Elise Loehnen: The 7 Deadly Sins and the Crown of Sadness

Should you stop being “good”? 

 

According to the 7 deadly sins, a “good person” needs no rest, has no appetite, has no desires, puts themselves last, and is never upset. 

 

NYT best-selling author Elise Loehnen says we spend most of our energy denying the needs and instincts that make us human - like our needs for love, connection, success, and rest. 

 

It’s hard to be “ok” when you’ve spent a lifetime denying your own needs.

In this episode we cover: 

• How the 7 deadly sins morphed into a rulebook for everyday life
• Who does she think she is?! 
• Is the sin of greed keeping you from making friends?
• Why the most harmful thing you can do to a woman is destroy her reputation
• Why don't we allow men to be sad? (it’s not what you think)
• The grief in how much time you’ve lost trying to be good

 

Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.

 

“You can't interrupt the status quo alone. This is communal work.” - Elise Loehnen

 

Related episodes:

⁣Horse Barbie & Cultivating Trans Joy with Geena Rocero

 

Book Bans, Grief, and Love: What Do These Have to Do With Social Movements? with Malkia Devich-Cyril

 

Follow our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @refugeingrief and @itsokpod on TikTok. Visit refugeingrief.com for resources & courses

About our guest:

Elise Loehnen is the author of the New York Times bestseller, On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good. She’s written for The Oprah Magazine, Stylist, and The New York Times, and hosts the podcast, Pulling the Thread. Find her @eliseloehnen 

 

About Megan:

Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. The best-selling book on grief in over a decade, Megan’s It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, is a global phenomenon that has been translated into more than 25 languages. Her animations and explainers have garnered over 75 million views and are used in training programs around the world. Find her @refugeingrief

 

Additional resources:

Elise’s NYT best seller: On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good

 

Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief co

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
These are in me. These are so intensively in me.
I police myself, and as I came to understand, I
police other women because culture. Culture is contagious. It has
long tails, it is long teeth, and it is in us,
and we pass it on to each other like a virus.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, best
selling author Elise Lunan on the price women pay to
be good, how these seven deadly sins might be keeping
you from making friends, and why we don't allow men
to be sad, settle in everybody. All of that and
a whole lot more coming up right after this first break.

(00:49):
Before we get started, one quick note, Well, we cover
a lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together.
This show is not a substitute for skilled support with
the licensed mental health provider or a professional supervision related
to your work. Hi, friends, This week it is all
about these seven deadly sins. Sort of, it's sort of

(01:12):
about the seven deadly sins, but really it's about the
things we long for, things like love and connection and
success and rest, among other things. Alise Lunan's best selling
book on Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins, and
the Price Women Pay to be Good. She explores the
ideas we've all inherited about how we are supposed to
behave regardless of gender, and what we're supposed to want,

(01:36):
or more precisely, what we're not supposed to want. Now,
before you think that this episode is just going to
be really heady theoretical conversations, it's actually quite personal. Alisa
and I talk about envy and competition and who is
allowed to be at the top of the success ladder.
We also get to talk about why women are often

(01:57):
seen as fundamentally caddy, which is a really cool conversation.
We talk about our fears of being judged as too needy,
too loud, too full of ourselves, and how all of
that stuff keeps us from making friends. I told you,
it gets really personal. We also get into the lost
sin of sadness, which is a fascinating concept that I

(02:18):
didn't know about. Somebody who I kind of pride myself
on knowing all things sadness no idea about the relationship
between sadness and the Seven Deadly Sins. So we get
into that lost sin of sadness and what that means
for men and boys. Now, whether the Seven Deadly Sins
have been part of your religious tradition or not, they're
part of our inherited, internalized cultural traditions, so they affect everybody.

(02:43):
You'll leave this conversation with a new perspective and hopefully
a lot of questions about your own true desires and
what stands in the way of the life that you
long for. In addition to her New York Times bestseller
On Our Best Behavior, Elise Lunan has and for Oprah magazine,
l Decorps, other media outlets, and she's the host of

(03:04):
the super cool podcast Pulling the Thread. So if you're
interested in these sort of conversations about complex interrelated issues,
check out Pulling the Thread. Because who she is our people,
Elise is smart and insightful and thoughtful and kind, and
I think you're going to love her and this conversation.
So let's get to it. My conversation with Elise Lunan

(03:27):
and the Price we pay to be good Ellis. I
am so thrilled to have you here. It will surprise
no one that we have been chatting forever before we
officially get rolling that.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Was supposed to be a secret.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Sh don't tell anyone that Megan really loves to talk
to all of her friend guests. Anyway, I was telling
you before we got rolling that I had a really
hard time narrowing down the things that I wanted to
talk to you about, because the intersection of the things
that fascinate you and the things that fascinate me is
largely a circle. So there are a million places we

(04:05):
could begin, but because your book is the sort of
the anchor for so many of those things, I want
to start there and then we'll move on beyond that.
So to get everybody on the same page, could you
introduce us to the Seven Deadly sins and the human
needs and desires that are sort of the opposite sides
of those.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah. So, because I had to be reminded of what
the seven Deadly Sins were when I as I was
coming into this idea and trying to understand this code
of goodness and how it's come to circumscribe the lives
of women, and ultimately I came to the Seven Deadly Sins,
which reads like a punch card of all of the
human instincts, appetites, and desires, that we have been programmed

(04:48):
to deny. So they are slaw, pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust,
and anger. And then and we can get an to
the history or not. But originally before these were the
cardinal vices, they were never in the Bible. They were
called eight demonic thoughts, and the eighth with sadness, and

(05:11):
it fell off the list. I write about it in
the book, as you know. But those are these deadly vices,
things to be avoided. And this isn't a book that's
like a stunty let's just go and spend a year
being lustful and greedy and gluttonous. This is about reconciliation

(05:32):
and balance. And in our quest for this externally adjudicated
idea of goodness, what it is to be a good woman,
A woman who needs no rest, has no appetite, has
no wants, has no desires, is never upset that in
this quest to sort of achieve this golden ring of

(05:53):
goodness and our patriarchal society, we spend all of our
energy denying all of these instincts that make us human
and denying the very facts of what it is to
be alive.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I love that You're like This isn't just a
book about go indulge your lust for the next year, Like,
it's not that. It's more of a let's look under
the hood of these things, and why are there rules
for how to behave? And why are their rules around

(06:29):
not being hungry? And why are their rules around not
wanting things in your life?

