How to Create Your Own Belonging with Michelle Zauner (Best Of)

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Speaker 2 Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We're going to explain to you right away why we're a little extra sweaty today.

Speaker 2 And that is because our guest today is Michelle Zahner. Michelle Zahner is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast.

Speaker 2 She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet. And her most recent album, Jubilee,

Speaker 2 earned two Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music album. Her first book, Crying in H Mart, is the book I have given to the most people.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is one of my favorite memoirs of all time and is a New York Times bestseller. She's currently adapting the memoir for the screen for MGM's Orion Pictures.

Speaker 2 Okay, Michelle Zahner, I know that you're an icon and the world is obsessed with you, but we have loved you. for a very, very long time, since the beginning.
Okay, we have three children.

Speaker 2 Two of them write the music

Speaker 2 columns for their high school and their college. And they, so music is a really big deal in our family.
And since Psycho Pomp, like since the beginning,

Speaker 2 our house has been full of your voice.

Speaker 3 Every car ride.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 Wow, what an honor.

Speaker 2 And then one day we were in this little indie bookstore in our town and I remember walking by a shelf and Chase, our oldest, said, that is Michelle's Honor's book, Crying in H Smart.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I don't know. I mean, I knew from your lyrics that this book was going to be good,

Speaker 2 but holy shit, Crying in H Mart is so flipping beautiful.

Speaker 2 It's like your music. I don't like music that's like too cheerful, like trying to trick me that the world is not shit.

Speaker 2 And I don't like music that's too depressing, like trying to kill me by only focusing that the world is shit.

Speaker 2 And your music, it invites me into the singular ache, and then it like widens to everybody every time. It's like this

Speaker 2 alone together feeling listening to you, which is the same as your memoir. So hi, Michelle.
Thanks for being with us and for all your work. This has been a great interview.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 4 Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 3 Bye, Michelle. Thank you.

Speaker 3 I'm Glennon.

Speaker 2 This is Abby.

Speaker 3 This is Amanda.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm so delighted to get to chat with you all. I feel like I always was like, who is Glennon Doyle? She just lives on the new york times bestseller

Speaker 3 i was like who is this woman she's incredible

Speaker 5 and the reason why you know that is because you you saw your book there for

Speaker 3 my neighbor

Speaker 2 we live together there she is

Speaker 3 we've been neighbors for some time and i'm i'm so excited to put you know a person to the name us too so

Speaker 2 You are a rock star, award-winning writer, and all of this artistic brilliance has been brewing and building in you since childhood, but it really took off after the death of your mother.

Speaker 2 And the love story between you two is just

Speaker 3 epic.

Speaker 2 It just moved me so deeply. She moved me so deeply.

Speaker 2 And you say that she was not a mommy mom. Pod squad, listen to what Michelle says a mommy mom is.
Okay.

Speaker 2 A mommy mom is a mom who takes an interest in everything her kid has to say, even when there is no actual way she gives a shit, who whisks you away to the hospital when you complain of the slightest ailment, who tells you they're just jealous if someone makes fun of you.

Speaker 3 I did that yesterday.

Speaker 2 Or you always look beautiful to me, even if you don't. Or I love this when you give them a piece of crap for Christmas.
So, Michelle, that was not your mom.

Speaker 3 That was not my mom at all. I think a lot of my friends had mommy moms, and it took me a really long time

Speaker 3 to understand

Speaker 3 my mother's affection. And I think a large part of that were, you know, cultural differences.
My mom grew up in Korea and didn't immigrate to the States until after I was born. And so

Speaker 3 she was really learning a lot. I think I just didn't understand that type of affection until I was.
I was older.

Speaker 3 It was a lot of like behind the scenes kind of like action, but she was very, very critical.

Speaker 3 And it created a very ambitious and like self-aware person in me in a way that I really value now, but was certainly at a young age, very difficult.

Speaker 3 I always compare my mom to my husband's mom, who is big time mommy mom.

Speaker 3 And whenever I got like fired from a job, Fran, who's Peter's mom,

Speaker 3 would say like, oh my God, like that's just so typical of the man. They don't know what they're losing and all this stuff.

Speaker 3 My mom, when I got fired from my waitressing job that I had worked at for a year, and I was, you know, really upset, I was like, I was their best server. I can't believe they did that.

Speaker 3 Was just like, well, Michelle, anyone can carry a tray.

Speaker 3 It's just like very, very brutal. But it made me a much stronger person.
But what, you know, growing up with that was like pretty challenging, I think, to be a young person.

Speaker 2 So you said her love was tougher than tough.

Speaker 2 It saw what was best for you 10 steps ahead and didn't care if it hurt like hell in the meantime. That's like the opposite of American parenting.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's something that's really important about that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that I hope that when I have a child that I will find a good balance between

Speaker 3 both methods of parenting, because I think that both are really important.

Speaker 3 And I can't imagine being a parent and figuring out the right way to do that.

Speaker 3 For instance, like I went to piano lessons since I was like five years old and I went to Korean language school and I every Friday when all of my friends were enjoying their weekends and I hated it.

Speaker 3 And my mom would never let me quit because she was like, you know, you have to practice piano 30 minutes every day. You're going to really regret not learning the language.
And I hated it so much.

Speaker 3 And now as an adult, like, those are the two things

Speaker 3 that I find myself really wanting

Speaker 3 to excel at.

