244. Stop Carrying Other People’s Pain with Chloé Cooper Jones

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Speaker 2 Hi, everybody. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.
I am already excited to hear what you are going to say to us after you listen to this episode. with Chloe Cooper Jones.

Speaker 2 Lots of talk about being present and being mindful and all of this in the world. Not a lot of talk about why we don't do that,

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 why we dissociate from the moment of our lives for good reasons.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 2 we can

Speaker 2 rearrange our minds so that sometimes we can be brave enough to try to be present.

Speaker 2 For me, this conversation was life-changing. Chloe's brilliance has helped me figure out why I dissociate

Speaker 2 and how to bring myself back to my people in my life. Listen, tell us what you think.
Enjoy.

Speaker 4 I actually just ordered another one.

Speaker 2 If I could just show you, there's just so many notes and writing in in it. And then I wanted to have one that's pure for other people to read.
It's really, really beautiful.

Speaker 2 And well, let me just introduce the pod squad.

Speaker 2 This is Chloe Cooper-Jones.

Speaker 2 Chloe is a professor, a journalist, and the author of the memoir Easy Beauty, which was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, and was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in memoir.

Speaker 2 So, babe, that's like an SB. That's like a FIFA World Player of the Year.
That's like the best you can get.

Speaker 1 That's my jam.

Speaker 2 She was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing in 2020. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
So, Chloe, what I'd like to start with is your idea of the neutral room.

Speaker 2 In reading your book, I recognized that I have spent much of my life in the neutral room.

Speaker 2 So can you explain to us how you learned about about the neutral room and what it has been for you in your life? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. First, I just have to say thank you so much for having me.
It's a total honor to be here.

Speaker 3 And it's very meaningful to me that within the framing of your question about the neutral room that you immediately say, I feel like I've been in the neutral room because I feel like the most important thing for me with this book is that while it is a very, very specific, you know, story about one person's life, that it was my goal to make sure that there were as many entry points or like moments of resonance with readers.

Speaker 3 I don't think that it serves any of us to write books that are just so insular that they become objects of like voyeurism, inviting people into voyeurism.

Speaker 3 And I know you know this maybe better than most,

Speaker 3 the incredible importance of writing things that leave themselves open for other people to enter.

Speaker 3 So in talking about the neutral room, I'm really curious to hear what your versions of the neutral room are, because I think everybody sort of has their own neutral room.

Speaker 3 So the way that I encountered mine is I have a physical disability and a pain disorder. And the pain disorder, when I was very young, I didn't have a good sense of how to manage it.

Speaker 3 And a pediatrician told me that the anticipation of pain in the mind was its own form of very, very real pain.

Speaker 3 So I could learn to manage pain a little bit or get a better handle on pain if I could first just figure out a way to kind of cut that anticipatory pain out of my sort of mental process.

Speaker 3 And I'd be very interested to hear what Abby has to say about this because the thing that I have learned since is that athletes have to do this a lot, have to go into a place where they're not imagining the pain that they'll feel, you know, hours later, even days later, but just focus on the moment.

Speaker 3 So I know cross-country runners do a version of this neutral room. And so the sort of core of it is just you find a place in your mind and the world doesn't come into that place.

Speaker 3 For me, it's like a highly visual place of

Speaker 3 white walls and on these walls flash, I count to eight. So the numbers one, one, two, three, four, you know, to eight.
And then all that I'm thinking is I'm in pain for eight seconds.

Speaker 3 not anything past that. So I just stay in that sort of present space of the eight seconds.
And then the eight eight seconds can repeat.

Speaker 3 And it's a way of just not thinking about or panicking or spiraling about the pain to come. So that's the sort of bare mechanism of the neutral room.

Speaker 3 And then the book sort of looks at the ways in which that neutral room, which is a very powerful place of like agency and peace in my life and pain management and control in a really positive way, can,

Speaker 3 if a threshold is crossed, become also a place

Speaker 3 of absenting myself from responsibilities, a way of managing social pain when I should actually be facing social pain.

Speaker 3 So it's both a physical place of remove, but it also can become a mental place of remove.

Speaker 3 And I think the book really begins at just a moment in which I'm recognizing for the very first time that I'm not particularly good at locating the threshold between where that place of remove is a choice that aids aids my agency and when the threshold is crossed, when it becomes a place of complicity or absentia in a very negative way.

Speaker 3 So, that's in some ways one of the core struggles of the book.

Speaker 1 I think this is so fascinating because, as an athlete, and of course, I've retired long ago. All I would do is count.

Speaker 1 And I would get into the hundreds of long runs or sprints. And for whatever reason, reason, to be in the counting of the seconds allows me to escape the physical pain that I was like enduring.

Speaker 1 That's, that is really something.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 One of the many reasons why I resonate with your work so much and this discussion in particular is that

Speaker 2 my version of the neutral room has always been escape. I'm not comfortable in this situation, this social situation, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And so I'm gone. And so my family will call that underwater.
It's a joke in our family. Mom's underwater because they'll like ask me a question.