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (06:36):
And exactly that these rules, And this is the thing
that what I really wanted to express in this book
is that this is about cultural programming. This is about
internalized patriarchy and internalized misogyny. And much like internalized racism,
you don't necessarily subscribe. You're not consciously choosing. You're not

(06:58):
saying like, I abide, I abide.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Like but this you didn't check off the terms and
the terms and conditions.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, no, terms and conditions exactly. You know. I was
raised in a largely secular, very progressive, alternative family. I
have a feminist husband, et cetera, et cetera. These are
in me. These are so intensively in me. I police myself,
and as I came to understand, I police other women

(07:26):
because culture. Culture is contagious, It has long tails, it
is long teeth, and it is in us and we
pass it on to each other like.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
A virus, not even thinking about it. And I think,
like we'll use an example here. I love that you
brought up like I police it in myself and I
police it in other people. There's something you said about
like it's like an internal cattle proud like reminding me
of my place, right. And I think a really good
example of how this shows up because I think that

(07:55):
people can hear this and be like, I don't get
what you're talking about. Right when you see you're scrolling
through your Instagram feed and when you see some women
being proud of themselves or being really confident in being
out there and really expressing themselves, like, there is a
part of you that like is like, who the hell
does she think she is? Like? Or how like what

(08:17):
is she doing wearing that? Like? Ooh, right, that's what
we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yes, it is the projection of like all of that
badness that we are our quote unquote badness that we
are suppressing. And yeah, I talk about the cattle proplem.
And here's an easy example in the chapter on sloth,
which I don't I think every single woman can relate to.
I really don't know any women who are lazy or
leading particularly RESTful lives I write about. You know how

(08:45):
my husband pointed out to me that in the twelve
years that we've been married, I've never been able to
sit and watch a TV show with him for more
than twenty minutes before I am up. I'm going to
get my computer, I am starting some laundry, I'm going
to go do some dishes, anything. I'm going to do anything,
because I feel so uncomfortable not being productive. And what

(09:09):
the aha for me is, you know, we can look
at all the social science about the disparities between men
and women in the workforce in terms of who's putting
in more sort of carrying hours, or who's putting in
more hours in general, certainly at home, right all of
the science, the only time that men fathers in same
sex marriages outstripped mothers is when the mother is the

(09:33):
sole breadwinner. And even then I think she might do
more housework. I can't remember. It's sunning and sad, but
this is what I writing this book made me understand.
I had so much rage against my husband because of
course these disparities exist in our relationship as well. We're
not special. And then I had to realize as I

(09:55):
was writing the book, like he's not actually demanding, asking
or even wanting me to make dinner five nights a week,
and like polish our floors. This is me. These are
my own internal standards about what it is to be
a good woman, a good mother, and a good partner.
And they are insidious.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, they really are. And I love the questioning of like,
wait a second, why am I doing this? Is this
an external demand? Is this an unspoken expectation? Because sometimes
that's in there as well. Yeah, but also like just
that taking that step outside of things and going why
am I doing this? What makes me feel like I
have to do this?

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Right?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Just that space of being curious about where it comes from.
I think this is the special magic of your book
is that it gets people to make that space to
be curious. Right, Yeah, do these things live in me?
And if they do, where do I see them showing up?

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah? And most likely they do, because you know, as
a progressive woman who's interested, like you in social justice
and a more equitable world. What I also found is
that I would be having conversations, sometimes great conversations sort
of on my podcast or previous jobs about the world

(11:17):
and we would be talking about the patriarchy and talking
about it as an it in a day and a
la la la la la. And then I was like,
you know what, like, what is it? Is it? Oz?
Who is behind the curtain? Isn't Mitch McConnell, you know?
And I could sort of in my own life identify
patriarchal men. Certainly I could definitely identify patriarchal women. And

(11:40):
yet in my own experience, despite like and then obviously
there are sort of the big cultural misogynistic men, et cetera,
and women, but I couldn't find it in my own life. Again,
to that point that I made about my husband, I
would look at the male bosses I've had, I would,
I just couldn't find. I couldn't source in a way

(12:01):
that explained to me the chasm for women between where
we are and where we should be. And then when
you look at all the social science research, it's quite
clear that women are as hard on other women, if
not harder significantly than men. Because we'll say things like well,
I just I expect more from women, again relying on

(12:23):
this cultural idea of quote unquote goodness and these ideas
of what it is to achieve that which is typically
out of anyone's reach, doesn't allow for anyone's humanity, anyone's learning.
We certainly see this in the way that we cancel
each other, destroy each other, criticize each other with very

(12:45):
little generosity typically.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, oh, that lack of generosity.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
I know a lot of the interviews that you've been
doing are focused on the envy chapter, so we're not
going to spend a lot of time in that, but
I think we want to bring that in here for
a second.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
It's important because it's so it's for women unfortunately, right.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Like the whole like you're too big, you're too loud,
you're paid too well, all of this stuff, and we
want to cut that down.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, which is it's the beginning the Gateway Sin. And
it's funny because the Gateway Sin.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Is that what you just said?

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I said, it's the Gateway Sin. It's really where
I started the book and was wondering if this wasn't
sort of all of it before, all of this idea
of all of the reasons that women are so hard
on other women, and then I sort of looked at
it contextually and was like, where did it come from?
What is it. Oh, it's a sin. And then I
was like, oh my god, this is the house, like
envy might be one of the might be the closet

(13:39):
in the master bedroom, but then they all live in
this this house, this structure for women that's quite oppressive,
but envy. It started with this conversation with Lori Gottlieb,
who you are probably friends with as well, and a
psychotherapist who wrote, maybe you should talk to someone, and
she said she tells her clients to pay attention to
their envy because it tells them what they want. And

(14:02):
I just like, for whatever reason, it was a small moment,
but I just couldn't get out of my head and
thought about it for six months, nine months before I
started even working on the proposal for the book, running
through it, running through it in my daily interactions, because
I realized that I envy felt so gross to me,
so bad that I refused to acknowledge it, and so

(14:24):
I had to wonder where I was projecting it. And
then this what I could infer is that I was
projecting it on the people who were inspiring my envy,
and I was deprecating them to make myself feel better.
So it was that I don't like her. She rubs
me the wrong way. Who does she think she is?

(14:45):
I didn't think her book was that good. I don't
know why people are so into it. Whatever form, we
can all recognize. And this again, the book is about
sort of culture versus nature. This is one of those
things about women that culturally we've been told that's just
who you are. You're all catty, bitch. Yeah, you know,
you're all bitches. You're all stabbing each other in the back.

