Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Julia Gets Wise with Anne Lamott

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

This week on Wiser Than Me, Julia gets schooled by 70-year-old author and Sunday school teacher Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird). Julia finds solace in subtle signs from the universe and learns the importance of shutting the hell up when it comes to parenting adult children. Anne also shares wisdom on recovery, perfectionism, and falling in love at 65. Plus, Julia and her mom, Judy, explore the inevitable role reversal that comes with aging parents.   Follow Wiser Than Me on Instagram and TikTok @wiserthanme and on Facebook at facebook.com/wiserthanmepodcast.   Keep up with Anne Lamott @annelamott on Instagram.   Find out more about other shows on our network at @lemonadamedia on all social platforms.   Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.    Maker’s Mark is a proud sponsor of Wiser Than Me. Celebrate the wise women in your life by creating a custom, personalized label from artist Gayle Kabaker today at www.makersmark.com/personalize.    Hairstory is a proud sponsor of Wiser Than Me. Check out their hero product, New Wash, today at Hairstory.com and get 20% off with code WISER.   COVERGIRL is a proud sponsor of Wiser Than Me. Check out their Simply Ageless Skin Perfector Essence. Learn more at covergirl.com. Only from Easy, Breezy, Beautiful COVERGIRL.    For exclusive discount codes and more information about our sponsors, visit https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/.    For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are so excited to be back for a second season of Wiser Than Me. I have been, and I really do mean this, truly blown away by the support that this show has received. We really do have a lot to learn from the glorious older women in our lives. And to celebrate, I've got a super fun announcement to share with you. Wiser Than Me now has its very own merch. Yah! Merch! Wiser Than Me now has its very own merch. Yeah, merch. Our team has whipped up some items

we think you're gonna love. We're kicking off the collection with a beautiful Wiser Than Me cross-body tote bag that even has a zipper. Oh sure, you think you've got enough tote bags, but if you get one more tote bag, a Wiser Than Me tote bag, you'll have room to buy so many more heads

of organic lettuce at the farmer's market or to buy so many more heads of organic lettuce at the farmers market or to carry that second six pack of Mountain Dew from your local 7-Eleven, all while brushing your teeth with both hands, because it's cross body. Hands free, baby. What I'm saying is that this could be a life changer, and this bag is made by Bagoo, so it's super high quality and its beautiful design features some of my favorite words of wisdom from the show. Head over to wiserthanmeshop.com and get two for yourself and then a bunch more for friends

and family. And presto, holiday shopping done early. Lemonade Oh, aren't transitions hard? Lemonada. Oh, aren't transitions hard? Maybe they're harder for some people than others, but I have to say for me, they are brutal. My parents divorced when I was really little, and I would go back and forth between my mother's family and my father's family on the old Eastern Airlines shuttle.

And that was the granddaddy of all transitions for me. It was absolutely excruciating. But even run-of-the-mill transitions are rough, like going to college, for example. I remember having a moment of abject fear when my mom left me on my own with my 11 bags at Northwestern. Yeah, I brought 11 huge bags to college with me

because I have always traveled very light. Leaving people that I love separating, even happily separating, it's just heart rending for me. So recently, my parents moved from one place to a new place and the new place is this kind of just amazing wonderful cozy cottage senior living thing which makes sense since my mom is 90 and my daddy Tom is 92. My sisters and I worked so hard to help them with that move. Maybe we went overboard I mean because we were involved in every design decision at the new place hiring movers and contractors and picking colors and

putting things away and Organizing and saying this out loud right now. I think we might be Helicopter children, but whatever we got it done. I Got to say though. I was emotionally wrecked. There was a lot of anxiety about this move, you know, was it gonna be smooth? Were they gonna be happy? And I was feeling a lot of frankly,

inexplicable separation anxiety. And you know, I haven't lived with my parents in basically like half a century, so I'm not gonna claim that any of this has any rational basis, but a couple of things happened during this move. So just to give you a little background, my sisters and I, when we were growing up,

we lived near American University in Washington, DC. And they had, and still do have, an old clock tower there, and it would go off every hour. You know, the, dum dum dum dum, dum dum every hour. You know the dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb you know that? Okay so I'm at my parents new place helping them move in and I'm putting boxes and keepsakes in a storage shed and this is very nostalgic stuff. It has almost a magical quality. It's ephemera from my parents from our shared past. It's very emotional for me.

And then, all of a sudden, I hear this, dum dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum. There's a clock tower somewhere close by. I don't even know where it is. And it's going off, and it's exactly the same tune. You know? Dum dum dum dum. The sound of that, that sound, that was the sound of my childhood.

And hearing it in that moment, all these years later, my God, it just, it had this familiar, cozy, and at the same time, melancholic feeling to it. All right, so that happens. Then, after that, I go back from the storage shed to my parents' new cottage, and the number on their cottage is 3107. And it totally blew me away because the address number of our house in Washington, D.C., where we grew up up was 3710. And look, to me, it was kind of remarkable.