Speaker 3 I'm looking at them,

Speaker 2 but I'm not there because that's not true. I'm not, I don't feel unsafe with my family.
It's like a thing you can get addicted to is being gone.

Speaker 2 And so this idea that you discuss is like, at what point is this

Speaker 2 survival strategy

Speaker 2 keeping me from the moment and from connection with other people, which is where I most find joy? Can you talk to us about the Beyoncé concert and how that did or did not relate to the neutral room?

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. First, I just have to say to Abby, I'm so grateful that you shared this thing about counting.
I think that,

Speaker 3 and this relates to the Beyoncé story, and it relates to what you're saying too, Glennon.

Speaker 3 Like this fear that I have about being fully present in the moment and being fully with others is that I will not be understood.

Speaker 3 I think everybody is always caught up in the act of translation between our disparate and mysterious minds. That's not unique to disability.
But I do think something that has followed me around a lot.

Speaker 3 as a very visually disabled woman is that people write on a lot of ideas and assumptions about who I am or who I could possibly be or how my life could unfold or what things I do or don't have access to.

Speaker 3 And so, what builds up over time is this sort of defensiveness of like, we will have nothing in common. You will not find any bridge to really see me or understand me.

Speaker 3 And I think, of course, with an athlete, that feels in my mind like a deeper chasm or like we're coming from two separate planets. We couldn't possibly find a bridge because

Speaker 3 your life has been, in part, about physical power and prowess, and kinesthetic intelligence. And mine is about,

Speaker 3 in terms of the way that people read my body, is about lack or absence or inability. That's the perception.
It's not necessarily the truth, but it's the perception.

Speaker 3 And it's one in this book that extends even to the ability to become a parent, right?

Speaker 3 It's just assumed that I won't be because how could a body like mine reproduce and make a child, let alone, you know, this beautiful child that I made, like this miracle child that I made.

Speaker 3 And so to just have these moments where I can be speaking to you, a body that seems so foreign from mine and find this moment of like deep connection.

Speaker 3 It's a reminder of like how

Speaker 3 those acts of translation,

Speaker 3 how we ourselves or I myself can make it harder with my own preconceived notions. So I don't know.
I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Speaker 3 I know I'm not answering your question yet, but it just feels really powerful to me to

Speaker 3 be able to like see those moments and to recognize them. And so I really appreciate you telling me that.
And I think, Glennon, your point about

Speaker 3 this like being present and not being present, it's like the question of the neutral room in some ways comes from a line in a letter from from my father.

Speaker 3 My father says, where do you go to escape the pain of reality?

Speaker 3 And that's a question for everybody. Like we all have that answer, whether the pain of reality is the physical, you know, epic run that you're on or the difficulty.

Speaker 3 feeling fully embodied in your present moment, even with, or maybe even especially with, the people that you love the most. There's also a joke in our house.

Speaker 3 My son will also often point out that I won't finish a sentence, that I'll start a sentence and then get lost in my head. And he'll wait.

Speaker 2 Neutral room mid-sentence.

Speaker 1 Here I am.

Speaker 3 He'll just wait and then he'll go, mom, you're doing that thing again. Do you want to tell me the end of that sentence? Oh, I love it.

Speaker 3 But something along the way told us that we were safest within our own minds. And

Speaker 3 the thing I think that's so tricky about that is that look at what our minds have accomplished. You know, like look at that social conditioning.
We've done so much.

Speaker 3 I don't want to lose all the things my mind has accomplished. I'm so proud of those things.
But then it's like that threshold. Can I also find joy in the present moment?

Speaker 3 So very simply with the Beyoncé concert, I didn't want to go. I ended up in Italy.
I had to sort of scam my way a little bit into a section of the stadium where I could actually see Beyoncé.

Speaker 3 And the huge sort of lesson that happens there

Speaker 3 is being able to see in real time

Speaker 3 the unbelievable, palpable joy that people feel when they are given radical presence. And I think people can be a Beyoncé fan or not, it doesn't really matter, but a great performer

Speaker 3 or a great even sporting event or

Speaker 3 film or anything, like

Speaker 3 we sometimes are in the presence of people who are giving us all of themselves. Like no part of them is split.
They are radically present with us. They're not thinking about their grocery list.

Speaker 3 They're not retreating. They're not hiding.
And you know it when you're in this space.

Speaker 3 And a really brilliant performer, which of course Beyonce is, she really understands how to translate from the stage.

Speaker 3 this feeling of just being there with us in that moment and being nowhere else like no part of her is split

Speaker 3 And what I saw was one, just the radical generosity of that, the gift that, and the courage and like the strength that it takes to, to really be present, but then also the unbelievable amount of joy that is generated in a, you know, this stadium with San Serro in Milan, it's 80,000 people and the joy was, it was just this, you know, ocean of human joy.

