The Daily Stoic - Kate Courtney, Karen Duffy, Meg Mason, and Susan Cain on Using Stoicism to Endure Life's Obstacles

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

This episode is a compilation of some of the best Stoic wisdom from the Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan talks to Kate Courtney about the important distinction between optimization vs. maximization, Karen Duffy about how Stoicism can help guide you through pain, Meg Mason about the vitality of being tolerant and forgiving of others, Susan Cain how to take heartbreak and mold something great out of it.Kate Courtney: https://dailystoic.com/kate-courtney/ Karen Duffy: https://dailystoic.com/karen-duffy/ Meg Mason: https://dailystoic.com/meg-mason/ Susain Cain: https://dailystoic.com/susan-cain/  ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space

when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

One of my favorite little quirks, interesting side notes in the history of stoicism is this decision that Musoneus Rufus makes, who is already clearly sort of an open-minded, progressive kind of a guy to teach philosophy to epict A partitas de Slay, but he gives this fascinating lecture, we may have even run it as an excerpt before, but the lecture is that women should study philosophy too, and the other one titled should daughters receive the same training as sons. And the point is, what Musoneus was saying way back, way back early, is that men and women both had a predisposition for virtue, and that virtue was the highest expression or plain for a man or a woman to reach.

And I bring this all up because one of the things I get the most often is, you know, it's either from critics, they say sort of stoicism is just this male masculine thing. In fact, there was a recent psychological argument that stoicism is a part of toxic masculinity, which I don't like at all. It's not true, as you know, that's the difference between lowercase stoicism and uppercase stoicism. But there's this idea that's very masculine, which is belied by the fact that I hear from thousands and thousands of women, this is, I would argue probably 50% of the fans

of the Daily Stalk are women. I just gave a talk this morning to a VC firm and the, of the people who came up who were familiar with my work, there was one or two men and the rest were all women. And then the other thing which I struggle in my writing as well as on this podcast is trying to actually represent those different points of use and lived experiences on the podcast. And I do as well as I can, I don't do as well as I would like, but I try to bring a diverse number of guests to the show. And I don't know, just something

struck me I was scrolling through our list of guests and I was like, man, this is a lot of dudes in a row and it's not presenting the full picture of stoicism that I want to picture. So I had my editor throw together a compilation of some of my favorite female guests on the podcast and their views, their understanding, their experience of stoosism is worth popping

up as a reminder always because we have to we're counter balancing 2000 years of that being very out of balance, right? We don't talk about Thracia's wife who goes with him into exile. We talk a lot about Kato, we talk about Kato, the elder, we talk about Brutus, his son-in-law, but his daughter, Porsche, married to Brutus, plays an equally integral role in the plot against Julius Caesar, and sort of gets this token role in Shakespeare's play. But we don't talk about it enough. I tried to write about her in Lives of the Soaks. All I'm saying is that I try to actively counterbalance just the survivorship bias of history,

the actual bias of history and patriarchy, and bring you other perspectives. So that's what we're going to do in today's episode. Here are some of my favorite female thinkers talking about and what they've brought to it and what they've taken out of it, I hope you enjoy. So you're on kind of a break, right? I'm just coming back. We're on day three of training. Oh, so it's like it's sort of an off season. Is there an off season in what you do? Yeah. So we kind of have, I typically have only taken a couple weeks off every year.

But we are off from racing pretty much from like September to March, but like the first chunk is rest and recover, and then we start the build up to the season. Is that hard for you? Like, or do you like the off season? I hate the off season. I mean, this is like, I think, yeah, that's like the hardest part often. Right. Um, is being out of your routine, like, I love riding my bike, I love training. Um, and also like, it's, it's just uncomfortable. Like when you really train that much, it's a big change for your body. So it's like, takes a little while and, yeah, but a lot of it is fun.

Like we get a break also. So, but I bet you have to fill up most of that time with other obligations that you've been putting off the entire season, right? Exactly. Yeah. So it's a lot of that. I'm guessing you don't have an off season. You're just on.

I sort of don't have an off season, but for me, it's weird. Like there's such a difference between like writing and putting out books. So like I'm in the middle. So my my courage book came out in the end of September. Oh, amazing. OK.

I like 10 pages left. I was going to I was going to try to finish it before each added, but 10 pages. Well, we're talking about me or we're talking about you, not me. So you don't need to have finished it. But I think the hard part for me is the disruption of putting out the book

because it blows apart like the writing routine, which is the thing I actually like doing. Lance Armstrong actually said something to me once that I really resonated with. He was like, they paid me to compete. He liked writing his bike, but he didn't like competing. What he was actually paid for was the disruption of like the training and like to go to the place and do the thing. And so I sort of think about it like that, like putting out the book blows up my whole life. I actually like writing the books.

Yeah, yeah, but I think, you know, with the Stoke Philosophy mindset, it's like those times are also an opportunity to appreciate what you like about being in the routine. So even right now, like just having a schedule being like, I get up at this time. I get on my bike at this time. I do strength work at this time. It's like an amazing feeling, whereas sometimes by the end of the season, you're like, I've been doing the same thing every day for 10 months. Right. No, that's a really good way to think about it. So it's like, while you're in it, remembering that when you are in the opposite of it,

you're going to be wishing that you are where you are right now. 100%. All right. Well, I want to start, I want to start sort of at the end. And I know you're super accomplished. So this is going to be a weird place to start, probably an uncomfortable place to start. But I loved the piece that you wrote for the Washington Post after the Olympics. Like we obviously we so celebrate what winning looks like and it's so rare that we don't spend that much time talking about what it feels like to not perform at your absolute best. So walk me through that because I just thought that piece was, I'm sure incredibly

difficult to write, but it also struck me as very beautiful and important. Well, thank you. I'm honored you wrote it. You are obviously one of my favorite authors and I have come back to your books again and again throughout my racing career. And I guess to the overall stoke philosophy that they impart in a very relatable way. But I think for me that Olympic moment was really, really challenging, but it was also an opportunity. And I think writing that piece, I did for me, I wrote it as a way to process that experience and to understand what had led up to that moment and also, you know, how I could respond to it. And in some cases, there isn't really some triumphant response. You kind of just acknowledge process, take the learnings and move forward. And that

was kind of the first step for me in doing so was, you know, writing about the experience, sharing it. And it was honestly amazing to see the response to that. And I think for me as an athlete, of course, I love the moments where I have this breakthrough performance. And it's an inspiration. And it shows some people that they could do something they never thought they could do or encourages them to get on the bike.

