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Daring to Tell
A Vulnerability Talk with Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I feel like I'm trying to figure out me. That's why I write. The things that I am currently writing about and scared to write about have everything to do with the core of who I am. This is Daring to Tell, the podcast where most of the time, writers read their true stories of personal daring. Then, we talk about writing and life. I am your host, Michelle Radow. ♪ Nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ And nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ Nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ Except doing what makes me scared ♪ I have a few confessions for you today. I have been having a hard time figuring out what to say to you lately. First, I am feeling bad about myself for not having a new memoir to share with you. Have I been reading new memoirs? Yes, I have quite a few that I'm thinking about and working on, but nothing that has come to pass at this moment in time. And now it's August and I can hardly believe it. Everyone is on vacation, except for me. And I'm not sour about that, really, because I live in a place called Vacation Land, more about that in this episode. And also, I love my work. So I never mind not being on vacation, per se. Next, and this is less of a confession than an admission, perhaps. Last night, I had an interesting dream. I know it is ill-advised to share dreams. Most people will find it incredibly mundane or ridiculous, but I am not one of those people. I discovered a new podcast I absolutely love called This Youngian Life, and in every episode, they discuss someone's dream. So my dream, last night, I was at the airport getting ready to fly to England with someone. I'm not really sure who it was. Maybe it was my mother, I don't know. I was there a good bit early, but then I realized I didn't have my ID with me. What I did have were some Xerox copies of different documents, and I knew I had a copy of my license in there somewhere. So I was rifling through all these papers. I wasn't sure if they would accept a copy of a license in place of an actual license, and I couldn't find that copy either, even though I did know it was there. Still, I wasn't all that worried. So then I thought, I might have enough time to run home and get it. I hedged about this a few times, but eventually decided, okay, I'll go. I had to go to find the car, which turned out to be a pickup truck. It was much bigger than what I was used to driving. It was very powerful, and it was also very hard to stop. The brakes were really hard to push down, took a long time for the truck to come to a stop. Still, none of this deterred me too much, but it then also turned out to be later than I thought, and I figured there probably was not enough time to get home, find my license, get back, go through security all over again, and then I would likely miss my flight and have to take the next one. But I figured, even if I had stayed at the airport, that not having the right ID would also mean that I would have missed my flight and still had to get the next one. I will pause here to emphasize this one small point. I'd have to get the next one. This is a lovely, lovely little piece of grace as I see it. And it's my dream, so I get to call it as I see it, in a classic stress dream like this, for me, and maybe for many people, or maybe in the collective unconscious, as they talk about on this Jungian life, maybe a typical culmination is in disaster, I won't make the flight, it's all ruined, and I will add that I have had many stress dreams about airplanes and flying and all of that, because here's another confession, I hate flying. I think I get more and more phobic about it as I get older, and it's gotten to the point where I really don't want to go anywhere anymore if it means getting into one of those metal tubes that want you high, high into the air and take you far, far away from the person and the place that you love. It's just a giant collection of many of the things that scare me the most. Another confession about this will come at the end of the episode. But anyways, as I was recalling this dream, it hit me that this little slice of grace had slipped in to my consciousness. Where did this come from? This concept of, well, I'll just get the next one. I knew immediately it was from my dear friend, writing teacher, and my podcast client, Nadine Kenny Johnstone. I am so honored to produce her heart of the story podcast for her. And in doing so, I get a chance to listen to her stories first and more than once. And in her episode about summer travels, she shared a story about how she was on her way to Europe in June for a couple of different retreats, and she had missed a connection in Atlanta by five minutes. She could actually see the plane, but it had just closed its doors and pushed away from the gate. Oh my God, I could imagine the frustration in that scenario. But instead of exploding in rage at this giant obstruction to getting to this retreat, you know, week that she had been longing for, she took a different approach to dealing with it and what a difference it made. I loved that story, and that was only the beginning. What does it mean to share our vulnerabilities? It was a conversation that she and I turned out to both have been contemplating. And so today, what I have for you is that discussion that we had about what it means to be vulnerable in our writing and in our lives. So here is my very dear friend, the writer, writing teacher, retreat leader, and host of the Heart of the Story podcast, Nadine Kenny Johnstone. - No, I am so excited to have a vulnerable conversation, one that is really real. I have been craving this. And the fact that you and I have those conversations every Monday, anyway, when we have our production meetings. So I think we were both just kind of feeling like, let's do this openly for other people to hear and just see what becomes of it. - Exactly, and so I was all about it. It's