Alison: Hello.

Jean: Hi. It’s great to have you down in my office.

Alison: Yes. Not in your closet.

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: That’s right. Because it’s no air up there, right? No air conditioning.

Jean: And it is super hot out today.

Alison: That’s right, that’s right. But this is perfect. This is a new fresh space. Yeah. For us doing our intro. So it will be very exciting for today. Right.

Jean: It will be because we are interviewing “Sit With Me” by Oneika Mays. And her subtitle is a no BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation. I love her title. It’s so simple and, and so powerful.

Alison: And I like that. It’s just an invitation,

Jean: Right.

Alison: Read this book, sit with me, hang out for a bit. And what where she was working on Rikers Island in New York, which is, um.

Jean: Near LaGuardia airport.

Alison: Yeah. It’s like really, it’s just hard. Yeah. And so it was fascinating to see how meditation, mindfulness and meta was melded onto this landscape that really was so yeah, hard and treacherous and had so many emotions that you don’t equate with meditation.

Jean: Right? I mean, what a courageous soul to go in to say yes and to experience everything she does. And she writes it, writes about it so beautifully, her memoir, her experiences at Rikers Island. And, um, and as I shared with you before, Allison, I’m reading this book very slow. Like it’s, it, it really speaks to me at a deep level.

Alison: So I really, I enjoyed it and meta is a type of meditation and you’re more familiar with it than me. That is like you, you repeat a little mantra to yourself, May I be safe. May I be happy,

Jean: May I be at peace.

Alison: May I be healthy, and may I be of peace. And so it’s and then you can do it for yourself, for a loved one, for a familiar stranger, and then for a difficult person, right. And for the world. So it’s really just a, you know, with many steps. So I can’t wait to see.

Jean: I mean, and I have listened to, to some of her other interviews and she’s, they are just super joyful and full of life. And this will be great.

Alison: It’ll be great. I can’t wait. Well, here she is. Here is Onika.

Alison: Oh my goodness. Hi.

Oneika: Hi.

Alison: She popped up right there.

Oneika: Hi Jean, Hi Alison. How are you?

Alison: I’m so good.  We’re so happy to meet you.

Oneika: I’m so happy to meet you both, too. I’ve really been looking forward to this.

Jean: Thank you.

Alison: You are some sort of special human.

Oneika: What do you mean?

Alison: Come on. Come on. This book is so good. And what you did. And we just did the intro, and we’re. And she was like, what a courageous soul.

Oneika: Thanks.

Jean: You know, to say yes to that. But seeing you on our screen now, this is this is so great.

Oneika: And thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

Jean: Yes. And, and I, we know you’re a busy person and, and I, I do feel so full of joy that you’re with us.

Oneika: I can’t, I can’t wait, I really I’m really looking forward to this. I know this is going to be a lot of fun. I’m really. Yeah.

Alison: All right. So I’m just going to dig right in.

Oneika: Oh, let’s do it.

Alison: Okay. So for our listeners, you are, um, a meditation, uh, teacher, a yoga teacher, um, a calming presence in the world. Um, I also think oddly, you’re an activist.

Oneika: Yeah. Um, and I like to advocate advocate. Yeah,

Alison: Could you just describe a little bit for our listeners what Metta is and what that practice is for you?

Oneika: I would love to. So Metta is really, it’s a way to say love. And it’s a Buddhist principle. And it’s one of the four qualities of the heart. And the other qualities are compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. But metta or loving kindness is, is not just kind of like any kind of love. It’s an Unconditional love. It’s a love without any exception. And the thing about it is it like starts with us, but then it expands. So we start with ourselves, and then we include people that we love, and then we include people that we don’t know really well or we don’t think much about, right? Like neutral people. And then we include difficult people or what in Buddhism we call it the enemy. Then we include everybody. So like all sentient beings. And that’s so powerful, right? Because it includes and the more that we engage in this kind of love, the more that’s there. So it’s infinite and it never runs out. So it’s incredibly powerful. And you can also just think about it as connection, because if you say like love, sometimes that can turn people off or make people like really uncomfortable. So you can think of it as just being connected or tied to something.

Alison: Which is easy, much easier. Because sometimes when even if you say the word God.

Oneika: Right.

Alison: A lot of, uh, feelings about that, And and when , jean knows about Metta much more than I do, but I have to say that, um, the difficult person.

Alison: I the first three I can do, I can probably do the world, but that difficult person one is hard for me. It’s challenging.

Oneika: It is. And it’s hard for a lot of people because we think of, well, this person hurt me. Right. Or I hurt somebody. So then there’s shame, right? I hurt somebody, so there’s shame or someone hurt me. And it’s not about excusing people. When we think about offering unconditional love to somebody who’s difficult, it’s it’s not saying we’re okay with what they did. It’s allowing ourselves to disconnect from the pain of what happened. And that frees us. I think it’s really freeing, you know, and oddly enough, the difficult person wasn’t the hardest for me. Because when I think of the difficult when I’ve had difficult people in my life and still have difficult people, right? Like, you know, that that’s very real for me. Very real.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: I am a work in progress. I am a work in progress. I found this practice for a reason.

Oneika: Um, But it was really hard for me with the neutral person, or what I call the familiar stranger, because it was hard for me to, like, cultivate feelings of love for people I didn’t know. So that was actually the toughest one for me. Um, when I had difficult people, there was a feeling there so I could work with a feeling that I had and work, you know, work on transforming that just like I did. If I hate, like, if I had that feeling of hate for somebody that meant that I was invested so that that meant there was a feeling there that I could, you know, hold on to. But with somebody I didn’t know, it’s like, what am I holding on to there? So that was the challenging thing for me. But the great thing about that is once I realized I could work with people I didn’t know, that meant that the entire world became like my family.

Alison: That’s right. Right? That’s right, that’s great.

Jean: I think for me, though, the the self-love one is I glaze over that. And, and actually, I was thinking to myself, that’s so interesting that, you know, in reading your book and I have heard of the Metta Loving kindness meditation, it’s like when I’m doing it for myself, it’s like really quick.

Jean: Like, just get through it and, and, uh, you know,

Alison: but I Gotta do the laundry. So it’s kind a ..

Jean:  but when it was with, with a difficult person, I guess I was like, okay with that a little bit more the neutral person It was too abstract, so I couldn’t really, you know. I would have to like, uh. So I love that this practice reflects more of our internal beliefs.

Oneika: Yeah. It’s for. Yeah. It’s so it’s for us, right? We, we work with other people, but it is for us. And if we notice that we’re, it’s hard to, to think about loving kindness for ourselves. Sharon Salzberg, who, you know, is known for this practice. Um, she, she suggests that if it’s difficult to think about loving kindness for ourselves, we think about a loved one offering us loving kindness. And then that can be a way in for us to start loving ourselves more. Or if we notice that we’re glazing over, you know, the neutral person, we think of a phrase like just like me. And that’s, that’s the way in. And I love that. Like just like me there people are trying to do the best that they can. Or just like me. People screw up, you know, just like me. People celebrate things and then that’s. And that’s the way in. But we have parts of ourselves that we love. We have parts of ourselves that we’re neutral about. We have parts of ourselves that are difficult. So it is really about us. And then once we recognize that all of that exists inside us, we can start to recognize that in other people. So again, the more that we can love ourselves completely, um, we start to love the world around us. And it’s not about accepting. Right? It doesn’t mean that we can’t have boundaries. It doesn’t mean that we can say like, I can love you, but over there, right? Because you’re causing harm, right? It doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong firm boundaries, right? Sometimes I think we think that unconditional love means being a doormat or being okay with things. And it’s I want to make it really clear that that’s not what that’s about, but it’s a sense of connection and ease around things.

Jean: Yeah, I love that you pointed that out because one of my questions was about boundaries taken from the theme, the central theme in your book is loving everyone is essential, but liking everyone is not.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: And, and so, you know, you tap on that all throughout your book. And I was thinking like, how do, how do boundaries come into play? But you know, you shared, you can love them over there,

Oneika: Over there.  I learned that teaching at Rikers Island. And for folks who may be unfamiliar, Rikers Island is a jail in New York City. A lot of people know it through watching “Law and order” that jail that they always show on the TV show , Law and Order. Um.  But I ended up, you know, sitting with people as the mindfulness coach with a lot of people who I loved and a lot of people that I didn’t like. I worked with a lot of people that I didn’t like, but, but by loving them allowed me to not have to like them. Loving myself allowed me not to like parts of myself. There’s a freedom there. If you go in loving people unconditionally, it doesn’t matter if you like them so much. And there’s a freedom in that. And you know, you think about social media, how we’re like always chasing this idea of, of being liked or being accepted or, or just being liked by everybody and being accepted. And that’s caught up in this idea of judgment. Like, if I like you, that means like, you’re okay if I don’t like you, there’s something about you that’s not okay. But if we, if we, we operate from this place of honoring your humanity right off the bat. If we disagree about certain things, that doesn’t really matter because I’m seeing your humanity just right away. And there’s power in that.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: You don’t have to like me because of it.

Alison: Right, right. Although we do like you. Um, so just I got to get that out. Um, um, uh, the Rikers Island. I just couldn’t believe some of that. Some of your writing just kind of, like, blew my mind because it seemed like you had. And maybe I, maybe I just read into it. Um, a challenge. Challenging moments where,  is supporting the people in the institution supporting the institution.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And I, I thought that was so profound. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Oneika: No, you read that absolutely correctly. You know, working at Rikers was working inside, you know, the system of mass incarceration. And as a person who wants to do this all differently, I realized, you know, I worked there as a volunteer, so I should make that clear. I was a volunteer for about six years, and then I worked there full time as an employee for almost five. So that was a very different feeling going in there once or twice a week for a few hours versus being there eight hours a day, every day, five days a week. And so I felt like when I was there as an employee, collecting a check, having a pension, getting insurance, all of those things that I was a part of the system and I was. And so there was a part of me that wanted to resist that for a very long time and push back against that. But I was part of the system, and I felt like I was making the system more palatable because I was a part of this program that a lot of people were like, well, isn’t that so great that there’s this person who’s offering meditation and yoga to people who are incarcerated. So how bad could Rikers be? And I never wanted that to be part of the conversation. And that ultimately is what led me to leave. Um, and it doesn’t mean that other people shouldn’t be doing that work. Like there’s a person now who’s the mindfulness coach and she is unbelievable. We had worked together before, um, as volunteers teaching yoga. And so she does that work now. So other people need to do it. I just felt like I couldn’t be a part of that anymore.

Alison: I think that’s an interesting thing though, because the world we’re living in right now is a very different world, I think, than what I know I grew up with, and it just is very challenging. So did you ever feel that loving kindness was a drop in the bucket? Like trying? You know what I mean?  how do you how do we get how do we get out of that feeling to continue to do it in the world we’re living in?

Oneika: You just have to do it. And yes, I felt like especially working at Rikers. So there’s two parts. I think working at Rikers often felt like standing at a tidal wave and trying to hold back a tidal wave with my hand. Right, Like that. It did feel like that a lot of times. Um, it felt very solitary. I, I worked with two incredible women, a wellness coach and also an acupuncturist who are unbelievable. But it felt like we were just trying to hold back all of that pain by ourselves. So, you know, that felt like really Sisyphean often. Um, but, and I think in the world that we’re living in, it can feel really lonely. But, you know, in Buddhism, we talk about this idea of non-attachment. So you do the work, you know, you put the love out there and you have to know that it It’s got to be enough. And there’s a ripple effect. And maybe it doesn’t happen when I’m still here in my body, but it will ripple out. And I believe that when I’m not in my body anymore, I’m going to go back to this source of consciousness and it will make an impact. And, you know, for my niece and nephew, you know, it will be enough for them and for all of the, the little people that we’re doing this for and for the earth, that that’s a, that’s enough. And, and that’s kind of what we do it for.

Alison: I love that.

Jean: Yeah. It’s beautiful.

Alison: That’s encouraging to me. It is.

Oneika: That’s the hope, right? Like we have to have hope. And I think hope is really important. And, you know, things do feel dark and they feel scary. But I think on the other side of that, we can also think about, well, isn’t there some excitement there because there’s something coming and shouldn’t we be thinking about what the new world can look like on the other side of this? And I think that’s that’s what we also have to think about, that there’s going to be something on the other side. So shouldn’t we prepare for that?

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: Wow.

Jean: Right. Yeah.

Alison: Okay. Well that’s it. Thank you. No, that’s pretty great.

Jean: Love is the answer.

Alison: That’s right.

Oneika: No, but it is the answer – transcends space and time. Yeah. You know, and it’s so powerful. We know that it keeps us going. We  think about the people who aren’t here anymore and how much we still love them and how much they keep us going. And I think that’s the thing that we hold on to. We know that it’s stronger than hate.

Jean: Absolutely.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: Yeah. You know, um, okay, so Onika  in your book, you write,  “the far enemy of love isn’t always swinging a sword. It’s adversion. It’s the thing that turns us away from our heart.” I thought that was so eloquently put. Because it doesn’t have to be this in-your-face thing. It’s it’s sort of like turning away from something and, and, and, and a lot of people, including myself, use that way to kind of not really look at things deeper things. You know, it’s like, what are you, what’s really going on in here? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: And when you wrote that and…

Oneika: There’s, you know, we think about hate and anger and all of us, you know, I, I think we can safely say like we know about like the big expressions of hate and anger. And that makes sense. And we we don’t want to engage in that. But it’s the little things that we skip over where we turn away from, you know, someone who’s homeless or someone who’s, who’s bought what we find distasteful. Right. And we have nice ways of saying that someone who’s distasteful or someone we find maybe repulsive or, you know, we don’t want to deal with somebody. And so we turn our head away metaphorically or, or even physically, we turn our eyes away. And, and that can be angry or we become passive aggressive or sarcasm, those kinds of things. Um, they are quiet, but they can be even more harmful than big explosions of rage or hate because they’re acceptable, societally. They’re acceptable socially, you know, um, among our partners, among our friends. And then they become really insidious because they happen over and over and over again. And they, they, they deepen this groove and, and then before we know it, we are completely separated from segments of society and we have become completely separated from people.

Oneika: And, and that’s how we end up in situations that we’re in now where there’s groups of people who are deeply suffering and we are completely ignoring it because we have just gently turned away. And that’s where love and compassion become really important. And where we, we recognize when we turn away from ourselves gently, you know, that the moments that we want to turn away from ourselves when we, we say like, oh, I don’t like that about myself. So I’m just going to turn away. So we need to start here first. When we notice that we’re doing that with ourselves, we turn away from ourselves and say, oh, I don’t like this about myself. So I’m going to I’m going to turn away. It’s not even so much even with other people, but we, it starts here. Um, and then we, we start to recognize that in other people. So we turn away from other people because we, we’ve started it with ourselves.