And of course, that's more fun to be in that moment. But in this moment, I actually got a much deeper response and a response from a lot of people who I think throughout the pandemic had been dealing with similar big challenges and moments of working really hard for something and maybe just not having it come through or work out. And to be honest, you know, even in the course of my career, which is so far, I would say, like I've had big success in races,

I've lost farmer races and I won. And I think that's kind of how it goes in life a little bit is you're trying to learn from and deal with and grow through those challenges to allow you to have your next big win. And so for me, that was definitely a pivotal one of those moments. And I'm still figuring out kind of the learnings towards the next big win, hopefully. One of the things you touch on in the piece that I thought was worth exploring was like, I think we sometimes think that like winning or being great at something is simply a matter of willpower, that it's like, if you train for it, if you get in the right head

space, like, it'll happen. And if it doesn't happen, it's like a reflection of you as a person. But like, you sort of just, you kind of gloss over, but it sounds like you just like, it just didn't happen. Like, you just, you just, you thought it would go a certain way. And you just, it just, you just weren't yourself that day. Do you know what I mean? Like it just, you just didn't get the performance that you expected out of yourself for really no particular reason. Yeah, I think in the time since that,

I've kind of understand a little bit more about maybe what could have been different in my preparation or what could change, but at the end of the day, that's completely true. And I think part of what I'm seeing in the world of sports in general and with me personally is, as an athlete, I show up, I have this process, I follow it, I get to these races as prepared as possible. And sometimes it works out. And sometimes, you know, maybe there's factors outside of my control or truly maybe I just fail to have the best performance that I'm capable of that day. But you're still the same person, and you still have the same approach. And the chunk of my time spent preparing and processing and learning still comes from the same place. And so it's this interesting disconnect where you're really forced to separate the outcome

from who you are as a person, which I think is a very healthy thing long term, but it's also very challenging in the moment because especially when things are going really well, you wanna identify with what you do. And for me at least I care so much about this sport. I love it. I've put so much of my life into it

that it isn't identity that's important to me. Well, yeah, like when everything's going well in your identifying with it, it doesn't seem like there's any problem with that. Besides maybe a little bit of ego, right? Like you obviously know you don't want to think that you're perfect or something, but you go as long as I'm not being a monster, what good is there, what what problem is there

being proud of how well everything's going? But I think the problem is what happens when it doesn't go well and you still did everything right or what happens when it doesn't go well and it's like it's not your fault, then you're devastated because you identify just as much with the failure. Absolutely, and that's a pretty tough moment to be in. But I think one that is part of the game, if you're gonna do something and put your whole self into it, you have to learn how to deal with that.

And for me, I'm still early in my career. I'm still learning through those experiences and understanding how to have that little bit of separation but still care just as much. Because in many ways, being devastated by the Olympics shows how much I care, shows how hard I work to get there and how much it means to me. And in many ways, that points me in the direction

of trying again, even in a moment when it can feel really challenging to think about that. What would you do differently as far as preparation? You said, as you think about it a bit more. Yeah, I think so the Olympics aren't for another three years again. I think for me, part of this has been a little bit of a disillusionment of that one race. For me, I race all year. We have nine world cups this year, and that's actually the same field in mountain biking as the Olympics.

It's actually bigger, because you don't technically have to qualify. So I think for me, it's really understanding how to separate my personal progression and my goals as an athlete, you know, comparing to myself year over year and getting better at my craft from those outcomes. And that means that I probably won't put the same emphasis at least internally on that Olympic here, but really see that in the context of my evolution as an athlete. This next go around. And it seems that seems like a subtle shift, but I think mindset wise, that that's what happens when you get experience in these sports. And then of course, like the specifics of training,

there's definitely some nuances that need to be changed. And part of what's challenging about being an athlete is that you're kind of you have this perfect plan But you also are relying on your physiology and you know this year the main thing I learned was like what we tried Didn't work for my physiology. I just didn't respond to this type of training And that's a hard lesson to learn but it also like When you can identify what didn't work when you can identify what did work, it's a huge learning and chance to do what works and know why it works in the future. I'm writing about

Lou Garig in the book that I'm doing now on on self discipline and there's this thing I was just think I was just working on it honestly before we talked so it's kind of perfect. But he goes through he sort of goes through this slump early in his career, and he'd sort of always been really good. So when he goes to the slump, he's like, despondent, right? Like he thinks he gets knocked down to the minor leagues, and he thinks they're going to cut him, and it's this sort of downward spiral that he's in. And the scout that had discovered him sort of gets dispatched by the owner of the Yankees

to find him, and they end up having this exchange, and he sort of bucks dispatched by the owner of the Yankees to find him. And they end up having this exchange and he sort of bucks him up. And then as he's leaving, like it's the sort of cinematic scene where he jumps on the train, he's pulling away. And the scout says, the most important thing that a young ball player can learn is that you can't be good every day. And I love that so much. And baseball is such a good example of that because, you know, like, if you bat 300, you're incredible. But that means you're going to be missing the vast majority of times that you're at bat. And so I imagine that your first Olympics, it's so big in your life.