Speaker 3 And I looked at this massive example of it and I thought,

Speaker 3 maybe I can't do it on this scale, but I could try to do it with my son.

Speaker 3 And so, taking the kernel of this huge call and response of presence and joy, and saying, How do I scale that down to just be radically present and generously present with my child?

Speaker 3 And this, you know, because

Speaker 3 that's what matters most. That's where the stakes are the highest.

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Speaker 2 I find it fascinating that, you know, you were taught, we are all taught,

Speaker 2 our parents try to teach us to stay safe in one way or another.

Speaker 2 And your mom, who I love her, tell us what your mom taught you and how that may have aided you in

Speaker 2 residing in the neutral room.

Speaker 3 There's so many things in this book that, and maybe this will be unsatisfying for some readers, or I hope it's, I hope it's the opposite. I hope it feels,

Speaker 3 I don't know, like weighty and complex in a positive way. But there's a lot in this book where it's like, well, on one hand, this thing is good, but on the other hand,

Speaker 2 that's why it's so brilliant because everybody's like, be present. Just the secret of life is presence.
And I'm like, it's so much more nuanced than that.

Speaker 2 And I think your story brings it into sharp focus throughout this story. It is very clear that being fully present with other people is not always the right thing because people are jackasses often.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So this thing of my mother's advice is sort of one of those things that has an either or edge to it.

Speaker 3 And the more that I sort of think about it in the book, the more kind of complex it is, which is just, you know, she loves me. I'm her only child.
Her priority is to protect me.

Speaker 3 And so one of the pieces of advice that she gives me very young, and this is good advice on some levels, is be aware of the fact that most people are going to give you one thought, one cursory thought.

Speaker 3 And that thought is going to be informed by what they've been told about you or your body or or what you represent to them.

Speaker 3 It's going to be a lot of social narratives it's going to be a lot of prejudice it's going to be a lot of preconceived notions and she said the vast majority of the world is not going to give you a second or third or fourth or fifth thought so if you're aware of what that first thought is

Speaker 3 then you can use that to your advantage and she would say just learn how to play your card and so sometimes what that meant was

Speaker 3 having a recognition that the way that a disabled body, especially a body like mine, in that I'm very short, I walk with a very precarious sort of side-to-side gait.

Speaker 3 So there's a lot about me that presents to other people as childlike, fragile, weak, precarious.

Speaker 3 In general, I think disability is often narrativized as inherently tragic, as weakness,

Speaker 3 as something to be pitied, as unlucky, as sexless, as a person whose agency has been removed. These are the stories that have been told about

Speaker 3 what we perceive to be fragile bodies or disabled bodies. My mother actually, she's the hero of the book for sure.

Speaker 3 And she's been this like very powerful person, very healthy, very powerful. And this year she got cancer.
And it was the first time in which she really could understand

Speaker 3 how I felt because when she got sick and when she was doing chemo, people in her life started removing her agency and stopped listening to her and stopped believing that she was fully capable of making her own decisions.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, so many years into being my mother, it was the first time in which that thing in my life really clicked.

Speaker 3 And so this thing of like playing your card, she taught me that as a defensive thing, like be ready for people's negative assumptions about you so that you have a plan for it.

Speaker 3 And so in that Beyoncé chapter, I bring that up and I use my card, which is I allow a security guard to believe that I am sort of weak and confused and I really play up a certain ambiguity about

Speaker 3 my mental acuity, my physical, you know, and I lean really far into this assumption. that I'm deeply unable.
And it works out really well.

Speaker 1 It sure does.

Speaker 3 Works out great. And I get what I want.
But I also have this other-edged moment where I'm no longer thinking about myself or my mother, but I think forward to my son.

Speaker 3 And I say, he can never see me do this because

Speaker 3 I recognize that playing that card where that advice comes from, a really beautiful and considered and protective space for my mother is also an act of complicity with people's worst ideas about me and about disability.

Speaker 3 And so I

Speaker 3 ethically feel like I can't do things. I don't want Wolfgang to see me doing things that add to or perpetuate that complicity.

Speaker 3 And the last thing I'll say about this is I make that decision in Milan and then I just double down. I do it again in Salt Lake City.
And I had this moment

Speaker 3 later in the book, I just manipulate another security guard to get what I want.

Speaker 3 And I had this moment where I thought, oh, I should cut that piece of the book because people will be like, oh, she just made this decision not to do this.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, a month later, she's doing it.

Speaker 3 But I left it in the book because I think that's just much more authentic to how change can actually happen for us is in fits and starts and beginnings and failures.

Speaker 3 And that doesn't mean that I wasn't really working toward being a better self or a better model for my son. It just means that.
recognizing I need to change doesn't, you know, instantly make it so.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 2 And your mom was teaching you that people weren't going to get it. They weren't going to get you.
Was there there like a superiority in your brain? Like you are so effing brilliant.

Speaker 2 So was there a protection mode that was like, we aren't gonna get each other person to person. So I'm gonna fix your thinking that I'm below you by being above you.