Now I know it's not the same number exactly, but it is the same four numerals. And this is a small coincidence, okay, tiny even, but I look for these signs that happen all around us. For me, they kind of confirm the mysteriousness of the world. Isabella Allende and I talked about that last year, right? You don't have to be religious to believe that there is mystery in this life. So somehow the combination of those numbers being related to one another and the clock tower gonging, this synchronicity,

it gave me a sense of real wellbeing, that something was at work here that felt correct and that I was being reassured. This move for my mom and dad, which is a loaded thing, moving into probably what is their last house, this transition was eased by that synchronicity. We pick up little random artifacts in our lives, images, numbers, sounds, smells,

mm, smells, my God, and each one marks a place and time, and we carry them forward with us. We bring them through our transitions, and when they bump into each other, there's a little comfort there. And sometimes a little comfort is a powerful thing. Anne Lamott says that holy rollers see coincidences

like the ones I just described as God working anonymously. And you know, maybe she's right. I take some solace. I take a lot of solace in these kinds of life coincidences. I just love them. And so today, we're talking to Ann Lamott. Hi, I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. And that really is what we do here. We talk to smart, thoughtful, funny, accomplished, wise women. And today is no different except, except I think it actually is a little different because today I'm talking to somebody who is kind of professionally wise, right?

I mean, what do you call somebody who is a spiritual and philosophical guide to millions of people? Somebody whose stock in trade is their ability to actually communicate wisdom and deliver enlightenment? You call that a sage, right? So get ready, guys, today we're talking to an actual modern sage. And she's not a bullshit sage either. She's the real deal. Even her bon-mos are secretly meaty. Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. I love that. It's simple, right? Hardly. And you'll find a million things like that in Anne Lamott's 20 books, 20, fiction and nonfiction. Her

writing just has this incredible mix of raw transparency and humor that hits you right in the gut. The first book of hers that I read was Operating Instructions, which she wrote about the first year of her son's life and which I read in the first year of my son's life, and I guarantee you we're going to talk about that today because it was a game changer for me. Her straightforward, open, honest, daring approach to her work is just unique. And she's not writing about easy stuff either. Her words on addiction, shaped by her own struggles, carry immense significance within the recovery community and have truly shifted perceptions on how we view sobriety and substance

abuse. And she's got one of those top to bottom amazing resumes, all kinds of awards and Guggenheim fellowships, fancy teaching positions, all these bestsellers, plus meaningful, important essays published in meaningful, important places. Look, let's face it, she's kind of perfect for this show, right? So I'm not going to waste any more time yakking away about Ann Lamott because it's time to talk to Ann Lamott.

Hello, Ann Lamott. I'm sorry that was so long. That went on forever. Apologies. Hi. Hello, love. I could listen to that all day. I'm happy to read it all over again. Okay, that'd be great. Thank you. Hi, I'm Julia, no, I'm kidding. So are you comfortable if we share your real age? Yeah. And what is your real age? My real age is 70. I'm a very young 70 though, except for physically and cognitively. So how old do you feel? I feel that I'm 47, except for my body, which things are sort of deteriorating slowly.

My feet and my hip hurt. So some mornings I wake up and I limp around like Walter Brennan, you know, but your inside person doesn't age, right? Your inside person is all the ages you've ever been and will be and shall be forever more. And so I trust my inside age more than the physical. Hey, can I ask you a question about your feet? Yes. We'll edit this part out, but what part of your feet are hurting?

Because I'm having this issue. Oh, I don't think you should edit this out. I think I have had planters off and on in my arch. Most people get it in their heel, but my arch hurts. I really limp. I was limping. It's getting better. But here's the thing.

You have to do what the doctor says, which I don't like to do. But what they say is you stay off it for a while. But I'm a little neurotic because I've also had a lifelong eating disorder. So I feel that if you don't get 10,000 steps a day, you can't tell where you're going to end up. So I would always get my steps and coincidentally, my feet wouldn't get better. And so, this is funny, my husband and I were in Cuba in the spring and my feet hurt. But I had been in this Cuban church and I was by myself and I stopped suddenly and I said to myself, what if I do what they

say? And it was so profound, I wrote it down, because I never do what they say. I kind of do reform what they say, right? So they say, stay off of it for a month, and I think, well, I'll do half as much walking for a month. And I started doing what they say, and my feet are so much better. But what helps is, if you have...

Where do your feet hurt? Well, it's the top of my foot. The top of it, that's funny. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I don't know if you can see, but see? Yeah, I can see. Right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know what's going on. Obviously, after we do this podcast,

I'm gonna call my doctor. Yeah, and then you have to do what they say. And I'm gonna do what he says, by the way. I'm gonna do what he says. And have you tried icing it? No, I haven't tried anything. Okay, here's what you do. You do the rice diet. You rest it. You ice it. You use a compression. Get a brace, one of those elastic braces at CVS, and you elevate it.

And do that for a few days and it'll be better. You also need to take Advil for the inflammation, if you ask me. And do you take insurance? I do. Yes, perfect. I take most insurance. Great. Well, I hope you take mine, because I'd really rather not pay for this out of network. Hi, guys.

Julia here. OK, just want to give you a quick update, in case you were concerned. I did go to the doctor after we recorded this podcast, and he diagnosed this problem as tendonitis. And he said that under no circumstances should I be icing the area. So, yeah, Dr. Lamont's advice was ill-advised, and I'm actually considering a malpractice suit of sorts.

But anyway, I still love her. So I guess the next question I was going to ask you is, what's the best part about being your age and I think I might answer it for you. I think Giving medical advice to people is might be one of your best best things about being your age Do you agree with me about that? Being my age means that everything has hurt at one point or another and I know what to do for a lot of different Everything has hurt at one point or another, and I know what to do for a lot of different ailments.

Yes. Everything, one of the things about being 70 is that everything has happened at least once, almost everything. Like you, I know you're very young, but... No, not really. Medium. Medium young. You're medium young.

By a certain age, we have all had unsurvivable losses, right? Oh, boy. Right? And I know how you come through them. I know what helps and I know what doesn't help. Little nice Christian bumper stickers don't help that God never gives you more to carry, blah, blah, blah. What a crock.

