I'm wanting to feel fresh to myself. I mean, you've become such a model of healing, whether you like it or not. Sorry. Yeah.

What do you think is helpful for healing? Healing is just constant. Every day, sometimes every hour I feel like I go through all of the I was, I am, I will be. Yeah. What do you think is most helpful for you and for people when they're trying to get off the floor to the present or to hope for the future? What helps you? I think curiosity because right now, yeah, I've done so much healing, but I still struggle a lot with vigilance and feeling like bad things can happen all the time and trying to prevent those things. But I wonder all the time about who I would be if I didn't have to be so vigilant all the time. And I really want to meet that person.

And I really want her to be able to succeed. Because right now I feel like my creative brain gets really shrunken because I spend so much time thinking about how to keep myself safe. And I want to know just who I'd be when I don't have to think about safety all the time. Like that person could do so many things, you know. So that curiosity of meeting her, really knowing her, keeps me going. And then I also think, yeah, I still have a really hard time with all this stuff. And it's almost like the more I've learned, the more difficult it is to be optimistic, truly. But, you know, recently last fall, all the freshmen at Sanford were required to read my book.

And I was really nervous to go back, just like we talked about. about going back is really scary. I'm scared of the people I've been. I'm scared to be in those states again and to be hurting that badly or to be that full of self-loathing. And I worried that when I went back to Stanford, that old self is waiting for me and she's just going to slip in and repossess this vehicle. And I won't have any control. And I wouldn't be able to go on stage and present as this, like, confident person I am now. So I was scared to go back. So I thought, I'm just going to go do it quickly, rip off the band-aid, and the event will be over, and I'll go back to my hotel room and unravel if I need to. So I get myself up. I walk over to the campus, and there's a few other panelists that day.

And when they announce my name, I come out, and all the students just start class. And then they don't stop. And I was sitting on stage and all these students are just holding me in this noise. Like if there was any question whether you are welcome here, we are dissolving it for the next few minutes. And my fellow panelists eventually put down their mics and just looked at me and started clapping too. And I was just being held in this sound. It was unbelievable. And so I knew I could relax.

I knew that for the next hour I was going to be taken care of. But most importantly, it's like without a word, the students were saying, we got it. Like seven years ago, I went to that campus. My life was changed. I had no language for what was happening. I was so lost. Like, I was so hungry for help and lonely. And I was walking around with a little antenna,

trying to figure out a single person I could tell who I could trust, trying to figure out where it was safe. And now all these years later, I had the same campus. There's thousands of students who have this information foundationally. and will begin the next four years of their lives with it. And most importantly, for healing, that to me is the permission. Like, you can go now. And I think that's also really what I needed to hear.

It's like you don't have to take care of all of us. You don't have to fix everything. Like, we got it. You can go now. Be who. You know, you're meant to be. And that for my healing was really important was not just returning to that place, but finally being released from it and being given the permission that it's okay to redirect my focus now. Oh, my God.

How beautiful. You had me in tears. And just the fact that you have the humility and the honesty to be like, I'm going back to this place. I have no idea how I'm going to be received. Yeah. And then for the place that in maybe your mind created so much of this trauma could also be the releaser and the freeing into your future. You see this with religion a lot.

It's like wherever there's a trauma, the freedom. from it has to be a little bit in the original thing that hurt you. Yeah, in the church that hurt me. The antidote is the poison in some way. It's so interesting. So Chanel, in an earlier podcast, we did the Susan Kane, she talked to us about filling our social feeds with more art to help our mental health. Our team feels strongly that your Instagram feed is the best mental health. healing place to be because the way that you see the world, the beautiful stories you tell about, I guess what you talked about in the beginning of the pod, about what you're noticing that day just helps me notice things in my that and just the noticing is so healing.

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Ruth Ozeki, Yuen Lee, Gia Tolentino, Jenny Zhang. This is really hard because it could go on and on. on forever and ever. Give me a second. This is actually a very hard question when people ask me this. Just so you know, every time someone asks me what are my favorite books, I forget that I even know what books are. All I do is read Chanel. It's all I do. Is there anything that you can go to that you know? Maybe it's not art. Maybe it's the dogs. Like, I don't know. Is there anything that you can go to? Like, I keep a little list of my list of things, like little healing things so that I can grab them, play with your dogs for 10 minutes, go for a walk outside, get a drink of water.

Water, meditate. Like, every time I think that my entire life is horrible and that I need to, like, have a new state and a new religion and a new career, I really usually need a glass of water. When we're big thinking, usually solution to big thinking is small things. Yeah. What is your personal thing that your mom does to you to take care of you? Oh, like the version of getting the pressure on your hand. Her pressure on the inside of her hand. Yeah. How do you get that pressure release when your mom's not there to bring you noodles?