like, okay, let's talk vulnerability, writing, and life, which are kind of like the bread and butter that we approach from different angles. - Yeah, I think I was thinking a lot about this because I follow so many writers, including you, on sub-stack. And my favorite writers are the ones who go there, not to the point where you feel like they're dishing out everything in real time that they haven't processed at all, and it's just a blah, not like that. But writers who are willing to go to those deep levels and say with healthy boundaries intact, what is going on in their lives. And I follow this woman named Nick Antoinette, and she does this thing called Rose Thorne Bud, where she talks about the Rose, meaning the highlight or the wind in many different areas of her life, the thorn, meaning the hard stuff, and the bud, like the growing possibility of something. And every time I listen to one of those, I just think this is what I want to be talking about with the people who matter to me. So what better person than to do it with you? - Well, with that, we first thought we would dive in with that kind of a discussion about what's just going on for us individually, both personally and professionally. - Yeah. - So, Nadine, personally, how's it going for you? - Oh my goodness. So I think the biggest thing when I think about personal is a sense of place. We have been in Florida now for two years. So we moved from Chicago to Florida in August of 2022. And there are so many highs and lows of this. And I did a lot of episodes right at the beginning when we first moved here, but I haven't given people an update about how is it going? And I know on the flip side, I'm always yearning to hear how it's been for people who relocate and move full families to a brand new place. And that's why I love getting your sub-stacks where I get to find out what's going on in Maine. - So what's been happening here? We have settled into a home that feels really good for our family. It has a yard and we finally got to move our trampoline into the yard, which is a really bonding place for G.O. And we have a little playroom on the first floor for G.O. And I can just see that he's so delighted to have space again in the previous rental home that we were in. It was much smaller. And you could tell he just felt a bit bottled up. He's a very creative dude and he needs space. And we have kids on the block whom G.O. has become really good friends with. And so I always envision this sort of childhood for him like I had where you're just riding bikes down the block and just going back and forth between friends, houses. And because of the timing of his childhood with the pandemic, that was like the case for a little bit and then pandemic hit. And then it was like such isolation. So we can see G.O. really, really flourishing. And he is entering middle school, which to me just feels bananas. He's like maybe two and a half, three inches away from being my height. I mean, I no longer stoop down to hug him. It's such an odd time, but he is delightful to hang out with. Like we have our little trio, Jamie and G.O. and I, and we have the best conversations and experiences together. And we're just kind of, I feel the shift of entering this new stage. She is not quite little boy anymore. I mean, he truly is kind of this middle school dude, but he still thinks we're cool. And I'm holding on to that perjure life. Because I know it's bleeding. So once it goes, it's like, look out, it's gonna be a while. Yes, yes. So I'm feeling the urgency of that, of trying desperately to have our together time, because more and more he's spending time with friends. But I'm also trying desperately to unclench my hands from the control of parenting and just let him have his life and be more independent, because we are in fact raising a child who will become an adult. And I'm really trying hard to remember that. And this lifestyle is very different from other places that we've lived, because we are three blocks from the ocean. And so every day I see that water and it is very, very healing. Now I will say the flip side of that. So those were all the really good things. Yeah, I was gonna say because I mean, I followed quite closely. I know that you loved Chicago, but that it was a tough place for you. And you had a rocky journey getting to where you are now. And so, yeah, being able to be a few blocks from the beach, being able to have the warmth and the sunshine. I'm like, is it everything you dreamed, Nadine? And the other positive that I forgot to mention was that I've developed really close friendships with a group of women here. We met through an entrepreneurial women's group and we have stayed deeply in touch. And just two days ago, we met up at the beach and we had our little gathering and we have met and made friends with our neighbors. And community has been really a beautiful surprise because we came here not knowing anyone. So isn't everything I hoped it would be? Well, yes and no. The honest truth is that I loved Illinois, but the hardest part for me was winter. I definitely get seasonal depression. Winter really, really affects me. And so I was deeply hoping that the warmth and the sunshine would help. And it definitely has, I will say that, it has. Sometimes the opposite thing happens though that because there's no true winter or even a big shift of season, I miss that wintering feel of the excuse to kind of like hibernate a little bit. I feel like I'm always on energetically, which is a weird thing. But what's happened this summer, this is our first summer here because last summer we were in Wisconsin, is that because it's so damn humid here, it is like our winter in that we are inside, we can't open up the windows. I don't want to even be outside because it's like too hot for me. And I mean, it's definitely better than some other southern states and some other parts, even of Florida because we have the ocean breeze. So it's not awful, but I do feel like my blood is made of molasses when I go outside. (both laughing) Yeah, so I have been