And even just, although you've raised a lot in four years, you have raised considerably more times, it probably loomed very large in your life, and I imagine the pressure of it and the place and what it meant to you only compounded all the things that we're talking about. Completely, and I would toss the pandemic in there as well as an extra year of thinking about it. But I do, I love that. I love that.

You had an extra year to be in your head about it. Yeah, completely. No, I really, I love that quote. And I think it applies a lot to a sport like cycling where there's there's these big cycles. And this year I've taken more of a break than ever before. So I'm very slow right now. But again, that's that's a question my coach keeps asking you. Do you want to be fast now? Or do you want to be fast at the next World Cup? And that, I think, it takes a little bit of maturity to appreciate. And it is an interesting balance between being future thinking

and looking at the process and understanding where you're going and trusting that you're going somewhere, but also being OK with where you are right now and being present with, OK, this is where I am fitness wise, right in this moment, and that doesn't mean this is going to be the moment forever, but you have to honor that break and that rest and what regeneration happens in your body to be able to actually deliver when you need to be fast. I'm writing this down.

So what does that mean to you? Do you need to be fast. I'm writing this down. So what does that mean to you? Do you want to be fast now or fast later? Because is that the idea of like doing something hard now that you're not good at that will have long-term impact on your skill set or your, but what does that mean? Yeah, I think the interesting thing about being a professional athlete is we do have these goals. And we have cycles and we have training structure for the entire year and the goals to really peak.

So we're trying to have kind of like superhuman performance for a few big events a year. And a lot of people think that means that you're just training as hard as you can all the time 24-7. But really, I would say what differentiates amateur and elite athletes primarily is the recovery time, the ability to make that work count and to allow your body to recover between these hard sessions.

So a lot of what we do in the fall is long, easy rides, and just preparing your body to be able to take on this load. And it might feel like you're not going as fast as you can or doing all that you can, but it's critical to performance when the time comes. No, this is so interesting to me because obviously you talk a lot about courage in that piece, which I want to talk to you about, but it really sounds like what you're talking about. Here is Temperance, where the idea of moderation, which I imagine is extra difficult when you are super committed, super ambitious, super driven,

and it sucks to not, like, I imagine it sucks to not be peaking right now, because that means you're having to be okay with not being as good as you'd like to be in the present moment or for even for extended periods of time. Yeah, I would, so my dad actually describes this and this is probably more of a business term, but of optimizing versus maximizing. And I think for me, that's really a big part of this phase of my career is understanding what things you're doing that make a big difference and doing those things fully and completely, but not maximizing. And maximizing, I would think of like the young athlete who's, I need to meditate and stretch

and do this and do the club bath and do the, you know, adding in every single possible thing you could be doing Just to feel like you're doing everything you can and really it is temperance as you said the optimizing the being able to Identify what actually matters what you actually need to do to be successful Execute those things at the highest level possible and then trust that they're gonna work When and I imagine holding back is difficult. You want to give, like, you didn't become who you were if you weren't really good at giving everything you were capable of giving, right? And then so for a coach or for a race or for a training structure to say, yeah, you can only go 70% here. Kind of goes against like what, how

you're wired, but it's, that's the difference between like fast now and fast later. Yeah, and that I would say, you know, to tie it back to that Olympic experience, into my experience last year, one of the biggest things that I learned is, I kind of pushed so hard in the last two years. I executed every training schedule to the best my ability. Often, I'm the one who's always at the high end of the range of hours, always pushing. Midway through the year when it seemed like things weren't working out, I had a lot of conversations.

I talked to some of the best people in my sport. I talked to my teammate, Neato Shorter, and to his coach, and really learned that a lot of what I was missing was that pushing too hard wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. So if I was given a two-hour ride, and I went for a three-hour ride, in their mind, that was wrong.

That was not, oh, you're doing more,, you're overachieving, you're pushing the limit. That was not respecting the assignment. And so that's kind of a re-conceptualization for me this season about really respecting the plan. And that involves a new level of trust and making sure that you understand, okay, why is it important that I do exactly this? And then having that temperance, having that ability to say, this is the optimal thing.

It's not the most I could do, but it is the right thing to do today, this week, this training block. I want to talk about momentum already at the end, but it does seem like you've had a lot of different lives, right? That your career and your life has had a lot of different chapters. And then as you said, the skills are transferable, so what you learn or what you practice or the virtues that one calls out, you're able to apply to the other. And this is sort of a parenting book

or it's a unique kind of parenting book and then it's sort of letters to your son. What is both stoicism and this sort of grapple and with chronic pain? How do you think that that shaped how you approach being a parent? Well, it's interesting, Ryan, because I wrote this book, wise up, really thinking about

Nikomakian ethics and Seneca's letters to a stoic. So it was never, I never wrote it as a parenting book. I wrote it as an epistolary because I thought this is a great way to express how much I love the gift of stoicism. But it was never a parenting book. It never occurred to me until my publisher. It was never a parenting book. It never occurred to me until my publisher. So, this is a brand new book. And so, I used my son, I asked him, if I could address the letters to him. And he said, yes.

And I, because my son, we have a great relationship. I really enjoy a sense of humor. And I thought in writing letters where my son essentially stands in for the reader, I could have a lot more fun and fill it with bits of trivia and historical information that it just found fascinating. So it was really a way to write the most entertaining book that I was proud of.

I am a bit of a magpie. I find bits of information and treasure them up. And then I get to tell where, by reading all your books. And that's what I love is that, like you've lit the fuse for so many people, their lives are going to be enhanced because of sharing the sharing of a knowledge which is such a gift.