Speaker 3 And all of the things that she encouraged me to do are things that she was so right about were things that I was going to really regret not focusing on during this like really formative time.

Speaker 3 But I don't know if a mommy mom had gotten that sort of, you know, feedback from their kid. If they're like, if you don't want to do it, like, that's fine.

Speaker 3 I think there would be some regret there too, that, you know, at that age, you do kind of need a a little bit of a push to like do some things that you don't want to do.

Speaker 3 So I think it's a really tough balance for any parent. And I don't know exactly what the right way is, but I can see the sort of benefits and consequences of both styles of parenting.

Speaker 4 This might be a tangent, but do you ever think about whether that's a chicken or an egg situation, the piano and learning Korean? Like, do you think it is because

Speaker 4 she prioritized those so much that you're drawn to them? Or is it?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, all the time.

Speaker 3 Some days I'm like, maybe if my mother was so encouraging about me pursuing the arts that i i wouldn't have wanted it so badly or i wouldn't have had to prove to myself time and time and again that this was what i really wanted and i wouldn't have ended up doing it maybe it was like part of her large ploy all along

Speaker 3 she was 10 steps ahead yeah she was 10 steps ahead maybe she was like if i like withhold this like from her then she'll have to really work hard for it and that is what you need in a way to succeed at that kind of thing and along with a lot of luck.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think about that all the time. I mean, I think also like whenever someone dies, you really romanticize like the things,

Speaker 3 be it positive or negative that they kind of leave behind.

Speaker 3 Like I remember I would hate it when my mom would like badger me to wear a sunscreen, especially in like the 90s when that kind of like information wasn't as prioritized or whatever.

Speaker 3 I'd be like, why do I have to wear sunscreen? I'm 10 years old. I want to like hang out in the sun.
I want to get a a tan.

Speaker 3 And now my husband is always like getting badgered by me to put sunscreen on and that kind of thing. And instead of being like, oh, maybe you're like being overbearing, I'm like, oh, that's your mom.

Speaker 3 Like, you're just being like your mom. So

Speaker 3 yeah, I think it's kind of a sweet thing.

Speaker 2 So, did you say your mom wanted you to take the piano? Because wasn't your interest in music a source of tension between the two of you? Was it the kind of music?

Speaker 2 Because your mom didn't want you to be into music. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is the thing I like do not understand with Asian parents a lot of the time. Most of them will force you to learn an instrument, but God forbid you do something creative with it, you know?

Speaker 3 So yeah, I don't know why it's so essential to play piano or violin in Asian culture, but I think a big thing was I never liked piano. I was like very impatient and not very good at it.

Speaker 3 And I think that when I was 15, I started begging for a guitar because it was so much cooler.

Speaker 3 And my mom was kind of like, I've dropped thousands of dollars on this piano lessons you never pay attention to.

Speaker 3 Why are we going to start doing guitar lessons now?

Speaker 3 And I get it because I feel like, you know, even with friends of mine, I'm like, this is a fleeting interest.

Speaker 3 It's like hard as like a loved one to just be like, do you really like, you know, totally need to start a crop garden or whatever or like skateboarding in your 30s, like give it up.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I mean, I think that she just was like, I've watched you like discard so many passions.

Speaker 3 Like you probably watched your kids, you know, go through all the time that I think it was hard for her to be supportive of this thing at what she felt was like a very crucial age, which was like 16 and things are ramping up for college and you have to really double down to like get your life together.

Speaker 3 That she was just like, we've given you everything and I don't think you really know what's at the other side of living a life of an artist.

Speaker 3 And she felt like it was her duty to kind of protect me from that.

Speaker 3 And I totally understand it, but at the time I was like,

Speaker 3 you are like a tower of evil

Speaker 3 keeping me from my true calling, you know?

Speaker 3 And so. That was sort of the beginning of our tumultuous like teenage

Speaker 3 puberty years.

Speaker 5 So there were a bunch of years that you said you kind of missed each other, anger, separation. You were feisty.

Speaker 3 She was baffled.

Speaker 5 Tell us about that time and how it kind of impacted your relationship.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think it's no surprise that I grew up with two extremely loud, opinionated, independent parents. And they were so shocked when, you know, their kid

Speaker 3 like doubled down on that in her own personality. My mom like like

Speaker 3 grew up in Korea, married a white guy, like moved, you know, away from her family, hardly spoke the language and, you know, took off and led a life of her own. And that was, you know,

Speaker 3 pretty rebellious and independent on her part.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I've had that kind of spirit in me. And, you know, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in Eugene, Oregon, in a small college town

Speaker 3 that had very little diversity and really wanted to strike out on my own path. And there's like a really wonderful music community in that town.
It's a very like artsy, creative kind of town.

Speaker 3 And so I was naturally sort of drawn to that. And it was the only thing that sort of felt like it had meaning in my life around the age of 15 or 16 when you're like so full of like.

Speaker 3 these really intense emotions. And

Speaker 3 I just knew that that was sort of what I wanted to do at the time.

Speaker 3 And, you know, around that time, my grades started suffering and I was saying saying crazy things like, I don't know if I want to go to college. And my mom was like, this is World War III.

Speaker 2 She's out of control. She's out of control.

Speaker 3 And I think she just tried to double down and trying to at least like protect me from that and make sure I went to college. And neither one of my parents went to college.

Speaker 3 So it was very, very important that I go. And here's this woman who feels like I've given this person every opportunity I never had.
And she's really bunkling this. And I need to fix it.