Yes. Bumper stickers and platitudes don't work. What works when somebody's going through unsurvivable loss is that you show up and you sit with them and you are willing to feel like shit with them and you don't try to get them to feel any better than they do for as long as it takes them. It could be years. Some losses we never recover from, but it's like having a badly broken leg where it heals, but you dance again, but with a limp. Yes.

And so I know what people, I know what life has to offer. And I no longer think that it's anything like in the movies or the ads. I know you don't buy it, rent it, lease it, achieve it. It's an inside job and it has to do with the inner healing of the spirit. And it has to do with having people that are not trying to get you to be a different person than you are or feel any differently than you are who look at you and say, God, I get it, me too, I've been there. Can I get you a cup of tea?

Right. Do you want to put your feet up in my lap? You know, I had cancer a few years back and that was my experience too. You know, I had a group of friends who would show up in that kind of way, even just to sit there. They didn't have to talk. I found that to be very comforting. They weren't saying things like, what can I do? Which is exhausting. It was just being there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so let's talk about your wonderful husband, Neil. You got married in 2019, right? Yes, I got married three days after I started getting Medicare. Yeah. Okay. Why? Social Security. I want to know why you decided, not because I don't think you should have, by the way,

that sounded kind of aggressive. I didn't mean it to. Why did you decide to get married at 65? We've been living together for a few years and he's really lovely and he changed my life and on our third date he taught me about this inner critic work. You know, I call it KFKD. I don't know if we can say that word on your part. We can. Oh, absolutely. In Bird by Bird I call it K Fucked Radio. And it's that singing stereo that out of the right hand speaker says, oh, you're different than, you're better than, you're certainly more humble than.

And then out of the left-hand speaker, it just says, you're a fraud, and that the jig is up and talk about beating a dead horse, and if people really got to know you too well, they'd run screaming for your cute little life. And he taught me to isolate this voice of K-Fuck Radio and to talk to it. And he taught me to say, oh, it's just you.

And then to kind of help it figure out somewhere else to go while I get that day's work done. And as soon as he taught me that, I thought, this guy's a keeper. Yeah, I love it. Talk about falling in love and how it felt falling in love in your 60s. If there is a difference between falling in love in your 60s, if there is a difference between falling in love in your 60s versus in your 20s and your 30s, is there? Well, we're different people, you know,

we're a little bit wiser. And I knew, when we hit it up the first date, I had come there anxious and uptight and guilty and full of shame, and I was instantly had a lot of relief. And so I thought, yo, and then we were jamming. We're just jamming the way you do with your best girlfriend. Yeah. And I had always held out for being with a man

who I would want to be best friends with if it was a woman. Yes. And before then, I had often been with men that I loved or I was addicted to or I liked to be with, but that wouldn't have been my best girlfriend. And Neil would have been because he's so real and so honest and so just funny. And so on about the 34th date, when I realized we were going to be talking for the rest of our life, I said, I want to keep this in the soda shop stage for a while. And we did.

And that, you know, when you're 40, 50, 30, you don't. It's like you immediately have all this adrenaline, you know, and you're kind of this tree, you have this energetic trance with the person, you know, when you start to, and it's like the vampire dance floor, it gets very smoky and a little bit of strobe lights and you get out there and it's like so much adrenaline.

You're getting down with the get down. You're getting down and you get so much adrenaline and you get the endorphins. So it's like a speed ball. And I thought I've been sober, cleaning sober 37 years. Bravo. And I don't want to get stoned on anything anymore, you know, except for maybe nature. And so we did, we got to know each other for a few weeks and it was very different and it was really fun.

I know that in your book, that's right, in the new book, I have all these books you've written, I'm surrounded by your books right now. And Neil said that 80% of everything that is true and beautiful can be experienced on any 10 minute walk. I love that. I love it. And I believe it's true. And I think I also might be in love with Neil. I've also fallen in love.

I hope you don't mind. No, no. What have you learned since you've gotten married? What have you learned about yourself, Ann? Ann or Annie? Can I call you Annie? Call me Annie, yeah. Everyone calls me Annie. Oh, you know, I've just learned that, you know, once I wrote in Bird by Bird that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It's the voice of the enemy. And I grew up with a lot of shame. I grew up with pretty unhappy parents who were married 27 unhappy years. I grew up looking very, very... Let's talk about

shame later too. It's my favorite topic. But I grew up with this crazy kinky hair and I got bullied a lot and people threw stuff at boys, threw stuff at me. And I mean, it was very crazy. So that my solution and something my parents encouraged was the perfectionism. I was always the best in my class. I was a tennis champion. I was, and it will make you sicker and more mentally ill and crazier than any other quality.

And so I learned little by little with Neil and then definitely after marriage, where let's face it, I was stuck with him. I learned how that life is just, you know, it's very messy and it's very real. The miracle of being older is that you might go to the same default places, minus this victimized self-righteousness

and this weaponized silence, but you move through it in two or three hours instead of months, and in one case, an entire decade. And that you know that you're gonna come through, you know that the problem is mental, but so I remember it's not them. It's like it's an inside job. I can choose serenity. I can pray for peace of mind.

I can pray to not be an asshole. Yeah. Amen to that. So tell me though, what was it like to have Neil enter your life with your family? Well, you know, Sam is very used to me being there for him and Jax. And so there was just a tiny, tiny bit of resistance to Neil. Jack, I mean, Sam has never been all that excited about long-term boyfriends, but with Neil and with Jax,

Jax liked him, he's great with kids. He's got a bunch of kids of his own. And so Jax was fine. You know, it's just like the, the, the mobile and that old, um, John Bradshaw family systems mobile where one thing happens, a person gets sober and every, all the figures on the mobile start to move again. And sometimes the strings get caught up in each other. And it was like that for a while. It sorts itself out, but it's really lovely.