(15:08):
We can talk about anger and how we're conditioned for
covert aggression and whispering and backstabbing in alliance building because
we're not allowed to be overtly angry or aggressive. But
I resist that. But that's the sort of conversation. Oh,
that's just how women are that keeps us stuck in
these cycles. And when I actually looked at it, I

(15:29):
was like, oh, right, these women who are tormentors quote
unquote mentors are pushing on a dream that I have
for myself. They are shining a light, they are full
of information. They are doing something that I want to do,
or they have something that I want to have. And
this is my soul knocking and saying, do the thing.

(15:50):
What are you doing? Do the thing. So it's an
amazing information that transition from E. Gross, I'm gonna diminish
you because your light makes me feel bad versus oh wow,
like I want to understand what you're doing? How are
you doing this? How can I do this too?

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, there's something in our longings in that. Yes, right,
there's something so deep in our longings, like the things
that you get into those like white hot rages of
how dare she? But her book isn't that good? And
like I started this and like all of this, Yeah,
this stuff that comes out of really a feeling of
there is something here that I want that I don't

(16:33):
feel like I'm being given, or that you know, this
isn't fair, or he's there, here is something I'm longing for.
And can I recode my understanding of that spark of envy,
that spark of she's not all that? Can I recode
that for myself to I like that you say my
soul is knocking here. It's like the doorbell of your

(16:56):
desires is getting wrong right.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Swing it's literally early calling. Yeah, and it can sound
like an annoying ring, but when you are like, oh,
that is my calling saying step into this, like stop it,
step forward, do it?

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, well, even just articulate your longings, right, because one
of the things you talk about in the book is
like it's not always obvious, but like we are in
so many ways conditioned out of our longings, conditioned out
of desire for anything.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Sure, yes, I mean, do you know what you want today? Right?

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Like? I mean, I that might not be the most
fair question for me, as a relentless self investigator and
a therapist who's used to asking those questions, because I
may not know what I want, but I know that
I want, right, So that may not be the I
may not be the fairest person for that question, but

(17:55):
I think recognizing that there are things that I long
for that I see other people appear to have. I
don't know what's true under the hood, but they appear
to have it. And all of my reactions to the
reflection of somebody who has something I long for, like

(18:18):
they're all valid and they're all information, and sometimes somebody's
success or whatever in whatever realm pisses me off so
much that it identifies a longing for me that I
didn't know I had. Yeah, right, So I guess my
very long winded answer. There is I know a lot
of what I want, but there's a lot that I'm

(18:38):
not aware of that is probably acting under the surface
in things.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
And those tones because what I think people will find
because you can reverse engineer I didn't know what I
wanted even though it was so obvious. You know, it's
like hello, but you can reverse engineer it. You know.
I've had this conversation sort of with friends on where
they're like, I don't really know what I want to do,
and I'm like, we'll see who's driving you crazy. This
is not to say, like Marjorie Taylor Green is driving

(19:07):
you crazy because she's doing harmful.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Behavior that we're not talking about that kind of r you.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Can identify if you can identify the problematic behavior, it's
not envy, but it's this when you have sort of
that like this person the very essence irritates me. Something
is there's information there, but you can reverse engineer it.
You know, who's sort of like who's irking you because
maybe you feel like they're in your lane somehow, and

(19:36):
then move towards that and just get curious because I
think what happens is we're so ashamed of these bad feelings.
We don't let them come up. We don't diagnose them,
we don't allow them. That's the other great revelation for
me was just sitting with a discomfort and being like,
what's happening in my body? Why is this person?

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Like?

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Why am I agitated? Why am I irritated? What's happening?
Let's just like be present doing that self inquiry for
a minute two minutes, and then you're like, ah, okay,
rather know it feels worse in this quest for goodness
deprecating someone else.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, right, then you're just stuck in it like that
is that's the seventh level of hell right there?

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
We've been talking with a Last Lunan, author of the
New York Times best selling book On Our Best Behavior.
Let's get back to it. I love the permission giving
in there to be curious about the emotions and the
sensations and the thoughts that are arising, right Like, that's
good medicine in there, because it's not like, notice this
stuff and then heap some judgment on yourself for coveting

(20:55):
what somebody else has, right Like, no, like it's not
we're not talking about judgment for being covetous. We're talking
about information has arrived and can you be.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Cremation has arrived? Yeah, And there's always cultural context. What
I loved about writing this book is that the sins
like they also crash into each other. So envy is
very closely related to greed and this idea of scarcity
that is so dominant in women's lives, particularly around opportunity,
this sort of tokenism, tokenism that because this person has it,

(21:29):
it means I can't. There's only ever one woman, yes, right,
so in order to have it, I had to destroy her,
to throne her, rather than saying, okay, she has it,
therefore I can have it to move over men, like
we're going to take over more space.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
That is a conversation, really fascinating detail that I had
not thought of. I've been thinking a lot about that
competition for resources, right, Like if they have success, it
means less for me. It's like that, Like it's like pie,
right Like if you have it, I don't get any
But I hadn't thought of it, like there is only

(22:04):
ever allowed to be one successful woman in the room
because all of the other spots are taken by men.
Fascinating layer to that interesting in just it's very in
our conscience consciousness that there's really like there's some box

(22:24):
to check, there's a quota.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah, and it's real. I'm not saying that it's not
a real event. And particularly in business, however, instead of saying, okay,
then I'll let's just maintain that quota and I'll replace
her in myself and guard against other women, it is
a function of questioning that foundational idea and saying no,

(22:51):
she's saying, and I'm joining, and the requirement for women
because I think so often we're like we perceive men
as the ones to whom we as the other and
then but really we're like sort of doing this in
fighting while maintaining the status quo and sort of giving

(23:12):
face to this idea that we're supporting other women, but
like the evidence isn't quite there, but we really need
to do that because we are not only half the population,
if not more. I don't know the latest demographic stats,
but many of us are primary breadwinners. There's just no
other real accounting for the discrepancy other than like, let's

(23:34):
get behind each other. I think that's our greatest hope. Yeah,
let's get behind each other.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
I love that it's a little bit of a sidebar here,
but I think that this is something that I've been
seeing happen in different social justice or activist communities in
issues right, like how dare you care about this over
here while the forests are burning? How dare you care
about this while this is happening? And when I watch