Alison: You talk about that incident on a subway.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And I found that I found that, um, upsetting because I could relate to what you said, but then you said, what, what if I had recognized that person? Or what if I knew that person and that, like, took my breath away because I know it would be a totally different experience. And then why would it be a totally different experience and why? That, that, that makes me very uncomfortable to say that it would be a totally different experience. And that brought up so much for me. Can you talk a little bit about how you got How you gave yourself self love for… You know, like that whole thing was just kind of upsetting.

Oneika: Yeah. So I was on the subway going to work, and it was early in the morning and there was a man who was experiencing homelessness on the subway, and there is an awful smell, and there was vomit on the subway, and the subway car full of commuters was clearly disgusted. And I was disgusted. And I, I thought that I was doing a good job containing myself. And when I looked up, I made eye contact with the woman and she looked at me and she looked like she was confirming like, yeah, isn’t this really, you know, really awful. And then I felt so shameful. Yeah. I was full of shame because I was disgusted and I felt so ashamed of myself because here I am, this person who teaches about compassion and loving kindness. And I didn’t have any compassion for this man who was clearly suffering. And this woman thought that we were, you know, allies in in feeling disgusted about this guy. And I really had to sit with myself because what what if he was somebody who I knew I would have acted very differently. And in that moment, I had to check myself and remember that people are suffering.

Oneika: And I needed to remember that everybody is suffering. And while there isn’t anything that I could do in that moment, I needed to acknowledge his humanity. And the problem is the system that we don’t have resources to take care of people. And that’s what I should have really been raging about. If I was going to be raging and disgusted with anything, it should have been with that. But I needed to offer myself some compassion for at least recognizing the shame in the moment, because at least I recognized it in that moment. And it didn’t take me a week, a month, a year to get to that place that it happened in that moment, which is a lot sooner than it would have happened a long time, you know, before. So but that’s what being a human is about. We make mistakes, things happen. And because I had a loving kindness practice, I could offer myself some some gentleness in that moment and say, hey, you know what, Oneika? You screwed up. You caught it. You acknowledged it and you move forward.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: So does that mean, um, do you live in New York still?

Oneika: I’m in Jersey city

Alison:  so does that mean then what does that mean moving forward for you if a similar thing happened on the subway again. How what would be different for you?

Oneika: That it’s I acknowledge that people are struggling and people are suffering. Um, and if somebody needs something, I can offer it. If nobody. And sometimes you just have to just offer loving kindness. And that’s what I do now too. I just offer like, may you be safe, you know, May. May you find some comfort. May you find a home. May you get something to eat. May you find somebody to take care of you. Um. Yeah.

Alison: You do that. I’ve seen you in cars do that. Like. Yeah, I’ve seen that. Like, I’ll be driving and Jean will just, you’ll just say, bless you.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: Bless you. Do you know.

Jean: Because I think that our thoughts.. Well I know our thoughts are so powerful.

Oneika: Powerful.

Jean: Right. Or if I see a person on the that lives on the streets, I go, wow, what a strong man. May you be blessed. But honestly, Onika, after reading your book, I do a little bit of that metta,  if I’m aware of someone and, um also, what also came to me in your book was like a, a quote from Jesus, or I’m not a huge Bible person, but to pray for your neighbor, to pray for your enemies. Yeah. Your neighbors, you pray for yourself. You pray for your enemies. It’s so powerful because that energy of separation, that’s where the hurt resides.

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: You know, um, and I like you, I’ll notice, oh, Jean, you are really judgmental on that one.

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: And I, I can feel it. My whole system goes just goes…ewwwwww…. It just goes yuck!!~

Oneika: Yeah. I’m I’m like an Olympic level judger, like it was really like, very good at it. Like, really I have medals, you know?

Jean: haha…you are i are in the same competition.

Oneika: I’m So good. And and I recognize it. And, and the wonderful thing about having a practice is that I recognize that, you know, this is a, it’s a practice and, and it arises, you know, shame. I still get a lot of shame and guilt and judgment, but I recognize it. And I can be tender with myself, like, especially on my yoga mat, like my yoga mat is a microcosm of my life. So I can notice all kinds of things that come up when I’m doing a yoga practice. Like if I fall out of a pose and, you know, I start judging myself or falling out of a pose, or if I’m in a studio and I talk about that in the book, and I notice if I start judging other people, like, what are you doing? Onika. That hurt your her practice is none of your business.

Oneika: Yeah, like her tree pose is none of your business. Like  why? What? What are you doing?  and I, like, have to check myself, like. Or, you know, the teacher calls a pose and I start getting mad at her like, I don’t want to do chair. Like, why are you having an argument in your head with the teacher about chair pose? She is not attacking you like this is all you. And you know, I can laugh at it because I know I’m having a conversation with myself. But all of this becomes, you know, an internal conversation. So you can start saying, like, this is happening because that happened earlier and you’re mad at this and that’s why you’re having this conversation.

Alison: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly it. Um, uh, when you talk about compassion or loving kindness, is, is there a line between that and enabling?

Oneika: Yeah. I think, you know, compassion is a wish for the ending of suffering for people. Like in Buddhism, it’s, it’s and loving kindness is a wish for happiness and joy and health for people. That’s how we define it in Buddhism. So, um, yeah, so, so that so that helps, right? Like.

Alison: Right. Very much. because then I see that I think, uh, a lot of people talk this like metta stuff ,but like, like they mix up compassion and love and forgiveness, like in this big ball that sometimes feels unmanageable.

Oneika: So and yes, and Buddhism, we have something that’s called the far enemy, which is the opposite of, you know, the thing that we’re talking about. So with loving kindness, the opposite is hate or ill will or fear, right? But then there’s something that’s called the near enemy. So that’s like the shadow side of the thing that you’re trying to, you know, Embody. So the shadow side or the near enemy of loving kindness is conditional love. So when you were talking about things get balled up. Conditional love is like that thing. If you do this, I’ll love you. And then if you stop doing this, I don’t love you anymore. Right. And so the shadow side of compassion, for example, is pity.  so if we start pitying people, that’s the shadow side. Um. Bless her heart. Um.

Alison: Right.

Oneika: Right. That that’s the shadow side. So when you start thinking about like enabling, that starts to be the shadow side of what we’re trying to embody. So that can also be another way to check in with yourself. If you’re, if you’re really embodying that, that quality that you’re trying to, you know, to live.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: I love that, I love that the, that the shadow side is pity. Yeah.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: And that and the loving kindness was what?

Oneika: Conditional love.

Alison: Conditional love.   My  eldest child, um, is non-binary and, um, a lot of people have now a conditional acceptance of my child.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And so  it’s quite a lesson, uh, that it’s been a big, big,….. I’ve learned so much about myself and my kid and what really love is.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: You know, it’s not this sort of outside story that has meaning.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison:  And, and it’s interesting that that some of the people that I know that I never realized they don’t like it.

Oneika: Mhm.

Alison: And who the hell are you?

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah. Like, don’t like it? I mean, you know, like, you know, it’s it’s interesting. It’s been a very…. So that’s interesting conditional love, but I don’t even know that love. That’s kind of like, um, a transaction.

Oneika: Absolutely. No, absolutely. And that’s how I write about it. It is a transaction. If you do this, I love you. Or if you stop doing this, I won’t love you. That’s exactly what conditional love is. And that’s why it’s so problematic. And, and the problem isn’t in our society, conditional love is just it’s everywhere. And we talk about it so much that it’s, it’s actually just accepted as a regular form of love. I mean, transactions are all over the place.

Alison: Yeah. Well, look, you know, I mean, just look, look at, look at, look at I don’t want to go there. But there are lots of people that are sort of our leadership that that’s, that’s their whole thing is based on that.

Oneika: So oh, the wellness world does a lot of transactional stuff. Like it happens all of the time, which is why it’s so important to have definitions for what love is. You know, um, somebody who really influenced me, Bell Hooks, um, talks about about love and her book was really influential and she, she says it’s so critical she wrote that it was so critical to have a definition for love, a universal definition, because if we did, you know, it, it would be important that we could all have this working definition and it needed to have components of recognition, respect, accountability, open and honest communication. Um, so we were, we’re all operating from the same place.

Alison: That’s great. Yeah.

Jean: I think the Greek language has, you know, different definitions of love like Agape…

Oneika: Agape.

Jean: And eros or what, you know. Yes, it kind of, but I, I, I do love, you know, sort of what you said throughout your book about- sometimes I like you, but I always love you.

Oneika: Yes.

Jean: You know.

Oneika: It’s it’s so important I, you know, I gave a talk in, in D.C. a few weeks ago, and I was talking about this and a woman just couldn’t believe it. She like, she was like, like, there’s really –  I mean, there’s no one that you don’t love. Like she could…

Alison:  what about Bob?

Oneika: What about?? She was like, but there’s some people who just aren’t worthy. I said, no, no. And I said, I can see from your face you don’t believe me. She’s like, I, I don’t I don’t believe you.

Jean: Mhm.

Oneika: And I said, there’s people who we need to hold accountable because they’ve caused harm in the world. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love them.

Jean: Mhm.  it’s a more far way reaching.

Oneika: Like I could I could see that she just wasn’t buying it.

Alison: That’s right. She wants her money back, you know. Um, well, you also talk about being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Oneika: Mhm.

Alison: And I want to talk about that because I don’t like being uncomfortable. And, um, and if I sometimes feel if I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable, in an uncomfortable situation, my way is to immediately speak up, say, because I’m not comfortable with being uncomfortable. Can you help me?

Oneika: Yes. And the, and the chapter that I talked about that in, that was such a difficult chapter to write because there were so many things going on. Because when I was talking about that chapter, right, i was talking about the women who were incarcerated at Rikers and this idea of discomfort, who gets to be comfortable and who gets to be uncomfortable. Because if you’re in jail, you’re already uncomfortable. So should you be comfortable being uncomfortable if you’re always uncomfortable? So it’s it’s recognizing what level of discomfort should you, you know, should you tolerate and what are your circumstances and, and what’s your location in the world and what’s your identity? So I think that’s, that’s the conversation I wanted people to think about like, are you a woman who’s tolerating something all of the time and, you know, you’re engaged in something. And so you’re, you’re suffering all of the time. So we’re already engaged in a level of discomfort because of who we are and what we’re tolerating with sexism. So we already have some discomfort. So maybe we need to be more comfortable and we need to relax a little bit. But if you’re somebody else who’s not used to being uncomfortable because of who you are, you might have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. So it’s this understanding of both who you are and where you are when it comes to discomfort. Does that make sense?

Alison: Yes. So then, so then yes, that really does make sense. So, um, does that mean that, if you’re uncomfortable that, is it true then that uncomfortability is a part of the human experience?

Oneika: Mhm.  Absolutely.

Alison: There’s levels of uncomfortability that we that, that we face because of our society. And then when I’m feeling that I have to be comfortable with that. Why do I have to be comfortable with it? Like, why can’t I be angry about it? Why can’t I rage? Do you know what I mean?

Oneika: Yes. And so in Buddhism, we talk about suffering and then the suffering of suffering, right? The mental anguish we cause ourselves because of the suffering, right. So you can choose to suffer. It’s called the second arrow, right? So something happens to us and we suffer. And then the suffering we cause ourselves because of, of what’s happened to us. So it’s the way that we choose to deal with the suffering that we, that we that happens. And, and there’s nothing wrong with anger. Anger is a natural part of the human experience. And it’s something that can catalyze us to, to do lots of things. But I think when the suffering takes over, right, and the suffering starts to cause us harm, we start to ruminate. You know, we start to hurt ourselves because of because of the anger, then that that’s something to look at. But when the anger, you know, helps us build a community to stop harm that’s happening to us, then that’s a great thing, right? So it’s really looking what we do with that, that second arrow, that that mental suffering that happens.

Alison: Well, that’s interesting because the second one feels like you’re taking your anger and being positively putting it outside of yourself and the first one sounds like you’re taking that anger and beating yourself up internally.

Oneika: Right. The first arrow is what happens to us. The second arrow is the mental anguish that happens because of that and what we do with it.

Alison: Wow. That’s really interesting to me.

Jean: It reminds me of. So when you have a judgment and then just to be aware of that, rather than judge the judge, then, oh, I feel so bad. I did that. And then it’s like, you’re.

Oneika: Those are all, those are all of the things that we end up doing-  right –  to cause ourselves more suffering. And there’s all of these things that we can do to ease that, whether it’s mindfulness, whether it’s loving kindness, whether it’s, you know, meditation, all kinds of things that we can do to ease that suffering. Um, so, so we aren’t suffering so much from whatever is happening externally.

Alison: And that’s so great because right now, uh, so many people are, are really suffering.

Oneika: Mhm.

Oneika: They are, there is so much suffering that’s happening in the world. And there’s so much that we can’t do anything about. Right. Um, but there are things that we can do for ourselves and that in turn can change the world. And I, I say that all the time. And I always sound like I feel like I sound so corny when I say that, but it is truly powerful because when we do something about who we are and how we act and how we can respond to the world, rather than reacting to the world, that creates great change.

Alison: Mhm. You’re so right. We have we have friends ourselves that are so invested in being miserable that, um, that you go, wow. Like if you took a little bit of that energy and channeled it in a different way, you’d really be making a difference. But they’re, they’re, they’re really in their head about really in being a victim.

Oneika: And you can be in it. Like you can be even an example for somebody just by living your life, right? You become a teacher for someone just by being self-aware, by practicing whatever your practice is, whether it’s, you know, a walk, whether it’s just listening to a song that gives you joy, whether it’s just by being a good neighbor like other people see that and they see that example, like our teachers are, are everywhere, you know, being kind to, you know, your pet or you know your family, like you are being witnessed by other people. And I, and I think that can really have an impact.

Jean: I think that’s, that’s beautiful.

Jean: So, Oneika, when you were writing this book, so so you wrote this book and you have left Rikers, right?

Oneika: Mhm. Yep.

Jean: So did you see how you changed from when you first showed up on Rikers Island to when you said goodbye? And can you talk about the change you noticed in yourself?

Oneika: Yeah. And I, yeah, there were so many changes when I started on the island, i think I was, um, I think it was a little Pollyanna thinking about what I was going to do, which is funny because I volunteered for six years. So it’s not like I was a it’s not like I didn’t know what I was walking into, but I think I thought I was going to do a lot more than I did. And I quickly adjusted and, and then I, and then I got a lot of vicarious trauma working there. Yeah. And, um, I still think, you know, I made some wonderful connections and I’m, I’m proud of the program that, you know, I helped to spearhead and I’m glad that I did it, but it took a real toll on me, not just emotionally, but physically. Um, it, it really made an impact on me. And so then when I left, um, I was really exhausted and even my family could see physically the difference that it, that it had on me. And I left in 2023. And when I left, I said I was going to try to get a book deal to write about it. And, and then I did.