Speaker 2 And then you have these moments because the neutral room is that too, right? It's like a judgment. You're gonna judge me.
I'm gonna judge you intellectually. So I'm up here.

Speaker 2 And then with the experiences you have, like at the Beyoncé concert, it's like, I think you say, if I must exist at a distance, let it be from above.

Speaker 2 But then at the Beyoncé show, you have this like not above, but within or withness with other people. Is that the most joyful place for you, even though it is unsafe?

Speaker 1 The withness.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are a lot of stages to recognizing

Speaker 3 your place in the world, your identity, the way that people are going to treat you, the way that people are going to

Speaker 3 reduce you. I mean, being dehumanized or reduced through the eyes of other people, whether they be strangers or the people who love you, like, I think

Speaker 3 that's the most painful experience. The feeling that your interiority

Speaker 3 is impossible for anyone to see. And that's not specific to disability.
That's something every single one of us are dealing with.

Speaker 3 There's not a single listener of this podcast who hasn't had a moment where they thought, oh, wow, my exterior self is being read in a way that is so dehumanizing to my interior self.

Speaker 3 And that is one of the core like mysteries, but also sort of complexities of being a human. And it's where a lot of great.
art has come from or a lot of great thought.

Speaker 3 But it's also, of course, where a lot of pain has come from. And maybe our most profound pain comes from that disconnect.

Speaker 3 And I think when you're really trying to deal with that disconnect in an authentic way, you might go through several steps, just like a grieving process.

Speaker 3 And I think one of those steps is defensiveness and maybe even disgust or a longing for some sort of way to place other people who've been unkind to you or

Speaker 3 who haven't even been unkind, but you perceive they might be below you.

Speaker 3 I certainly felt that way, especially because the thing that was valued so much for me in my life was my mind. So I thought, okay, well, I'm not a body.
Nobody values my body. I won't be a body.

Speaker 3 I'll only be a mind. But let me tell you, I'm going to be the best possible mind.
I'm going to be the best mind in the world. But there was a part of that accumulation of

Speaker 3 of the mind's power or knowledge that was less about doing it for the sake of those things, but was more about,

Speaker 3 yeah, setting myself apart, but in a way that I controlled and not in a way that other people were choosing to marginalize me.

Speaker 3 And it was also on the flip side of it, this plea to be like,

Speaker 3 if I just get enough degrees, if I just get enough awards, if I just write a good enough essay, if I just am a nice enough person,

Speaker 3 won't that be enough to see me as real and valuable?

Speaker 3 So I'm thinking a lot about this sort of disgust-desire matrix, like how those things are really in a deep relation.

Speaker 3 I've been thinking a lot about this because I just experienced this dancer and choreographer. His name is Maddie Davis, M-A-T-T-Y Davis.

Speaker 3 And I saw his work for about five seconds and it was so physical and it was so visceral. I saw it on my computer that I slammed my computer screen down and I was like, I hate this.

Speaker 3 I hate that, you know? And then I kept coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it.

Speaker 3 And the thing that I realized is that he's doing a kind of dance that's very physical and a kind of choreography that's very intense, but he always includes a really wide variety of bodies.

Speaker 3 So it was the first time in which I could imagine a dance universe where my body would be valued. And that was so

Speaker 3 threatening to me on one level because it asked me a question. That question was, do you want to do this? Are you up for this?

Speaker 3 And on the other side was this desire, like, yes, I do want to be up for this. But those two things lived very close to me in relation.

Speaker 3 And I recognized that immediately as this thing that's popped up in my life over and over. So to live a life with others.

Speaker 3 That's my greatest desire, to be very present, to be loved by the people that I love, to make my son feel like I'm endlessly present with him. Like, that's my greatest desire.

Speaker 3 But if the thing that I've been taught or the thing that's been reinforced over and over again is there's no space for you, we don't make space for disabled bodies.

Speaker 3 We don't make accessibility important in the world that you move around. We don't put bodies like yours on the cover of magazines.

Speaker 3 You are not ever going to be a romantic lead, and you're not going to see a body like yours in a romantic comedy. We would rather actually imagine that you don't exist at all and not think about you.

Speaker 3 You're excluded even from like conceptions of what diversity even is. Like, if that's the message, that's the drumbeat over and over and over again,

Speaker 3 then this desire that I have of being one with other people and connected to other people seems very far away. So, what do I do in the early stages of trying to grapple with this pain?

Speaker 3 Disgust, dismissal, rejection. I will put myself above.

Speaker 3 But I think, you know, becoming a parent, certainly for me, and I would imagine, I would ask if this resonates with you, it's one of those things that forces you to imagine moving past

Speaker 3 the pain of dismissal and moving past the pain of trying to cling to moral superiority as a life raft and rather move into a space in which you're living a life that's worthy of modeling for your child.

Speaker 3 And when I imagine the life that I think is worthy of Wolfgang, it's one in which he has a mother that's brave enough to try.