(23:58):
that unfolding in the world, and when I watch for
that impulse in myself, it's like, we need all of
these things, Like we don't need to be infighting against
each other, Like can we look at each other and say,
you're holding down the fort on gun violence. I am
working over here on transjustice, and we need all of
us and we are all united against the common enemy

(24:22):
of violence, apathy and ignorance. And instead we're fighting over
the scraps that are left over from those who are
running the apathy and ignorance machine.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And we fight over our perfection in all of these
different spheres in a way that is so deeply unhelpful.
And watching the left and people who are like ninety
percent aligned, eighty percent aligned, you know it goes to
Loretta Ross, who I love, and her sort of calling

(24:55):
in culture rather than calling out and Essentially, she's like,
I'll work with anyone who's at least like ten percent
aligned with me. There's certain people, you know, the people
who stay who stormed the capitol. She's like, they're never
going to be my people. But like, there is so
much common ground, but the way that we sort of
persecute each other for imperfect speech or just not having

(25:18):
it all right all the time makes it too terrifying,
I think for so many of us to participate, and
then gives excuses again, easy excuses for people to say
I'm out opting out, like I don't want to engage.
This isn't safe, so we have to like I mean,
this gets into the anger chapter, but there's like multiple

(25:38):
calls here. One is internally we each need to develop
the ability to withstand criticism because what I you know,
the book is about how women are conditioned for these
this external idea of goodness, men are conditioned for power.
But it gets too at this idea that the most
harmful thing you can do to a woman is destroy

(26:01):
her reputation, and we do this by calling her a
bad person, unkind, toxic, a bad mother, whatever it may be.
There are million adjectives. Everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about.
That's enough to make a female founder or anyone just disappear.
And meanwhile, a man can do anything. He can go

(26:22):
to Jay clearly and if yeah, exactly, and if he
we still perceive him as powerful, we will still revere
him and take him seriously. But for so many women,
there's no recovery from reputational damage. It's very very not
I want to say odd, it's very sad, but it's

(26:43):
completely understandable.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
It's understandable, and it's predictable.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yes, but we have to be like bringing that to
the front of our consciousness, both in terms of ignoring
ourselves to those attacks, to say no, I'm not going away. Yes,
I'm here to learn. I'm sure I'm not going to
get it right, I'm gonna be I'm just gonna stay

(27:07):
and be present, regardless of what you might say or think.
So it requires a certain durability, particularly for white women
like you and me, but it also requires grace, generosity.
I mean, it's like, oh, come on, friends, and to
go back to your original point. This like the ability

(27:29):
to run a relay not a sprint, and that we
all we all have different gifts, we are all differently abled,
differently privileged, et cetera. We all all have those sort
of special spikes and that's what needs to come out
of each of us. And you're different than I am,
and that's.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
What we're here to do.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, So yes, like I'm going to go and work
on this.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
You work on this.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
It is as you know more than I do. It's
like the collective grief and overwhelmed of today's moment beyond
what's happening in our personal lives. We can't divide and conquer. Yeah,
we're screwed. There's no way of taking all of this
on ourselves, right.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
It has to be a collaborative movement, which means looking
at all of the ways that we have internalized and
learned competition and to fear judgment. So I want to
bring this back down into the more intimate sphere here.
We know that I'm a big fan of all of
these concepts and these practices in the world of making

(28:33):
the world a better place for everybody. But I think
that sometimes we can lose the intimacy of this that
we're not just talking about You're not just talking about
I'm not just talking about these bigger issues. The seven
deadly's the things that women have learned about being good.
These are things that impact our intimate daily lives. So

(28:54):
there's you mentioned it at the top. Here, there's a
whole section towards the end of the book on grief
and sodness. But to my reading, there is grief and
loss in every single chapter of this book. And here's
the example that I want to pull out. I have
it marked as coming from the Pride chapter, but it
might not be, so you correct me. But in one
of those chapters you wrote, I have to wonder how

(29:17):
many times this has kept me from trying to make friends,
or more specifically, to put myself in any sort of
situation where I could be rejected by other women. This
is the personal, intimate part of this giant collective issue
that we were just talking about, that competition between women.

(29:38):
This is something that actually affects us on a very
deep intimate level.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, it's funny. I don't know what chapter that is,
but it could be in any of the chapters, right,
because yeah, it could have It could be because essentially
every chapter in regard, depending on what the particular sin
or vice is, is about extending ourselves into the world
more fully and the risk slapping that might invariably come

(30:09):
as we're shamed for being too greedy, too gluttonous, too lustful,
whatever it may.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Be, right, too full of ourselves, too proud, too proud,
too good.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Too proud to put ourselves out there, and how isolating
that is. And we were talking, you know, before the show,
but about our the weird synchronicities of what you studied
and the setup for the book. And I wrote this chapter,
which we debated keeping. I'm so glad that we kept it.
It's the most academic but it's really not that hard,

(30:41):
so everyone listening can most certainly get through it. But
it's about the history of patriarchy because as mentioned, like
I didn't, I had just sort of assumed it was
this foregone conclusion and that it had always been this way.
And so I learned a lot. I read deeply, and
you know, go to the bibliography and notes of you
who want a deep dive alongside me about how this

(31:03):
came to be. But I talk in that chapter a
fair amount sort of about how we went from this
affiliative partnership style way of living, which most anthropologists archaeologists
agree is more or less the standard which makes so

(31:23):
much sense. I know that there's a lot of talk about, oh,
we were matriarchal. It's like, no, there's no evidence of
a dominance, hierarchical oppression based. It's funny to think about
cultural system with women at the top. There were matrilineal cultures, etc.
But effectively it was affiliative and partnership style and we
were all doing everything together. We were just existing, surviving, thriving,

(31:47):
alo parenting. Women were hunting, men were hunting, men were foraging,
women were foraging, people were gathering, planting, all sorts of
creative forms of culture in society. And it really wasn't
until it's a longer history lesson we can leave it
for the book. But as part of patriarchy in this

(32:09):
idea of sort of God the father and the man
of the house and organizing these nuclear households, which in
its first formation included enslaved women and children, and women
of various social degrees and typically designated by whether they
were sexually available to multiple men or only one, and

(32:32):
by available that's like a very generous word of essentially
their level of enslavement. But women prior to that did
life together. And then you see sort of increasing is
isolation and siloing of women away from other women, organized
under men, and so we've been really torn apart. And