Speaker 3 And that was really hard for me. And her love was very,

Speaker 3 she could be very critical.

Speaker 3 And I had never seen other parents sort of so brutally honest like that about just, you know, she hated everything I wore. And there was no just like, oh, this is a face, you'll grow out of it.

Speaker 3 It's just like, why do you torture me with wearing this ugly shit all the time?

Speaker 3 We just really butt heads.

Speaker 3 We were two very strong women that were, we're not going to like lay it down and um it went on like that until i went to college and i think she sort of felt like okay my job has come to a certain kind of end you know she's out of my house and i did everything that i could and now she's on her own and i was kind of like

Speaker 3 how do i do laundry

Speaker 3 just one more thing just one more thing can i can teach you how to do laundry yeah yeah like and i think i just was like oh wow mom does a lot you know

Speaker 3 and i was a young,

Speaker 3 confused feminist. My mom was a homemaker.
And I think as a teenager, I sort of looked down on that. I just didn't respect her in a way.

Speaker 3 And it wasn't until I went to college that I began to see all of this invisible labor that she was like talking about and understood just how much she provided.

Speaker 3 for our family in this way that we were very privileged to have and how cruel it was to demean that, you know, all my life.

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Speaker 4 So you have this tolit. You go to college, you come back, and at some point you're sitting in the car and she says to you, I just never met someone like you before.

Speaker 4 And hearing that from your mom was deeply healing for you. Why, why was that so healing to hear that from her?

Speaker 3 I've always like made this reference and I don't think it's ever gone well, but it's so important to me. But there's a scene in the Sopranos where

Speaker 3 Meadow and Carmella are fighting.

Speaker 3 And Tony says to her, like, don't worry, Carm, she'll return to you. And I feel like that's such a thing with a lot of mothers and daughters.

Speaker 3 I know a lot of mothers and daughters that sort of get to that place and you have have to kind of go away in order to return to one another and really see each other for the first time.

Speaker 3 And I think that was sort of what happened for us was like only until I was out of the house. that she was able to sort of reflect on a lot of things.

Speaker 3 And I was also able to reflect on a lot of things and we were sort of able to come together. And also the age of being in your sort of early 20s.

Speaker 3 And finally, I really felt like I saw her not just as mom, but like as a human being with agency and her own passions and her own desires. And

Speaker 3 I think she also felt that maybe this thing wasn't a passing phase because I kept with it and she could maybe start to see how important it was and see me in this sort of new light.

Speaker 3 And so her saying that to me was so moving because it's such a strange thing to say to a person that you made, you know?

Speaker 2 That's why it was so magical. It was like this moment to me when I read,

Speaker 2 it was this moment like where it felt like there was a magical shimmer around that moment where it was like a moment of individuation for the first time.

Speaker 2 Like she looked at you like you had just appeared. Like for the first moment, you weren't just a reflection of her.
You were your own being.

Speaker 2 And she saw that for the first time. What a beautiful thing to say.
Oh, the problem this whole time is just that I've never met anybody like you. Yep.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I had the opposite reaction when I read that. I had the wind knocked out of me because I was like,

Speaker 4 oh, it feels so alienating. Like the person that's so connected to you, feeling so distinct and remote from you.
You know, if your mom doesn't even intuitively get you, how is anyone going to get you?

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But then I hear what you're saying. It's like for the first time, you weren't just something that existed to oppose her wishes.
Yeah. You existed as your own being.
Thing.

Speaker 4 It makes me think of the question, like, does love exist

Speaker 4 without understanding? In that moment where she was saying, oh, I've just never met anyone like you.

Speaker 4 That made me think, oh, she doesn't understand you, but maybe she was just understanding you for the first time.

Speaker 3 Wow, I think that is a really beautiful interpretation that I haven't encountered. And yeah, hearing that question, can love exist without understanding? My initial, my immediate response is no.

Speaker 3 But then to look at that relationship, that is clearly untrue. I know that my mom loved me very deeply, but there was a lot of misunderstanding there.

Speaker 3 You know, there was a real struggle for both of us to understand one another. And I think we certainly loved each other

Speaker 3 all along.

Speaker 3 But yeah, there was not a lot of understanding. So yeah, I think that my initial, my immediate response to that question is like, no, how can you love someone that you don't understand?

Speaker 3 But I think that I've had experiences where that's not the case.

Speaker 2 But can't you understand somebody like thematically without understanding the details like she could have looked at you and suddenly understood like your switch from piano to guitar was like her switch from Korea to America, that your individuation was just like her individuation.

Speaker 2 There can be understanding without the details being the same, where she can respect woman to woman, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I also think

Speaker 2 you can tell we've discussed this.

Speaker 5 Yes, before we spent a lot of time talking about this because the family I grew up in, my parents, they often didn't understand me, but the way that they expressed that was in this critical way.

Speaker 5 And in the way that this sentence for me felt when I read it, it is like this, this curious way. I just never met somebody like you.

Speaker 3 Rather than, where did you come from, Abby? Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, like those are kind of very different

Speaker 5 situations. I want to talk a little bit about your sensitivity.

Speaker 5 You are described yourself as so sensitive. I also live with a sensitive person.

Speaker 3 What does it mean to you?

Speaker 3 I think it means so many different things. I'm just deeply impacted by

Speaker 3 very like ordinary things. I'm impacted by obviously like the intense emotional stuff, but I'm also very moved by sort of ordinary circumstances, I think.
I've just always been that way.