Speaker 1 Wow.

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Speaker 1 You know, I think a lot about gayness and religion with this conversation and how early on I had to rebel and rebellion is still a part of the same same system as soon as i stopped rebelling so hardcore to like the catholic church i realized oh now i'm in my body now i'm i'm in my own authenticity and making decisions for my myself because if you're rebelling so hard against something you're still a part of that system you're controlled by it yeah and your disgust was desired disgust by the church you wanted acceptance really when we get down to when we're really super honest your description of all of this is absolutely universal.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm so grateful that you're talking to me about this.

Speaker 3 It's, you know, it's something that I write about in Easy Beauty, but it's this thing I'm really writing about now as I'm thinking about this artist, Maddie Davis, and like this project of embodiment.

Speaker 3 And I think part of what's so sort of intense about that experience, looking at his work, is it shows me just how far I have to go, like how many things I'm still afraid of.

Speaker 3 And how even after writing one book, book,

Speaker 3 there's a lot more work to be done. It's not over.
And so I'm just seeing this like big road ahead of me.

Speaker 3 And I think part of what I want to say is like that disgust, that rebellion, that rejection, I think that's a really necessary part of the process. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 And I want to be really clear, like I place no moral.

Speaker 3 judgment on I'm I try to be very forgiving and kind to myself about the mistakes that I made because I just don't know how any real change happens without pain and struggle and even some regret about decisions or things you wish you could do differently.

Speaker 3 So I think it's a really important part of this process.

Speaker 3 But I think you're both saying like there's a point in that rebellion or that struggle where you realize that while a fine first stage, you're still defining yourself in relation to that thing. Yes.

Speaker 3 So you're not free.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's right.

Speaker 3 So then the second or I don't know how many stages there are, maybe it's the 100, but a stage that comes up is,

Speaker 3 okay, I needed to reject this. I needed to define myself temporarily in a oppositional relationship to this thing, but now how do I get free? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes, because obedience is a cage, but rebellion is an equal and opposite cage.

Speaker 1 That's my question. I love what you said earlier about the perception of future pain and that anticipation of that future pain.
I think that that's what we're kind of talking about.

Speaker 1 Like that's the little crux right here. I think my rebellion was in anticipation of future pain and going, nope, I'm just going to turn my back on it and I can avoid all of this pain.

Speaker 1 But I think what we're trying to say here is maybe don't just throw yourself in a pile of pain, but turn towards it and step into it and figure out how to be able to go.

Speaker 1 and however you deal with that pain.

Speaker 2 How do you do it now, Chloe? When do you find yourself, oh, I don't want to be in the neutral room right now. Do you have an answer to that question that we're asking? Yeah.

Speaker 1 When is it? When is it painful?

Speaker 2 When is it keeping you from connection? And when is it keeping you safe in a way that's good for you?

Speaker 3 I do.

Speaker 3 To be clear, I think like locating that threshold between how the neutral room or removal or any of these things or separating yourself from pain, like locating that threshold between where it's an active agency, because as you said, like there are reasons to not engage with people

Speaker 3 that are great.

Speaker 3 And there are reasons to avoid pain and suffering. Not all pain is productive pain.

Speaker 3 So I would say, first, like that, locating that threshold between the kind of productive pain you need to move through in order to grow and the kind of pain that

Speaker 3 you can leave for others, that's a lifelong project. There's no way to locate that threshold once and then have it.
And in fact, I love that, right?

Speaker 3 Because that threshold shifts as I shift and as I become, you know, hopefully wiser and more experienced. So that threshold is growing alongside me.

Speaker 3 But I do think that one really important thing for me when I'm thinking about this desire-disgust matrix or the things that I'm rejecting and the pain that I need and when it's all sort of mixed up in a way that is very important and productive, but I'm afraid of it.

Speaker 3 And that's where the disgust or dismissal comes from, is I just had to really think sincerely at the core of my life what is the thing that has caused me the most pain that has caused so much of my actions to unfold in both positive negative ways and i think that it is very simply that it is hard for a lot of people in this world to see the disabled life as whole

Speaker 3 and what i mean by that is

Speaker 3 There are so many bad notions and so many bad narratives around disability that it is very hard for people to see me as a real person.

Speaker 3 And that's the story that sort of begins the book is a friend of mine saying,

Speaker 3 you know, disability is such an inherent tragedy, such a huge flaw that it negates the value of any other thing in your life.

Speaker 3 So much so that he argues that I should not have been born and no body like mine should have been born. So there's no shock in that argument.
That's the basis of eugenics.

Speaker 3 That's the basis of a lot of prejudice against a lot of bodies that one single aspect of us reduces our entire human value or allows people to dismiss our human dignity.

Speaker 3 And so that belief and how that has operated in my life in both really minor ways in the grocery store and really major ways. within my family or within my relationship to my father.