So thank you for that. Well, yeah, you have a similar way of expressing in the book that this idea that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond. I imagine obviously you're having to model that for your family, like you didn't choose this illness, you're having to choose how to live with it. But how, because my kids are much younger than yours,

how do you actually teach that to your kids? Right? Like how do you day-to-day sort of teach other than modeling? How have you tried to walk your kids through these stoic principles? Probably one of the best things was the no technology at the table only philosophy. And my son just had to give his chopper talk at his school as a senior. And it was fantastic because he wrote and presented a talk that he is now a budding stoic.

And I think having books available and sharing what we're passionate with our children is truly the way to model it. And I love that he, you know, he said the other day, like, you know, you've got to make, you know, you've got to play the hand you're dealt, make the best of what you have and take the rest as it comes. And I was like, why is words young lad? Why?

He was listening. He was listening. And that is so fantastic because you know, I always think like the mom is always the worst world in a TV show, in a movie. It's always some saggy naggy. Like there's not a lot of mothers where you really where you get to see that there's someone's not always chewing, chewing a whole inner shorts. But I was able to tell my son, like in your teenage years,

like it is expected that you will find me a huge pain in the keister. And that is the direct job of testosterone. Okay, there are hormones swimming in your co-hornies that are going to make you think that I am the biggest pain in the butt to ever come down the pike. And he's like, I don't see that happening. And I was like, the sound of me biting into a piece of toast will be repugnant. If I don't see it happening, but it did happen and it wasn't a bite of toast.

It was a corn cob that I apparently I chomped into like sea biscuit. And I'm always telling them like, dude, moms are so incredible that nature had to synthesize a chemical to break our bond so you don't live in my basement for the rest of your life. So be aware. And that has been such a gift, the fact that we can talk about it and laugh about it. And knowing that I think we can take things so seriously. And I tend to not take it that seriously.

Well, no, I love what you just did there because obviously I think sometimes we forget because the still X are so feel so modern that they were right in 2000 years ago. Right. And so the idea that they would have understood that there's a chemical that's operating in the relationship that's provoking certain reactions, it's likely to do the X, Y, or Z. They wouldn't have known that. But I feel like 2,000 years later,

they would have certain, like what you just did was you're like, okay, here's the situation that's likely to happen. Here's the cause of it. So let's understand it. We're still gonna get frustrated with each other about the toaster or the core of the core of the cop. But because we understand it,

because we've talked about it, we're not gonna let it feel like the end of the world, we're not gonna let it blow up into something bigger than it is. To me, that's what the Stokes are talking about when they talk about sort of using your reason rather than just your emotions. And I do like to think that if Marcus Aurelis

or Epic Teedis or Senica was around today, they would be incorporating these understandings of these concepts into what they're doing. I read a thing from Adam Grant, he was like, the worst thing we do to parents is that we don't teach them any basic psychology or biotic, that they're just flying blind, and they don't understand some of these forces

that are operating just below the surface that are affecting every part of this really difficult thing we're doing. Exactly. And we were just flew to Charleston. And our plates were delayed and flying is more complicated. And I think the fact that Aristotle said,

it is expected that unexpected things will happen. The problem is we don't expect problems. I expect problems all the time because I am a walking biological complexity. While we were at the airport, there was a family that was blowing their top and the outside reaction as if they were the only people out of the 200 that were on this flight. And it was really the three of us we just we had compassion for for everyone who had to deal with them. We also try to have compassion for the people who are blowing up. But the fact that we understand that life will not be perfect. And I can accept

that. And that was something that was really great to see my son take in this information and also now being awake to the idea that unexpected things will happen. The problem is we don't expect problems. Yeah, and my wife and I were just doing this yesterday, we went into this drive-in zoo down the street from our house. And so we thought our kids would have this amazing time, and they did. But on the way back, my son who five had just like a complete temper tantrum He wanted to watch something on our phone and we said no

And he just had this complete meltdown. He's like screaming all this stuff and and There was a part of me that's like, you know, you can't let your kid act that way Why are you treating me like this? We just gave you everything you said you wanted and then it was like wait What when did we eat last? And it's like, you're obviously just hungry. And so we sort of catch ourselves and we go, okay, like obviously we don't have any food, so this is going to go on to we can get some food. But just the idea that like, understanding like, okay, you're acting this way, and I can

react to the surface level behavior that I'm seeing, or can understand and I could you know my parents would have just yelled at me about this right they would have tried to like crush the behavior and made me feel like I was doing something wrong by the way I was being instead of just understanding that this is a five year old who has zero control of themselves and is actually just really hungry and by the way it's my fault because I didn't give him food on the schedule that we normally eat food, right? And I think this idea of sort of understanding what's going on beneath the surface with people is like one of my favorite parts of stilicism.

Absolutely. And it's a gift that you give yourself. But it's also it's a gift to others because when But it's a gift to others because when I'd like to be a good person when things aren't looking too good, I'm really good in a catastrophe, which I think is why I was drawn to becoming a chaplain and being a part of a volunteer with the FEMA, the Office of emergency management. And I think there are banan appeals in front of us at all times. And statistically, a pandemic was predicted. We just never believe it's going to happen.

And I am a spectacularly optimistic catastrophist. I think things are going to go great until they don't. And then we're going to figure it out and then we'll get back on being great again. And I think that's something that I was able to learn through reading and from experience. And what I love about the Stoics is that it's so much, it's not just about reading, it's about taking action and doing things and expecting taking action, being a good person, being brave, having vigor. I love, like, I do see humor in vigor in the stoics. Like, I feel in a way that there are friends, you know, you know, I spend so much time with them. Sure. You know,

I mean, that's, that's what's so incredible about what Marcus manages to do in meditations is that his life should be utterly incomprehensible and unrelated to us. He's literally worshipped as a God. He's the most famous person in the world. He's the most powerful person in the world. Plus, he lived 2,000 years ago in a society that had slaves and cults and all these ridiculous things, right?