Speaker 3 Things that normal people are supposed to sort of adapt to and adjust to bring on like sort of this monumental wave of feeling for me as I navigate them.

Speaker 3 I think my sensitivity as an artist can also be like hearing the most like ordinary word.

Speaker 3 Like the other day, I watched an interview with Kate Blanchett where she talked about how like when she got her Oscar nomination, the news of her Oscar nomination, they celebrated her with sheetcake and how that's a very American thing.

Speaker 3 And just like the word sheetcake was so evocative that I just like had to write it down because I was just like, that's such a moving image that like conjures so many different things.

Speaker 3 Or like like the word Winnebago.

Speaker 3 Like I think like a lot of people ask me like what like my creative process it is and is like sometimes I like just hear those two like extremely ordinary American phrases or words or like proper nouns and I'm just floored.

Speaker 3 I think especially in music, you have like such a small word count that a word like everyone, you hear sheetcake and I just feel like you just see a sheetcake and it conjures like some very specific like childhood memory and and place and taste.

Speaker 3 And I just feel like that is like part of, at least for me and my work is just like finding those like moments like that where you're like, how can I use that to like conjure a moment for many different people like really quickly?

Speaker 3 And I think that's a lot of what we do as writers is. pull on the strings of that for like many different people.

Speaker 3 Are there certain things that you just know are like, I know this is a very like, I have my own personal attachment to this, but I have this intuition that it's going to touch a lot of different people

Speaker 3 too. And they could be all these like collections of little details.

Speaker 3 Like everyone has like a certain connotation of like a neighborhood TJ Maxx that for me, TJ Maxx was like a major place for my, that was like a like a holy ground for my mom.

Speaker 3 I think that sort of sensitivity allows me to think like this should belong here.

Speaker 3 And later down the line, there will be maybe like a dozen people that are like, yeah, TJ Maxx is like moving in an important place or whatever. I mean, that's essentially what crying in H Mart is.

Speaker 3 I was crying in this grocery store and I was like, I bet other people have done this, you know, and like, I need to share.

Speaker 3 There's like something really funny and really dark and really emotional and sad and moving about this phrase.

Speaker 3 And I think that sort of sensitivity is sort of what led me down my path. So I think that's a type of sensitivity.
And then,

Speaker 3 I don't know, I just like, my feelings are just so easily hurt.

Speaker 2 Then there's the other part.

Speaker 3 But it reminds reminds me of that quote: that there's either

Speaker 4 nothing's a miracle or everything is.

Speaker 4 And the sensitivity to be like, we live in a world with sheetcakes and winnebagos and TJ Maxx's, like, and everyone's walking around like it's normal.

Speaker 4 It's like a kind of miraculous way of living, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Winnebago, it like sounds like what it is. It's like an experience.
I don't even know what a Winnebago is, but I know it's like

Speaker 4 an onomatopoeia. Yeah, it's an automatopoeia.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
I feel like I hear that word and I'm like gazing out at the Grand Canyon. Yeah, yes, yes, through the window of the time or something,

Speaker 4 eating a sheetcake.

Speaker 2 Like, Winnebago and sheetcakes are kind of opposites, anyway. They are, yeah, aren't they? Because sheetcake is also like very like

Speaker 2 and it's like so cookie cutter. Like, this is what we do.
This is our celebration.

Speaker 4 Baptism, sheetcake. Promotion, sheetcake.

Speaker 5 It brings me right back to like my 10th birthday. Like, and I see the candles on the cake and I can taste it.
My aunt Sally made our sheetcake

Speaker 5 birthday cake. So it's

Speaker 3 kind of like delicious, but also disgusting. It's plasticky.

Speaker 5 There's like a hint of plastic.

Speaker 2 You know exactly what it's going to taste like every time.

Speaker 3 But you want it. But you want it.
Even though you don't.

Speaker 4 Death taxes and sheetcake.

Speaker 3 That's good. Very predictable.

Speaker 2 So speaking of sensitivity, you, one of the things we have in common is that you also had a full mental breakdown in high school. I actually ended up in a mental hospital.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you actually were sent away.

Speaker 3 I wanted to.

Speaker 3 I was like, I need to go. We were about to go at one point in time, but my parents were afraid.
My mom was afraid. Well, my dad probably was afraid too, that it would show up on like a record.

Speaker 3 or something and that they were afraid that it would impact future opportunities if you looked up like my medical records and saw I had been checked in somewhere.

Speaker 3 But I remember there being a moment where like we're like, she's got to go. And I wanted to go.
I felt like I was going crazy. And that part was really hard for me to write.

Speaker 3 And I was worried actually that it didn't really come across like

Speaker 3 what. And I think a lot of people probably go through this, but last minute, I ended up not going because they were afraid of like the 10 steps ahead.
when I'm applying to 10 steps ahead.

Speaker 3 Be a senator or something that it will come out.

Speaker 2 Speaking of being sensitive to words, I heard in a podcast, you said, I'm still afraid of my mental health. Yeah.
And I thought she didn't say, I'm still afraid for my mental health.

Speaker 2 She said, I'm still afraid of my mental health, which is exactly how I feel. So can you tell me what you mean?

Speaker 3 That time in my life

Speaker 3 was just so out of my control. And I think as an adult, I've certainly learned ways to kind of navigate when those sorts of feelings come on.
It still does feel out of my control.