Speaker 3 All of that is kind of tied to that one thing so the thing that i want for myself more than anything is to be seen as having inherent human dignity and to be seen as whole okay well what's the problem with that if i want that for myself i have to figure out how to give it to other people

Speaker 2 Say it isn't so, Chloe. Anything else?

Speaker 3 What a drag, right? All right, wait, say more about that. Shit, I forgot that's where we were going.
It's such a drag. It's the same thing with raising a kid.

Speaker 3 It's like, you can't just tell them how to be. You have to model it.
I find that so rude and annoying.

Speaker 1 It's terrible.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I mean, how can I really demand this from

Speaker 3 for myself and from the world if I have no ability to give it, if I have no ability to

Speaker 3 try my hardest to seek the fullness, the wholeness, and the humanity of other people.

Speaker 3 And to remember that even in moments of great pain, people are not reducible down to the worst thing that they have said.

Speaker 3 People are not reducible down to their worst action.

Speaker 3 And my mother has this really brilliant line in the book. I mean, it's so devastating in my life.
I'm having a conversation with her about

Speaker 3 ways in which I feel that pain has come to me and the way that I've perceived it from other people. And she says, you're always looking at the wrong hurt.

Speaker 3 And what she means by that is, I'm often in a situation where somebody is saying a cruel thing to me or a dismissive thing. And I'm taking on that hurt as that they've located some

Speaker 3 visible flaw in me and my character, when in fact, of course, they're only speaking from their own hurt.

Speaker 3 And that doesn't mean that I have to forgive them or be complicit in what they've said, or it doesn't mean that I don't hold them accountable.

Speaker 3 But it also is, if you really think about it that way, like, one, you don't have to dismiss them as, as an entire person, but also you just don't have to take their pain on.

Speaker 1 You don't have to.

Speaker 3 And the book ends, you know, as a very purposeful bookend. It begins with these men in a bar telling me my life is not worth living.
And I take all that pain on and I allow it to separate.

Speaker 3 you know, to isolate me from my life. And it ends in a bar with another man asking me, how is it possible that your husband manages the burden of your body?

Speaker 3 And it's important to me that those moments bookend, you know, this story, because the world is not magically better. Like those men are always going to exist or women or anybody.

Speaker 3 Like I'm always going to have to be navigating that. But the arc is I just get a little bit better from the beginning to the end at not carrying that pain or.
or at not looking at the wrong hurt.

Speaker 3 And so this man who says, how do people deal with the burden of your body at the end of the book? I I can just see that he's speaking from his own limitations. He's speaking from his own ignorance.

Speaker 3 He's speaking from his own pain and intoxication. And it really has nothing to do with me.
And I can say goodnight to him and then go on and enjoy the rest of my life, my evening. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the way it ties for me to the anticipatory pain is I see it in myself when I'm in a space with a man who I perceive to have any sort of

Speaker 1 maleness. Any kind of toxic musculoskeletal.

Speaker 2 It's It's anticipatory pain removal. I will retreat in anticipation of something you might do,

Speaker 2 which

Speaker 2 it felt like it's almost a self-trust too, that I don't have to retreat because it's not that these people aren't going to be jackasses. It's not that these people aren't going to say the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 It's that no matter what they say, I will be able to handle it. So I don't have to remove myself.
beforehand.

Speaker 1 And it's like removing yourself in case somebody doesn't see your humanity is denying that person's possible humanity preempting it right some way it's almost proving that they're right yeah like when you when you enter into their crazy and their drama that is like a proving of their point in some way so it's like you're trying to quit the job before you get fired You're always like, you'll leave the relationship before somebody leaves you.

Speaker 1 Like, that's the, that's the kind of energy in terms of this toxic. You're like, I'm out, not even going to see you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just to respond though, to this great thing that I feel like we're, you know, collaboratively drilling down on is, is that feeling of, you know, disgust or dismissal in these spaces and preemptive defensiveness of pain.

Speaker 3 I think it's really important in those moments to look at oneself and be like,

Speaker 3 how much Am I latching my psyche to these assholes? Am I allowing them to control my behavior or how I might might navigate this room or this space?

Speaker 3 Because then all the worst things have already come true. And it's actually not because they were assholes, it's because you collaborated with them in that moment

Speaker 3 to make it so.

Speaker 3 So it's like back to that question of like,

Speaker 3 okay, that rejection is a good first step, but the next step is, how do I just get free?

Speaker 3 There's a question throughout the book of like, you know, sometimes these men say things to me at bars or whatever. And I'm like, can I just enjoy a Friday night?

Speaker 3 Can I just put on a little dress and have a beer? And it's like at the beginning, I can't. And at the end, I can't.

Speaker 1 I can just go, okay, you're gone.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to latch my psyche to you. I'm not going to let you move me geographically around this bar.
I'm not going to let you drive me out of the bar. I'm not going to let you taint my night.

Speaker 3 And that feels like a much deeper freedom. And I'm somebody who feels my emotions extremely deeply.
So before this sort of attempt at freedom, which by the way, I don't succeed at this all the time.