And then somehow you pick up meditations and you're like, this is my God. I know exactly what he's talking about. And I think that's what art does, right? By getting very specific, you manage to become almost universal, but there is something incredible about. Santa Coutue, he feels like he's writing to you.

Or Epititus, it feels like he's calling you out instead of whoever it was in the lecture hall that he's speaking to in discourses. It's one of the most remarkable things I've ever come across in my life. It is this radiant intelligence and the fact, as the metaphor you used earlier, this torch has been carried. And how lucky you are, how lucky we are that you read the book that changed your life and that has now put you on a path that will illuminate people for centuries to come. That's a real gift. So thank you for doing this.

I mean, it takes a lot out of you. I mean, this is, you are dedicated. And I think that should really be honored. So thank you for this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding and thinking.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. It is helpful, I think, to realize that some of the thing, the people that bother you or the

people who don't have it together in the way that you think they should, all this stuff, just the idea that they could be fighting this battle that you know nothing about is to me just, it's not just, I think, a just way to go through the world. It totally turns down the volume on how frustrated and disappointed you can be about things because you're like, oh, this person is probably doing the best that they can and probably dealing with something

that I don't even know about. So, I'm just going to let this go. Yeah, and I think because Martha has a sister in the novel called Ingrid and they're very, very close and Ingrid doesn't have what Martha describes as little bomb go off on her, go off in her brain when she's 17. And so her life has evolved in a different way, but the function of her and the reason that she's a sister rather than just a friend is because a sister can't leave in the same way that a friend would have deserted Martha a long time ago based on her behavior and what I really loved and wanted to show in Ingrid is that she thinks the best of Martha at all

times and can see through her behavior. And even if it is baffling her in the moment, she will give Martha the benefit of the doubt. And I think that is something that I would want to try and do in life as well is because why, you know, for all Martha's atrocious behavior, why would anybody want to behave like that, if they really had a choice? Who wants to be the family member who ruins every event and who upsets everybody? Nobody really a decent person is not going to choose that.

So I think that, you know, it's so easy to look and judge. And I think that's why, you know, there's something interesting about the idea of labels. And we sort of think I don't want to be labeled, you know, something something doesn't define me. But in terms of an illness to an extent, it does. If you feel that it's informing all your decisions and I think for whatever reason,

in the absence of a label, in the absence of a correct medical diagnosis, someone in that position is going to get a moral diagnosis. I think you see it, especially with conditions kind of in that realm of ADHD. You just look like a sloppy, bad person who lies and loses things all the time. But, you know, if you can say, I have an HD, then that explains why it's not something you've chosen. It's not something you can just train yourself out of in the same way that, you know, a neurodivocal person

could just not function that way. Yeah, I was just reading this thing, and the writer was sort of trying to define one of the stoic ideas as to go through the world, assuming that you have power over your choices and decisions, but that for everyone else, they're determined, like it is deterministic. And so you're like, okay, I have the choice not to be angry, not to get my act together,

but I have this agency in power. I have free will. But then other people don't. They're being acted on by forces they don't control. Not only is it kind of largely true because people have different experiences, traumas, illnesses, et cetera, but it also makes you so much more tolerant and forgiving

because instead of being in the case of the book, Martha is a bitch, look at what she just did illnesses, et cetera, but it also makes you so much more tolerant and forgiving because instead of being in the case of the book, Martha is a bitch, look at what she just did to this person. Look how she's torturing this person, whatever. You're like, Martha can't help it. Yeah, that's why I never sort of struggled with how people will say, oh, why did you set out to write an unlikable character? And I'm like, I didn't.

I set out to write a suffering character. And when you read the book, if you read it through the lens of this is a confession, an active repentance, then you can see she's never proud of that behavior. She's confessing it in the way that you would to sort of, you know, as a large apology. But I think as well, what is just interesting is the way that her family swings between wanting to believe her and not being able to believe her. And I think that that is really challenging. I imagine it to be, you know, when I really try and put myself in the position of somebody

who was looking after a chronically ill person, there would be days when you're just tired and you just stop believing and you just want them to be better. But at the same time, what I've really been interested to see is that a lot of friends my age, kind of in early 40s, often because their child has just been diagnosed with something, especially like ADHD, they will then look at the list of symptoms and be like, oh, oh, you know, and so there seems to be real crop of people in my age group now being latterly diagnosed with something. And what I've noticed is there is a tremendous relief that comes with the diagnosis, but then there is grief because look at everything

that was lost and you sort of will look back at the arc of your life, which is what Martha is doing. I think if only I had known I never had a chance. And the reason that I was in trouble, always at school, of the reason that I didn't do as well in my exams as I should have based on, you know, raw intellect, it is a real grief to be worked through. Well, and then it's also, I think, guilt, where you're like, look at what I've been subjecting myself or other people too, as if they were in control of it, as if they should be punished for what they're doing. Really, they didn't have a choice, and they didn't want to be acting that way.

They didn't even know they were doing. Yeah, and then some rage, then some side rage, which I definitely wanted to show in Martha because she has this fury that everybody stopped believing her and why did they not look at her and think this is not right, this is not normal, this can't be her, she shouldn't throw plates at her husband, that's not, let's investigate and nobody does. And so I think it is a huge area and it's so real, but that is also at the same point

where I didn't want to name a specific diagnosis because I thought that was a really interesting choice. I think the majority of readers are at least the ones I've spoken to, I really understand why I did it and appreciate it and understand why it has to be that way and the function of it. There is a small content that has been really frustrated. They're usually the same people who were fundamentally frustrated by a Martha, but I think even in that case, I'm like, yeah, it's pretty annoying, isn't it?