(32:54):
I write about the witch hunts, not at great length,
but that's you know, it's so interesting because we think
about the Salem witch trials and they still hunt our
imaginations here in America. And I think thirty people died,
not to say that they weren't terrible, but in Europe
the witch craze went on for centuries, trees, centuries, and

(33:17):
we don't know, we'll never quite know the exact number
of people, but it's about one hundred thousand, primarily women
who were hunted, tortured, killed. It was a gender side.
It is crazy to think about when you think about
the intergenerational trauma of being suspicious for your sex, turning

(33:39):
on your friends, turning on your mother, turning on your
daughter to save yourself. So obviously, here in America, we understand,
or some of us understand, the intergenerational trauma of racism,
of colonialism, of genocide on First peoples, and it still

(34:02):
is in our land. It's in our shadow, it's in
the energetic patterns of our lives. We get that, but
this is big too.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
I mean we were chatting about it just a tiny
bit before we got rolling. But that was my entire
undergrad and half of my grad school was looking at
the European witch trials and the pitting of women against
other women and the weaponizing of women's relationships and that
like releases book everybody and check out the bibliography because

(34:32):
it is fascinating and horrifying. But I think our point
here is that this competition between women, this desire to
be good, to not have any pride, to not be lazy,
to not want things, to not have desires, to not
think too highly of yourself so that you don't get
bigger than your breches or whatever like that is all manufactured.

(34:54):
Is our point here that that is not an intrinsic
trait that belongs to to women or belongs to any gender.
It is something that was manufactured a long time ago.
And I think the work here, what's so powerful about
your book is that you turn on the rest of
the lights in the room and you say, these things

(35:17):
that you may not recognize you've absorbed, have impacted your
life in so many ways, your current life, your friendships,
your relationships, what you think is possible in your world,
what you think is possible for the future, Like, so
much of that has been guided by something that has

(35:37):
become invisible but is very powerful. And can you start
to look for that and look for the ways that
these largely unspoken rules have kept you in a life
that doesn't serve you, or that keeps you from what
you most long for. So we go back to that

(35:59):
quote that I pulled of yours, Like, I wonder how
many times this has kept me from trying to make
friends or kept me from being in any sort of
situation where I might be rejected? Right, Like, we've got
an epidemic of loneliness in this culture. Could this be
part of that? We long so strongly for connection and

(36:20):
to be seen, and we are terrified of being seen
because most of what we think will get, especially from
the women around us, is judgment and rejection and will
be ostracized, which means we'll be alone.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, that spells death, social death.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
You know, I write the beginning about the work of
Ashley Montague, who is this visionary anthropologist, and he said,
you know, we should really call our ancestors gatherer hunters,
not hunter gatherers. He wrote this book in the fifties
called the natural superiority of women, because you know, he
was like it bears out, like you look at the

(37:00):
durability of women, the IQ tests of girls. I mean,
we've been outperforming boys and men in school for a century.
So I love men. I have two little boys. Not
to upset everyone, but I do think men are more,
in many ways more injured by the patriarchy than women.
There definitely it's victims too, But he writes about Ashley

(37:22):
Montague writes about this idea of first nature and second nature,
and first nature is who we are, sort of instinctively
and naturally. I guess it's hard to find language to
describe this idea of first nature. It's just who we are.
And then second nature is culture, it's who the stories
we tell about who we are. This happens to men

(37:44):
as well, But the real crime against women is the
ways in which we're told that our first nature is
really our second nature, and that a woman is more caring,
more kind, more nurturing, et cetera. I'm not saying that
these aren't all qualities that women possess, but we can

(38:05):
be many other things too, and men can be very
caring nurturing, creative, loving. You know, I write a fair
amount in the book about the divine masculine and the
divine feminine, and I think that we're at the point
where we're ready to really understand what that means, and
that we each contain masculine and feminine energy ideally imbalanced quotients.

(38:27):
But I tend to be more in my masculine than
in my feminine. You do too, Okay, So I mean
not to go in totally a million different directions, but
this is what the in some ways, what the contemporary
trans movement is calling us to, yeah, is actually there's
another more powerful element at play which is not attached

(38:50):
to gender.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Divine masculine is not a quality of men, and divine
feminine is not a quality of women. It is not gender.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Ironically, Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Elise,
you know, I'm going to tell you about something special.
I assume that a lot of you know about my
book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The full title

(39:20):
of that book is it's okay that You're not okay
meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn't understand,
And it's that last part that's relevant here. If you
haven't read the book, or you read it but you
skipped over that first section where I get into the
deep historical roots of grief avoidance. This is your encouragement
to go read that section. Alisea and I have been

(39:42):
talking about the ideas we've inherited as a culture and
how they influence us in powerful and often unrealized ways.
The cultural programming that we've inherited around grief is especially complicated.
So pick up It's Okay that You're not okay where
you get your books, or check the links in the
show notes to get your copy, and dive into that

(40:05):
turn on those lights around what makes grief so scary
for us. It's right there in the book. All right,
back to another fascinating conversation about the hidden reasons behind
human behavior with a least lunin. You know what this
reminds me of is Gina Rossea was on the show
a couple of weeks ago, and.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
I love Gina.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
She's so good. I love her so much. And she said,
you know, I'm not going to speak for the whole
trans community, but we would love to stop talking about gender. Yeah, right,
because this isn't it? Right, Like, the whole reason we
have to talk about gender is because gender is an issue,
because our ideas are around what is allowed and what
is not allowed are like so heavily gendered. But like

(40:45):
we're out here trying to just like be life, and
well gender is like.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
The least, it's the least interesting. It's like, yeah, your bits,
like it's not interesting. It's naturally it's not at all.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Oh, but we're making it that way, so it's it's interesting,
Like we you know, we're doing this sort of contract
expand back and forth here in our conversation from like
the personal and the intimate and out to the cultural
and back. There's something for me in when you start
to look at this stuff, when you start to go, oh,

(41:21):
there has there have been some invisible forces that have
made me make certain choices in my life that now
looking back, I wish I had known this sooner. I
know that you've said that you learned a lot in
the process of researching this book and writing this book.
Was there grief involved for you at any point in

(41:42):
like recognizing the way that those internalized structures I don't
want to say prevented things, but like that again going
back to that line of yours that I pulled, Like,
there are so many relationships that I kept myself from
and now that I know what I know, I wish
I had known it earlier and to how do I

(42:03):
not do this moving forward? So is there a grief
for you at all in those lights getting turned on?