Alison: That’s cool. Yeah.

Oneika: A year it was a year later I got a book deal. I was very determined. Yeah.

Alison: And exciting.

Oneika: Yeah. And in that year after I left, I, um, I got healthier. I, I really like, I, I got healthier, um, and I was always, I was already practicing yoga and I had a peloton and I was very physical, but I, it’s like energetically so much fell away and I was so much of the island I think was in me that I was able to shed not just the vicarious trauma, but that island has a, a life of its own that that left me. Um, and so I felt like I got myself back after about a year. Um, but I still, I still sometimes like feel it, um, in me, like sometimes even what I talk about it and I feel it on like the left side of my body, actually. Um, it’s like a a a a twinge in my left shoulder. Um, I feel it. And when I was writing the book, I would feel things leave as I was writing certain chapters, especially the chapter about working  in solitary was, was really challenging and pouring stuff out, like pouring it out. Um, and I feel now, um, I’m more like myself, like before I started working there. Um, but I will always, I think, be tethered to the island in a way. I don’t think it will ever, ever leave me.

Alison: But you just said you just started off by saying, I thought I would do more than I did or something like that, but how do you even know the impact you truly had? Because it sounds like you had a big impact.

Oneika: I yeah, I think so, and I don’t yeah. And I probably shouldn’t even get caught up in measurement, but I think, I don’t know what I was thinking that I would do. I think maybe I hadn’t, I, I thought, I don’t know what I thought, I thought maybe it would be bigger than it was, or I had some dream of what I thought would happen. And because it didn’t come to fruition, maybe I think maybe it failed a little bit. Mhm. And just because it felt so grim at the end and and even the book wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, I thought my book was going to feel a lot more upbeat and hopeful than what I ended up writing. And I think there is hope, more hope in it than…. But there is a lot more sadness that that came out, and I didn’t resist it. Once it started to happen, there were things that, um, I think just came out and started to channel itself, and I didn’t resist a lot of it. And I allowed it just to sort of happen because I was like, this is what needs to come out. And I need to say this, and I don’t want to sort of censor it. Um, I don’t want to make it like lighter and I don’t want to make it heavier because there were a lot more heavier things I probably could have written, but I didn’t want to make it like trauma porn.

Alison: Right. Exactly. Sure.

Oneika: Right. Um, but I didn’t want to make it light either.

Alison: But your book is is just for me… You describe small moments. Mhm. Like not being able to open a window. Mhm. For someone that just wants to… I’m like, I think I’m going to cry. Someone wants to be outdoors and, um, that small moment I thought was so powerful.  You know…

Oneika: You’re going to make me cry.

Alison:  just that that chapter with that, I forget the woman’s name and she just wanted to go outside. That was in the in the window.

Jean: In the beginning.

Alison: Yeah, i just felt so-  I could feel your frustration. And you. Yeah. And the lavender cotton balls and…. Yeah, it became such a thing.

Oneika: Yeah. Yeah.  I loved those women. I mean, yeah, I did, and it was, there were so much that I think I did do, but there were so much that you couldn’t do.

Alison: Right.

Oneika: And that was always the push pull.  and that level of frustration to live with was, was maddening. Like, and to take that home every single day and then to feel guilt about feeling that kind of frustration because you got to go home and then to feel frustrated and then feel guilty about feeling frustrated like it was, that it was a lot to hold to, to that push pull was just yeah, it was so much. And then it’s like, well, I’m starting to drive myself mad about all of this. And at what point am I, am I sacrificing myself? Jean, going back to your point about loving kindness, when do am I putting myself below the women that I’m serving? And then I realized that I was and I couldn’t do that. And that loving kindness means that I matter just as much as the women that I’m serving, and that if I’m sinking because I was, I was really sinking. And that’s when I had to leave.

Alison: And you speak about that. Did you call it compassion fatigue?

Oneika: Compassion fatigue?

Alison: Yeah, that was very intense too, because I could see that.

Oneika: Yeah.

Oneika: Caregivers. It happens to caregivers as well. Um, it happens to healthcare workers, doctors, nurses. It happens. It’s, it’s a real thing and it’s deeper than burnout. And it can really, it can really affect you and it can really impact your life because, um, you, it can bring on depression. I started to feel myself, you know, um, getting depression, which scared me as somebody, you know, who struggled with mental illness. I was like, I can’t make myself sick. And when I started to even feel that, I was like, this is getting way too scary. I don’t want to sacrifice my mental health, which is, you know what? The system thrives on people who care so much that they will do anything to, to keep showing up.

Alison: Right, right. You know, I think about my father. My father was a newspaper reporter for the Daily News for many, many years. And I think he suffered from it when he retired. Compassion fatigue.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: That was the first time I ever when you when I read the book, that was the first time I ever connected that because you write these stories about the downtrodden and people that needed help, and it was just a constant thing in our house. And there was always people around in our house that like these people just there was a lot of people in our house. And I thought to myself, I wonder if he went through that, because I think it I think it’s such a subtle thing because you think I should be getting energized from the thing I’m doing?

Oneika: Yes.

Alison: Do you know?

Oneika: And you are for a while. Yeah. Until you aren’t. Right. Because you like. I had practices too, right? Like I had all of these practices. You know, I had people that I could talk to. I went back into therapy. Like I was doing all of the things I should have been doing to take care of myself. And yet that still wasn’t enough to sustain myself, which should tell you everything that you need to know about the system of mass incarceration. If I couldn’t, if I couldn’t keep it together with a therapist, with people who were doing this work, with a meditation practice with yoga, practice with a serious workout. Like it’s just not sustainable. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Jean: Well, I know for sure that whoever came into your beautiful presence.

Alison: I agree

Jean: Was blessed. And the rippling effect you have there is eternal.

Alison: And your book is not sad.

Jean: No, your book is not.

Oneika: Really. You don’t think so?

Alison: No.

Jean: It had some very strong experiences. And vulnerability is is stunning. Um, but you and you had some very relatable things that I could relate to. Yeah. Um, and I do think there was a lot of hope in your book.

Alison: I do too.

Oneika: Oh.  wow. That’s interesting to hear.

Alison: I felt like…

Jean: But It wasn’t like, go Rikers. Yeah.

Alison: Like we’re not printing up t shirts and say that.

Jean: No, we don’t mean that.

Alison: I agree. I agree with you. I felt very much like, oh, oh, we’re all in this, are all in this. And we, I, I’m responsible for myself and the people there and the people I love and the people I don’t know and the people that I don’t love yet I’m responsible. And I have.

Oneika: oh  People you don’t love yet. That’s cool.

Alison: Do you know, and like, I like I, that’s really what it made me feel. I really liked this book. I really, really liked it. And just those little moments. Look at all my look at I don’t know if you can see them, but all the pages are dog eared and this pencil, like everything is everywhere. So it really I thought there was hope. I agree with you, Jean. I thought there was hope.

Oneika: That’s really cool.

Jean: In in such a place where, where you would think no hope is going on in there.

Oneika: And there was a lot. There was laughter too, though, like, you know, there, there was darkness, but there was plenty. I mean,

Jean: There was cucumber salad.

Oneika: There was cucumber salad, I made cucumber salad yesterday as a matter of fact.

Alison: I love that.

Oneika: That cucumber salad was so good. I loved that cucumber salad. Oh my gosh, that is the lentil soup too. There was lentil soup there. That was pretty good as well. Um you know it’s it you know it’s so funny because you wouldn’t expect it. Yeah. That it was so fresh, um, that it was so tasty and people cracked up the way that I danced and tap my feet when I hit that cucumber salad. But,  It’s so good because there was so little to like, hold on to. So when you found it, I was just like celebrating it. Oh my gosh, if people would just run into my office and say, hey girl, there’s cucumber salad today. It was just and I was like, I would like high tail it down to the cafeteria to go get it. It was just the best. Oh my gosh.

Alison: And that totally came across. You’re you’re a very talented writer. Will you write more things, do you think?

Oneika: I you know what I will I have an idea for for my next book where I think I want to write about trying and how I think that we just need to try. There’s a concept in Buddhism called Right Effort. Um, so yeah, I think I want to write a book maybe called, um, try with me.

Alison: Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. Let’s get that on the calendar. Let’s do that so we can talk to you again. I love that.

Jean: That’s great.

Alison: I love that. Great. Oh my God, this one’s so fast.

Jean: Yes. Our time, it really flew by.

Alison: And oh my gosh.

Jean: We’re going to have to wrap up Oneika. But we have two wrap up questions for you.

Oneika: Okay.

Jean: Okay.

Alison: What do you think. Insidewink means that’s the name of our podcast. What do you think it means?

Oneika: I think it means listening to your intuition. I think it’s a flicker. Like when you get like a a tickle and you listen to that little tickle inside yourself.

Alison: We have not. I love that we’ve never heard that. So that’s beautiful. And it’s perfect. Thank you. That’s perfect.

Jean: Very nice. Okay. In our last question is – do you prefer cake pie or ice cream?

Oneika: Ice cream. Hands down.

Jean: Okay, great.

Alison: cucumber ice cream. What are you going to say That?

Oneika: And my favorite ice cream is coffee ice cream, which I hated as a kid. Right. Like coffee ice cream is not. But as an adult, it is just my favorite with a little whipped cream. Mhm.

Alison: Yeah. We have a friend who’s addicted to Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.

Oneika: Oh, it’s the it’s the best.

Alison:  yeah. You are a spark of joy and light and your smile. We’re so grateful to you. Thank you.

Oneika: Thank you. This was real. I knew this was going to be fun, I knew it.

Jean: Oh, well, you’re you’re just wonderful. And we will share this podcast and let you know. And thank you so much for being a huge, powerful love vibe in this world.

Oneika: Thank you, thank you.

Alison: And I can’t wait till you write your next book so we can talk to you again.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: Okay.

Alison: All right. That sounds good.

Jean: Okay.

Alison: Have a great day.

Oneika: Mwah. Sending you lots of love.

Alison: Thank you. Bye.

Oneika: Bye.

Alison: She was just. Oh, gosh, her energy. And what what what she had been through, and it just was. It was a great talk. Yeah. Right.

Jean: She, you know, you, she has, um, just so much effervescence.

Alison: Yes.

Jean: And wisdom.

Alison: And the best smile,

Jean: a Gorgeous smile.

Alison: Yeah. Just. And you told me she has a podcast.

Jean: She does. It’s called – you good?

Alison: I love that.

Jean: Uh, and then she sits on the board of One Love Prison meditation project, which is… I wanted to ask her about that, but I, I was thinking, okay, we gotta close, close, wrap up. But it sounds wonderful. What I read about it is that, you know, it’s it’s keeping meditation practices alive in prisons.

Alison: Wow.

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: That’s an amazing, an amazing, wonderful idea. And her book, Sit With Me is just a really great read. Yes. Because it reads almost like sometimes like a novel,

Jean: A memoir. Yeah.

Alison: You know, it’s like, it’s like, really? And I just, you get you get so much from her and her experiences and it just, it has made me feel more connected. Yeah. You know? Which is so great.

Jean: And that whole, um, the whole practice of metta.  If you’ve, if you’ve never tried it, um, it’s really beautiful.

Alison: Right. May I be safe? May I be happy? May I be healthy. May I be at peace.

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: Yes. Wonderful. Are you okay? You’re coughing.

Jean: Yeah. I got a little cough, but I’m good.

Alison: May you be healthy. Thank you. Well, have a great day and thank you for sharing this interview with us. And yeah, I think that’s it.

Jean: This was wonderful.

Alison: It was wonderful.

Jean: It’s great to see you, Allison.

Oneika: Great to see you, Jeanie. Bye, everybody.

Jean: Bye.

Alison: Okay, here we go again.

Jean: Well, hi. It’s so great to see you after, uh, what, five weeks?

Alison: Yeah, like a month. Five weeks? We haven’t seen each other. Just just very, very briefly in the middle. Because you were in New York.

Jean: I was in New York visiting my mother and  my son and my sister and you..

Alison: I went many places Sedona, Grand Canyon, Zion, and then just, you know, to fill it out, to balance it off. We went to Las Vegas.

Jean: But I, I actually think a lot of people do that.

Alison: And I have to say it was great, but you go, oh, man, there’s a lot of people here when you’re like out in the wilderness, you know? Right. But my whole family, we had a great time. It was it was really lovely.

Jean: The photos look great.

Alison: But I missed you.

Jean: I missed you too .

Alison: You, you know, it’s weird.

Jean: But we did get to see each other.

Alison: Mhm.

Jean: Um.

Alison: Because you drove me to the airport..drove us to the airport. When you came back. You’re back, like, for ten minutes and drove us to the airport, so it was wonderful. And that’s where we did this interview. When you were in New York.

Jean: I was in New York, and I wasn’t sure about the internet connection, and I’m so glad it worked because this interview is really beautiful. so we interviewed a couple that wrote a book about marriage, and their names are Casey and Megan Casten.

Alison: And they wrote The Marriage Habit. And it’s a book that really gives you very specific tools and ideas to move your relationship to a deeper understanding of each other, I think, and it’s good. It’s not even has to be about marriage. It could be about friendships, it could be about work relationships, right? It’s really about listening and caring and not being on two sides of it, you know.

Jean: And prioritizing.

Alison: Very good.

Jean: That’s your, uh, your relationship, and, and I just think they gave so many great tips and, and.

Alison: It was so much fun meeting them. They’re funny. They are, they’re two different, like, they’re very different. They’re really fun. So here they are. Um, Megan and Casey.

Megan: Hi, Allison.

Alison: Hello. How are you?

Casey:  hello to both.

Alison: Thanks a lot, you guys.

Megan: Yeah.

Megan: Um, we are not together. I mean, we’re together, but we’re not together.

Alison: Thank God.

Alison: We have the scoop. We have a scoop.

Megan: Yeah. You know, the real behind the scenes with Casey and Megan? Yeah. No, uh, funny story. During Covid, we were, you know, we worked together full time and in probably like either the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021, . I looked at Casey and I said, I love you. I’m so sick of seeing your face all day long. You have to go get an office out of the house. So here we are. Yes,

Alison: I understand that I was I too am married for 33 years and Covid for the four of us, my husband and I and our two kids in this house was a lot of fun.

Megan: A lot. Yeah.

Casey: Our our Christmas card that year was too much togetherness.

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: Exactly. I love that about you guys that you’re so honest and vulnerable about all this.