Speaker 3 There are sometimes just when there is a deep depression I feel coming on. And I think as a teenager, I was like

Speaker 3 more prone to leaning into that, you know, like, so I'd be like, well, my body doesn't want to go to sleep right now. So I just wouldn't sleep.
And, you know, I wasn't eating well.

Speaker 3 I wasn't taking care of myself. And now, when I feel those kinds of like

Speaker 3 feelings come on, I do go out of my way to try to incorporate like positive, basic people things like exercise and like sun or whatever.

Speaker 3 All the stuff that drinking water, like all the dumb things that you think like are

Speaker 3 for basic people, but are actually really

Speaker 3 crucial for every human being and they are really onto something.

Speaker 3 I think I would just kind of like lean into listening to Elliot Smith and staying up till like eight o'clock in the morning on those days.

Speaker 3 But I know that that is something in me and it's like something kind of like that is out of control. And I am very afraid

Speaker 3 of it, you know? And a big thing is like,

Speaker 3 I'm very nervous about,

Speaker 3 I haven't really talked about this, but I have a real fear of being away from my, my partner, my husband.

Speaker 3 I have a real fear of like being alone for a long period of time because I'm just very nervous about where.

Speaker 3 like my mental health will go without someone sort of keeping me in check.

Speaker 3 And I don't know how much of it is is is rooted in that and also just this real trauma of like losing a loved one and and being so afraid that the one person that sort of keeps me on the rails like um won't something will happen to him uh but yeah i think it it comes from that fear and i've had moments where i've been alone uh for like a week or something which is totally normal you know just to like for work or something and felt like oh this is a little scary for for me but i have a better way of like handling it than i did when i was when i was younger and i think think that that sort of mental breakdown kind of led me to know that I'm capable of those feelings.

Speaker 3 And that's why I'm sort of always afraid. And when my mom died and it was finally just like, now you have like an extremely real reason to fall into a deep pit of depression and never get out of it.

Speaker 3 I think that's sort of the reason why I reacted the way that I did. When she died, I was just like, you have to.
get busy. You have to get a job.
You have to get like three jobs.

Speaker 3 You have to like have projects afterwards. Cause I knew that if i really let myself lean into

Speaker 3 that despair that i just would never crawl out of it again i think yeah i do know

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 4 michelle you already mentioned that your mom is korean your father is a white american You describe a really complicated relationship with belonging.

Speaker 4 When you would go to Korea, they would kind of stare at you and try to figure you out. And then in America, kids were much less subtle and would just say, like, what are you? And so

Speaker 4 what does belonging mean to you? And with whom do you feel most belonging?

Speaker 3 Artists. I think that sort of like outsider feeling is something that a lot of creative people have in common.

Speaker 3 And I think in a way that when you write a book or when you make music or when you're involved in creating something, you're you're basically making some kind of like home for yourself to be understood um

Speaker 3 and so over the years uh especially the last you know few years that the book has come out and this sort of conversation has has been a big part of my life i've met a lot of other um biracial people who have a very uh sweet way of saying you know i don't feel like half korean and half white, I feel like 100% Korean and 100%

Speaker 3 this other thing. And I, that is, I think, a really generous and sweet idea, but it's not something that sort of resonates with me at all.

Speaker 3 I feel very much like I've always had this kind of fragmented identity. And I think that my journey has been sort of about being okay with being divided in this way.

Speaker 3 I think that is a really big part of who I am and what I grew up with. And I think a big reason why I do what I do is because I feel whole in being an artist.

Speaker 3 I feel whole like when I am playing on a stage and I've gathered people into my house to like come watch me do the thing that

Speaker 3 is so uniquely my own and people have responded to that.

Speaker 3 So I think that that's where I feel the greatest sense of belonging is in a space that I've created for myself.

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Speaker 4 We have a conversation, ongoing conversation on this podcast where we are trying to figure out how do we know whether our personality is authentically us

Speaker 4 or whether our personality is just this manifestation of our accumulated coping mechanisms and traumas. And

Speaker 4 I heard you say that much of your personality was developed in opposition to these stereotypes that were projected on you as an Asian American woman.

Speaker 4 So you never wanted to be seen as docile or agreeable or hyper feminine. And so you kind of over-indexed on the masculine, raucous kind of side.
And

Speaker 4 you are not even sure whether that is your genuine personality. And it makes me wonder, how can we figure out who we really are when so much of what we become is based on

Speaker 4 societal expectations that we actually have to reject. And so practically speaking, have you you been able to determine what is authentically you?

Speaker 4 If so, how?

Speaker 3 And also, do you know who we are, Michelle?

Speaker 2 You've been talking to us for 30 minutes.

Speaker 4 Send me an email. That would be great.
I'd love to know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know if that

Speaker 3 exists or like what that would look like if we weren't.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's what being a human being is, is being conditioned by things that happen to you. So I don't even know what,

Speaker 3 what like pure root of that we would be after.

Speaker 3 Because if we weren't conditioned by things, we wouldn't speak any language and we would just be primal beings, I guess. Um,

Speaker 3 but I don't know, there's never been a world where that uh that kind of like pure self exists. So, I just don't really know.

Speaker 3 Men are also conditioned to be a certain way, and white people are conditioned to be a certain way. So, to be fair, like I,

Speaker 3 there's a part of me that wonders if I wasn't doing certain things in opposition to my expectations, like what I would be like.