For yourself, yeah. Yeah, for real. I'm telling you, like, even just a subway ride or the park, I remind myself that my skull is basically, when you look at me in Manhattan, my school is like a tiny, tiny acorn. And it's full of these swirling thoughts that I think are so big and devastating. But it's really just a little acorn in this huge landscape of ginormous silver buildings. So go out into the city.

I'll notice things and also just watch other people inside their lives. Because it actually saved me when I realized that there are so many different types of lives unfolding. Even if you feel like you're on one track, it can veer often so much. different directions and what a relief that is. And so, like, even recently I saw in the swings, there's a little girl dressed as a mermaid. And her conundrum was like, she was sitting on the baby swing, and she had to fit both of her legs in her mermaid tail through one swing hole. I was like, this is her biggest problem today. And if I was in her life, like, that would be my consuming issue of the day.

You know, and so just being able to practice stepping outside yourself by seeing the other storylines people are living in the subway. I was going to do a comic about this. There's these two friends and this guy had this smiley face patch on his sweatpants. And he and his friend were just sitting eating grapes. And his friend took a grape, pressed it to the smiley face and went, hum-m-rum. And his friend could have. could like was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe and their little game became pressing a little

grape to the mouth and then the other one would just lose it like that was the whole ride you know what I'm saying and like that's my brain is in relief my brain is is inside their game the world is full of that stuff and it's free and it's happening all the time and you just got to if you are stuck in your little toilet paper roll depression, redirect that little roll to those small moments. They're not going to save you, but I swear if you string them along, you come out somewhere different. Oh my God. That's another way of saying I am here. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just getting the inside out to the world. It's getting the outside world into you. Yeah, because we don't often have it. I admit I don't have enough to keep myself afloat all the time. Like I can't conjure all.

of that. Like I need different types of visual nourishment out in the world. You know, I need to see things in motion because it is so hard to just be like, okay, I'm going to meditate this out or I'm going to do it on my own. It is so hard. I have to cling on to these little things going on outside of me. So in our last three minutes, we call this podcast, we can do hard things. What's hard for you right now. Oh, what's hard. What's not? The hard thing is going to be not thinking about everything I just said for the rest of the day. That's what's hard. And so I'm making the declaration right now that I did was best. I spoke whatever bubbled to the top. Maybe I was a little rest in some places. You know why? Because I haven't really been talking to people for two years.

So I'm letting it go. And as soon as we're done, probably going to seek a bath. Probably going to work on literature for younger people and just know that all that mattered is that I feel really great sitting across from both of you. I hope our listeners took something away. and I'll just continue showing up in my truest form sailing into my 30s. Oh, Chanel. Yes. Hell yes. Everything you just said.

Yes. Let us skip the part. How about we skip the part where we both, because Abby doesn't do this, but what if you and I skip the part where we worry about every single thing we said this time? And we just don't do it. Yeah. Oh, that was good. Guess what?

Great. First one. It would be a revolution if women stopped doing that. And then that worry keeps us from being present in the next moment. That's right. So we'll just go carry out to be present. You be present in your bathtub. Okay?

Yeah. Chanel, we will be in your corner and your fans forever and not because of the big things you do, but because of the little things you do and the way you see the world. And don't let them panic you. Don't let them rush you. You know, you know better than anybody else does on the planet, unfortunately, for you. So you just tell them when it's time for you. You don't let them tell you when it's time for them. And if and when that time comes that you create art and put it out into the world, this place will always be here for it.

That's right. Glennon and I will always be here for it. It makes me feel emotional at like what impact you have and we'll keep having. But like not in the world, like our family, every post, the putty, the gray putty, the two dogs who are. deciding on flowers and oh my god what if she chooses the blue one or the green one oh thank god she chooses red you help us see the world for as magical as it is yes so thank you for that we love you forever go take a bath for the rest of you you also take a bath pod squad okay that's a good next right thing we'll um everybody go take a bath that's right we'll see you next time on we can do hard things I give you Tishmilton and

Brandy Carlisle. I came out the other side. I chase desire I made sure I got what's mine. I continued to believe that I'm the one for me. Because I'm a... This were adventurers and heart breaks on map A final destiny Stop asking directions

To places they've never been And to be loved, we need to be known We'll find We can do a heart, a brand new star Sometimes things fall hard I continue to The Bull are free Look sometime

But I'm finally fine Because we're adventurers And heart breaks I'm at a final destiny They stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.

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