Megan: Well thank you. Yes.

Alison: You know.

Alison: Some people nowadays just make everything seem like they’re like a panacea of goodness and happiness, and it drives me nuts.

Casey: Yeah. I think people can see through that, too. I think, you know, I think there was, um, you know, Rachel Hollis and her husband were on a podcast a week before laughing and giggling about how great their marriage was, and then the next week they said, oh, we’re divorcing. So I think that that was such a high profile, like example where people are like, you know, hey everybody, we’re talking about marriage. Isn’t it amazing? And they’re like, no, that’s not. We can see through that bullshit.

Alison: Totally, I totally agree. Hi, Jeannie.

Jean: Hi there. Oh, it’s great to see you, Alison.

Casey: do you go by Jeannie?

Alison:  i just, I just that’s just my nickname for her.

Casey: That’s cute. I love it.

Jean: We see each other a lot. So when I don’t see Alison, I’m like, oh, there she is.

Jean: Because yeah as I mentioned, I’m not in LA right now.

Alison: We’re like hanging out all the time. So it’s, it’s it’s great. Um, I just wanted to start off by asking you to talk a little bit about yourselves to give our listeners an idea of where you’re coming from and who you are. And then I have some questions I can’t wait to get into.

Megan: Casey, you want to start or do you want me to start?

Casey: Why don’t you start, babe?

Megan: Okay. Are you eating something, Casey?

Casey: I got I got a little mint. That’s why I’m getting I’m getting.

Megan: I’m like, are you eating? Are we are we that casual with these guys? We’re like, oh, we’re just going to have our lunch. Yeah.

Casey: I’ll peel my orange in just a second.

Megan: Oh, gosh. Okay.

Jean: don’t ake us into the bathroom.

Alison: I love that.

Megan: All right. Well, we actually are college sweethearts. We met the first day I moved out of my mom’s house when I was 18 years old. And Casey was in, on the freshman welcoming committee of our college, and we joke that he did a great job welcoming me. And I also learned later on that he joined that freshman welcoming committee so he could meet his…. He could meet a girl. So, you know, there was there was something there was an incentive behind there. Um, but yeah, there was definitely sparks right away. And, uh, we were friends for a few months. We dated. Everything was great. We thought, let’s do this forever. This is so fun. We’re connected. And then we got married. And we didn’t realize how much our childhood would have impacted our adult life and our marriage. And between Casey and I and our parents, there’s there’s 12 marriages. So our parents have been married 12 times. Oh, yeah. So we only knew blended family, divorce, remarriage, chaos. And I guess we just really went blindly into marriage thinking, well, that’s not going to be us. And it almost, if anything, it trauma bonded us like, well, we don’t want that to happen to us. But we had no skills, no relationship education. And so within three years of being married, we were heading towards divorce.

Alison: Wow.

Megan: Yeah. And it was not obviously, no one gets married thinking they’re going to get divorced or they wouldn’t get married. And we just couldn’t believe that we were at that place. And so I grew up in a home where therapy was very normalized and very much so praised. Casey grew up in a home where only crazies go to therapy. So I had begged him to go to therapy with me and he said, no, you’re the problem. I’m not the problem. And I’m like, well, actually, you’re the problem, Casey, and I’m not the problem. So we were doing this thing, the pointing of the fingers.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And finally I went by myself and it was the best thing that I could have ever done. And the therapist asked me two questions that changed my life. She said, have you done everything and anything you can to save your marriage so you don’t live with regret? And I knew the answer was no. I had not done everything. And she said, well, thank you for being honest because most people haven’t done everything. And then she said, if you want to make a better marriage, it starts by making a better you.  I hear you so focused on Casey and what he’s doing and what he’s not doing, and he’s not here to defend himself. But you’re here, and I know that you’ve admitted you’ve got some growth areas. So let’s work on you. And so for 13 months, I worked on our marriage and I did a complete 180 on myself.

Casey: And and I will say that Megan, when she changed, you know, I want you to imagine two people dancing a tango, right? You know, the one partner makes a step to the left, the other partner has to respond. And so midway through our dance, Megan changed up from the tango to, you know, a sexy rumba or whatever it is. And I had to respond to that. So when when I hear a lot of people saying, like, I’m stuck in my marriage, actually you have more power to create change than you think you have. So when she changed, you know, and I was still stuck in my own ways, I remember this moment where we were screamers and yellers when we first were married. We would scream until 2 a.m. in the morning because we just thought, well, we got to resolve this. But of course, that didn’t happen. And so I come into the living room and my face is all red. I’m just like, you know, I’m going to tell you what you need to hear right now. You’re so that, you know, she saw it coming her way, saw me coming her way. And she stood up and with the, like the calmest, like spa voice, she’s all, hey, I can understand you’re really upset right now.

Casey: And I want to have a conversation where we actually resolve our issues in a healthy way. Uh, why don’t you take a walk outside, come back and be sitting on this couch, and I’m going to be waiting for you, and then we can talk. And I’m, I’m here to listen. And I mean, the next thing that happened was my jaw hitting the floor. Like what? Like you’re supposed to respond in kind. This was the dance that we had. And she made such a change that like over time, it was like, I’m the one that’s the unhealthy spouse now. And because we’re so competitive, I was not going to live in a world where she was more healthy than me. So I’m like, I’m going to out health you and I’m going to get better than you. And I’ve been chasing that dream for 25 years or so. But that was the change that required. And I gotta say, like looking back, I think our journey is actually the typical story of every couple. It’s this is not like maybe we have some extremes. Like my mom’s been married six times.

Alison: Wow.

Casey: She’s not even a celebrity. Okay.

Casey: So like, yeah, like we, we have some extremes, but we’re like the every couple journey of like, hey, let’s do dating because this is let’s do marriage because dating was so easy. It’s not going to change much. And, and we’re just going to set off. But very few people have a healthy role model to chase after. Um, we don’t see a lot in culture or entertainment this like what is a healthy marriage look like? We see this, you know, a very twisted version of it, whether it’s the Hallmark Channel, it’s the Bachelor, Love Island. Okay, i guess this is what love is all about. But that’s not reality. Marriage is actually much more boring. You know, it’s showing up in all the daily moments. Not these big, you know, fantasy, sweet experiences.

Megan: Can I correct you? Don’t say boring. Say mundane.  Because I do not think that we have a boring marriage. I’m just going to say like, we are not…. We are not boring in our house. I’m like, we’re not boring at all.

Megan: Yeah, we’re both pretty stubborn.

Casey: I’m the thrill seaker over here.

Megan: Yeah, yeah.

Alison: That is that is exactly right. I think you know that we are so inundated with with false images, and to try to aspire to something like that is impossible. And that’s why your book was so was so great, i thought, you know,

Megan: Thank you.

Jean: Yeah. I mean, right out the gate you say your tagline, make a better you, make a better marriage. And, and that gives such empowerment and hope to whoever is struggling, you know, and, and, um, just, just because, okay, I, I, maybe my partner will not come to therapy, but I at least can, can work on myself until I’ve exhausted all, all resources. So yeah, it, this book was wonderful and it was so full of great practical, intentional tips. And I love also that you use the word intentional and yeah, that’s…

Casey: Yeah well, this, this book summarizes basically Megan and I. So to kind of catch you up to today, we spent we’ve spent the last, I’d say 15 plus years really trying to understand is happily ever after just a myth? Or can it be possible for someone to, to pursue? And what we realized, Jean, is that there’s one quality between couples that are struggling and those that are thriving, and that’s by being intentional. And so for the past 15 years, we’ve been coaching couples on how to create these systems, these structures, these habits, these habits that help couples, uh, create a, a healthy rhythm of constant connection and guarantee it.

Alison: And what, what I really liked about some of them is that they’re very specific.

Megan: Yes.

Alison: They’re not just like, you know, do better, you know, help cook, you know what I mean? Or like, like, like that, that known and also the 62 second  blessing. And I think those things are, and I think I want to make like an eight by ten poster of that forgiveness page that that I’m sorry page.

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: How to apologize.

Megan: Yeah.

Megan:  we say specific is terrific.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: We, we often give very vague answers. And I’m just going to say this about women as I am one, I think we tell our husband, love me more, listen better, be present… And you know what he’s hearing blah blah blah.

Alison: What dogs hear.

Megan: Yeah, yeah.

Megan: And you’ll hear a lot of women say, I want to emotionally connect and I love that. But I really, what does that look like that might look like to you, Allison. Something very different than it looks like to me, to Casey, to Jean. Right. Like there’s not and this is why we need to be specific. And we’re trying to show couples and teach them different ways on how to be able to do that to where you walk away going, I know tangibly how I can measure success in my marriage. I tried this tactic, right? Yeah. Because we all know we’re supposed to communicate.

Alison: Right?

Megan: There are thousands of communication techniques and tools out there.

Alison: Exactly.

Megan: Right. And what does it mean? Yeah.

Megan: And what does it mean and what does it look like? And yeah, we know we should forgive. But what does that actually look like on a day to day basis?

Alison: Right. That’s exactly it. That’s why I really liked – that i’m sorry thing, is so not what we do, we do here sometimes in my home …it is a lot of like, I’m sorry, but or let me just tell you see, you know, it’s a lot of like, like, you know, mock trial debate going on, I didn’t know, so that was very useful.

Alison: I like that.

Megan: This is really helpful to know because I do this, i did the same thing. I would say I’m sorry to Casey, but— and then I’d go into the explanation, and what I’m doing is there was a true explanation as to why I yelled or why I forgot, or why I was on my phone, right? Or why I didn’t initiate sex like there was a genuine explanation. There always is to everything that we do.

Alison: Yep.

Megan: The thing is, is that in apologizing, it’s all about our impact and we focus so much on our intent. My intention was good. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: I didn’t wake up that day thinking, well, how am I going to piss off my spouse today? So why should I apologize?

Alison: Right? That’s exactly right. although I think some days I have woken up like that.

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: I have to just tell you, some days I’m like, ohhhhhhhh.

Alison: You know. and like, and then there are other more, you know, 33 years that’s going to happen some days. You know, it’s, it’s a long time.

Megan: It is.

Casey: I appreciate you talking about the practical nature of this book because, um, you know, Alison, I think if if we took a poll, I think a lot of people feel very confused or not totally understanding, like what do relationships look like.. And there’s a lot of really smart, like psychotherapists and therapists out there that speak with such high language that people are like, I don’t know what that looks like. I mean, I’m trying to put my kids to bed and my husband’s not helping me. So if you got something for me there, that’d be rad, right? But instead, it’s like the, you know, the attachment and there’s a lot of therapy speak. What we try to do is, and for me, I’m embodying the 20 year old Casey a 25 year old casey has just got married, hasn’t got a clue and is like, I didn’t get any role model growing up. I have no mentors. I’ve got no tools. I feel like this book, uh, what we really tried to embody was you could pick one of these tools and put it in play within 60seconds inside of your marriage and see a difference. And it’s not like you don’t have to have a degree. There’s no therapy speak. It’s just like, hey, this is what the this is what healthy marriages look like.

Alison: Right

Alison: And Jean and I were talking, it’s not even marriages. It could be any relationship.

Megan: Mhm. Yes.

Megan: Yeah. A lot of these techniques you can actually even use in parenting. I mean, really, right. I, we have two teenagers and, you know, I always ask every adult this. I’ll ask you ladies this. Did your parents apologize to you? Did you ever get an apology? Are you waiting for an apology from a parent? And that’s why we tell parents it’s never too late to apologize to your kids, even if they’re adults. Teenagers, right? We all mess up. We all. We all make mistakes. And I think like. So the apology obviously is one of the habits in the book. But I think even sitting in the KNOWN position, yeah, you know, it’s such a vulnerable, intimate way that we talk because we do life so much side by side. And yes, it doesn’t have to be just for marriages. It can be for dating couples. It can be. It’s cute because our daughter’s dating and has a boyfriend. She’s 18 and she’s like, oh, I want to teach you the known position. Like it’s funny to, it’s funny to watch like in our home that’s normalized. And her boyfriend’s like, what?

Megan:  what? You know?

Alison: Exactly.

Megan: And to clarify for the listener, the known position is not a sex position.  it is not. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Casey: Every time we say we’re going to teach you the known position, everyone gets a little uncomfortable.

Alison: right, right, right,

Casey: Can I, can I go back to the apology for just a second? Because I know you got some questions for us, but I just want to say, um, I wished more people like you said, maybe you don’t need a, I need a billboard with the apology framework on it.

Alison: Right.

Casey: Because, you know, we get a lot of couples that come to us that have been stuck in therapy for years, and the therapist never taught them how to apologize. So the couples trying to repair from the hurt of the past, but talking about it doesn’t help it out. Not even date nights like we. I think there’s a lot of valiant attempts to repair relationship, but it’s not sufficient. Date nights, makeup, sex, trips to Paris, whatever. That’s not the,  that doesn’t fix the problem. That you won’t stand up to your mom when she comes over and tells me how to parent.

Alison: Right.

Casey: What stands up and heals that is the apology. And we have taken the most stubborn couples a fair covery 30 years of not dealing with issues, and we will spend somewhere between 4 to 5 hours of them apologizing back and forth to each other. And it is magic.

Alison: Wow.

Casey: It is magic. There’s something,  like we called it the Dark Passenger. All that resentment at play in relationships and maybe your listeners are listening and they’re like, I have resentment at play. That’s the dark passenger that creates disconnection and stands in the way of like couples having sex, couples talking, couples connecting because of all that resentment. And the only way to deal with it is through apologies. That’s how powerful that framework is.

Alison: That’s right. Jean?

Jean: I mean, I think apologies are so important in relationships, as you both have said, becuase our backgrounds are so different. You know, something that’s so sensitive to me might not have been a big deal to Alex and vice versa. You know, and, um, and I do think that resentment really clamps down communication. And if you cannot communicate, it just starts eating away at the, the intimacy and then, you know, so yeah, I mean, I, there were so many great tips and I wish I had this book a few years ago, uh, many years ago actually, but I’d like to get into some of these great habits that you’re just. Yeah, someone’s listening and driving or whatever, and they’re just like, okay, I would like to know, what are your…Casey what’s your favorite habit? Megan, what’s your favorite habit?

Megan: Okay, I know what mine.

Jean: I know what mine is.

Megan: Yeah.

Casey: What’s your what’s yours?

Megan: Yeah.

Casey: I want to hear.

Jean: I love love lists.

Megan: I that’s my favorite.  That’s my favorite. Okay. Yeah. Right.

Megan: It’s like a whole thing. Yeah.

Jean: If you’re not there. I mean, I did like the apology a lot. I loved known and maybe we can talk about that, but love lists.

Megan: Mhm.