Pretty annoying to not know what the diagnosis is. I wonder if that's why Martha behaves in much the same way as you are now with your vociferous monologue on how annoying and frustrating it is. So that's kind of been a private, I guess, validation of it in myself. No, that's a really interesting. You're putting this sort of most minor, you're inflicting upon the reader the most minor version

of what she would have gone through her whole life. Yeah. And they find it totally insufferable and unbearable. Yeah, exactly. And I've invested 350 pages in finding out and I deserve to know. It's like, yeah, I'm also put 20 years into that same project. So I think, I mean, it's not one of those things that I realized that I was doing or I set out to consciously do. But afterwards, when it was done, I sort of realized that that was what it was achieving. So

it was. What's actually even worse than that? Because not only did she not know what it is, people repeatedly told her it was a different thing than that because not only did she not know what it is people repeatedly told her It was a different thing than it actually was so she was under the wrong impression as to what she was dealing with and so How much worse that is it be like if you said it was one thing in the book and then you revealed an interview It was actually another thing and only some of the readers found this out Yeah, no, it's true and I I think, again, I didn't try and I didn't look at it and think I'm going to have a conversation in this book about medical misogyny, but it is an experience especially of women to be handed this incorrect diagnosis or no diagnosis. To be told, no,

there's nothing wrong with you. It's hormones or it's hysteria or you're just your board and you need to get a hobby. And I think that's not resolved either. I think women still experience that a lot, but because we're not trained to question these supposedly godlike medical practitioners. Of course, you know, the majority of doctors are brilliant and incredible, but we do.

Most of us would say we've had one doctor who's disqualified Oh pain and sort of minimized it and made it to feel like it is something that is innately Wrong with us, but we don't have a legitimate medical defense as it were So that's something that I hope the book does investigate. I was just thinking of that the other day Because I was reading this someone had posted there like my my relationships falling apart and these sort of talking about this experience he's having with his wife and it's like, you know, anyone with like a modicum of experience or empathy would see that this, it's like, it all started right after our child was born.

You know, and it's like, I mean, come on. Like, as a society, there did so much work explaining what most part of me is, you're like braiding this woman for piles of dishes around the house and the sweatpants she's wearing. It's like, how could you not see what this is? And then you're like, maybe nobody explained to this person that there is a thing that happens

to way more people than we think it happens. Mm-hmm. And they don't want it to be, like it was just, it was so perfect. He's like describing this thing and every part of it is attributing to malice and laziness and disinterest. Yeah, completely.

It's like, oh yeah, we're just being about another. No, it's true. And I think oftentimes because we do have the vocabulary now, or we understand the fundamental symptoms of PND in a way that we didn't use to or any condition, we can talk the talk, but then do we actually connect it to what is going on in this house right now? Because I know a lot of women, you know, friends of mine with children, it wasn't too afterwards that they looked back and be like, oh, I was really impressed. I just thought that was motherhood, or I just thought that was me, and I was too weak, and I didn't have the wherewithal for what I was doing. And sometimes you just don't look at it through that eye of like, especially I think partners, it's like, is this the woman

that you knew nine months ago, or is this feel like a completely I think, partners, is this the woman that you knew nine months ago, or is this feel like a completely different character so maybe we should look at that? Well, and yeah, I'm not exempting myself from this too, because you look back at arguments you have when after you've had kids and you're like, wait, was I arguing, like, what was I doing, right? Like, I think it's kind of like,

you don't notice like you're here getting longer or greater because you're not watching the time lapse of yourself. So you can't notice the change, where it's like you're not realizing that the person is undergoing this transformation or it's been taken a hold of, because you're like, we just had a normal conversation about movies that we like,

and everything seemed right, but then now, again, the inability to say, do the dishes, it seems like you put on clothes this morning. It's very hard to realize, oh, no, this person isn't in complete command of themselves or their facilities. Maybe that's really what we don't, it's like we don't even want to think about that because the thought of it's fucking terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. And there's an incredible book

that I read actually after Zoram Bliss. And Martha's condition, it is manufactured. It doesn't. Sure. It's something that I sort of amalgamated from everything I knew of every condition and had changed those symptoms to fit my narrative, which is another reason why I redacted it

because it wasn't actually accurate. But after that, I read a book called The Unquiet Mine by Kay Redfeld-Jamesson, who's an academic who a psychiatrist as well and was writing about her own life as someone with bipolar, and it's just the most incredible book, and I just will never forget her description of depression, you know, her absolute nose, she would say, the idea of refilling the ice tray was overwhelming. And I just, I'll never forget that is like, that is, yep, that's depression. Yeah, that's that's very vivid. Yeah, you know, church, I'll talk to about the black dog. And I guess it's just, it's easier to just be like build the fucking ice tray than to think.

What how terrifying is it that a sane healthy normal person could be besieged by a thing whether you call it a black dog or depression or mental illness or whatever in which they become incapable of doing. It's like in sports, nobody talks about this thing called a Yip, which is like your ability to play the thing that your world class at suddenly or partially disappears. Like, wait, suddenly the picture can throw it one direction, but not the other direction,

and there's no public explanation for it whatsoever. Yeah, it's true, and no one would choose it. So it has to be, it has to be real, it has to be a phenomenon. Yes, but if you think about it, I think it's like, what could I catch it? You know, I think that's part of why we don't want to think about it or accept it.

It's like we'd rather, we'd rather twist it on the individual and the angry at them or even cruel to them than to conceive that this thing. It's like a Trump famously said during COVID, if we do less tests, they'll be less COVID, right? It's like we'd rather not think about it because that makes it not exist. Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I remember, because I had COVID a few weeks ago, and I was convinced, I had sort of met a show of weight at for years. And everybody that I know who had done that would all started to consider ourselves above COVID, like medical models who science would take an interest in our extreme, you know, strength of character that we didn't get it. And so when I started to get the symptoms, I was like, no, no, no, this is absolutely no way. This is COVID. I just have, you know, this is allergies. It's why I have a sore throat.