lately just like holding up and reading a ton of books. It's kind of like my winter, so yeah. - But can I ask a question though? Does this so much sun, even though it's, you know, oppressively hot? I remember being in Florida when I was like six years old, we went and visited an aunt and uncle who lived there. And I remember feeling like walking out the door was like walking into a wall of, you know, humidity. It was, I mean, and I was only six at the time, so I can imagine. But I would imagine that there's still because it's sunshine, knee outside, there's still that push to get outside and do something fun, or is it just like, doesn't even matter, like draw the shades, make it a little more like nurturing and kind of closed or something? - Yeah, I mean, you still have that pool because all around you, you see tourists heading to the beach and doing things and having fun. And it's kind of like, oh, shouldn't we? Maybe having fun too. But I've gotten to the point where I'm like, no, this is a reading season, so whatever. So it gets to the point of there's no perfect place. I love the weather here between mid-September and mid-May. It's amazing, but in July, August, no, thank you. So there's that. There's also, it's really setting in the homesickness for my family. You know, I'm really feeling the effects of the fact that I'm not a drive away from my mom and sister. And I'm trying to balance that out, especially because our original plan was to not be here in the summer and to be in the Midwest in the summertime. And Jamie had some job differences that made us need to be here this summer, but truly the goal in future summers that we're working towards is to not be here and to be in the Midwest so that I can be by them. So I'm feeling that current homesickness. And the final thing about just place is truly when you live where people vacation, it's interesting because the vacationers don't always take care of the land and the space and the places, the way that locals would. They kind of think of it as like, I'm generalizing care, but turn off the brain, let's just have fun. Who cares? And so we spend a lot of time stuck in traffic because it's very touristy right now. We spend a lot of time complaining about the trash on the beach and picking it up. We spend a lot of time driving five miles an hour because golf carts and bikes are everywhere. And so it's the kind of thing, I imagine the way that people who live on Cape Cod all year round feel after Labor Day, when the tourists leave, there is a massive celebration. - Yeah, there is. - And I understand that, Ernie, because I was once the tourist. - Right, right. - I don't love that part of it. I wish that people didn't really know about this area. And I find quite honestly the over building that's happening here and just, the infrastructure isn't made for this amount of people. And I don't like the amount of building. I feel very land conscious of just like, let's preserve the natural beauty all around because I've got huge live oaks outside my window. We have the beautiful ocean, let's preserve that. All right, so well, enough said about highs and lows. - Okay, so I have one quick follow up. Do people drive golf carts on the street? - Oh yes, yes, really. So there are certain, like the highway, you cannot, the main drag, you cannot, but the two lane roads that runs through our area, you can, they really shouldn't. They really shouldn't. I think it should be preserved for just like little neighborhood jaunts, but yeah, they can so much so that they had to make pull offs on the shoulder for the golf carts so that they can pull over every now and again and let all the traffic that has bottled up behind them go. - Right, right. - So, wow. - That's very interesting. We do not see golf carts on the road here, at least not in my travels. It's a whole different world. There are a lot of bikes, I mean, on the back roads of Maine and that, I would love to say I support the bicyclists which I do in an intellectual way, but it's stuff like it's windy, hilly roads and to pass them, you gotta go in the other lane and I don't know if there's a car coming around the corner, so that part is, I go, okay, that's great. I think that they should do that, but yeah. I'll kind of just like follow up with, you mentioned my sub-stack, which thank you. I've only just sort of begun and maybe we can mention that more, but when I, the piece that I even wrote thinking about why I wanted to start writing again on a weekly or as frequent as I can basis, has to do with the fact that I find myself saying, there's a story I keep telling over and over because it's like, why did you move to Maine? What is it about Maine? And I feel like you have had a similar experience, like here's what happened, here's why we left Chicago, here's the trip that we went on. And so I think about what are these stories that we tell over and over again and how do they develop over time and why do they mean so much to us? And it's our own constant recalibration of ourselves in a place. And summer is the time when Phil and I moved to Maine now four years ago from the day that we are recording. It's four years and two days off. So like this is the week that we moved. It was in 2020, so we were in the height of COVID and it was just insane from kind of like, how do you move mid pandemic when it was still so uncertain? I mean, it was slightly better in that it was summer, but still anyway, that's kind of not even the focus of what I have been writing and or thinking about. First of all, okay, differences between living in Boston, where I lived pretty much my own life and moving here in Boston, the city empties out in the summertime because there's so many colleges and all the students go home and I love summertime. It's my, it was, still is I think my favorite season, but I remember being like, oh, the city's empty, like there's less traffic, there's less this, that blah blah. I loved it. Well, now I'm living in a place not unlike Florida called Vacation Land, by the way, where people come up, you