Jean: You know, it’s it’s like you what you said, Megan. It’s like to be specific of.

Megan: Yep.

Jean: What’s going to make Casey really? Oh, she’s being intentional. Like she like there it is. There’s that sign. But tell us, Megan, you speak.

Megan: Yes.

Megan: Okay, so I too, love Love lists. . It’s my favorite. And it really stemmed from the idea of Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, which anyone listening. You don’t have to read the book to know what Love lists are or your love language, but the idea around love languages is we all give and receive love differently. That’s what makes it a beautiful world. Some of us love words, some of us are acts of service. We just want to go do things for people. Some of us, like me, I like to go shopping and I like to find that perfect gift for my kids and my husband and my friend. And I want to wrap it. I want to watch them open the gift, right? So there’s all these different ways we love each other. And rather than assuming that our spouse should know how we want to be loved, you actually sit down and you write, these are the things that you could do, my spouse, for me that make me feel loved. Leave little sticky notes around the house telling me you love me. Buy me my favorite, you know, drink from Starbucks and surprise me at work.

Megan: And again, specific is terrific. So not love me more. Listen to me more. Be present. Um, put your phone down during date night. Uh, initiate a walk with the dog. Like this is how granular. And we give you dozens and dozens of ideas to hopefully spark memories. And then what happens is if both spouses make their own love lists, you exchange them and you’re like, here’s basically your cheat sheet. So Casey has a long love list of ways he can love me. And I have a love his love list. And so you can do these daily, weekly, monthly, maybe you’re in the doghouse and you’re like, I kind of need to do something to show my spouse I was in a bad mood yesterday. I want to show them that I love them. Or, oh, your spouse just went through a horrible day at work and you’re like, you know what? They just need a little extra love for me, tonight…. I’m going to pick something off of their love list to do. And I just, it takes all of the guessing and assumptions and disappointment out on how to love each other well.

Alison: And, you know, going back to Cassie’s point that we think we have been conditioned to think, well, if you really loved me, you would know that.

Megan: Exactly.

Alison: You know, if you really listened, you’d know that. Or like the scheduling sex thing that’s not going to, you know, that’s going to take the whole, you know, and we’ve been conditioned into this mindset. So why do you think it’s important to make a love list as opposed to assume that Megan like, well, if Casey really loved me, he’d know I want I want a bouquet of flowers. How do you not fall into that? Well, I guess it’s over because I got to write this stuff down.

Megan: Yeah, it’s definitely about a mindset. We talk about that a bit in the beginning of the book. Before we get into the habits where you have to understand the myths, or we would say the story you’re telling yourself about love, marriage and romance. If you’re basing it off of assumptions in Hollywood and if we’re soul mates, we should just know, then you will always feel disappointment and let down always the rest of your life with any relationship you have.

Alison: right

Megan: You’ve been my friend for five years. Don’t you know I want this like this? We’re really putting a lot on someone to assume that we know. Plus, the way we love and the way we want to receive love can change over time.  when the kids were really young, I loved acts of service. Just do things for me, you know?

Megan: And it’s changed. It can it can morph. Not for everybody. So we really want to make sure that in, in relationships, specifically romantic relationships, that we address the myths and the story we’re telling ourselves about it and to, and to know that backed by science and research and all of us on this call that have been married a very long time, assumptions lead to disappointments, and I don’t want anyone to feel disappointed over and over and over again. Wouldn’t you rather be clear with your communication and say, hey, this is actually the best way to love me? And now your spouse has a choice whether they’re going to do it or not. And that’s a whole other topic, but at least you can’t say, well, I didn’t know. It’s like love takes that, that out of there, right?

Alison: Right.

Casey: Well, I, and I think a lot of couples run off of hope as a strategy.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: I hope we deal with our issues. I hope he remembers. I hope she, you know, is kind, you know, like there’s a lot of hopes out there. Yeah. Um, going back to those myths that, you know, maybe love is all we need.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: Um, if it’s true love, we shouldn’t have to work at it. Um, my other one is soulmates. Like, there’s this perfect person out there that when we meet, we don’t even have to work at it because we’re so perfect for each other. I’m like. 

Alison: I don’t think so.

Casey: I don’t think so.

Megan: I mean, that sounds wonderful by the way.

Alison: Yeah,

Megan: It sounds fantastic.

Alison: Yeah. Right.

Alison: But I mean, I think I think people get married. I think a lot of it’s just timing. I don’t know, I don’t know like that’s at least what I think. I think you’re both in the right place at the right time and you meet and there’s a nice energy and a good vibe. But I think if you two weren’t married, it doesn’t mean that you had to marry Casey, like, you know, or you had to marry Megan. I think I’ve, I think relationships form and it just is like, like even friends you meet and you, you, you ignite and hey, great. I mean, the only one would be like kids, right? You gotta, you know, your kids are like living in the house with you. You know what I mean?

Casey: think about the emotional content of like a rom com and how funny it is and the energy that they have. And then like, you know, and it wraps up in an hour and a half. They lived happily ever after, right? But but they weren’t. They didn’t say like, hey, listen, your mom’s kind of overstepping their bounds,

Alison: Right.

Casey: Hey, listen, can you please be accountable with your spending? They don’t talk about that in the movies. And yet that’s what real relationships are about, right?

Alison: That’s exactly right. You’re right. What’s your favorite? Going back to Jeanne’s question, what’s your favorite habit?

Casey: This one’s an easy A for me. The weekly marriage business meeting.

Alison: Yeah. That’s great.

Casey: Okay. I work with a lot of entrepreneurial people, um, professional athletes that have all of this going back to this intention in this area of their life. And it’s creating a lot of success, right? Athletes are doing, you know, what are their workout recovery, nutrition, sleep patterns. They’ve got KPIs, you know, guys that run businesses, they’ve got, you know, a leadership team. They’re very intentional in this domain of their life and it’s creating success. But then when they walked through the front door of their house, they fling the door open and it’s chaos. It’s just the wild, wild west. And I, I, you know, when they explain to them, like, you would never run your business like your marriage. Right? What are we running off of? Relationships, hopes, whims, whims, insecurities, fantasies, emotions. Like you would never run your career that way. And yet, what I’m asking is, to take that same intentionality and put it and overlay it into your marriage. And the number one tool that we are kind of known for, uh, I’d say that also reduces conflict by over 50% is the weekly marriage business meeting. Because what you’re doing is you’re setting a weekly rhythm where we’re checking in with each other. We’re looking at the week ahead, whether that’s schedules, our connection time, we’re putting all those things in the calendars, our meal plans, our self-care, even sexy time. And we’re, we’re kind of looking at the week ahead and creating with intention that week. Yeah. So then when you walk through the week, you’re already prepared. And here’s the key thing. It’s all about alignment.

Alison: Right

Casey: A lot of couples, they’re scrambling on Tuesday night at 9:30 at night going, what’s happening tomorrow?

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: You know, and then Wednesday night it’s the same thing. And instead of like walking through the week with like, purpose, with being proactive.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: Everything is the house is on fire, the bikes on fire. And I’m on fire because it’s just chaos and I don’t and there’s no like, and then everything becomes like a big thing because there’s so much stress.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: That being reactive creates stress in people’s lives. So just implementing that one tool and habit inhabit, create so much peace. And then guess what? When it’s 930 at night, the kids are in bed. You don’t have to talk about tomorrow. You actually get to focus on yourselves and play card games, or take a walk, or have that kind of connection time where we’re building our friendship.

Alison: Yeah, yeah.

Alison: Do you guys still do those?

Megan: We do them religiously.

Alison: Not still. Really?

Megan: Yes.

Alison: Oh yeah. That’s cool.

Megan: And you know why we do it? Well, we also are believers that we should practice what we preach.

Alison: Good

Megan: But I think too, we fight if we don’t. So in full transparency, I hate to cook. I’m a horrible cook, I burn everything.

Alison: Me too.

Megan: Oh, really?

Alison: Oh. don’t be so happy. My family in the other rooms are like, yes, that is true. She’s being honest.

Megan: My daughter brings her friends over, and one of the first things she does when she introduces me is she’s like, oh, this is my mom. She’s not a very good cook. Okay.

Casey: So Megan burns water. Okay.

Megan: I burn water like I forgot I had a pot of boiling water on this. Anyways, okay, so I’m really bad. So one-  actually, what came from like how we created the weekly marriage business meeting. We, we created this for ourselves. Most of our resources, 75% are like, we fight and we’re like, we need to find a solution for this.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And if there’s no solution, we create a solution. We’re both fixers. We’re both problem solvers. We’re both very innovative people. So this is why we have so many worksheets and habits because we’re like, if it’s, we can’t be the only couple fighting about who’s cooking. There’s no way we’re the only couple, right? So this is a true story.  Casey, it’s 530 at night. We’ve got a baby. I don’t want to cook. I’m not good at cooking. He’s like, what’s for dinner? And man, did I snap. It was like 0 to 100. I don’t know why is it on me? And it was like, whoa, I was just asking, what’s for dinner? Now we’re trying to figure out who’s cooking what, what ingredients we have in the fridge. And we realized we were fighting about cooking or food almost every day. Just little bickerings, you know?

Alison: Yep, yep.

Megan: I’m like, wait, what if we sat down on a Sunday and decided, well, Megan doesn’t like to cook? What if Casey takes over the cooking, which he does now, and I do the cleaning, which I’m fine with. I like to cook and I’m way better at that, you know? But like, why were we doing it? Like you said, a certain way, we just kind of came in with these expectations, these, these assumptions. And, and so it’s like, well, now we literally don’t fight about dinner anymore. Like we haven’t in over a decade. It’s not an issue. Busy nights. It’s like, maybe we need to go through In and Out or Chick fil A, like all that is discussed though, ahead of time. And so couples are very reactionary in marriage. Most couples are. We were also very reactionary. It was in the moment. You’ve got tiredness, kids in the background, feelings of disappointment from work or whatever, and you’re bringing all that to just a simple conversation of what’s for dinner?

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And so we’re trying to remove any barrier, any kind of thing that can get in the way. And then the other thing we would tell couples is your calendar is a reflection of what matters to you.

Casey: Mhm.

Megan: So if you have in your calendar working out, which I we both do, we know that working out is very important to Casey and I. It’s self care, right? Keeps us healthy, keeps our it’s for our mindset more than anything. I have wonderful best friends, girlfriends. I have lunches and pickleball with them because I’m prioritizing them. If my husband and my marriage is not in my calendar, then there’s something wrong there.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: Right. We put everything in our calendar our kids dentist appointments, their school projects, their school plays. Our daughter just graduated high school. That was in the calendar graduation party because those things have value and meaning. And so we would that’s why I think a lot of husbands can wrap their mind around the weekly marriage business meeting because they think, gosh, you’re right, I do this at work. I can transport this and put this in my marriage. And it is very transactional. It’s not feelings based. Um, you know, we always tell couples make it your own. Yeah. You know, make it your own, make it work for you. But we give you a guide and a worksheet in the book that people I mean.

Casey: Jean, I mean, could you imagine if Alex walked in the studio and said, hey guys, let’s just make it a great show. We’re all going to do great. We’ll just, you know.

Megan: We’ll wing it.

Casey: All right. We’ve already done this a couple times, so, uh, yeah. All right. Walk off. Walk off like no.

Jean: So true. They there was a there was a plan. There was an every word, every great word you guys have used prioritize. Everything was thought through because it was important, you know, and, and there it is again, like the marriage, there’s that assumption that, oh, he should just know and she should just know. And we’re, you know, it’s it is really a call to staying present, to being conscious about your thought words, your deeds. And, um, yeah, no, they would never have done that at the studio.

Alison: I love that. Well, write the questions as we go.

Megan: Yeah. Oh yeah. Can you imagine?

Casey: I’m just going to assume you guys got it right.

Alison: Exactly. Exactly right.

Casey: And again, I think a lot of like the CEOs that I’ve worked with, like when I explain that to them, they get it. They, they’re like, but they never connect the dots before. So if we can just kind of like say, hey, when you’re intentional in one area of your life, your career is not more important than your marriage. I mean, that is research. That’s Harvard’s human flourishing project showed that the thing that makes humans happy and grounded is the depth and quality of the relationships we hold, not how much money we have. Not accolades, not how you could be the most successful person, have all this money and be in an empty house and miserable. I heard that story and seen that story lived out time and time again. I worked with an athlete that said, Casey, you know, it’s amazing. I have everything I could ever want. He was currently estranged from his wife, but I don’t have the one thing I need.

Alison: Oh.

Casey: And you could like his. Like the paleness of his face. He was like, I was kind of envious coming into this meeting. And now. Wow, this is not a life I would ever wish on anybody.

Alison: You know, my husband and I work freelance, and I’ll be really upset if I don’t get a job. Oh, I didn’t get that job. And then, you know, when my mom, I took care of my mom as she was passing away, and she never said, I wish I had more work. Like I wish I, I, you know, she worked for the New York Daily News and it was never like, I wish I didn’t I wish I was on assignment like never like it’s always just like about, you know, the people you love and, and your friends and family and your marriage and your kids. It’s just always about that impact.

Casey: You know, I actually just not to be morbid, but I visited my grandmother’s gravesite. It had been like 15 years. It was really actually, I mean, I think in American culture, we’re not like confronted with death too often. So it was a little weird to be like walking on like on top of graves and like, yeah, like kind of freaked out. And they have these little placards that say like, you know, here lies Martha Smith, you know, 1967 to 1993 or whatever. And, um, it didn’t say like, here lies the best accountant in Orange County. Or here is one of the greatest plumbers to ever grace Alisa Viejo or whatever.

Alison: Exactly.

Casey: All it said was a devoted husband, brother and father.

Alison: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey: It was because we’re human beings, not human doings.

Alison: Right

Alison: The connection and community is really the thing. And Jean and I talk about this a lot whenever we do these interviews, you know, the word that comes up the most for all these people and to share the good realm, curiosity.

Megan: Oh yes.

Alison: And you guys talk about that. Can you tell us why it’s important to be curious in a relationship?

Megan: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Curiosity to me communicates. I care about you. I care about your thoughts, your fears, your highs, your lows, your dreams, your goals. I genuinely want to know those things,

Alison: Right.

Megan: And I believe we live in a culture where it’s a lot about me, me, me, me, me. But to actually sit in a place and say, I want to get curious about you. Yeah, it’s very fulfilling.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: For both people, really. And we, our first book that we self-published was 365 Connecting Questions for couples.

Alison: I love that I have that.

Megan: Yeah,  We sent you one.

Alison: Yes, yes, I love it. Thank you.