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah? I mean the whole book. I mean, in some
ways it was really fun to write, but it was
a very heavy and hard experience. And you know, you
participated in these types of projects. I mean, it was
therapy around each of these ideas and the ways in

(42:31):
which I could tell I had limited my own life
or judged other people, or you know, potentially perpetuated harm
culturally by abiding. You know, I think about that in
the context of gluttony for example, certainly. And yes, I

(42:53):
mean a lot of grief, some more heavy than others.
You know, Sloth, which is the first chapter in the book,
is just so accessible and so easy for me. That
was more raged contending with my anger, but anger speaking
of very much was about accessing grief. And you know,

(43:13):
I write about a year as a therapist. You know
that angers off and secondary to grief, shame, fear. So
I definitely, definitely in the process of even acknowledging that
I had anger, which was a big step for me
opening that door and saying, yeah, I'm pissed. I think
so many of us think we can hire mind our

(43:33):
anger or we're calm. You know, we would never, we would.
You know, we've got it. We're under control here. Yeah,
a tremendous amount of grief. Not to mention that I
write about grief, although in a more direct way, but
I would say too that grief is what brought me

(43:55):
to even write this book. And similar to you, my
husband's brother, I mean not my husband, My brother's husband
died in his sleep when he was thirty nine of
a rare, undiagnosed heart condition. Although it's in a way
a blessing that he was never diagnosed, because it's not

(44:18):
a disease. With any treatment or cure, it would not
have been He in some ways had a beautiful death,
even though it was so tragic. But Peter dying in
twenty seventeen just completely changed my life in that way
that the real bottoming out can. Peter he was my

(44:42):
brother's husband. They met their first week of college. I
met him when I was fifteen years old. In many
ways he functioned more as my brother than my brother.
He's the one who would you know, drive me to
the airport and call me every day. And he's also
one of those people who had twenty people who thought

(45:02):
they were his best friend. Speaking of competition, funeral competition,
who gets to be who really deserves to grieve, who
gets to be the most sad? But anyway, his death
really put me in touch with the universe. It just
it just recontextualized everything for me, including oh my god,

(45:23):
what do I want? Like this is short? Yes, this
is this is short, and certainly no day can be
taken for granted and your life changes can change immediately
for the better or for the worse. So his death
gave me access to a much deeper part of myself.
And it sucks, right life like you just can't you can't,

(45:47):
don't really live until the hard things start happening. And
I mean that's not entirely fair, but.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
That is sometimes accurate but not required.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Right yeah, okay, yeah, thank you for that correction. But
it just it just adds a different texture to your life, right,
And for me at least, it was very recontextualizing, and
I'd say the grief was present. It's still present because
of course I also refused to you know, in no
way do I want to say to women like, buy

(46:21):
my book and you will be free. And I've done it,
You've done it, You're you just read that.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah, it's all you need. But there's there's something in there,
right of like when you start messing around with what
does it mean to be human? What does it mean
to be in relationship with yourself and with others? What
does it mean to wake up to your life because
whatever happens, right, what does it mean to wake up
to your life and go, wait a second, this is
not this is all over so fast. This is not

(46:51):
the way I want to spend this time. Right, It
kind of starts going against all of those like scriptive,
do these five steps and be free, all of this stuff,
and so it's this, it's this interesting middle ground of
how do we.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
As authors, as teachers, as creators create the space the
structure for people to ask questions of themselves and then
go in search of their own responses maybe not answers, right, Like,
how do we do both things? How do we share
what we know in such a way that lets other

(47:32):
people use our path to question their own path, but
not provide answers for that.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yes, it's funny. At first I sort of pitched this
book as a more academic, more abstract, clinical read, you know,
and then my editor with a little bit of memoir,
and it's still it's not like memoir dominated by any sense.
But my editor was like, not so fast, Like you

(48:03):
have to be present. You need to walk everyone through
this and bring yourself closer to all of these sins
and guide us through this material. And it doesn't mean
that people, And there's something to that, you know, not
only it's like vulnerable is such an overase word, but

(48:25):
modeling in some ways, like I'm going to go first,
I'm going to walk this. I walked it, and like
you can follow my path or do your own. But
here's my experience of going through this.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
I'm grinning because I've heard this so many times this season,
where people are like I had this great ted talk,
I had this great book proposal, I had this great
like these amazing things, and then the editor or the
talk coordinator goes, you know, you have to put yourself
in there, right, like you can't cut yourself out of
this equation. So I love that from that perspective of

(49:04):
people being like, hello, do not exclude yourself from humanity.
Put yourself in there. But also there's something and I
mentioned it sort of earlier today as we were talking,
that all of these ideas, all of these concepts, they
can feel out there, they can feel out of reach

(49:25):
or not mine or just nothing. It's like, you know
how we say, like we need a personal face of
God because otherwise it's just undifferentiated chaos, and I can't
relate to that, right, Like, there has to be there
has to be a face to it. So like when
you put here's how pride shows up in my life

(49:46):
and the choices that I've made before I realized this
was something bigger or more powerful or something that I needed, right,
something human and healthy. Right, Like, there is a way
of bringing this large conceptual thing down to the personal scale.
When you say here's how it showed up for me,

(50:06):
It's like we give people a blueprint, is a little
bit more than a little bit more of a guide
than I'm thinking here, but like there is a structure.
Here's how I use this structure and went looking in
my own life for the footprints of these seven deadlies.
You can adapt this footprint to look at your own
life and where has it shown up? I mean one

(50:28):
of the things is that you know, the personal is
the political is the collective? Right that this thing going
back to, like judgment of other women and who does
she think she is? And that competition and all of this, Like,
I don't know anyone who hasn't felt that right. The
particular flavor of that might be different in an individual life,

(50:49):
but the gesture of it is probably there somewhere. And
if it isn't, Wow, what happened that made that different
for you? And can we celebrate that? Like? I love this.
I love this idea also of like this is such
a tangent. I was having a conversation with somebody the
other day who does not have the greatest relationship with

(51:10):
their mother, and they're like, I don't get the people
who are like my mother is my best friend and
I really learned how to show up as my true
self from my childhood, like all of this stuff, So like,
maybe you don't have that impulsive judgment of other women,
you don't feel like anybody is your competition or that

(51:31):
you're fighting for a scarce resource. I love that for you.
And what was different. What was the care and feeding
that you got that allowed you to keep this right?
Who is this? And how can we love on them?
Because there's something in there too, there's something in the