know, from all of New England and the whole country for summers in Maine, whether it's, you know, like a weekend or the whole summer, there's so many family camps that are in, you know, all the rural lakes and rivers and shorelines everywhere. And so that's been just a weird switch, like a weird adjustment to get used to, that summertime is the busy time. And then after Labor Day, I think it's probably not as dramatic as it is on Cape Cod, but not dissimilar. And really there's like sort of a shoulder season to between Labor Day and October, early October, it's like they're still traveling in that time. But I think that summertime I go, oh, I don't want to go to the grocery store on a weekend. What can we get? Like, I don't want to go, this is the day that is the swapovers for the whatever. - Bingo. Yeah. - So that's been different, a huge portion of what's different for me. And I don't know why this is, why this is such a focus for me, but I observe life through bugs and insects that are around me. Because that's one thing that's just, there's so much more prevalent here. And I think in the city, I could ignore them and get grumpy and be like, "Ah, this is my territory." But now I'm living in their territory. And so kicking and screaming, I have gotten more curious about them. And that has been a constant starting point for noticing something and then thinking about whatever it is. Yeah, so as I start this sub-stack that I have to thank you. Here we are in person over the computer. If it wasn't for your class and that newsletter and the ideas that we came up with through the platform building workshop that you held that was like 12 weeks, so good. I mean, I find myself constantly referring back to the things that we talked about in terms of platform building as a writer, as much as that is a very sort of distasteful phrase to think about. It's really, I reframe it constantly as, who can I connect with? It cares about, it really gives a crap about reading about bugs all the time. I mean, I am amazed that there are a handful of people at least so far that seem to be amused by that. And I realized that it became such a great discipline for me in that I would sit down every Friday morning and write out this newsletter. And I really have been missing that. And I've been missing it for a full year because I thought about doing it a year ago. And that's about the pace that I move at. I think when we work together, I'm always like winded at the pace that you work at 'cause I feel like you're constantly, you are having three balls, five balls in the air at any given time. And I'm like, let me think about that for a year and decide what's gonna happen next. So, I think that's another beautiful thing about listening to other writers, podcasters, what they talk about, how they work, what their processes are, because I learned so much from that. Not only about the other writers, about me, you know? I feel like I'm trying to figure out me. That's why I write. So through doing all these things, this has been a wonderful, wonderful gift of a process. And of what is turned into a way to make a little bit of a living, you know? I'm working on that one, and that's a slow one, and I know you are doing the same. So I don't know if any of those things in there you're more curious about or that you wanna add on to. - And you have gotten into this whole world of audio books too. So like in the last few years, you have started your own podcast, you now have podcast clients like myself. You have a regular newsletter now on Substack. You now produce audio books. You have launched, your authors have launched those audio books out into the world. They're beautiful and so like proud of it. - There's a lot. - It's amazing, like that part of it was so obvious and completely unexpected like the best. It was both at the same time. So that has been a huge, a huge thing. And likewise, you know, you have taken what was a huge career in teaching and turned it into this personally based professional endeavor. How does that feel for you? Because we met, right? I didn't even, I don't think either one of us knew when we met. We were both sort of on the brink of these turning points of personal and professional dramatic change. And you know, you're a stellar, stellar teacher coach. So when you asked me about a podcast, I was like, oh, well, yeah, I mean, you would be great at that. I mean, your podcast has really blossomed in a gorgeous, gorgeous way that I am so proud to be a witness to and part of with you on the journey. Absolutely, so. - Well, you know, I've said this before. It exists because of you. Because I can talk every week on Zoom, but I can't do any of the production work and not one episode would have been really significant weren't for you. So you know how much I appreciate you. - And yes, these last few years have been such a beautiful flourishing of everything that's important to me, teaching my own writing workshops, but then also collaborating now with other teachers. This upcoming season and beyond will have a lot of collaboration. - That's really exciting. - Yes, I love teaching. And I love teaching alongside other great teachers. I feel inspired by them. I kind of get even more jazzed up because of them and what they're teaching. So there have been a lot of really huge milestones lately leading the retreats that I lead with women writers that those are always things that I know will be lifelong memory makers. The podcast has been the most enjoyable thing for me because I get to speak with other writers and in particular writers that I deeply admire that many of them I thought I would never get the chance to speak with in my whole life. Like it just seems so pie in the sky. So to talk with them like regular human beings about human stuff and writing. I just, I get off of the calls and I'm just always beaming and walking around in this dreamy state pinching myself going, oh my gosh, I can't believe, I just talked to Maggie Smith. I just talked to Abgal Thomas. I just talked to Emily P. Freeman. That's