Yeah. You know, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you how important operating instructions was to me personally. Wow. Thank you. It really was, Annie, because my, actually both of my kids, but my first son had colic and I had- Same, yeah.

No, I know. I just reread it and I was reliving it and it was so difficult. And I of course thought it was because of me and my bad mothering or bad something. You know, you talk about shame, right? And there was a me too part of that book comforted me away from all of it. And there was a quote that I pulled, where is it? Yeah, my heart is so huge with love,

I feel like it is about to go off. At the same time, I feel that he has completely ruined my life. Yeah. Yeah. And I know it's like all truth is paradox and I would feel like I literally would sacrifice my life for him and then I'd look over and think of him raising his ugly reptilian head, you know?

And then there's a part, I don't know if you remember it, where the colic was so bad and I just thought casually about bundling him up and putting him on the porch for the night so I could get one night's sleep. And every mother worth her weight in salt said, me too. Oh, yes. And you're just not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to say it. There was so much you weren't supposed to say that had to be said in that book.

It was critical. It was urgent that it was said. And it is such a shock to have a child in so many ways, in the most beautiful of ways and in the most difficult of ways too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, I wrote a follow-up to Operating Instructions because Sam had a baby at 19, and I wrote a book called Some Assembly Required. And I think it, I mean, if I had to go to a desert island, it's a book I would take because spiritually the toughest stuff I ever did was to have to let go of my son and to let him be the parent because I'm sure you're not like this with your children, but I think I have excellent

ideas for them. Oh, yes. I think I do too, by the way. Right, in all areas of their life. And that, you know, I finally heard someone say that help is the sunny side of control, but I didn't hear it in time for when Sam had an infant. That is great. Can you just describe the difference, if there is one? Yeah, when you're a mom, they don't leave. When you're a grandmother, they all leave at some point.

Right. And that's a blessing. And also, when you're a your grandmother you're older, I was a young grandmother I was 55 but you know, I didn't when Sam Sam called me the night before Thanksgiving in 2018 and said he was gonna be a father of course, I had 25 people coming and It was not on my bingo card it was not what my plan for him was right College was the plan and a little tiny, tiny bit of a career, like that would be so much skin off his nose. And so I was young. And Sam was a mess. He was a mess head and alcoholic. And so because I'm a black belt codependent, I also thought that what he should do next was to get sober and so on and so forth. What

he should do after that was to this, and what he should do after that. And I had all these plans. And some assembly required just so much about how the more you offer your plans for your children, the more they need to resist you, because you're crazy. And I really would, Sam is 34 now, and without my recovery program and a lot of therapy, I would be running alongside him on his hero's journey, you know, with Capri's son and lip balm and sunscreen. And that's an insult. That's disrespectful and it injures him and it injures me. But it injures our children to try to control them. So this book, Some Assembly, is where I kind of learned pretty much most days to stop trying

to control them. So you could have called it Just Shut the Fuck Up and Sit Down, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a great acronym in recovery for people with tiny, tiny control issues, and it's WAIT, W-A-I-T, why am I talking? And so I just sit there quietly and I think, I'm not going to compare, I'm not going to correct, I'm not going to complain, I'm just going to love these people, just love them,

love them, love them, and stay quiet. And it sounds like you've gotten better at it as time has gone on, correct? You get better. I mean, it's like learning to play a pickleball or a piano or something. You start off really badly and you take the action and the insight follows. The action might be not saying what you thought, what was on your tongue to say, and instead just kind of gently stroking your shoulder and saying, quietly to yourself, it's okay, honey. Why don't we get us a nice cup of tea until we settle? And then, yeah, you get better.

There is something about being a mom and having that focus and that grounding that is, when it's working well, it really takes you out of yourself. And that is one of the many blessings of being a mother, I think. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. We're going to take a short break right now. There's more with Ann Lamott on the other side. Say hello to your in real life makeup filter in a bottle CoverGirl Simply Ageless Skin Perfector Essence.

Have you ever had that moment when you discover a new beauty product that quickly becomes non-negotiable in your morning ritual? That's what you'll experience with CoverGirl Skin Perfector Essence. It's not just another makeup product, it's a brand new formula that has such incredible results you'll wonder how your makeup routine ever survived without it. CoverGirl is pushing the envelope with its cutting-edge micro droplet technology. The Skin Perfector Essence features tiny pigment capsules that explode on contact.

So it's hard to tell where your skin ends and the makeup begins. And with an infusion of 0.5% pacucci oil, a plant-based wonder that's gentler than retinol, you'll see the difference both immediately and long-term. The Skin Perfector Essence is also a hydration powerhouse with a formula that's 71% water, ensuring your skin stays refreshed for up to 24 hours and you'll have that enviable,

dewy finish. Plus, with 8 diverse shades to choose from, CoverGirl ensures everyone can find their perfect match. Choosing the Skin Perfector Essence is the best way to make sure your skin looks healthy inside and out. Clean, vegan, and cruelty-free, it will make you feel as good as you look. Through the CoverGirl experience where beauty meets innovation, you can feel confident in your skin every day.