(51:51):
I dodged that particular messaging and here's there's something important.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Although, yeah, it's funny listening to that. Yes, and I
think about my editor wit who In terms of the
Envy chapter, I intended it to go first. I sent
it to her and she just freaked and you know,
she was like, I don't agree with this. This isn't me. I,
you know, like just freak out. And I said, okay,

(52:23):
just like I'll move it to the last chapter and
I'm going to spend the rest of the book convincing
you that this.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Is this is you.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
And then maybe a few months later she was like okay.
She just had identified enough instances where she interrupted her
own thought pattern to recognize it and was like, okay.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Yeah, that's a really good nuance. Anytime you're like, oh,
that's not me at all, that has nothing to do
with me, Like anytime you have an emotionally charged response
to saying that is not mine, Oh babe, that is yours.
I'm talking to you.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
You saw it, you got it.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
I'm thinking about Malchia Dewitz Cherril, who was on the
show earlier, and them talking about the community in which
they were raised, right, which is not to say I'm
certainly not going to take their inventory for them, but
not to say that they don't have that impulse to
compete or whatever, but that there was something medicinal. It's

(53:22):
like that seed culture. What is the seed culture that
helped you not be in that quite as much as
somebody else might be. I just think I think that
there's like, if we want to start dissolving those internalized
metrics for goodness and performance, are there things that we

(53:44):
can do and things that we can practice that will
help us do that, because I think if we don't
start also talking about the structures how you might ask
these questions, how you might work through these things or
look at these things with kindness in yourself. If we
don't give some of those tools, we're sort of like,
here's this shitty thing that happens, you figure it out

(54:06):
on your own, which is just putting us back into
that self sufficient I cannot rest until I get this.
I'm not a good person. I somehow failed somewhere because
I'm a product of an inherited culture, I have to
do everything in my power to get around. Do you
know what I mean? Like we can start can read
a book like this and you can see it as

(54:26):
all of the ways that you've failed, or you can
read a book like this and see it as all
of the inheritances that have failed to beautiful. But I
think this is a really important point here is there
is so much at stake personally, interpersonally, communally, culturally, globally,
there's so much at stake that I think we need

(54:47):
to be able to look at the places that the
system has let us down, that we've let each other down,
that we've let ourselves down, and also talk about what
is the medicine that it's called for? What do we
do now? Because otherwise we're like, we got a heap
of problems, we have no idea what to do about it? Right?

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (55:04):
I love that. One of the things that your book
has done is it has started conversations about this, and
to me, that's the medicine. How do we have conversations
about what we've learned and what we've inherited and how
that's held us back, and that connecting in that stuff
instead of waiting to perfect it in ourselves before we
talk about it, Like I feel like connecting in these conversations,

(55:27):
curiosity for ourselves, generosity to other people. Did you read
Elisa's book? How did that chapter on envy? Does that
show up for you?

Speaker 1 (55:37):
You know, there's so many amazing books and siloed conversations
about women and food, women and money, women and anger,
et cetera. And I wanted to show how they're all related,
bring them all into a house, connect them all to
a system, and create a framework in which we could
identify this in ourselves and then talk about it together.

(56:00):
And yes, like, please read my book and support my book,
I would love that. But the idea, the thing that
makes me most excited, is that you could go to
a book club for on our best behavior and you
don't necessarily need to have finished the book or even
read much of it to be able to talk about
each of these ideas fully. And that that's the sort

(56:22):
of viral effect I wanted to create, because you know,
writing this book was a very lonely experience and I
was with myself processing, but then to watch it go
into the world and then see how see women talk
about it together and or talk to me about it.
Has been as you to use your word medicinal and healing,

(56:47):
because you can't interrupt the status quo. You can't program
against culture in a silo. This is communal community work.
This is bringing women back together to talk about these things,
and that's how we break them. That's how we interrupt
them and say not today. Can It's very Barbie maybe

(57:13):
though when I saw the movie, I was like, oh
my god, this is a much more colorful version of
on our best feed. But you start to recognize the
cognitive exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, you start to recognize it. We don't have a
lot of time to get into it, so this is
more of an encouragement for people to get the book
is like the last chapter of the book, this is
something that I learned that the seven deadly sins were
once the eight thoughts as you started opened with here together,
and that those eight thoughts included sadness, but sadness was

(57:45):
excommunicated from the list, and you wrote of all the sins,
sadness feels like it should be most important. It should
be the crown. And to me, of course, like my
entire view of the world, is that that grief is
the turning point of the world, and that the inability
to explore identify name as healthy and a normal part

(58:07):
of human being being a human being like that the
repression of grief is why we have all of the
problems that we have, much bigger topic y'all have heard
me talk about quite a bit, but I loved this
coming in at the end of this book, coming in
at this exploration of all of the seven Deadly sins
to say, you know, actually the crowning jewel of this

(58:28):
is sadness.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yes, I I'm so glad that that chapter is in
there because we talked about it.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
But I do, like you.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Think that grief is how we start cleansing some of
this cultural patterning and the destruction that we've reaked on
the world and on each other. And we spend a
lot of energy keeping our thumb on that grief, and

(58:58):
I write about it. Obviously, sadness is not the dominion
of women or men. But I also write about that
chapter because I had this lingering question and this question
that I thought people would wonder, and what about men?
And this book isn't directed towards men, certainly, although I
hope men read it because I think it would provide
a lot of insight into the psychology of women and

(59:21):
sort of that internal programming that we're pushing against. But
I think that the suppression of grief, this refusal to
feel our feelings, the denial of sadness, which shows up
most acutely for boys and men. Certainly it's a cultural
it's a cultural malady, but it is we sever boys

(59:43):
from their feelings, or historically have I think we're getting better,
but I think the primary symptom of that is toxic masculinity.
And again, women can behave in toxically masculine ways, but
this dominance, suppressive control. To me, that's an antidote, or
perceived as an antidote to all this grief, all this feeling,

(01:00:05):
all these chaos states.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Yep, shut them down, shut them down.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yeah, and we can't move forward without reconciling with our grief.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
There's a line here that I is both enraging and
I super love. You wrote that sadness was seen as
the sin that is most destructive to men because it
is perceived as womanly, womanly, which means weak. That line
just sort of summarizes what you said. Is like we
work really hard to make men and boys not appear

(01:00:39):
like women. We don't want them to have feelings, we
don't want them to cry, we don't want them to
be quote unquote soft. It's one of the reasons that
we attack gay men and attack trans men is because
they're acting like women, and we hate women so much
that anything that leans in that direction needs to be exterminated.