been wonderful and even more so, the relationships that then carry on beyond the conversation because now we're bonded. So those have been just true highlights that I think when I left being a professor, I couldn't have fully grasped how wonderful that would be. - So what's the hard part about all of this? - Yeah, the hardest part is loneliness. I was used to at the university, even though I had my own office, I taught my own classes. I was very much alone for most of it, but I would speak to my colleagues all the time in between classes. The in-person nature of my teaching made me feel less lonely. I was teaching in a city, which then meant, there were just always people around and just so much chance for interaction. And on teaching at a university, I would usually teach at other organizations at night. I mean, I was doing so much in-person work, but then also talking with other teachers as well in between our classes. So I think that I have been trying to figure out a balm for the loneliness or a solution. And I am getting there, but it's not fully there. The retreats are a huge part of it because for five days at a time, I'm in person with the writers and I love that. Another thing that we've been doing is then creating these meetups like Midwest, West Coast, East Coast. So in a week, I'm gonna see my Midwest writers that are part of my writer workout community. We're gonna see each other in person. So I'm trying to make these meetups. And then the collaborative teaching with other teachers, that definitely makes me feel less alone because it's like we're both there together, even if it's not in-person teaching. But I will say, I didn't anticipate the loneliness because when I was teaching at the university, there were times when I closed my office door because I was like, I don't want another student or person entering my space. It was almost too much. Right. And now it's the opposite where I spend a lot of time in my home office, which is contemplative and focus but can be lonely. And then I would say another hard thing is that I don't love social media. I just don't, it doesn't feel natural to me. So I'm trying to find a way to really share my offerings that I care deeply about that I put my heart and soul into, my podcast, my retreats, my workshops and how to let other people know they exist without selling my soul on social media, I know. And I do think you've heard me talk about sub-stack for a while, but in the background, I've been getting more and more serious. I've been taking a course on sub-stack about to do some work with a sub-stack coach to really hone in on my ideas. So I think that the future looks like me really not being on Instagram at all or maybe just like quick podcast video posts, which is what I've been doing a lot lately. And if people want more of me personally writing pictures, images, video, like it's gonna be in a safer place which to me now feels like sub-stack. I think that's why so many writers are gravitating towards that space. - Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so many things to say about that because first of all, I wouldn't tell you funny thing. Phil showed me the other day. We've mentioned our husband's years as Jamie, mine as Phil. He showed me this thing. I'm assuming it was on Instagram. It could have been on X Twitter or whatever you want to call it. And it was like a post-it note with somebody's handwriting that was said something like, "Social media is not the answer for creatives." And I was sort of like, but there it is. I was like, "But then there aren't social media." So I was like, "Yeah, exactly." - Ironic, right? - I know, you go, "Come on." I mean, I am much less on social media than you are. And so that is one place where I think we are in some Pataco about our feelings about how to do it. I think it's really, I am super impressed that you have taken a sub-stack class because I just have so jumped in and done it messy. I don't know what I'm doing. I did enough to figure out how to get something posted to a few email addresses. So I'm kind of learning as I go. But that's kind of my way. I feel like that's how it works well for me to figure something out. Obviously if anyone's interested, please go check me out. But what else was I gonna say about social media, about the challenges? I feel like for me, it's just my baseline, which it always is, which is fear. I mean, that's why my brand is what it is. I mean, I am afraid to say pretty much anything. And I am still always afraid to say things that I think or feel. I have so many areas where I go, "Nope, nugget talking about that." And that's why I was actually very interested in having a conversation about vulnerability as, you know, difficult as that seems to put myself on the spot in that way. But it's a similar thing to like sort of doing something messy or it's more like putting my toe in the water. Like what am I willing to talk about or to write about or to say today? And in what capacity am I willing to say? So one of the questions I really wanted to ask you 'cause you face these things. You have faced them and you have been out there with a lot. Are you ever afraid to just put words on a page? Like what? And you're nodding, so. (laughs) Yes, yes, yes. What is your fear with putting things on a page? Yeah, my fears have changed over time. When I wrote my infertility memoir, I wrote it a huge chunk of it during the first year of my son's life. And for part of that year, we were living in Massachusetts and our families weren't nearby. So it didn't have their voices in my head. Just thinking about how will this affect so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. I was also writing in the era of Cheryl Straits Wild where it's like, you know, it's gonna get really truthful. And I look back to the person who I was when writing that book and I'm jealous almost at her level of willingness to be vulnerable in that book because now I feel much more afraid than I used to about certain subjects because my son is now 11. He is a middle schooler