Embrace the effortless beauty that comes with CoverGirl's Simply Ageless Skin Perfector Essence. Find your shade now, only from Easy Breezy Beautiful Cover Girl. How long do any of us really want to spend looking at labels in the supermarket? It's so time consuming. But when you're worried about quality, it's absolutely necessary. That's why we're so excited to tell you about a sponsor of our podcast, ButcherBox. They want to help you find meat you can trust

without the supermarket guesswork. They offer 100% grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, and wild-caught seafood, all humanely raised with no added antibiotics or hormones. They've put in the work connecting with farmers and providers to make sure that there's transparency across the board and it definitely comes through in the quality of the meat. Not only does ButcherBox ship straight to your door, they also offer free shipping. Plus, if you're loving your salmon, steaks, and beyond, you can opt in to exclusive member deals making quality cuts more accessible than ever. It's all in the details with ButcherBox. They even offer recipes in every box that will help complement whatever delicious proteins you're prepping. Sign up at

butcherbox.com slash wiser and get our special deal. ButcherBox is offering our listeners a free for a year offer plus an additional $20 off. Choose salmon, chicken breast, or steak tips free in every order for a year. Sign up today at butcherbox.com slash wiser and use code wiser to choose your free for a year offer. Plus get $20 off your first order. It's getting warmer, the sun is out, and you are all looking beautiful in your Pair Eyewear Sun Tops. If you haven't heard of Pair yet, they make eyewear that lets you switch up your style in a snap.

Pair Eyewear offers completely customizable frames. So you get one base pair and then as many top frames as you'd like, letting you change your style, color, and overall look instantly. With Pair, you're not just getting glasses, you're stepping into a world of ever-changing possibilities. The days of agonizing at the eyeglasses counter about which pair to commit to are over. Plus, they offer all sorts of fun design collabs like their new Star Wars collection. There are 21 designs which were all released on May the 4th,

classic fits for fans of all ages. With one pair, you get infinite possibilities, starting at just $60, including your prescription, and that's for men, women, and kids. And the sun tops start at just $30. Also, you can even use your pre-tax FSA and HSA dollars to pay for Pair. They want us to feel and look our best while still being able to see.

One Pair, infinite possibilities. Go to pairiwear.com and use code WISER for 15% off your first Pair. And support the show by mentioning that WISER than Me sent you in your post-checkout survey. That's pairiware.com code WISER. Let's talk about writing. Okay.

It would be horrible if we didn't really talk about that. Do you mind just briefly telling the story of the title of Bird by Bird and the story of where that came from? I love that story. Yeah, well, okay. When I was coming up in California, at the end, in fourth grade, you wrote your first term papers. Yes. And you have to do a bird paper. And so my older brother hated school and wasn't very good at it because he didn't care. And he had his bird paper and you have the whole semester to do that. And it was due the next day. This was a Sunday and it was due on Monday. And he hadn't started, he couldn't start. It was too much. Like any writing project you start. It's like an unassaulted ice floe. And he was in tears. And my older brother's

a tough guy, was a tough fourth grader. And my dad, who was a writer, sat down with him and put his arm around him and said, just take it bird by bird, buddy. And he taught him to read a little bit about chickadees, for instance. And then in his own words, which is the only way you can share what's inside of you to share with us. You write, tell us about chickadees and then find an illustration. Okay, next we're going to do great blue herons. I want you to read a couple pages of Audubon on great blue herons and then I want you to tell me in your own words about great blue herons. So that's where it comes from. Oh, I love it so much. It's such a beautiful expression, in fact.

My son had a teacher. It's not quite as beautiful, but she used to say, when he would get overwhelmed, she would say, just break it down into manageable parts, which is exactly what your dad was saying. Of course, you're known for your talks and your teachings on writing. Two things that you said really struck me.

One was the act of writing turns out to be its own reward. And publication is something you have to recover from. And I'm so struck by that, Annie, because you could really apply that to many things. Everything, yeah. It certainly is applicable to acting and producing and editing a film or a television show or anything. It's crunching it, crunching it, crunching it down. I was amazed at how universal those teachings are of yours.

Oh, well, thank you. Well, the publication is, it's that American fixation that what you seek is outside of you. That's right. And it's a perfectionism. And E.L. Doctorow, the great novelist, ragtime and book of Daniel. Of course. He said in Vanity Fair 20 years ago, he said, writing is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way. And that is the truest thing I know, whether it's about what you're working on, your production stuff, your creation stuff, or your spiritual life, being a mother, having a colicky baby. It's like driving at night with the headlights on and you can only see a little ways, but you

you can make the whole journey that way. It's hard. Some days are so hard. And one of the acronyms for shame in recovery is should have already mastered everything. And the terrible feeling you have when you haven't, when you have a colicky baby, when you have a very old parent, you know, how could we

know this stuff? But we think we're supposed to, right? I know. And that reminds me of the piece that I read that you recently wrote in the Washington Post about the beauty, I'm going to say the grace of not knowing. Yeah. I don't know. How could you know? Yeah. That really resonated with me. We think

like we have to know that getting the answer is what you're striving for, but maybe living in the unknowing is its own sort of blessing. Yeah. My mom had Alzheimer's and she was living an independent living but falling apart. And so we, my brothers and I were just trying to manage it all. And she also had diabetes and she'd sneak over to Safeway and steal bread and cookies and the cashiers would pay for it because she was such a lovable person. And then, and so we had this nurse and my brothers and were with her, and we said, oh, we don't

know what we're doing. We don't know how much longer she can, we don't know how to get her to stop eating the carbs and the sugar. And we don't know if she's even doing the insulin. We went on and on just in that grief, but also that self-doubt, that toxic self-doubt. And this gentle, gentle nurse looked at us and she said, how could you know? And that literally hadn't occurred to us. Well, that is incredible. How could you know? How could you know? And just so you know, at Thanksgiving this year, or this past Thanksgiving, I should say, I referenced that in a toast

that I made to our family. Because we, so thank you for sharing that as I start to cry. But the reason being is because we've got a lot of family stuff, people getting older, people are struggling with health in our family, different people. And so it's forgiving yourself for not knowing and being comfortable with not knowing is an okay place to be. And I think it's gorgeous. It's not only okay, it's the portal. It's the opening to something more spacious and more expansive, where there might be grace and there might be fresh air instead of, you

know, going over and over and over again, your ideas and your plans, none of which work. Right. Can you talk about how your writing changed after you got sober, Annie? Oh my God, let's see, I got sober when I was 32. I had published three books. I had, you know, I was born and raised in the same county I still live in, so I was loved out of all sense or proportion. And I just thought, I mean, my insights were like Swiss cheese from the bulimia, and I was addict and alcoholic and all that.