And then I was going up the stairs one morning and I was like, Oh, I really need to sit down and have a break after five stairs. I think I might have COVID. Well, I hope you didn't just jinx me because I'm still in that camp. And, oh, well, I'm a better person than I am. Well, I would say, you know, not getting it in Australia is less impressive than not getting it in Texas where I have to, I have to say, which makes me an even worse

person that I managed to catch it here. It's been like Matt Matt, so we're here just sort of every man for themselves that's, and it doesn't, it doesn't exist. And you know what? It hasn't stopped anyone from getting it. So I think it all felt miserable. Yeah, it's so true. Well, I loved the book so much and I can't wait for the next one. This was a very fun conversation. I was thinking about that recently too. It's like someone can take away something that you love,

a person, a position, a place. But the Stokes would also say they can't take away that you had it, right? And so that I think that's also the grief is that it's gone, but that you have the memory of what it was and what it meant to you. And that's always there, which is both wonderful and terrible at the same time. Right. And the wonderful is obvious, but you mean terrible because the knowledge that you'll never have it again could eat you up, is that what you mean? Well, and also terrible because you remember how great it was, and now it's not there.

Right. So it's sort of like, if grief was simply the disappearance of someone from your life, that would be sad, but also sort of solve its own problem. It's that you also have the memory and the longing for that. You have what you have the memory of them, which every time you think about makes you happy and then also sad at the same time. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that I think one of the things that we need to do as people is accept that that is the state of being alive, number one. And you know, and this is my thing that we're not really taught that.

You know, like as kids, we're basically taught that that life is when everything is going well and that when things don't go well and when we lose people or things or whatever, that's like the detour of the main road. As opposed to being taught, the main road is both these things. The main road is the joys and the sorrows along the way. And, and again, just this idea that that which we've lost can actually manifest in other forms. And like, so I told you I lost my father from COVID in 2020. We were quite close. And it was really my father who gave me my deep love of music. We used to listen to music together from the time I was really little.

And the night he died, I listened to a lot of music. Some of the music that he had shown me, introduced me to, and just some music in general. And you know, and I was listening to it at first because I was kind of hoping to find him there in the music. And I don't feel like I found him there, you know, I felt like he was still gone. And at the same time, I also felt like the music itself in all its gloriousness is a manifestation of love just the way that my father was. So I don't mean to say that it's a substitute in any way, but it's just, it's a separate manifestation of it. Yeah, it's, it's the, what you were just saying about the sort of detour, it makes me think of this expression that we've all heard a million times in the pandemic, which is like, I can't wait for things to go back to normal.

Yeah. As if this somehow is not normal, as if this hasn't been what's been happening for thousands of years, if we didn't go through this exact pandemic 100 years ago, and if tragedy wasn't also tragically normal. Yeah, it's funny you say that because when the pandemic first started happening, you know, and I have kids who at the time were like, what age would they have been sort of like late elementary school, early middle school, and so, you know, they couldn't do their normal sleepovers and all those kinds of things. And, um, and I remember talking to other moms about it who were really worried about the impact of this on their kids. And I felt more like, well, this is actually, like, if we presented to them

correctly, I felt like, well, this is actually a really good life lesson that, you know, they actually knock on wood. So far so far have had these amazing lives, but it's not always going to be amazing, but we're going to be able to take that and turn it into something okay or even beautiful if we pull it off right. But, but just to see that is like, okay, this is just part of the deal and and that's okay. There's something I keep finding in child rearing that the very often when kids are upset about something, that so much of what is fueling their tears is that they think the thing they're upset about

wasn't supposed to have happened. And so they're crying at the unfairness of it or like, how could this have happened? And I find that with my kids, if I say to them things like, well, you know, this is, this happens to everybody, like life has these moments, it's gonna pass, but this is part of life, it'll happen again, and then that'll pass.

That's actually what comes them down because it's kind of telling them that it's all normal and that what they perceive is real as opposed to being sold with the fact that they're supposed to be living somewhere over the rainbow. Well, normal compared to what? I mean, you have that you have it. It's sort of a throw away moment in the book, but it really struck me where you talk about your mom being called over to listen to Hitler give a speech on the radio.

Like is that normal? You know, is, is COVID normal or abnormal compared to that? Right? Like if you think about what's happened in even the life of a 20 year olds right now, you think about what the last 20 years of history have meant to a person. A pandemic's not really that abnormal, right? Like all life is insane.

And so if you have some sense that it's supposed to be a certain way that that's everything's always gonna feel wrong, but if you can kind of step back and look at the surreality of it, it suddenly, you at least don't have the disappointed expectations because you're like, this is, it just is what it is. Yeah, I would agree with that completely. Like I don't think anything that we're going through right now or the moment that my

mother was called over to the radio to hear Hitler, all of that. It's not abnormal at all. And at the same time though, like what I really want to emphasize is you know, the joy and the beauty of love is also normal. So it's like the more that we can hold both of those things together, I'll all at once. We're really good in this culture of being like either or. It's like either it's all tragedy or it's all this or and I don't think that's it at all. It's more like it's all together at every moment. Have you read an unbearable lightness of being?

Oh gosh, a thousand years ago. There's this moment in it and I thought about it a lot during the pandemic and he talks, you know, all this terrible stuff is happening in the book and he's describing this cemetery. And he's talking about how even as the world is tearing itself apart, the cemetery is beautiful. It's got rolling hills and it's quiet,

and there's these old trees. And I think that's your, that's sort of the point. Even as your mom is being called over to listen to Hitler, who knows what other ordinary, wonderful things happened that day. The love of her mom to her, or, you know, like, also that was just one moment in an otherwise, you know, normal life, which there was

wonderful, wonderful things. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a funny thing, you know, my grandfather, who was the one who called my mother over to the radio that day, you know, her father. And, and he, her father. And he came to this country on his own when he was 17 and left behind his entire family and village and they were all killed.