Speaker 3 It's just something I'm aiming for. But before I was really working and aiming toward this, like it wouldn't just be a retreat in the moment.

Speaker 3 I would hold on to like frustration or anger, or I would revisit these moments and I would let the negativity of it haunt me for,

Speaker 3 you know, sometimes for weeks. I mean, there's still things I think about with decades.
Sort of toxic. Yeah.
What a waste of my energy.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 3 I do recognize all these things are much easier said than done. So there's no part of my book in which I go, wow, I've got this all figured out.
It's just a little bit of traction toward

Speaker 3 awareness or something. That's it.

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Speaker 2 In terms of your disgust desire thing, while you were talking, I'm thinking about what like disgusts me. And I swear, Chloe, I'm thinking about

Speaker 2 for me, I'm in anorexia recovery and I'm in it. I'm like doing it.
I'm eating all the food. And it was, it was food.
It was eating that

Speaker 2 disgusted me.

Speaker 2 And now I understand that I was fucking starving for 15 years. Like I desired more than anything or like rest, anyone resting disgusted me.
Oh,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 2 These things I was desperate for.

Speaker 1 That's really interesting. Wow.

Speaker 2 So, Chloe, keep going with that.

Speaker 3 Oh, good. I'm writing about this right now.

Speaker 1 So you guys are being very encouraging.

Speaker 3 I'm writing very explicitly about this disgust desire thing. But I had the same thing.

Speaker 3 I mean, one of the biggest sort of voices in my mind is that my self-worth is found only in work ethic and my work ethic or my ability to produce. And that if I can't produce, then I have no value.

Speaker 3 And part of this, I think, just comes from, you know, my poor mother, she's so great, but she just works.

Speaker 3 She's, you know, lives on a farm, was a third grade school teacher, just is constantly in motion.

Speaker 3 And, and there's a great sense in, especially for me as a disabled woman, like maybe my power wouldn't come any other way.

Speaker 3 Like nobody was going to give it to me for my beauty or my connections or any other sort of marker that allows us to access sort of power in our lives, but I could maybe access it through work.

Speaker 3 And so if I saw saw my friends being sort of what I perceived problematically as being lazy or resting or like enjoying their lives or something, I'd be like, that's, what a shame.

Speaker 1 Losers.

Speaker 3 What a God. Look at that person enjoying their life on a Sunday.
Like they don't know what living, you know, it's like, it's so ridiculous. But of course, it's because I wanted.

Speaker 3 I mean, I want my work ethic. I love my work ethic.
I love being able to produce. I also want to rest.

Speaker 3 I also want joy, but something, yeah, there's that drumbeat in one's mind that certain things are not acceptable for them.

Speaker 3 So when we see them projected in the real world, I think there is that disgust desire. I'm curious if anything's coming to Abby.

Speaker 1 I think the things that disgust me are the things that I feel most insecure about myself. I'm not an extremely judgmental person because I am pretty

Speaker 1 aware of all of the ways that I I have fucked up in my life and the faults. So I'm pretty generous when it comes to, and in your mind, I do think that you think I'm overly generous,

Speaker 1 that I give people too much of the benefit of the doubt. But what I do think is interesting about this, the paradox between disgust and what was the word you used?

Speaker 1 Desire. Desire.

Speaker 1 I think that they are intrinsically linked. I think that you can't have one without the other.

Speaker 1 I mean, we've been talking to some friends recently about our daughter and her musical possible career that she wants to go down. And these folks we keep talking to is

Speaker 1 go towards what's making you jealous in other musicians.

Speaker 1 And what can be brought up in jealousy and disgust is actually like a really nice path and a guide for you to like figure out maybe you got to work on that or go towards that. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because disgust is like, I can't even look at that.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 Why can you not even look at it? Yeah. Because you want it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because you want it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I love this. Jealousy is sort of like a cool, like on-ramp to disgust.
It's like maybe it's like, because I, you know, sometimes I have like light jealousy where I'm like, oh, that meal looks good.

Speaker 3 Like, I wish I had eaten them.

Speaker 3 It's not gaining traction in my psyche, but it's like, if I keep following jealousy to the point where it turns into disgust, it's like, ah, now I've gotten, now I've really gotten somewhere, you know, it's like, or just that deep dismissal of something or that profound judgment of something, like, that's maybe actually a voice that's really telling you you want that that's why you're afraid of it or it's just something you got to look towards to work through when we talk about jealousy i want to end with just tell us about what your husband first i'm obsessed with as obsessed with your husband as i am with your mom and wolf gang this whole family yes can you talk to us about what he said about school dances

Speaker 3 We went to a magic show in our neighborhood in Brooklyn, in Prospect Park, and my son,

Speaker 3 there were kids from his school there and he chose not to sit with them. He was sort of sitting back with us and sitting very close to me and away from the crowd, very separated from his peers.

Speaker 3 And as the magic show went on, he kept ruining all the tricks. He kept figuring it out.
He actually still does this. We just watched this show on Netflix, Magic for Humans, which we love.