And I got sober July 7th, and I didn't think I'd be able to write again, because certainly what you learn is the writers you love most are alcoholics. Is this true, really? No, but I was raised by a writer, he was an alcoholic. His friends are alcoholics. Oh, I was gonna say. Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Shirley Jackson and Dorothy Parker and all the writers I love most

were very severe alcoholics. But anyway, I didn't know if I'd write again and that bad voice said, well, that's that. You can either get sober or you can keep on being a writer. And I decided to get sober because I thought I was going to die otherwise. And this guy said to me when I first got sober, he said, he said, at the end of my drinking, I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards. And I had gotten there. I had no more good ideas.

So I stopped drinking and for a while, nine months, just like what it takes to have a baby, I didn't think I could ride. And my friends and the sober women said, don't worry about it. Go to a meeting. Do you need a ride? Do you want to have coffee? Come with me. I'm coming over.

And I'd say, no, no, don't come over. Don't come over. They me. I'm coming over." And I'd say, no, no, don't come over. Don't come over. They'd say, I'm coming over. Because your mind is a bad neighborhood and you shouldn't be in it alone. And they'd come over. And so I wrote my first book, my novel, which is called All New People, which is in many ways, I think the best thing I've ever written. But it's the first thing I wrote sober. And I've had this strange feeling one day that this story was inside of me. And I felt that it had come and was tugging on the sleeve of my sweater. And it was trusting me to get it right finally, because I wasn't drunk. I didn't think I could

write without it. I didn't and it tugged on my sleeve. And it said, you know, bird by bird. I always had my writing students get one-inch picture frames and give them to, or two-inch picture frames, give them to each other to remember you just have to do that one passage that you can see through the one-inch picture frame, that one scene. That's all you have to do today. So I started doing that. I started slowly doing what I've always told my writing students. And you do it badly, you do shitty first drafts, and then you do a better second first draft, and then you do a really decent second draft

and give it to someone to read. So it was really slow, it's a long road back, and I did it one day at a time with a lot of help, with very profound people along the way. I am in awe of the courage that that took and the, I just admire you so tremendously and I really, I have a sister who unfortunately died of a drug overdose and I really wish I could have gotten you and your people together with her because I think, well, anyway, it is what it is. But I do admire you. I'm in awe of the strength

that that took and the power that that took. That's a lot of power. That's a lot. It's a lot of help too. And if you ever said to me, Annie, I need you to go to New York or Chicago because I have a niece and we're afraid she's going to die and I want you to spend a couple days just having walks with her, I would go as God as my witness. You know, I'm a Sunday school teacher and I mean it, I'd go like that. Well, that's very sweet. Because that's what the women, that's what the sober women did for me. They said there's literally nothing, no way that you need help

that I won't try to get you that help. So, yeah. Angels, angels. I know, angels, angels. Angels, angels. We'll get more wisdom from Anne Lamott after this break. ["The New World"] When you think about it, half the time you're traveling during a vacation is spent on the way back home.

That's why Delta Airlines dedicates itself to making you feel at home long before you actually get home. It's not just a flight, it's part of your journey. Delta Airlines has put in the effort to make each flight experience really stand out. From the moment you board, you're welcomed by an Uber friendly staff. They'll help you settle in to enjoy over a thousand hours of in-flight entertainment and fast, free Wi-Fi available for all SkyMiles members. And it's not just about staying

connected or entertained. Delta Airlines offers premium snacks and beverages too. That means herbal tea, sparkling wine, and more. Delta's caring service and curated travel comforts always round off your trips on a positive note. It's like they know exactly what you need to unwind and prepare to come home. And whether it's the bamboo cutlery or the nutrient-packed organic snacks, Delta Airlines continuously innovates for a more sustainable world, making sure every part of your journey feels thoughtfully considered.

They even have gluten-free options. Delta Airlines believes you should feel at home, even if you're 30,000 feet above it. Learn more at delta.com. As spring starts to set in, it's the perfect opportunity to revitalize your workout routine. That's where Peloton steps in, guiding you into summer with fun, flexible workouts. And the famous Peloton instructors will definitely motivate you to be your best self this season. With Peloton, it doesn't matter if your calendar is packed.

There are classes as short as five minutes. This flexibility means you can always find time to stretch, sprint, or strengthen, no matter your schedule. What's really different about Peloton is how they meet you where you are. They have everything from walking to yoga and when you're ready to start challenging yourself and feel the burn they have Pilates, HIIT and biking. Peloton offers personalized recommendations and curated programs that take the guesswork out of your workout. Every day is a fresh opportunity to invigorate your routine in the way

that suits you best whether that's running, cycling in your living room, rowing your heart out, or lifting weights. Peloton believes that it should all be accessible, meaning you can find the workout that actually works for you. So why wait for summer to start feeling vibrant and energized? Get a headstart on summer with Peloton at OnePeloton.com. If you travel a lot for work or vacations, you might be familiar with that feeling you get knowing you're leaving your space unused for stretches of time. But hosting on Airbnb means you don't have to leave your home sitting empty when you're away.