Megan: You’re welcome. Because and we self-publish because Casey asked me the same three questions. What’s for dinner? Hey, that story again. What’s for dinner? Um, how are the kids? How was your day? Right. Are we having sex, like, almost every day? And I was like, I just wish that you’d ask me, like, different questions. And he’s like, can you write some down for me? I’m like, you know what? I actually say fixer problem solver. I’m like, yes, I will. In fact, I will write a book about questions. But that’s where that idea came from. Anyways, all that to say, if you think about back in the dating years, we all sat there across the table or on the couch and we asked each other.

Alison: Right.

Megan: open Ended questions. Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your grandmother. What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s your biggest fear? And so that’s actually what connects us to friendships and our romantic partners. And then we just kind of get comfortable, or we assume we know everything about that person, but we’re always evolving. We’re always changing.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And, and it’s not that that curiosity isn’t there. It’s just we haven’t like turned it back on. It kind of laid dormant. And so yes, curiosity is huge in marriage. And the Gottman Institute has done some of the most extensive research in relationships, right. 40 plus years. And the number one way to build emotional intimacy in any relationship is by asking open ended questions.

Megan: Yeah, there’s science that backs that up. Yeah.

Alison: And it’s sort of what the world needs right now with so many people in disparate fields and ideas. And like, you know, if I think if we lean into curiosity as opposed to like, oh, you’re on the other side.  I think that, oh, look, you got fireworks happening, Casey.

Casey: Yes.

Casey: I was giving you two thumbs up.

Alison: I love that.

Casey: that’s so True.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: Because curiosity is a listening posture.

Alison: Mhm. Right.

Casey: When you think about it, when some when your spouse is attacking you, you know, you’re kind of like this. You know what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? It’s kind of the question like, why are you attacking me? Um, but curiosity is kind of like gets gets into our partner’s world and it’s like, what’s the, what’s the burden or stressor that you’re carrying that I don’t see right now?

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: And the, the polarizing political divides and all the social issues, there’s no one really creating like, okay, can we just get curious? I’d love to hear your posture. Everyone’s talking. No one’s listening.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: And sometimes we do that in marriage. And I want to tell you, this is actually what’s the secret message that you’re sending when you stop being curious with your spouse is I’m bored with you.

Alison: Yeah, you don’t matter.

Megan: You don’t matter.

Alison: I don’t care.

Casey: I’m not Interested anymore. And what, what really lies at curiosity that there’s a secret sauce to marriage is desire.

Alison: Mhm.

Casey: Because we all long to be desired. And when someone’s pursuing us, wanting to know who we are and get to know who we like. Tell me more about your hopes and dreams. What are you afraid of? Again, like Megan said, all the questions we did when we’re dating. But somehow we just turn off when we’re married.

Alison: Yeah. Yeah. Very much.

Jean: Have you noticed, that’s so that’s so great that you talk about that…Have you noticed a change in marriages, people that you’re you’ve been counseling, like the the problems that come up from, you know, when you first started this beautiful career that, you know, this offering that’s so wonderful.

Megan: Mhm. Yeah. I would say actually a huge shift we’ve seen over the last couple of years has been with AI.

Alison: Um.

Megan: And ours is more of a concern.

Casey: Allison.

Megan: Not, not a good, not a good thing.

Megan: Um.

Casey: People are using AI to go. They’re replacing their coach, their therapist, their advice with AI. And, you know, we always say AI is only hearing your side of the story. And in a marriage or a romantic relationship, there are two sides to every story, right? And they don’t know the history. They don’t know the patterns, they don’t know their spouse’s perspective. And we’re seeing this massive shift where people are going to AI, and AI is just giving them what they want to hear.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And I know you can train AI to say, I actually want you to challenge me, which if anyone’s listening, I would say tell your AI bot to challenge you to say, I don’t want to always be right, you know? Um, but I think that this is going, we’re already seeing some serious repercussions of this and I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Alison: So what do you what does that mean? Like you’re seeing some repercussions of it because I know I have friends who will be like, they’ll have a problem and I’ll be like, oh my God, I felt that way. You should have called me. Oh, no. I talked to the AI thing and I’m just like, oh my God, no. Like, it just freaks me out.

Megan: So yes, we would say, um, if you’re struggling in your marriage, you should go to a trusted resource, not AI. So you should go to a best friend, a mentor, a therapist, a marriage and life coach. Casey and Megan, like, there are so many people out there that love you and want the best for you. You don’t want only yes people in your life.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: Not when it comes to romantic relationships, because again, there’s two perspectives. So what people are doing is they’re saying, well, I got in a fight with my husband. This is what he did. They don’t talk about what she did.

Megan: This is what he did.

Megan: What should I do? And then what they’re basically doing is they’re validating. You’re so right. You should feel wronged. You should feel upset. You know what? He was wrong in X, Y, z. And what’s happening is if you do that enough, it’s going to make you start telling yourself a story that my husband’s in the wrong or my spouse is in the wrong, I’m in the right. And now you’re bringing that energy into every argument and every conversation with your spouse, because an AI bot who does not really know you or your spouse told you something to do. And so we’ve seen people get divorces.

Alison: Wow.

Megan: We’ve seen people have affairs. We’ve seen people saying, well, you’re justified in the way you’re feeling. And so it’s okay that you give the silent treatment. I’m like, the silent treatment is never a good thing. Who’s telling you this? Oh, Gemini. Oh, I like no, like that’s that’s not healthy. So I know that they’re working really hard at trying to put more things and protocols in AI. Like, even like, you know, there was that big story where a kid said, I want to kill myself. And they said, you should. Right?

Alison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Megan: And like, but we’re really far behind. Ai is going too fast. We can’t keep up with all this. By the time they make laws and rules, AI is going to be light years ahead. So I would say this is a massive shift we’re seeing in, in with our couples and our clients.

Alison: Wow.

Casey: And I’ll just follow on with that to say, going back to the Harvard study, human flourishing was it’s not our relationship with AI that keeps us grounded and happy and whole. It’s the depth and quality of relationships. Now here’s where AI is actually kind of, uh, short circuiting a lot of our young people’s, uh, relationship tolerance because you can interact with an AI bot that validates you. Maybe that makes you feel good. There’s a little dopa hit there at that moment, but you can just as easily walk away from that relationship with zero consequences.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: And it’s, it’s at your beck and call. So it’s at your convenience and at your comfort. Yeah. Problem is relationships, human relationships are oftentimes inconvenient and very uncomfortable when we have to talk about hard conversations. And so this, this younger generation has a lower tolerance of like, if we have to have a hard conversation, they’re like, well, I’m out. I don’t want to deal with this. And so they’re not, they’re not talking about it because they’ve trained themselves on having a relationship with AI. And that to me is deeply concerning.

Alison: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree.

Megan: Yeah. The other thing I would say, we’ve seen a change in relationships is just with busyness and stress and exhaustion. It feels like it’s gotten way worse.

Alison: Mhm.

Megan: We felt like with Covid, it actually got a little bit better. People were home more. There was like, actually, we’re okay. Like we’re having more time. Like couple time and family time. So there was some good benefits that we were hoping would stick with people.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: Um, unfortunately, they didn’t stick for a lot of people.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And it’s almost like when, you know, the pandemic was done, it’s like, well, let’s just go back. And if anything, I feel like people are more busy and I don’t know if they’re busying themselves. I think there’s a a wide range, but we hear often that people are overworked, stressed, and very busy and tired. And the reality is, is relationships require both quality and quantity time.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And you’re going to have to have energy. And so a lot of times we were coaching people, helping them almost like life skills. What can you say no to so you can say yes to your spouse? What can you say no to? So you’re not giving your kids your leftovers every day because you can’t give people leftovers day after day, year after year. They’re going to get over that.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: And then you’re living with that regret and that guilt, right? Like I gave him my leftovers, you know.

Megan: No one wants to do that. And so you, I get it. There’s seasons and we try to tell people there’s a difference between being in a season of burnout. But this can’t be a lifestyle.

Alison: Right

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: That’s right. Do you guys ever still struggle with any of the habits?

Megan: Yes, because we’re imperfect.

Alison: That’s good though.

Alison: That’s good.

Alison: But see, I like that you say that because there are some people, Jean and I talk about this too, that there are some people out there that are like, you know, well, I’m up, I’m up here and you’re down there and good luck to you, little….

Casey: Oh, let me just tell you. Last week, I, uh, said something out of turn, and I had to come and apologize to Megan about it because, it was impulsive and that doesn’t that’s not going to go away. I have a raging case of ADHD, so I give Megan a lot of practice in patience.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey: Um, but yeah, I mean, we, I would consider us more marriage practitioners.

Alison: Mhm.

Casey: Because the truth is, marriage is a summit less peak.

Alison: Right

Casey: There’s always something to discover and learn. So the moment that people sit back and just kind of coast. It’s communicating something that I’m assuming they probably actually don’t want to say it or communicate to their spouse, but they’re saying it with their actions.

Alison: Right.

Casey: Um, one of the things that when we were talking about intentionality in this conversation, uh, I did a deep dive on the word and it’s Latin for intindeary.

Megan: Mhm.

Casey: Which it’s two words put together and it is stretch forward. So I don’t know if you’ve ever been stretched, but it’s very uncomfortable.

Alison: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Casey: But this idea of intention is that we’re stretching forward towards, you know, we’re being proactive. We’re getting ourselves a little uncomfortable. Yeah. It’s probably not the most convenient thing, but I’m, I’m stretching forward in my life. I’m being intentional with and, and that that’s really this beautiful word picture of what it looks like to be intention. Now, the opposite of that would be to cross your arms, lean back in your chair. And this, this is me. Hey, whatever happened in life? It is what it is. Hey, my partner’s not joining me. Uh, I you know, I’m stuck. I’m disempowered. This is, you know, I’m just a victim of circumstances. Um, you know that.

Alison: Yeah.

Casey: That is the opposite of what’s required to create change in your life. Really?

Alison: Yep. Yep.

Casey: Alright, we got lean forward in the saddle with with intentionality.

Megan: Mhm.

Alison: That’s a great image.

Megan: Yeah.

Jean: And that’s, you know, we’re all here to grow and change and expand and experience. You know, so I do. I never heard of that. Thank you Casey. I like, I like that. What is it called? Uh, the, when the you look up the root word of something.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: Etymology.

Casey: Etymology. Yeah.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Alison: And can I ask you just one more quick question before we end, because I could talk to you guys like for the next ten hours, but that would be inappropriate. Um, sorry about that. Is there like you talk a lot about forgiveness and right now we’re living in a world I think that could use more forgiveness. Um, but where could you talk a little bit about forgiveness and then also address a little bit the line between forgiveness and enabling?

Megan: Yeah.

Megan: Um, I will start with saying I will be transparent that that is the one I still struggle with the most in my own life. So I feel like I’m, I’m qualified to say this because forgiveness and boundaries are the two most misunderstood and confusing topics within marriage.

Alison: Yeah.

Megan: People really don’t understand. And I, we like to call ourselves we’re relationship educators. So while yes, we’re marriage and life coaches, a lot of what we do in our practice with our clients is we educate them. Again, if they didn’t have a model, they didn’t have an example, how would they know that’s okay? They don’t know. We didn’t know either. But anyone can learn. So Forgiveness actually starts in the head. It’s a choice. I’ve got a sign behind me that says choose.

Alison: I love that.

Megan: It could say choose. Excuse me. Could say choose forgiveness. And I believe that a lot of us feel that we should wake up, and we’re going to feel like we want to forgive our spouse or our partner for hurting us. And I’m here to say you’re probably never going to feel it. And so if you’re waiting for those feelings to come, you could be waiting days, weeks, months, years. So it starts, it really does start with our thoughts and, and this is so important. And this is the switch of, you know, you hear people say, forgive and forget. Well, our brains are not wired to forget really big hurts. Um, I mean, I think with time and forgiveness they can maybe you won’t, right. But I don’t forget, I have never forgotten all of the big, nasty fights that Casey and I got in those first few years of marriage. I mean, those those left scars. Now I’ve forgiven them so we can talk about it and not get triggered. We can actually even laugh and go, how stupid were we? Right?

Alison: Right.

Megan: So forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Forgiveness is a very individual act. It is basically a choice, saying, I am going to let my spouse off the hook for the pain that they caused me. I do know I no longer want this pain to dictate my life. I don’t want it to trigger me. I don’t want it to hold me down. I don’t want it to make me feel depressed and bitter. It’s so it’s completely nothing to do with the other person. Which is why it’s so unfair. Yeah, but it’s a choice that you can make. I’ve walked women and men through forgiving moms, dads, sexual abusers that have already passed away. The person doesn’t have to apologize. Should they apologize? Yes, but you may never get the apology you’re looking for. So you can actually wake up one day and say, this pain’s costing me a lot. It’s not serving me in life, and I don’t want this pain to dictate my life anymore. So it’s a choice. Okay, so that’s really important. It’s not a feeling, it’s a choice.

Alison: Right.

Megan: And, and there’s different practices that, you know, you can walk through a therapist can walk you through a coach can walk you through that will really help kind of solidify that. But going back to your question on forgiving versus enabling, we want to put forgiveness and rebuilding trust in the same category, and they’re not.

Megan: So you can forgive your spouse, but I forgave Casey for yelling at me. But that doesn’t mean that he’s just allowed to continue to yell at me over and over and over and over again. That’s a boundary issue. That’s a rebuilding trust issue. That’s a very different thing. So for example, yeah, we were both yellers. I hated that I was yeller decided I don’t want to yell anymore so I could tell Casey, well, you can’t yell at me anymore, but can Casey yell at me? Yeah, the answer is yes, because I don’t control what comes out of his mouth.

Alison: Right.

Megan: So I forgave him for yelling at me. I was going to say he’s yelled at me. I saw him through the eyes of compassion, hurt people, hurt people. He’s not a bad person. He’s a hurting person. But that doesn’t excuse the behavior. That doesn’t justify the behavior. So I forgave the pain that was caused. But moving forward, what I did was the example he gave earlier was, I decided, my own boundary of, I’m not going to allow him to yell at me anymore. So if I can’t control what he does, I can control what I do. I’m going to get up and I’m going to disengage. I’m not going to engage with a yeller. And literally to this day, I do not engage. If anyone not just yells at me now, he doesn’t yell at me.

Alison: Right.

Megan: But that was a boundary I created. I don’t have to tolerate this anymore.

Alison: Right.

Megan: So as married people, we like to clump them together and I say no two different things. Forgiveness is one thing, letting go of the pain… Boundaries of we teach people how to treat us is a completely separate, separate, different topic. Yeah. Because we don’t want to, we don’t want to just keep forgiving and forgiving and going, well, you can keep yelling, yelling at me, or you can keep giving me the silent treatment. Or you can keep fill in the blank. That would be enabling. And we don’t want to enable bad behavior. So the opposite of enabling is basically boundaries, personal boundaries for yourself to say, this is not something I want to tolerate. You can keep doing what you’re going to do because you’re human and you’re going to do what you do.