who's going to become a teenager, who's going to become an adult. And when he was four months old and I was writing my memoir, I couldn't almost even fathom that. Like I wasn't even thinking about him as an adult reading the book or a teen reading the book. And has he, does he know about your book? He must know about it. He hasn't read it. No, no. He knows about both books. He knows about this much, I'm sure, and come home to your heart. And the things and come home to your heart, I wouldn't blink about him reading at all. Of this much, I'm sure we're talking about fertility issues. We're talking about how it all affected our marriage. We're talking about like horrific health stuff. So all of that is stuff that definitely at this age, I wouldn't want him reading. You know, I'm not embarrassed or, you know, if he read it in years to come, I don't think I would feel embarrassed. Would I feel a little like, whoa, wow, he's seeing everything. Yeah, yeah, I would. But now so many of my concerns are about how what I write will impact him, how much to expose or not of stories that involve him, what he will think of me and the other characters. I write about real life characters. I'm also much more conscientious just about our world. And in cancel culture, quite honestly, I am terrified to offend anyone. And I've never, ever, ever wanted to offend anyone in writing. But I think when I was writing back in 2013, '14, '15, cancel culture wasn't what it is today. And social media and viralness wasn't what it is today. And so it just feels like a whole very exposing landscape. But what does bring me hope is the people I'm seeing on sub-stack and who are publishing books now, who are fighting against that. Like Joy Sullivan just had a great piece on sub-stack. And she made the switch to go to a pay walled sub-stack after one of her free newsletters went viral and people had many good things to say about it. And then many people also attacked her, especially men who were just having issues with some of the things that she said. And she wrote this beautiful piece in response to it about how she said, I started writing, I'm paraphrasing here, but I started writing to get away from the purity culture that I grew up in that really wrecked me. And now I have fallen into a different kind of purity culture where I cannot say anything without offending anyone. I'm afraid to, if I post about a picture and I'm in a dress suddenly and someone says, "Oh, I'd love that dress, where'd you get it from?" Now she's like, "Crap, was it ethically sourced at all?" You know, all the questions she posted a picture of her on horseback. People came after her for animal cruelty. I mean, it was to the point where like she felt, she was saying how she couldn't do anything without a negative opinion and the fact that it's just not okay. Like, yes, we have to be mindful, but we are now in the total opposite direction. So I am following those writers who are going, yes, we have to be conscientious, but we are human and we are not perfect and we need to write about real human things and then we need to hold space and respect for each other even if we differ in opinion. So that is the pep talk that is driving me to keep writing the hard things, even when I'm terrified of the ripple effect on my son and the ripple effect of reactions towards me from strangers. - Yeah, yeah, I-- - How about you? - Totally, yeah. Yes, absolutely, I'm terrified to say anything and what you're saying when you talk about cancel culture, which I totally get and I understand and it's interesting purity culture, I haven't heard that, but I can imagine what that is. What that makes me think of is something that I drill down on in considering what I say when I'm writing, which is the frequency at which we hear so many buzzwords in whatever venue, from a conversation with your friend going for a walk to things that we see on social media. And I don't go on social media that much, so I really don't immerse myself. I certainly don't immerse myself. I rarely see anything. I mean, I'll look at a few things once in a while. Anyways, it's just not a major part of my sphere of influence. I care about sharing things that are meaningful and I hope that I do do that in a respectful way. I do things to try and learn, as I said, more, learn more about myself. Have I been hurtful, clueless? - Yeah, we all have, that's the thing. We all have to-- - That scares the bitchesis out of me to talk about. But I do try and think about some of those things in a respectful way and in a way that I continually re-ask my question of myself. What is my point here? Like, what am I actually trying to say? What is this about? Because I do find I go into diversions constantly. And I go, there is a point here if I like follow the diversion through long enough of and I get lost in the following of it. But I try not to, but I think to get back to the fear and the viral and the judgments and all the craziness that is out there that can go flying around in light of people who people, I say people, writers who are trying to be vulnerable in a way that shares somehow and sort of shares connection, shares understanding, shares something greater. It's, if we can't go to some of those hard places of the ways that we ourselves have been rude or clueless or naive or hurtful, how do we get past that? And I hear my own words. I don't want to get past things. I want to integrate them. Like, this is some of the stuff that I'm thinking about is that it all comes inward at some point. So the buzzwords are one of those areas that I go, okay, if I see myself writing down a buzzword or a low-hanging fruit that's sort of like a placeholder for something that I think means something else, I try and go, what do I really mean by that? So in working through revision, that's one thing that I think about. What do you mean by buzzword, by the way? Like, like cancel culture to me I think of as a buzzword. I think of what are some other buzzwords we hear? I don't know, it's a lot of, I honestly try not to talk about