Speaker 3 But then I also know like both of my parents are really loud, unapologetic, not docile people either. I think that when I hit my 30s, like everything feels like my parents' problem.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 I feel like I, I think everything that I, somehow, like, when I hit my 30s, I became obsessed with thinking like every single part of my personality, bad or good, could be attributed to my parents.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. You did it 10 years earlier than I did.

Speaker 2 I'm right there now. Yeah.
Michelle, I've said this 10 times on the podcast, but there's this New Yorker cartoon that came out recently.

Speaker 2 And there's this dude laying on the couch in his therapist's office. And he says, I had a complicated childhood, especially lately.
And he's like 55.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for better or worse.
I feel like I can source everything from, you know, either from my genes or the way that I was raised.

Speaker 3 I feel like it's all their

Speaker 3 problems.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I don't know i i guess i'll never know but i do think i didn't feel comfortable doing certain things that now that i'm older i i can recognize why i mean there's a lot of undoing that we have to do in our lives and i think that um it's really wonderful like you know as exhausting as like contemporary discourse can be it really can be eye-opening i remember being in my teenage years and starting there is starting to be a dialogue about how women compete with one another and and can be cruel to one another.

Speaker 3 And I remember like being very impacted and aware of my own internalized misogyny and how to, you know, how that exists in everybody and how to work on undoing that.

Speaker 3 And I still think that it's something that I have to work on all the time. I think it's something that everyone has to work on.
For me, in a creative field that can feel

Speaker 3 like there's not much space for all of us, it's hard to not be envious or jealous of other people in your position and have this sort of scarcity mentality.

Speaker 3 And so I think that sometimes like there's a really positive undoing of that.

Speaker 3 But when I was younger, like, I think especially because I was really drawn to sort of male dominated fields, it felt like in order to be taken seriously, you had to present

Speaker 3 in a certain sort of way. Mostly just to not invite like a certain kind of question.
When I was younger, I wore a lot of like muscle teeth and I had like a very short haircut.

Speaker 3 And I I liked myself in that way. And I also like myself in this way.
But yeah, now I feel like I'm sort of at a place in my life where I have the option to appear a certain way and not feel

Speaker 3 threatened by that, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2 So you're talking a little bit about the masculine. And I was very grateful for how honest you were about your dad in the book.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You talk about how you hadn't planned for your mom to be the one. to die first.
There was a feeling of like, we're not going to be an us anymore without her. She was the one that was the glue.

Speaker 2 There's this one line that you had about your dad, which we read out loud, but you said,

Speaker 2 talking to him was like explaining a movie to someone who was walked in on the last 30 minutes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Talk to us about your dad. What did you mean by that line? And also just having listened to your lyrics for a long time, how do you feel about men in general? I have some feelings.

Speaker 2 I have some feelings and thoughts, but I just

Speaker 4 like it's a sidebar.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Extra one.

Speaker 3 First question is,

Speaker 3 what did I mean by that line? I was really privileged in the way, I mean, I grew up with a, as an only child with a mother who was a homemaker. I spent so much time with my mom.

Speaker 3 She was kind of like my primary parent. And

Speaker 3 my father never had a father. And he was a youngest son of a, of a single working mom.
And he had a tough life. He was an abused child and a recovered drug addict.

Speaker 3 And I think when he turned his life around and became like a successful working adult,

Speaker 3 he really felt like he'd served his role. And I think that I am very lucky to even have that

Speaker 3 in my life.

Speaker 3 But I don't think that he took, he just didn't take as much of an interest in me as my mother did. You know, I remember my dad.
actually telling me, I don't love you as much as your mom.

Speaker 3 And that being just like an insane, like, why do you need to tell me that? Wait, he didn't love you as much as he loved your mom or he didn't love you as much as your mom loved you?

Speaker 3 He didn't love me as much as he loved my mom. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 That goes in the category of just don't ask, don't tell.

Speaker 3 My dad is just like such an open book. And maybe I get a lot of that from him to go back to like blaming everything on your parents.
But

Speaker 3 for better or for worse, he's the opposite of my mom. There's like no withholding nature to him.

Speaker 3 And so I think that sometimes that's like a very American concept that you should always be yourself and you should always tell the truth and you should always let everything.

Speaker 3 And I think as I get older, I realize like that can actually be really harmful. And it can sometimes be like the sort of easy way out, the sort of unburdening of the truth all the time.

Speaker 3 Because there were a lot of things that I sort of wish that I didn't know about him as his daughter.

Speaker 3 So yeah, that was just how I felt about him. What do I think about men? I mean, that's such a broad question.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 I think I've simultaneously been,

Speaker 3 I don't know, I have a great reverence for some men and a great disappointment and many, many others, you know.

Speaker 3 But I feel that way about women too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What do I mean? What do I mean? I don't know.

Speaker 3 What are you getting at, Glenn?

Speaker 5 Good question.

Speaker 2 I think all the time about this part in Isabel Wilkerson's cast, where she talks about how experts in caste can identify what caste a person's from by just the way they walk into a room, regardless of what they're wearing, what they're whatever.

Speaker 2 It's just a way that people carry themselves. And in terms of being a sensitive human being, I tend to

Speaker 2 either shrink or like react too strongly to the way that people who have been conditioned as men carry themselves in a room. Just the lack of yield.

Speaker 2 the lack of give, the here I am, instead of the there you are type thing.