Alison: And what did you do? Just did you just get up and leave the room?

Megan: But in a healthy way, the example he gave earlier, hey, I want to talk to you about this, but you’re yelling at me and I’m not going to tolerate yelling. When you’re calm, let me know. Happy to talk to you. And it just I had to do that for four months, ladies, four months until he finally was like, oh, Megan’s not going to let me yell at her. So he could have kept yelling at me. But the consequence of the boundary was I’m no longer going to tolerate the yelling and the I’m going to disengage. Yeah.

Alison: That’s great.

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: I think boundaries are like a thing I struggle with because I feel guilty sometimes.

Megan: Yeah.

Alison: Do you know? So that’s a really great thing. You know, I feel yeah. So that’s a great that’s a great we talked Jean and I talk about that a lot about what is the boundary. When can we say no. Do do we have to be good girls and make sure everyone’s happy and pleased all the time, you know.

Megan: Yeah. You know so one of the things, one of my areas of expertise is boundaries, so if you ever want to talk offline about it…Happy to help you.

Megan: Um, I will, I will say

Alison:  don’t joke about that because I’m you’re on speed dial now.

Megan:  i love it.  You, reach out to me anytime because I, I lived in a, I lived in a home where there were no boundaries.

Alison: Mhm.

Megan: And when I got help for myself, I. And I learned what they were. And I started implementing them. There is so much joy and freedom on the other side. I want every man and woman listening to experience that, because people see me as a very confident person, and I have my insecurities like we all do. But a lot of my confidence, Casey will tell you, is because I have very good, healthy boundaries in my life, in every area with my kids, my self-care, my marriage, my budget. Boundaries are actually in every area that we have, whether we have them or not. And one of the things I will tell every listener is you almost have to make a boundary and expect that the person’s not going to like it.

Megan: So if you’re a people pleaser, it’s going to be really, really hard to make a boundary. And that’s why boundaries are actually based off of our values. If we know our worth, we know that we shouldn’t be yelled at. We shouldn’t be given this. Hey, wait, I deserve love and respect. They’re actually created from your values.

Alison:  right.

Megan: Yeah, I know, I told you I could, I could do like 17 hours on boundaries and I would love it.

Jean: Your next book

Megan: I know our next book, right? Yes. Maybe. Yes.

Alison: This is so great. You guys really are like like little sparks, like this Sparky thing that I just really enjoyed. Meeting you is just the highlight because your book was so engaging.

Jean: We both really, really loved it.

Alison: I hope everybody buys it everywhere and not even people married. I think it’s really important for relationships, you know, just the relationship habit. Do you know, I think it’s great, but we have two end questions, Jeannie.

Jean: Okay. So the first one is what does the word inside wink mean to you?

Casey: Okay, I’ll go first because what I heard inside wink, I was like, what is an inside wink? I thought it was kind of that way of this is a way to initiate sex is you have an inside, like, of course, it’s kind of like um. Hey, do you want to clean up later? It’s it’s kind of that like inside language of initiation for sex. That’s where I took it, ladies. I mean, that was what I thought.

Megan: Casey, you’re such a man.

Alison: We’ve talked to so many people. And I have to say that’s the first unique answer. And I have to give you kudos for that.

Alison: Because you’re you’re you’re your own guy.

Casey: Yeah. Hey.

Alison: I love that.

Megan: Yeah.

Megan: That’s funny.

Casey: You want to go to bed now or later?

Megan: That’s so funny. Oh my gosh. I love that.

Alison: Megan, What does it mean to you? It’s going to be it’s not going to be about sex is it?

Meygan: My answer is not going to be nearly as exciting as his. Um, I actually think of the word intimacy because I think that if Casey and I have like a look we give each other when we’re in an uncomfortable situation or when our kids are being funny, but we don’t want to know. We don’t want to tell them they’re being funny. We kind of have this little wink. We give this little look. And I think that requires intimacy and trust between two people.

Alison: I love that. And and finally, um, pie. Cake or ice cream?

Meygan: Oh. Ice cream.

Casey: Ice cream all the way.

Megan: Ice cream.

Alison: That’s why you guys got married. There you go.

Meygan: Love. Ice cream.

Casey: Chocolate ice cream. I mean, you just can’t. You can’t even mess it up.

Megan: Yeah.

Megan: Peanut butter. Peanut butter. Chocolate’s my favorite.

Megan: Number two.

Meygan: Oh, he loves Rocky Road. And he likes the rocky road with walnuts, which they don’t. It’s hard to find the one with the walnuts.

Alison: I’ve never heard of that.

Meygan: Yeah. They do. They do. Almonds now.

Jean: And almonds are harder. I like this. Walnuts are a little softer. And, uh. Yeah, I love walnuts, too.

Casey: Especially if they’re frozen. Almonds are trash.

Alison: We’re going to get letters about that now.I’m totally teasing.

Meygan: No, we love almonds. Just not just not not ice cream.

Jean: not Frozen ones. Right?

Meygan: That’s right.

Megan: Yes.

Alison: Thank you guys so much. You are just amazing. I just I just wish we were like neighbors. And I could just come over now.

Jean: And talk about turning lemons into lemonade and sharing that with everyone. And again, uh, you have a great app. You have a website. We will, your books will put everything where our viewers can, our listeners can, uh, reach out to you and thank you so much.

Alison: Yes. Thank you, thank you really all this time and congratulations on everything.

Megan: Thank you.

Casey: Thank you so much. I just want to inject our mission really is that we would see, um, couples and really people becoming the healthiest, healthiest versions of themselves. Mhm. They can experience the joy of connection. Because I would like to say our big message to the world is happily ever after is not a fantasy. It’s something you can do if you are intentional.

Alison: Right… That’s great. And that can be for everybody and everything

Meygan: Yeah.

Alison: Thank you so, so much, you guys.

Alison: After after talking with them, I said to Jean, let’s drive down to San Diego and meet them because I thought they were so nice and funny and like little bright lights. I thought they were adorable and I enjoyed that interview so much.

Jean: I did too, and I think that they both have really just grown into their best selves. And I think that’s what marriages are all about.

Alison: All about relationships.

Jean: Yeah. Growing into your best self. And they were fun.

Alison: And the fact that and once you read their book, because it’s all about really good techniques, but talking to them and getting to know them a little bit. I think now I’d like to go back and read the book again. Do you know what I mean? Because their personalities really shown in the interview, you know? Yeah. And now that I know them a little bit, you know, I felt like they were just so, um, like their. Go ahead.

Jean: Yeah. They’re just so vibrant and.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: Joyful.

Alison: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I’m using some of their tips and I, I really like their tips because if you feel like it’s not just like, listen more. Mhm. Say nicer things.

Jean: No. And they talk about that being specific in, in, in their love lists. Like what specifically, you know, makes you feel loved.  what specifically makes you feel loved? Alison.

Alison: Um, I like taking, I like time with people. Like and I like, um, when someone sees me, truly sees me and can help me make my way through a challenge without making me feel less than that really shows love to me. Like if I’m feeling a challenged or worried or upset, someone’s like, oh, get over it. It’s going to be someone who makes me feel like, well, what’s going on with that? Or let’s talk about it or like, they’re really with me, right? What about what about you?

Jean: I would say the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

Alison: You know, I just love that.

Jean: Because it’s, it’s such, um, that presence and that unconditional love to help you navigate something that’s bothering you is really beautiful.

Alison: And I think too, that I like when if there is a problem in a relationship that you talk about it and you forgive it, you forgive each other, which is really like, you know, they, they had a rocky go of it for a while as a lot of marriages do. And I love that they were like, you know, we have to move into forgiveness, not forgetting, but forgiveness and saying, okay, I love you. Let’s continue.

Jean: Right.

Alison: Which is great. So I hope, we hope you read the book. We hope you enjoyed the interview and.

Jean: And we hope you are well and having just a wonderful time. Yeah. Wherever you are.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: And this book, no matter. Married. Not married. This is a beautiful book.

Alison: Beautifully said, my friend. Bye.

Jean: Now?

Alison: Now, now! There it is. We did it!

Jean: You did it! I just watch in awe.

Alison: You give me your your confidence. You give me confidence to continue it.

Jean: That’s right.  I put all my chips in your corner.

Alison:  In my cookie.

Jean: Yes, exactly.

Alison: the juice is worth the squeeze.

Jean: Thank you. Matthew.

Jean: I know— Matthew, this isn’t your, uh, quote that you devised, but Matthew would use that a lot for me. Mom, the juice is not worth the squeeze,

Alison: Which I love. I use it now all the time.

Jean: Yeah, it’s a good one.

Alison: Yeah, because I’m not going to be squeezing stuff.

Jean: No more squeezing stuff that’s not giving the amount of juice.

Alison: That’s right. So speaking of good juice is today’s interview, right?

Jean: Yeah, that’s for sure. Today we have Natalie Silverstein and she is an author, a speaker, a public health advocate and hosts a podcast.

Alison: We got the pleasure of reading Simple Acts of Care, which was just amazing how to help when loved ones are hurting. And it’s, um, it’s really talking to like the, the step beyond the caregiver. It’s like the friends of the caregiver or the friends of the person going through something. It’s really a really good, a really good book that reminded me of a lot of things. Right?

Jean: Me too. Allison. And I also think it, it really helps you have even more empathy for challenging situations. And sometimes saying nothing is very powerful. And, and again, you know, not always having to say something… And I think so many of us feel we have to come up with the most wise, most helpful thing to say, thing to do. And she’s just saying, keep it simple.

Alison: Yeah. And give yourself grace.

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: I can’t wait to talk to her. Yeah. Okay. Here we go.

Natalie: Hi. How are you both?

Alison: Thanks for doing this. I’m Allison,

Jean: And I’m Jean.

Natalie: It’s so nice to meet you both. Um, can I also, before we begin, tell you the craziest story. Jean, you’re kind of not going to believe this. So my husband, um, uh, his best friend from college, passed away a few a few weeks ago from early onset Alzheimer’s. He was 60 years old. So that’s been heartbreaking. And then literally a week later, his, my, my father in law passed. So it’s been a tough time for my husband of late. But the celebration of life for his best friend is happening in July. And I’m here in New York City before I go out to Long Island where he is. And he asked me to grab his photo albums from college and and slightly beyond so that we could pull out pictures of his friend Scott for the memorial service for the video. And my husband after graduating from Denison, he went to a small school in Ohio. He worked in Arizona for a company that made ball bearings. And I’m flipping through the pages. I’m getting somewhere with this, and I come to the period where he’s in he’s in Arizona, and I can clearly see that he’s at office parties and things. And you’re not you’re kind of not going to believe this, but there is a photograph in this thing of Alex Trebek, just Alex Trebek.

Alison: Oh my God,

Natalie: That’s him.

Natalie: I’m I’m almost certain it is. The year is 1990 or 91, and he’s clearly at some sort of conference. And I told my husband, I’m like, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m meeting Jean Trebek in two hours. And I just opened this book, and this is a picture of Alex Trebek. Why do you have a picture of Alex Trebek in your photo album? And he said he must have been at a like a conference. Like, um, and maybe Alex was there speaking as a motivational speaker. He has no recollection of this, but I find these things to be sort of fascinating. Right? Like.

Jean: I find that fascinating too. And I think that’s a sign that Alex is letting us know he’s circling. He’s here. He’s not circling. He’s here. And I actually said to him, like, I sometimes I talk to him in my thoughts and, and I’m like, can I get a sign that you’re, you know, that you hear me and that you know that.

Natalie: So, I mean, I, I could have opened that album to any other page. I could have opened it tomorrow after I spoke to you. I could have never opened it. I could have grabbed the albums and stuck them in the bag, which was what was I, I was going to do, but I start flipping through to make sure that that the right ones not not, you know, I don’t know, some high school thing because of course he didn’t know Scott in high school, and that’s the page I opened to and I, I don’t know. I do believe in these things. And there’s a chapter in my book, my new book about this how if we we will see the signs if we’re looking for them. Right. And, um, I don’t know, that just felt really meaningful to me. So I wanted to share that.

Alison: So beautiful. I think the synchronicities are really meaningful.

Natalie: It’s crazy. So anyway.

Jean: I love that you shared that and it really means so much to me. And um,

Alison: Alex looks good there.

Natalie: He looks amazing. Well, we all looked good in 1990.

Alison: Yeah we did. We all did look good. Yeah.

Jean: Right, right. Let’s see. 1990 Alex and I got married.

Alison: So that was right then, right? Huh?

Jean: Yeah, yeah.

Alison: That’s really great.

Jean: That’s great.

Natalie: Crazy story. I know, I know, I love those types of things.

Alison: Your book, The Simple Acts of Care. Um, we were thinking, I was actually thinking while I was reading it, how much caregiving Jean has done and I have done and you have done.  How much that kind of like, um, it sort of binded us together, right? Bound us together in a way. Like we had a lot of stuff in common about that. Do you know, and that’s why your book was so interesting to us.

Natalie: I’m glad. Thank you. And you were kind of you’re kind of the only people that have read it beyond. And it’s again, you saw a version. It’s not even the final version. I’m receiving the final proofs in the next few days because it comes out at the end of the year. But I felt like, um, this book is a lot more of probably the topics that, that you would be interested in speaking about. The other two books were parenting books, essentially, which were fine and interesting, and talking about how service is sort of the key to raising kind and compassionate and empathetic children, which I think is always a good topic. But I’ve moved on from that into this sort of caregiver support role. So, um, yeah, so I thought it would be, would be good to share that piece as well.

Alison: Perfect. It’s really wonderful. Um, and, and how did you, how did you make that transition from doing like from the parenting… Because I was very familiar with your parenting books and sort of your Instagram and all of that. How did you make that transition to this?

Natalie: Well, you know, these stories have been bubbling up inside of me all of these years since my husband was diagnosed about ten years ago now. Um, he’s, he’s, he’s 59 and he was diagnosed right before he turned 50. So, um, you know, and I’ve over these years also have lost my own mother and I’ve helped a friend who passed away from a glioblastoma at a young age. Um, and so I think as we get older, these sort of, um, grief and loss and caregiving and support roles, it has just hit me in the face over and over and over again, the different ways that people want to show up authentically and they want to show up helpfully and meaningfully, um, and many times out of, out of complete ignorance to it or just not knowing what else to do or to say, they sort of center themselves. Right. And I’ve done it a million times and we all do it. We’re all so anxious to be seen as the good friend and the good helper and the savior of this, you know, saving the day that we sometimes move into a situation and offer words and actions that aren’t necessarily helpful to the person going through a painful situation.