(01:01:01):
And I love that what you say here is that
gag order on sadness that we enforce across the board,
but really really does show up for men and boys,
like the amount of energy that it takes to suppress
a normal responsive sadness or grief or human empathy or feeling,

(01:01:22):
like the amount of force it takes to hold that
down it can only explode elsewhere. Yes, it really is
in the allowing of sadness that we get the beautiful
world we say we want.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
And you know, to quote therapist Terry Reel, who writes
and so beautifully about men, we don't talk about turning
girls into women, but we talk about turning boys into men.
And again, to go to Ashley Montague, it's a cultural
idea of what a man is is. It has nothing

(01:02:00):
to do with a natural state. It is just our
cultural idea of a man who is stoic, strong, and
completely disconnected from himself.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Oh, we have so much more to say about this,
But I also we'll do another one. We'll do another one, well,
like we'll do a whole Salon series. Okay, Anyway, I
do want to ask you the question that I ask everybody.
So much has changed for you over the last several years.
We didn't even get into the wellness movement and the
grief involved in leaving that, Like, we didn't even touch that.

(01:02:38):
I'm going to I'll put it in the show notes,
and you do talk about it in other places. But
so much has changed for you over the last several years.
So knowing what you know, living what you've lived up
to this point, and living what you're living with this
new book out in the world, what does hope look
like for you? Does hope show up in this world

(01:03:00):
for you at all?

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Oh? Yes, I am essentially an optimistic and hopeful person.
And the book may be about these external ideas of
goodness in a way that might seem like I'm deprecating
the idea of goodness, I'm not at all. I think
people are inherently good. I really believe that it's baked

(01:03:23):
into who we are. I think that we can stray
from that. I think that there are some people who
are full of shadow. But I do believe that when
we can calm people's fear, when we can relieve scarcity,
that when we can put people in contact with each other,

(01:03:44):
that ultimately people are good. And it's a really scary
and weird time to be alive, certainly, but I am hopeful.
I am optimistic, and I'm primarily hopeful because I think
that women are. It's wild. Actually, when I think about

(01:04:04):
how powerful women are, this isn't a new thing either.
It's like we are so impressive, so incredible, and intelligent,
hard working, yes, nurturing often. And so when I think
about the potential of women getting on side with each other,

(01:04:27):
of starting to allow that they are, that we're all
good and bad. You know, we're human, contain multitudes, We
contain multitudes, We're full of shadow. There are certainly going
to be moments that we regret and every single day.
This isn't about perfection that if we can get on
side with each other. We are boxers who have been

(01:04:49):
training at high altitude and I just think that the
world could rapidly start to change and evolve. I really
do put us in, not into the elon Mark Zuckerberg cage, bye,
thank you, but put us in.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
I love that image of we are boxers that have
been training at altitude and just how strong we are.
Watch out, watch out? All right, So obviously we are
going to link to the book in the show notes
and to your website. Is there anything else you want
people to know about you or the bok thread pulling?

(01:05:27):
Lay it on us? What's pulling the thread?

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
About pulling the thread? Forty five minute conversations with cultural luminaries,
you will have to come on about big questions of
the day, and you know, similar to you, I'm interested
and just understanding the world.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Okay, so we will link to that in show notes too.
Thank you so much for being here. Everybody, stay tuned.
I will be back with your questions to carry with
you after this break, and I promise I will not
load you with all of the questions that came up
for me each week. I leave you with some questions

(01:06:11):
to carry with you until we meet again. Okay, Before
the break, I promised that I would not bombard you
with every single one of the questions and the ideas
that came to me during this conversation with Elise. There
were a lot of questions and ideas that came to me.
The show that you listened to is like just under
an hour, but Elise and I talked together for almost
two hours, so I got a lot of thoughts in

(01:06:34):
my head. Is basically what I'm trying to tell you.
For our purposes, I'm going to stick with one thing.
These conversations can feel really theoretical, really out there, away
from the life that you're actually living. I love that
Elise had to be pushed a little bit in the
writing process to bring herself into her own book, and

(01:06:55):
she gave us a way to ask ourselves things like
how does envy show up in my life? How does
the fear of being seen as lazy keep me from
letting myself rest? These are such powerful questions and they
can lead to real transformation in how we live our
daily lives. I also love that she gives us a
way to question the cultural narratives, right to turn on

(01:07:19):
the light and look at that cultural messaging, especially the
messaging that says that having desire is a bad thing.
You deserve love, connection, success, rest, all of these desires
that we have actually been conditioned to silence. I love

(01:07:40):
that Elisa's work gives us the space to question those
things that we've inherited and to start asking ourselves how
the silencing of our own human desires has kept us
from getting the things that we deserve, and then gives
us the space to wonder about what to do differently
with the information that we learn. This stuff isn't just theoretical.

(01:08:05):
I can get lost in that sometimes, like my brain
goes into all of the patterns and all the systems
and all the ways that things interrelate. But at the
end of the day, we do these things so that
we can take them into ourselves and ask ourselves better
questions about who we are and what we want. Yeah,
what's stuck with you? In this conversation? Everybody's going to

(01:08:28):
take something different from today's show, But I do hope
you found something to hold on to. I would love
to hear what's coming up for you. What you found,
the questions you might ask yourself, the questions you might
ask of the people in your communities and the people
you care about. If you want to tell me how
today's show felt for you, or you have thoughts on
what we covered, let me know. Leaving a review of

(01:08:51):
this episode on your favorite podcast app is a good
way to let me know and let others know the
ways that this show is making you think, or feel
or relate.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Eight.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
You can also tag at Refuge and Grief on all
of the social platforms so that I can hear how
this conversation affected you. Follow the show at It's Okay
Pod on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to
see video clips from the show, and use the hashtag
It's Okay Pod on all the platforms to keep the
conversations going. None of us are entirely okay, and it's

(01:09:22):
time we start talking about that together. It's okay that
You're not okay. You're in good company. That is it
for this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe to the show,
leave a review, Get your own conversations started by sharing
this episode with your community. This one especially is really
a good conversation starter. Follow the show on your favorite

(01:09:43):
platforms so you do not miss an episode. It's Okay
that You're not Okay. The podcast is written and produced
by me Megan Devine Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, with logistical and social media support
from Micah. Post production and editing by Houston Tilly, Music

(01:10:05):
provided by Wave Crush, and today's background noise provided by
the dog very quietly snoring at my feet