Being an Airbnb host isn't just a way to earn some extra cash, it's a chance to share your space and make some future guests' vacation all the more memorable. You might not think your place is right, but don't write it off just yet. Your potential Airbnb might be right in front of you. Whether it's a cozy guest house, a spare room, or even your entire home, there's an opportunity waiting. Plus, if you spend a good part of the year away from your home, it might be an excellent lifestyle fit. Airbnb turns your home into a practical

and even profitable venture. Who knows, your place might become someone's trip highlight, sparking rave reviews, and you can use the extra cash to book a vacation of your own. So, if you're curious about hosting on Airbnb, find out how much your space could be worth or visit airbnb.com slash host. It could be the start of a whole new chapter for your home. Go to airbnb.com slash host. By the way, on the first season of this show, our first guest was Jane Fonda. I love her.

I love her. And I love her. And she loves you and she quoted you. She quoted you. She said, no is a complete sentence, as Anne Lamott said. And here's the incredible thing. At the end of the season, our final guest was Carol Burnett, and she quoted you too. No way.

I swear to God. No way. Yeah. Oh my God, I have to write that down. Isn't that cool? Yes. Yeah. Wow.

Love that. Yeah. Which is, it's a fabulous expression. It's a fabulous idea. But also, I get the sense that you're a yes person, that you're somebody who said yes to a lot of things in life. Is that right? I mean, you teach Sunday school, you're church, you write, you're in the recovery community, you take care of your grandson. So, what are you saying no to? Because it seems to me you're really saying yes a lot, which I also admire. Well, I say no to things that I really don't want to do. I say no to things that I'm only

used to agree to do so people would like me more because before recovery, I got all of my value from how other people thought about me. And if I was of value to other people, then I felt that I was a person of value. But I say no now to stuff that is just damaging to me. I do, as an older woman, have less energy than I used to. And so I say no to trips, even if they pay well, if there's not a nonstop. You know, I don't want to do that anymore. And so I say no to a lot more things

that people ask me to do, because you know what I want to do? I want to be at home. I want to be in my funny little town. I want to be with the people that I have, my spiritual and walking and pickleball life and Sam and Jackson and Neil and the kitty and the dogs. And you know, I just want to, I just, I'm caught a lot of the striving, but it's a huge change. As you get older, is that the striving really quiets down, you know?

Oh, interesting. And the being grows, the longing for the being, you know what E.E. Cummings called the human merely being, instead of the human doing and the, and the impressing people and moving my numbers up and getting... The striving is just organically quieted down for every single person I know. Yeah, the pond of the striving settles down and you kind of think, well, I can give you an image in the Hebrew Bible, the famous Psalm 23, that ends, my cup runneth over, before recovery and before I got older, it's like I had this cup, this chalice, and I ran around trying to get everybody's overflow because I had such shaky self-esteem and such a raging ego,

you know, this terrible ping pong game going on. And as you get older, you stop running around trying to get other people's leftovers and you start letting your own cup be filled up with that that really hydrates and nurtures you and fills your cup with love and memories, sweet memories, you know? You start making sweet memories instead of working on your flabby thighs. And I think, you know, another thing that you talk about in your writing is breathing, which also resonates with me because there have been moments in my life where, you know, everything feels like it's so bad that you can't escape it.

You can't get your head away from it. I mean, like, it feels like you physically cannot escape. And in those moments, I have found that if I can just remind myself that I can still breathe, I'm still able to get breath. So I'm not, even though it feels like I'm suffocating, I'm actually, I can breathe. Yeah, you could put your hand on your tummy and just breathe into your hand. Yeah, just breathe. Yeah. But I'll tell you the most perfect breathing mantra and exercise I know. I have this tape to my bathroom.

That's how you know it's important. It's Thich Nhat Hanh who just died maybe a year ago. But he has this mantra and exercise and he says, breathing in, I calm myself. You take a deep breath, breathing in, I calm myself, and then breathing out, I smile. And it's not a big phony smile, it's a tiniest smile, like Mona Lisa, or just a tiny smile of, oh, thank God, I'm breathing again. And you do that for three minutes, you go breathing in, I calm myself, breathing out, I smile, and it breaks the trance. It breaks that terrible hook into your mind that is spinning like the rat exercise wheel.

And I promise you, it connects you umbilically to something beautiful and outside, outside, surrounding and indwelling us. But you do three minutes. So... I'm totally doing that. I love it. Yeah, yeah. And it's not like a 20-minute meditation. No.

You can get it done in three minutes and get on with it. I love it. Okay. We've run out of time, of course, which is a bummer, because I could talk to you forever, although I'm sure you have a million other things to do. Let me ask you a couple of really quick questions that we sort of end with, if that's all right. Sure. Is there something you go back and tell yourself at 21?

Oh, wow. I would tell myself, you are so beautiful as is. You don't need to change a thing. You don't need to worry about your hair or what your butt looks like. You don't need to worry about anything inside of you. This is an inside job. That's what I tell my Sunday school kids. It's an inside job. You are loved and chosen as is. And I would have said, there is nothing that any man out there can ever say to you or think about you that matters an angstrom unit. It is not out there. It is not what they think is of value in a person. What is a value in a person

is what you learned at those women's meetings. What you learned is that all of your feelings are okay. It's okay to be mad. It's okay to feel really ugly inside. It's going to heal you. You're angry. And it's okay to be grief-struck. When I was coming up in the 50s, women couldn't be angry or grief-struck. They were exiled. They were either institutionalized or divorced. And then the men all got cute new 15-year-old wives, you know?