the political sphere period, but I feel like the buzzwords in the political sphere are rife, like it's just nothing but talking points. And I'm not interested in people's talking points, I'm interested in what people actually have to say about something that takes time. You know, that's the other thing. Like, I was saying how slow I am, I'm a slow person. If you say something to me, I'm gonna think about it for a really long time. And then four weeks from now, I might go, oh, you know, I was thinking about that. Which makes me think about this self-exploration idea, which is something else I wanted to ask you about because you had an amazing conversation with Crystal Clark who I didn't know who she was. And, you know, sometimes when I'm listening, I go like, say, who is this person? She's a coach and a speaker. I don't know. She to me is like a wicked smart person who seems to know a lot about stuff. And was talking about these tests where she was saying about you being a strategic, whatever strategic was in that Clifton strength, something or other. And I'm so curious about so many of these tests and look up things about ourselves. And I mean, those are rife with buzzwords, like strategic means something obviously to you in that setting. But what is a strategic nadine? And what is the draw for some of these self-inquisition tests because the Enneagram is another one that I am madly in love with and has helped me out a lot. So I don't, I could talk about that. But I'm curious in the term of self-knowledge, what that means to you or what you've gotten from some of those conversations or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Heidi Rose Robbins, who is on the podcast maybe two years ago now, she does astrology through this lens of soul-centered astrology and what that, even though it might sound woo-woo, really truly what it is she has a quote from her dad, which is when you know who you are, you know what to do. And that immediately just clicked for me. I think the reason why we take those quizzes online, the reason why we do strength tests, the reason why we want to know what Enneagram number we are, I'm a four, it's because when we know who we are, we get more clarity on what to do next and how other people perceive us in the world and how to navigate relationships. I think we so clearly see other people, but we sometimes it's so difficult to see who we are in the world and how people see us in the world and what our strengths are and how to access and use them and what are areas of like, I don't want to say improvement. I'll say shadow areas or other areas when maybe not in check, it goes like the total opposite way and how to do better. I think all of it is because we want self groundedness, we want to be in integrity with ourselves. We want to see from a place of our values and our integrity, we want to act in alignment when we're in relationship with other people in integrity, have good boundaries. I mean, all of it comes from knowing who we are. So I think that's why we're drawn to those things. And to me at the end of the day, the more I know who I am, how I feel, what I want, what I'm afraid of, any of those things, I call it fed fear, expectations, desires, they're the same things that drive a narrative arc in writing, exactly. - Yeah, so it's like, and that's why it's so analogous. I mean, this is why I love talking about these things 'cause it's informative to our writing, it's informative to our life. - By the way, I know for a while you had said, does everything, I shouldn't say everything I know about you is from your podcast, that's not true. But I gleaned so much. And you have said for a while, you suggested that you might be a one. And I was thinking, I don't know. I don't know. Is this heart of the story? She's so heart center. I think she's a heart type to start, which if people don't know any of your grand, they're gonna be, what the hell? - I've always been between one and four constantly. My friend over the weekend was like, "You are a four." - And my dear friend, Susan, who I know is Susan Piver, who is a, she knows a lot about as much as anyone alive, I think might know about the anyagram at the moment. She is also a four, and so when I've read about it a lot from her and from other people, what she would say is, you can't type anyone else. But what I would say about uniting is I feel a lot of four energy with you. So I'm really excited to hear you say that. It took me a really long time, like Susan had been talking about anyagram with me for a really long time. And for a while, she was like, "Are you a four?" You're like, she thought that I had a lot of similar fours 'cause she's also a four, which she tells people. And I had no idea. And it took me forever to figure it out. And I couldn't figure out myself honestly until I was in the past two or three years, where I feel like I have come into myself more that I have realized I'm a nine, which is the type that is a gut instinct driven person, but who is blind to their own instinct, which I feel like that explains everything. And once I started thinking about things from that lens, a lot of my writing really opened up quite a bit that I go, okay, here was a woman who really didn't know or trust herself. And I had gut surgery. And when I had to pay attention to my gut, that's sort of like, obviously, the like elevator pitch thing of the writing that I am working on. But the other thing I was gonna say about the anyagram and other typing things are that it is so eye opening to me to say, not everybody thinks about the world and operates in the world the same way I do. It's like, duh, for other people, other centers of intelligence, other wonderful important qualities are the ones that drive them. And so thank God, everybody's not like me. We play in big trouble. So I don't know, those are a few of the things. I feel like we could really keep going with this, but this has been a really fun conversation. Do you have anything else to share? - Well, I think the last thing is truly this, is that when