Speaker 2 So I think about that a lot in terms of also being a white woman and how i do that in in other ways but um i it's something just that i struggle with that men not men but like the male act

Speaker 3 is just good for me yeah i think it's something i'm i both admire and i'm repulsed by yeah i always think about this time my old band used to have a rehearsal space in this uh warehouse and there was like a freight elevator that we would bring gear up and down for shows and stuff.

Speaker 3 And one time it broke, and we were like stuck in this freight elevator. And I was just like, oh my God, what do we do? And I watched my

Speaker 3 male guitar player try to figure out how to operate and fix a freight elevator. And I was just like, what is it like? to be conditioned with like that kind of confidence.
That's like incredible.

Speaker 3 And it's simultaneously so dumb and terrifying that you have the confidence to like do something that could maybe kill us all,

Speaker 3 but you also like have the strength and courage to try. And I also really

Speaker 3 envy that and want to find that balance in my life.

Speaker 3 I will also say I've been repulsed by,

Speaker 3 I mean, I just think that ideally, like, um,

Speaker 3 you find a balance of these things that like the sexes can be conditioned by society.

Speaker 3 That I also watched that kind of masculine trait like totally fail because my father was not conditioned to learn how to take care of people.

Speaker 3 And so when my mom got really sick and was bedridden, I remember like we got this mouthwash because she had like all of these sores like that were a response to medication.

Speaker 3 When I would take care of her, I'd be like, okay, here's the mouthwash. And if you need the mouthwash, you're going to need a cup to spit it out in.
You're going to want a tissue to wipe your mouth.

Speaker 3 And like, you're going to want like lip balm like afterwards, maybe water to rinse my my dad would just be like here

Speaker 3 mouthwash and then peace out there wasn't like this list of like things like that he would kind of follow up as as a caretaker and i thought you know i wasn't repulsed by him i was so sad that he didn't get to learn that no one taught him um how to do that uh or to think about those sort of things and i think that um

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wish like as a someone who is conditioned with as a woman, I I had some of the courage to take on things that felt kind of barred from from me, you know, even just like a lot of young boys are like given a toolbox as a kid.

Speaker 3 I never, you know, like had that. So of course I'm not going to feel savvy around that kind of stuff because you don't get that.

Speaker 3 You get these tools of caretaking. You get the dolls that you look after and dress and know how to, you know, maintain.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I'm interested in like there being a balance of those qualities and the way that people are raised in general.

Speaker 2 It's so interesting in terms of the we can do hard things of it. It's like this has been a theme on the pod when women have come on and talked about the men in their lives.

Speaker 2 Or like, what is it that makes you think, yes, I can fix a freight elevator, but no, I can't sit with this person in the hard,

Speaker 2 like walking people home type heart.

Speaker 5 You know, a word that she said that just totally struck me was envy and how much I related to that.

Speaker 5 When I feel most frustrated by like a white male privilege, like walking loudly into a room, I think, oh,

Speaker 3 I wish I had that. I wish I had that.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's really, really, really, really something.

Speaker 4 But its connection to love is fascinating too, because that part of the book with the mouthwash, I remember your mom saying to you

Speaker 4 when you were giving it to her,

Speaker 4 he doesn't know how to do it. He's my husband.

Speaker 4 How come he can't do this for me?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And it feels like full circle to the car, which is like,

Speaker 4 I've never met someone like you. How can you not see me? How can you not understand me? Here are these two people who do life together for so long.

Speaker 4 He can look at her, but he can't see what she needs. Whereas you can look at her and see what she needs.
And that was a love impasse for them.

Speaker 4 She didn't feel in that moment like he could love her the way she wanted her husband to love her by helping her with the mouthwash.

Speaker 4 And it's just like you say the ability to condition to see those things.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, but in the same breath, I couldn't see her or help her with certain things because of our cultural divide and our background. And that was also what was so heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 And a lot of what the book is about too is like, because even being, you know, half Korean and growing up with a certain type of food, I never ate like Korean old person, sick person food.

Speaker 3 You know, we ate like barbecue meats and spicy stews and like when you're going through chemo like that is like not those that's what my i watched my mom growing up eating those things i didn't ever see see her or have to like make um these more muted korean versions of like what you know would be like chicken noodle soup or whatever like there are korean versions of that that i never really i never made and some things i didn't even know about um so in a way there was this inability for me to see her too because I just didn't have that upbringing and it wasn't until her friend Kay came to live with us that I realized, like, oh, I'm really failing in this other way of caretaking and way of seeing my mom because we have very different upbringings and experiences.

Speaker 2 Or are none of us failing? And it just takes a bunch of people. Yeah.
Like, it's healing and caretaking is just a community, and we all bring something.

Speaker 2 So, Michelle, your mom used to say

Speaker 2 over and over again, some version of,

Speaker 2 No one will ever love you as much as your mom does.

Speaker 2 And so, subtle again. And my question to you is,

Speaker 2 and clearly your dad agreed with that.

Speaker 3 So dad concurred. Yes.

Speaker 2 So did that turn out to be true?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 In what ways?