And it was something that he never got over. Even if you met him, you would have had no idea. He seemed very twinkly and vital on the surface, but even on his deathbed, he was calling out for his family. He had left behind. And at the same time, when my mother used to sometimes get anxious about this or that, he would say to her, oh, mom, the way you know, sometime, the way life is you're like,

you're walking through, it's like you're walking through a, a corridor and the guns are pointed at you, but most of the time they never go off. And that was his takeaway, even though the guns had gone off over and over and over again in his life. But so he was like very intensely aware of them, but also very much like living life deeply and fully as he passed through that. Wow, yeah, that's again beautiful and tragic

at the same time. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was thinking about as I was reading about your relationship with your mother in the book, I was thinking about like, I don't know about you, but I find when I read books, there's always like one little thing in it sticks with me, even though it's not really what the book is about, but that thing sticks with me. And I think I told you, the thing that struck me the most about quiet was you had this, again, sort of a throwaway thing. You just mentioned the idea of parent child fit.

And how, you know, like an introvert could be born to extroverted parents or vice versa. And just that it doesn't always line up. Like you don't, you're not always the child, your parents want, and your parents aren't always what you need as a child. And I remember reading that and feeling so seen by it and helped by it because it very much describes my upbringing. And I wondered, then when I read about your mother, I wondered was that, do you think that

was part of what happened for you as well? That you guys just weren't a fit with each other or that you were fit at different times in your life because it seemed like the relationship changed over time. Yeah, um, I Think we were actually like a fantastic fit for each other as I say and my childhood I really did have a kind of garden of Eden kind of childhood in no small part because of my mother who was so incredibly warm and loving and supportive and everything, you know, like exactly the mother, you would dream of happing. And but my mother also had demons of her own

because of life experiences that she had had. And I think as I reached adolescence, she, because of her demons, she really could not handle my growing into an independent person with different opinions or ways of life and all of this. And for her, I think we all, at some point in our lives, face what you could call a pain of separation. And for her, that pain of separation was so intense that she kind of turned on me.

So I don't know that that was specific to me, maybe other than that I have a sensitive temperament. So I probably took it harder than maybe, you know, someone with a thicker skin would have. But I don't know, you know, that was a... Did she go through the same thing with your brother or was it different? That's interesting. My brother is 11 years older, so I don't think I know. But I know, I don't think she did. And I think it's because I was the youngest child. We had a really close relationship and I was the youngest.

So I kind of represented the end of that stage of her life of being such a warm and giving mother to a child, which she had so excelled at. So, we had a real break. I can tell you the story now if you want. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So basically, like, off through my childhood, I've always wanted to be a writer since the time I was four years old. And my mother my grandfather, it always really encouraged that. And so I started writing in diaries from the time I was pretty young and especially when I hit adolescence.

And so all the troubles that I was having with my mother and all of our terrible emotional pains and all of the conflicted feelings I had of her, like the mix of love and hate that I started to have for her in my adolescence, I wrote it all down. And then I went to college, you know, and I tell this story in the book, I went to college and kept writing all of it.

And my parents came to pick me up from school at the end of freshman year. And for some reason, they had to take my stuff home with them. And I was gonna be staying on campus for a few more days. And so they took all my bags. And then like at the last minute, I could still remember doing it. At the last minute, I take the stack of diaries

and I hand them to my mother and say, oh yeah, can you take these two? And Freud would have a field day with that moment in time because on a conscious level, I had no idea of what I was doing. I was just like, yeah, these are some things. And my mother's super trustworthy. And she would never read them. So here, take them.

And I was so unaware of what I was doing that when I got home a few days later, and my mother wasn't speaking to me, I still wasn't sure what the reason was. I remember calling a friend and saying, do you think she could have read my diary? You know, and of course, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I write in the book for years after that moment. Like we were still mother and daughter and still saw each other at holidays and still said I love you and all of this, but it was never the same. And I felt emotionally motherless after that. To the point for years, I couldn't really speak of my mother like even to say my mother grew up in Brooklyn. I couldn't say that without crying for years and years and years.

And and over these last five years. writing this book and partly because my mother now has Alzheimer's and has forgotten all our years of strife and remembers only our fundamental relationship. It's like the mother of my childhood is back. And we're incredibly, I mean, she is a limited way of interacting now with it with the Alzheimer's, but her loving soul, sweetness, the warmth, everything is all back. So, yeah, so we've had a real redemption. You could say, love returned in another form. It's in the form of mediated through Alzheimer's, but it's very much there. And then, but there is also something about the process of writing this book that And then, but there is also something about the process of writing this book that really cleared me to the point. I'm not struggling with tears as I tell you this story,

the way I would have been a few years ago. Yeah, it's, it's almost out of a movie where like, everyone knows what's happening, but it's powerless to stop themselves from doing the thing that they know will sever the relationship, both you and her. She must have known what was in the journals, right? Like there's no there's no reading of the journal that's going to improve the relationship. And yet she can't stop herself from doing it just as you seem to be incapable of considering what handing them to her will mean. Yes, I mean, I think that when you get to, it's almost like what you were saying at the very beginning of like anticipating something before it's actually happening because you're feeling

the vibrations before it actually happens. You know, and so I think we both knew what the truth was. I think unconsciously probably it was like desperate to tell her the truth was. I think unconsciously probably was like desperate to tell her the truth of my feelings, you know, things that I felt I couldn't express because I thought she couldn't really hear them. And she probably knew it too and needed, she knew on some level what the feelings were whether she read it or not. I think there's so much that we sense intuitively without even articulating it to ourselves. ...

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