I think about all these different tests and what they say about me as a person, I think sometimes they help validate how we feel and how we operate, which I think we're always looking for validation for someone to say, it's okay for you to be the way you are and feel the way you feel and think the way you think. And to me, it comes down to the things that I am currently writing about and scared to write about, have everything to do with the core of who I am. For example, I always have a hard time feeling like I belong anywhere and I'm always searching deeply for belonging, whether it's in a place or within a community. And it's not like I feel like I don't deserve to be and say a circle of people, but I'm always wherever I'm at, like here in Florida, I'm like, I somewhat belong, I don't fully belong, like this is my forever place. In communities, I'm looking around, like I feel deep belonging in my writer workout community because it's all women writers who are amazing, but I'm going, when I'm in a group of new people, I'm always going, who's gonna know me like at the core level, the deep level, who's gonna get over this BS stuff and really talk about the real deal? Who wants to talk about midlife with me and how that feels and how it feels? - Yeah, like I'm right there, I'll talk about that with you any time. - Yes, and I wanna talk about rage, I wanna talk about joy, I wanna talk about as a woman in the world that even though I'm a mom, I can still be fun and adventurous and have my own desires and needs and wants and yet I can still love my kid deeply and I sometimes have so much rage about societal shit. You know, like there's so much in me that even just the word belonging can light up a stream of venting on the page. - So, to wrap up, I think that I am afraid but will persevere about writing about these things that deeply matter to me because I can't write about anything else. - Exactly. - Do I am. - Exactly. - How about you? - Wow. - As we wrap up. Say one thing that you feel very important or urgent to write about even if you're afraid. Love, love, belonging is an important one but love is also a big one. It means so much to me and I mean that seems silly to say love means so much to me. - No, no, it's not. - Of course it does, but deep love is why we're here. I don't know, for me, that's why we're here and being able to talk about that more love of place, love of human people, love of our partners, love of our friends, love of this earth while we're here to do the things we do. That's kind of it. - Oh my gosh, Michelle, that's beautiful. I know we need to do a part two of this. This was way too fast. - I was gonna say, I feel like we could just-- - This is the tip of the, yeah, scratch the surface. There's our cliche for this. - Oh god, I know. - Wrapping this up. - Scratch the surface, we're gonna dive deeper the next time. - Two riders is passing cliche back in four. - All right, I love this, I love it, I love it too. All right, thank you so much my dear. We will talk soon. - Part two, soon. - Oh my god, did she catch me off guard with that question? That truly was the first thing that popped into my head, love, which I think about this a lot too, is really the greatest risk of all, both to give and to receive. Ah, thank you for listening all the way to the end. I have been thinking about my airplane dream a little bit more and what my unconscious might have been saying to me in that dream about only having a copy of my ID and not the real thing with me and then going home to get the actual one, no matter which option I chose to try and get by with the copy or be late in getting the actual one, I was not going to avoid missing one flight and having to get the next one. So if the ID is a representation of our identity, duh, I'm guessing, maybe the message is that it just doesn't matter if we're presenting our official selves or a facsimile of ourselves. We're still gonna miss the plane, which is to say, we can't avoid the way life is gonna roll out. Maybe that's a little fatalistic, I don't know, but anyway, my final reveal that I said I would follow up about is that in spite of my fear of flying and that little anxiety dream, I have indeed made plans to get on an airplane. A series of happy coincidences lined up in such a way that I would be able to do two West Coast things. First, visit my very best friend Michelle who I am constantly talking about and who I haven't seen in quite a few years, I think. And also to go to one of Nadine's amazing retreats, which of course I always get to hear about front and center when she talks about them on her podcast. The caveat, I must first wrench myself away from my beloved vacation land and all whom I love most at flying pig farm, most notably Rocky and of course Phil. I am feeling an equal pull of both excited and scared, but I have become familiar enough with that combo that I've begun to trust, that that means it'll be a good thing for me to do, to push myself out of my comfort zone. Deep sigh. So that is it for you, my August episode. I apologize again, no essay or no memoir this month, but I will encourage you if you are so inclined to keep up with the musings from flying pig farm to sign up for my sub stack, which I have called ineffable. A link for it is in the show notes. If you enjoy this podcast, please click follow, so it will pop into your podcast app on the first Tuesday of every month. I also hope that you'll check out Heart of the Story, which is Nadine's podcast. Her most recent episode is that one with Crystal Clark, which is so good. So thank you again to Nadine for being my podcasting, writing, and bravery partner in our endeavors together. A giant thanks to my love, Phil Rado, for the music that you hear on this podcast. And most of all, thanks to you for daring to listen. Catch you next month. ♪ And nothing's gonna break my fall ♪ ♪ There's nothing in the protocol ♪ ♪ It's like swimming up waterfall ♪ ♪ Or taking away the ground ♪ ♪ Taking away the ground ♪ ♪ It's like taking away the ground ♪ (guitar music)