Speaker 3 But the whole time we would watch it, he'd be like, he's palming that. It's this thing.

Speaker 3 And I loved this because I was like, his intellect, like, he's so critical, he's crushing, you know, what these other kids are just dazzled by.

Speaker 3 And, and so I was being very encouraging of this dismissal response to magic. Um, and I kept being like, yeah, tell her she's wrong or like, you know, like ruin the trick or something.

Speaker 3 And, and of course, what I was prioritizing in that moment was one, what I perceived as, as again, that sort of moral superiority that comes from the intellect that I have sought and found a lot of value in, of course, very destructively in my life, but here I am, even at the end of the book, still very seduced or tantalized by it.

Speaker 3 But also,

Speaker 3 I loved the feeling of my son and I against the world, right? Like, if I have to be separate in this separate little bubble of marginalization,

Speaker 3 Doesn't it feel so tempting to bring him into that bubble with me? And then it's us, we're together, and the rest rest of the world's against us.

Speaker 3 Of course, that's not what I want for him, but I'm being honest in this moment of being, yeah, seduced by it or leaning into old habits. And my husband keeps saying, like, please stop doing that.

Speaker 3 And then he says, I went to high school dances and I never danced. And I immediately was like, oh, yes, I did this too.
And he said, sometimes standing apart from the crowd is

Speaker 3 really important

Speaker 3 and is an act of bravery.

Speaker 3 And sometimes it's cowardice.

Speaker 3 And he said, I look at our son and I think that he is both sensitive and confident and smart enough to know the difference between that bravery and cowardice if we just get out of his way.

Speaker 3 And that was right. That was very correct.
It's really hard as parents to get out of the way, but I think it goes back to that like thing you said a while ago of like, can you trust the self?

Speaker 3 And of course, one of the amazing things about being a parent and raising a child that I think is so exceptional and so brilliant is I also have to trust him and get out of his way.

Speaker 3 And that, yeah, he is wise enough and beautiful and sensitive enough that

Speaker 3 he could possibly live a life with others a little bit more seamlessly than mine, especially if I can model it and get my own,

Speaker 3 my own shit out of his way.

Speaker 3 So so hard to do so easy to say so hard to do so you're offering him the withness

Speaker 2 like teaching him he doesn't have to be above to prove he's not below he can be with

Speaker 2 damn to prove he's not below chloe you are a freaking philosopher for our time i'm so grateful for you and your work it really is world shifting for me Please come back a million times.

Speaker 3 I will. Anytime you invite me, I'm here.
And I just have to say quickly, I have loved how this has felt like such a collaborative, generative conversation. It's such a gift to me.

Speaker 3 So thank you for having me. And just thank you for your time.

Speaker 1 You're the best.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't wait for the desired disgust book. If you could just hurry back.

Speaker 1 Can you quickly

Speaker 1 let's go?

Speaker 2 If you need to chat again, we're here.

Speaker 2 I'm disgusted by almost everything.

Speaker 1 So I'm a good reference. Well, thank you.

Speaker 3 Thanks for the encouragement. It makes me want to write for the rest of the day.

Speaker 2 Pod Squad, we love you. Go out there and be with.

Speaker 2 We'll see you next time. Bye.

Speaker 2 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

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Speaker 2 We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 13 Studios. I give you Tish Milton and Brandy Carlisle.

Speaker 1 I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

Speaker 1 I chased desire,

Speaker 1 I made sure I got what's mine.

Speaker 1 And I continue

Speaker 1 to believe

Speaker 1 that I'm the one for me.

Speaker 1 And because I'm mine,

Speaker 1 I walk the line.

Speaker 1 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on the map.

Speaker 1 A final destination

Speaker 1 lack.

Speaker 1 We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 1 to places they've never been.

Speaker 1 And to be loved, we need to be known.

Speaker 1 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 1 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 1 that our lives bring,

Speaker 1 we can do a heart game.

Speaker 1 I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

Speaker 1 I'm not the problem,

Speaker 1 sometimes things fall apart.

Speaker 1 And I continue

Speaker 1 to believe

Speaker 1 the best

Speaker 1 people are free.

Speaker 1 And it took some time,

Speaker 1 but I'm finally fine.

Speaker 1 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Speaker 1 Our final destination

Speaker 1 directions

Speaker 1 to places they've never been.

Speaker 1 And to be loved, we need to

Speaker 1 know.

Speaker 1 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 1 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 1 that our lives

Speaker 1 bring,

Speaker 1 we can do a hard pain.

Speaker 1 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Speaker 1 We might get lost, but we're okay with that. We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 1 to places

Speaker 1 they've never been.

Speaker 1 And to be loved, we need to be known.

Speaker 1 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 1 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 1 that our lives

Speaker 1 bring,

Speaker 1 we can do hard things.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we can do hard things.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we

Speaker 1 can do hard

Speaker 1 things.