And so I would say all of that stuff inside of you is the way home. Talk to another person about it. Talk to an older woman about it. And I think that's probably the most important thing that I would have said is that we're starting over. We are starting over as of now. And this is a new page. And from now on, it's what we think about us that we're going to go by. Oh, I love that. And I'm not going to ask you one more question because that is just like the perfect wisdom to end this conversation on. I just am in awe of you and I thank you for being here today. You are such a dreamboat.

You are a positive dreamboat. Thank you, love. Oh, that was so much good stuff. I got to get my mom on zoom and process all of this. Hi, mommy. Hi, sweet. Okay. So today we had the great pleasure of talking to Annie Lamott. And I know you're a fan of her work. Absolutely.

So she's 70. And I was asking her about, because she's a grandma, the difference between being a mom and a grandma. And she was saying, the thing about being a mom is that they never leave. What's your take on that? How would you characterize the difference in the mother relationship versus the grandmother relationship? And for our listeners, my mom has three daughters, myself included, and then five grandchildren. Parenting requires, it's a big responsibility and you have all kinds of worries and so forth. But with your grandchildren, there's a sheer joy because as she says, they go home at night. In other words, it's like taking care of somebody else's garden, but it's their garden to

really tend. And that releases you from the kind of worry and the tension of being a parent, and you have the sheer joy of everything from their first immersion, the first time you see them coming out with a little wet hair and all the things along the way. It's not that you don't have any worries about them, but compared to being a parent, it's just like having the sheer joy of every moment that you're with them is because you know that you're not the final vote. Mm-hmm. Wow. I think that that makes complete sense and that's something to look forward to. She was saying that in terms of her parenting, she's somebody who really wants to fix things and get in there and offer her help and she said, and the more that she tried in the past

to offer help, the more resistance she got from her son. And there's this acronym called WAIT. I think it's something from AA that she sort of falls back to a lot. And it stands for, why am I talking? That's so good. Yeah, it's a good one. and it stands for, Why am I talking? That's so good. Yeah, it's a good one. That's a good one.

Why am I talking? I think that's very interesting. And to turn it on its side, I would say that, you know, you girls have helped us move into this place that we've come to. Yeah. And you've done so many things and so many things. And so I was talking to your sister today and she, and I was talking about something that doesn't work.

And she said, oh, I'll call and I'll take care of that. And I said, listen, you're so wonderful, but it makes me weak if you are going to do all of the, I mean, it's time for me to start the struggle and do the adjusting here. Yes. And if somebody else is always coming in to save you and to save you from struggle and so forth, it makes you weak.

Right, right. Or if you give in to that. So I think that's sort of interesting that I felt that at this age. Yeah, isn't that funny? And we felt the need to get in there and, uh, help and make decisions for you and daddy, um, it's so it's a real role reversal. It is a complete role reversal. Yeah. But also, um, it's one that is, you have to worry the same way you worry about over parenting, right? So I've over, I've over same way you worry about over parenting.

Right. So I've over parented you is what's happened. Not saying that. You are a little, but that's okay. I get what you mean. I totally get it. Well, it was interesting just being with you and your sisters and having all these decisions that, you know, were and so forth. And that's,'s and by the way it's critical because we're old and it would have been the the uh the move was very difficult for us at this age yeah so it was essential that you guys do that but also it's essential now that we take take charge of our of ourselves and of our situation yes yes yes remember we got tied a big thing of tide and of our situation. Yes, yes, yes. Remember we got tied, a big thing of tied, and I tried to do a laundry today and I couldn't find it.

I was gonna call you and say, where'd you put the tied? Did you find it? I opened up looking for some toothpaste and I found it. Good for you, mama. I know, I felt like a huge success. I got my PhD. You got your PhD in life.

Okay, mom, I love you so much. Have fun in your new digs. Oh, thanks honey. And thanks for helping me with my new digs. You're welcome. I love you. Call me if you need to find things. I'll find them for you. Okay. I'll find them for you.

There's more Wiser Than Me with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content from each episode of the show. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts. Make sure you're following Wiser Than Me on social media. We're on Instagram and TikTok at wiserthanme. And we're on Facebook at wiserthanme podcast. Wiser Than Me is a production of Lemonade Media created and hosted by me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This show is produced by Chrissy Pease, Jamila Zaraa Williams, Alex McOwen, and Oja Lopez. Brad Hall is a consulting producer.

Rachel Neal is VP of New Content, and our SVP of Weekly Content and Production is Steve Nelson. Executive producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Cramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Barber, and our music was written by Henry Hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel and, of course, my mother, Judith Bowles. Follow Wiser Than Me wherever you get your podcasts, and if there's a wise

old lady in your life, listen up. This episode of Wiser Than Me is brought to you by Makers Mark. Makers Mark makes their bourbon carefully, so please enjoy it that way. Makers Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45% alcohol by volume. Copyright 2024, Makers Mark Distillery, Incorporated, Loretto, Kentucky. Hey, wiser than me listeners, we want to hear from you. By just answering a few questions on our listener survey, you can share feedback about show content you'd like to see in the future and help us think about what brands would serve you best. And even better, once you've completed the survey, you can enter for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card. The survey is short and sweet and will help

us play ads you don't want to skip and keep bringing you content you love. Just go to lemonautomedia.com slash survey, lemonautomedia.com slash survey.