Speaker 3 I just like know it. It's interesting.
I just,

Speaker 3 I don't know. Your mom is just like my mom was just like obsessed with me so like

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 3 i i don't know and so much of my like young adult life and childhood life was just like her just like endlessly listening to what i just endlessly listening to like the you know banal like parts of your life like with more interest than any other human being will will ever give you because like i wonder how much of it is just like that's mine but anything that you say is like you know that's that's from me um

Speaker 3 and yeah i just feel i just feel it i just don't think anyone has ever been

Speaker 3 for better or for worse no one will ever be as honest with me as her no one will like ever have like my true she just didn't want anything back beyond like me

Speaker 3 living well and no one no one will ever i know no one will ever give that to me again i feel very loved by a lot of people and especially my husband but i do know that i don't i don't think anyone will love love me as much as my mother loves me.

Speaker 5 It's like unconditional love. Like a parent, I feel like does have unconditional love more than you can have with a partner.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if you're lucky, yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, whether we want to.

Speaker 2 If you're lucky.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I wonder if when you said before, Michelle, about you felt like the response to that question of do you need to be understood to be loved, you're like, absolutely. And yet, I have this with my mom.

Speaker 4 And so I'm wondering, is a mother-child child

Speaker 4 or father child in applicable situations the only relationship where there can be utter love without understanding? Like, I don't need to understand you to know that I love you.

Speaker 4 Like you are just this marveling creature that

Speaker 4 I'm obsessed with by virtue of you being mine.

Speaker 3 Well, I think that like understanding is probably a spectrum. There's no like, you either understand someone or you don't.
You understand different parts of someone you know like i think about like my

Speaker 3 my two best friends who i've known since i was in middle school so 20 years now and um

Speaker 3 i don't understand them and they don't understand me anymore they're like my siblings we've grown in such different directions and we're very different people but i we have such a deep love for each other in this way that you can only develop in

Speaker 3 a way of like in longevity, you know? So I think that both things are kind of spectrums, right? Like, I think that, like, there is just no like love or no love.

Speaker 3 There's just no understanding and no understanding. They're both like on this slider of like, I understand a deep part of you, but I also,

Speaker 3 I don't know, love, love you on, on a slider as well.

Speaker 2 And it's tied to like, though, you said you're talking about your dad's idea of brutal truth and knowing everything and being transparent and whatever. Maybe like love as

Speaker 2 understanding each other is sort of like a Western idea too. Because I mean, even in your your mom used to say to you always save 10

Speaker 2 right i mean that was of yourself of yourself always save 10 of yourself she said even with your father i save 10 of myself

Speaker 2 it didn't sound like for her love was equivalent to i show you 100 you show me 100 love was a different thing what do you think about that 10 saving 10 of your self-advice even in love and do you follow it Yeah, I mean, I think it could also be interpreted in this way of just like, you're never going to know anyone 100%.

Speaker 3 Like we said, I don't even think I understand myself 100%.

Speaker 3 You know, like, so I think that there's always something that's missing in translation. And I think in a way, like, it almost feels like your partner,

Speaker 3 your romantic partner in life.

Speaker 3 At least in my situation, I feel like I have the most understanding from my husband because that's the person I've I've like picked and am compatible with.

Speaker 3 And we understand each other like very deeply. But I also like, I know my, my, there was like a lack of understanding between my parents and I, but they also loved me tremendously.

Speaker 3 My mom in particular just didn't trust anyone. And it was really good advice for, you know, to go through life of just, you know, be careful.
Like don't, people are not to be trusted.

Speaker 3 And everyone is self-serving and you have to guard yourself against that.

Speaker 3 And for better or for worse, like that has protected me from a lot of stuff, you know, and I think it's given me a really great compass to lead my life.

Speaker 3 But the older I get, I kind of sort of see it from another perspective where I think that it can also apply to being withholding to protect people.

Speaker 3 I think that sometimes that West, there's like a kind of Western concept of like, always tell the truth and be like, so unapologetically yourself. But sometimes I think it's like an unburdening

Speaker 3 for you to have to tell the truth.

Speaker 3 And sometimes it's better for people to not know certain things. Like one thing I thought was interesting was an example of this is like when my mom was sick,

Speaker 3 she found out that her old friends

Speaker 3 who'd kind of like disappeared, her like childhood friend who's disappeared's daughter had cancer. And that wrecked her.

Speaker 3 She was just a mess because she was just so pained by the idea that a young child was going through what she was going through.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I think my aunt saw that.

Speaker 3 And when

Speaker 3 her dad actually died two or three weeks before my mom, they decided not to tell her, that it was better not to tell her.

Speaker 3 My dad and maybe me would be like, mom, you. sorry to tell you this but like this happened and i think that like

Speaker 3 that can also be a type of 10 of just like what does that do right now, you know, for this person?

Speaker 3 And to really think about this, this truth, like, does like every piece of information I own need to be put onto this person? Is it a good thing for them to know or is it better to keep to myself?

Speaker 3 That's like a really hard lesson I've been thinking about a lot lately. If someone says something to you

Speaker 3 that's cruel about a friend, like, do you need to tell them, you know, like, I mean,

Speaker 2 no, you do not.

Speaker 3 And I think that when I, even like a couple years ago, I probably would have.

Speaker 3 If someone like, someone says something like mean about your friend or like, uh, oh, like that might make them self-conscious, like, maybe it's best to not tell them.

Speaker 3 Not because like you, you want to expose the other person, but because like you don't want that to weigh on their psyche.

Speaker 3 And I think it's actually more loving to withhold that kind of stuff than to just tell someone everything.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's like wise love.

Speaker 2 Michelle's honor. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Pod Squad, We Can Do Hard Things. Wise Love this week.
See you next time.

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