Natalie: And that could be a divorce, that could be the loss of a dog, that could be the loss of a job, the loss of a significant other, or in my case, a diagnosis that was, you know, wildly unexpected and, and very challenging. So I’ve just gathered all these ideas and stories. And as I was thinking about a way to put them into the world without it being a memoir, because I don’t feel comfortable sharing my family’s story in an intimate way, because we’re still living our story. And it’s my husband’s story and it’s my children’s story. So it wasn’t going to be a memoir. And so the simple acts idea from the other two books kind of percolated a little bit. And I had all these essays and ideas, and I finally just pulled the trigger. And again, it’s going to be a very small book. It’s going to be one of those sort of gifty kind of books that you’ll see in the front of the store, you know, on the counter, um, in the, and it’s illustrated really beautifully. And it’s just a hope to sort of help people to, to just slightly shift their, their thinking around the way that they show up for other people.

Natalie: And it’s important for me not to make people feel badly about the way they have been showing up. Right? That’s the needle threading I had to do, which was I wouldn’t want anyone to read this and be like, oh my God, I’ve been saying the wrong thing all these years. I feel terrible. Or like Natalie is shaming me for the way that I show up for other people, which is I bring casseroles and that’s I’m going to keep doing that like you do you. Right. But I, so I, it was a, it was a very, um, difficult threading of the needle to make it like I do these, I do it to I’m I’m, I’m guilty of it too. Let’s all just sort of rethink how we center the person who is going through the tough time and really show up for them with active listening and, and really paying attention and taking ourselves out of the equation. Um, and so I think that that’s, I think we can all use that help. And I hope that it’s, I hope it’s received with that, um, the way that I intended it to. So we’ll see.

Jean: I think you nailed it. Actually, I did notice that I thought your writing was very thoughtful. And when I saw myself, um, both being on the receiving end of care when Alex passed away and when Alex was still here. You know, it’s different kinds. And I know it’s hard for for people to. And a lot of what you share, I could totally relate to and and again, to reiterate your your writing so thoughtful. And so I don’t think anyone’s going to take it.

Alison: In a bad way. Exactly.

Natalie: I hope so. I hope so.

Jean: It’s so Beautiful. And there were so your chapters. Another thing I loved is that they’re broken up into small, really bite sized chapters that you can just easily digest.

Alison: And, and I thought they were really interesting. Can you talk to tell our listeners a little bit about empathy versus pity?

Natalie: Wow. Yeah. So that’s a big that’s a big thing. Pity was, if I’m being honest, pity was the driver of the whole project to some extent, because I had been sort of accumulating and, and thinking about ruminating on that face, the pity face which I referenced in there and that I have seen, by the way, I’ve seen referenced in fiction, in nonfiction, in and other memoirs and grief memoirs. You really can’t read a book about grief and loss without someone mentioning the fact that someone comes at them with this face, right? That a face that no one wants, no one wants. Okay. Um, and so it’s and so in the describing of it and in the summary at the end of the chapter, I wanted to just sort of gently suggest that we all kind of neutralize our faces and try not to give this like, oh, you know, this puppy dog thing that with the lip and the head tilt and the. Mhm. No one is going to receive that with like joy and like comfort. I don’t know it. So it really helps. I hope it helps people to think twice about how they approach someone physically. But, um, you know, as, as empathy is a big piece of, of my work with families and teens around how we can be present for other people, right? So empathy is, um, kind of showing up by understanding what the other.

Natalie: Trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person. Right. And so again, the work that I do in helping families to do service and volunteerism, meaningful work in the community, the work that I do around teens finding their purpose through social impact work or whatever, is to sort of stretch or to flex that empathy muscle, right? So I don’t think we can be good citizens and good friends and good neighbors, unless we at least try to put ourselves into the shoes of another person and to think to ourselves, what might that person need right now that I can provide for them as opposed to like, what would I want if I was, you know, like what– really think about the other person and what they’re going through and what they might need. So empathy is such an important muscle and it is sort of the basis of all service work, right? We want to build a more empathetic, you know, world, period. And I think our government could be a little more empathetic to people of all different. I mean, you know, there’s just layers and layers of what empathy could do if we were better at it.

Natalie: And I don’t think we as a society have as many opportunities to flex our empathy muscles as we did a long time ago, when we all sort of looked out for each other. And you helped your neighbor to get food or to shovel out their driveway, I think we’re all very much in our silos now, and that’s and we’ve lost something in our empathy. So, and pity is, is this kind of I find it to be like a negative thing. It is like feeling sorry for someone, um, without really taking into consideration how that might feel if somebody was directing that at you. Right. We’ve, we’ve all been pitied. And I don’t think anyone wants to be pitied in any way because it is suggesting that you are not capable of handling this situation that you’re being faced with. Right. Pity sort of says, oh, you’re not going to make it. Like, oh, poor you. It just feels diminishing of a person. It feels like you’re not seeing them for who they are and what they’re going through and what they’re capable of, of overcoming. And so I think when people approach us with these pitiful faces and with expressions of pity, um, I think we just need to kind of wipe pity off the map here, you know, because, you know, again, no one wants to be pitied.

Natalie: It is at most, you know, if you’re being nice about it, it’s it’s like kind of unkind. And if you’re not being nice about it, it’s kind of cruel. You know, it really makes people feel worse. There’s nothing about being pitied, nothing about being pitied that makes us feel better and so, um, I just wanted to raise that. It would be hard to write a whole book on pity. But pity was sort of this kernel of a thing that I, i really rejected when people were clearly pitied. The fact that my very young and vibrant and healthy husband was diagnosed with this really difficult neurodegenerative disease, and our children were very young, and the very last thing I wanted was for anyone to pity us. Because we are a strong family, we are surrounded by love and community. We will do the very best we can to overcome this, to live with this, to successfully thrive with this, and i don’t need your pity. I need your friendship. I need your love. I need your support. I need your understanding. I need you to walk beside me. I don’t, I don’t need your pity and no one does.

Jean: Yeah. So, Natalie, what’s your take when someone says as a response, when you, when you, uh, you give the news that something is going down in your family and they say, oh, I’m so sorry. Um, you consider that a pity response?

Natalie: I think, I think I’m so sorry to hear that is, is a, is a valid response. They are sorry to hear that. Right. I am sorry to hear that someone has been diagnosed. That is, you know, that’s a a natural human expression. Um, and it is, you know, but I would be, I would go beyond that and say, I am so sorry to hear that, you know, tell me, tell me what’s going on. Share with me as much as you’d like to share with me. How can I be helpful to you? Here are a couple of ways that I can be helpful to you. Um, right now, right now, if, if those things are helpful and if not, please, you know, take them and put them in your pocket and pull them out any old time. I’m always going to be here for you. I’m here for you. Um, there are lots of different ways that you can show that you support someone without saying, oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, that’s too bad. I wish I oh, you know, like there’s, there’s a lot of that kind of stuff that is, that is wildly unhelpful. Right? So, um, straight out, I am so sorry to hear this news. I’m so sorry for your loss. Right? Because a person is sorry for the loss. And I’ve learned a lot from Megan Reardon Jarvis, who is this incredible, um, trauma therapist who wrote the intro to the book and has her own podcast and she runs something called Grief Tastic, where she gathers together all of these grief experts and what she says when someone says, I lost my mother. She says, tell me, what’s your mother’s name?

Alison: Yeah.

Natalie: You say my mother’s name was Susan. And she says, tell me about her. Like with a big smile on her face, she is clinging on every word that you’re going to tell her about your mom. And then she might share something about her experience losing her parents in a traumatic way, and then other wonderful things because she’s a therapist. But there is a way to approach a person that is so grounded and so human and so realistic without being like and again, to another chapter in the book, without using a lot of platitudes and a lot of cliches. God did not need another angel.

Alison: Oh, yeah.

Natalie: You know, God didn’t need another angel. I’m sorry. He didn’t. I don’t know God personally, really, but I, I’m pretty sure we needed that person here. Any of these things. Um, are those phrases and the platitudes and the cliches and all the like, oh, what are you going to do? Like, no, that’s not that’s not super helpful. So, um, I try and just be really intentional about the things that I say.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. And that’s, and that’s, uh, I know for me, I had heard so much of that sort of, uh, um, oh, well, or she’s better off,

Natalie: Better off. Yeah. That’s a good one now. Right ..or at peace. Not suffering. Which are, which are, which are, you know, those are valid things, right. You know, I had a 90 year old mother and, and she, you know, I hope she’s, I hope she was at peace. I hope that that’s true. We, we say these things because we don’t know what else to say. Right. Say that a number of times in the books, all of these things that we do and say is because we don’t have the tools in our toolbox, we’ve not been taught or we’ve not experienced these things ourselves. So we don’t really know what might be helpful. And so we pull out these platitudes and we pull out these faces and we pull out these things or food, let’s send food. Food’s going to make it better. Like it might not. Um, so we do these things because we don’t know what else to do. And that’s okay too. I, I think this comes across and I hope it does… We just have to give each other abundant grace and give each other a break and know, or at least assume that everyone is doing everything out of the goodness of their hearts and doing all that they can with the tools that they have, right?

Jean: No one’s intentionally saying something that hurt your feelings or you’re like, really —

Alison: Is that the best you can do? Right.

Natalie: Right. Right, right.

Jean: Yeah. I, um, I mean, we could spend so much time with you, Natalie and I, I want to, uh, there’s a few other things. So, um, you write a chapter, which I found very interesting. Curb your curiosity.

Natalie: Yes.

Jean: And I was sharing with Allison before we got on the Zoom call together, that I also think that relates to who you are in your friend’s pool of friends. Are you super close? Like, are you a best friend or are you someone that you never hear from and then all of a sudden they’re like, they’re, they’re coming with.

Natalie: So sure.

Jean: please share A little bit about that topic.

Natalie: Yeah. I mean, I think that we all have this natural curiosity when something like this happens, either a diagnosis or a sudden, sudden death, like what happened? How did this happen? And I really thought about this again. It’s taken me a few years to really sit with it and think, I really think it’s this natural reaction we have as humans to say, I need to know what happened so that I can ward it off and not have it happen to me or someone I love.   And so the question about when did the symptoms begin? How did you know? How long have you known? What did the doctor say? All of these things. And if the person who’s going through it or their closest, you know, caregivers and and companions get these questions and they get them repeatedly from so many people. Right. It starts to feel like the grand Inquisition, right? It really feels intrusive. Um, in some instances, particularly with a neurodegenerative disease like Parkinsons or others Alzheimers. Um, you may be keeping the details of that to yourself because that may provide information about how far along you are in your trajectory of the disease. And so then everyone’s going to be like assuming all these things about how much longer you have and all these crazy things that are not relevant. Not relevant at all. Um, I find this pretty frequently when unfortunately, when someone has taken their own life, the details of that are incredibly important. And that could be because we have so much information at our disposal in our hands, and that when someone famous has, um, unfortunately taken their own life, we are somehow entitled to the remote, the tiniest details of how they did that.

Natalie: Where and how and who else was in the house and who found them. These details are none of our business. Not at all. And that person is still gone from this planet by their own hand. Which is tragic. And the fact that we, as a society feel entitled to this information when it happens to a famous person, um, is really kind of unfortunate. Um, and it’s because we have so much access to information. But you know, again, if someone has received a difficult diagnosis of lung cancer, for example, whether or not they smoked is not how or where they were exposed to something or secondhand, none of those things matter. What can we do from today forward to help this person navigate this very difficult situation? And yes, I think, as you were saying, Jean, in terms of if someone is a closer person, you’re going to share more of these details. And then perhaps someone who’s not sort of inner circle has no right or access to these to these details. They need to if they need to know at all. This is what’s happening writ large. And then if they want to be helpful, which would be lovely, here are the ways that you could be helpful. But going back and sort of doing an autopsy, if you will, of how this came to be or how long you’ve known, and I don’t know, it’s bizarre. It’s like some people have this feeling like if they didn’t know from the very beginning, they’re not really your good friend or something. I don’t know unless you’ve gone through it yourself. You really have no right to judge in these situations.

Alison: Exactly. And I like it’s sort of like two pronged curiosity, right? Because on the one hand, what you were saying a minute ago, tell me about your mom.

Natalie: Mhm. Mhm.

Alison: What’s a great memory or one type of curiosity that brings one response? But that whole like that whole, um, like, did she have an itch over here? Yeah. Sometimes I have a thing. Right?

Natalie: Because sometimes I have that itch. Exactly.

Alison: And and that that kind of curiosity is right.

Natalie: It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to bring the person back. Right. The curiosity around tell me about your mom is, um, you know, tell me your favorite story about your mom from your childhood that is trying to draw us closer together, that’s trying to, to, to bring you comfort. And again, as I mentioned in the book, I believe that people who have lost someone, they want to say that person’s name. Yeah. You know, Megan, Megan talks about this all the time. She says her mother’s name every single day. Mhm. Because she doesn’t want the world to forget her mother, and she doesn’t want to stop hearing her mother’s name. And if you use her mother’s name, it is so comforting to her. And she still has voicemails that her mother left and those types of things, like that’s a different there’s a connection there. It’s like trying to, to recognize that grief never ends, that people will grieve their people that they loved for their entire lives, that grief may change and ebb and flow, but. And it goes through different. It morphs and changes, but they will always grieve their person, right? On the flip side, if someone’s going through a really harrowing time with a very difficult diagnosis, I, you know, my friend who was going through a glioblastoma, I didn’t need to know the ins and outs of it. I just picked her up in my minivan and took her for her treatments and brought the cookies and made her laugh. That’s it.

Alison: Yeah

Jean: I think that’s so beautiful that it’s sort of like you’re not expecting something.

Natalie: Right

Jean: Because even when you are going through something really hard or challenging, it’s just another burden that you have to respond now.

Natalie: That’s right.

Natalie: To that person, it’s like, okay, now I’m taking care of you too,

Natalie: Well that’s right.

Natalie: That’s all over the book, right? It’s the burdens that we place on the people who are going through the thing. And so that’s why I always I started off with like, let’s reframe this. Like, let’s put the person who’s going through this thing at the center. And so therefore, the chapter about how to actually offer help, when you say to someone who’s going through a tough time, what can I do to help? Give me a job? You must need something. What can I do? Oh, so now I, oh, I have to, I have to make you feel better by giving you a job that I don’t even know what that job could possibly be. So it’s a burden on me. I’m going through something and you’re like, standing here insisting that you must help me. Who is this about again?

Natalie: i promise you, if there was something I had for you to do. I would ask you to do it. If I felt comfortable asking you to do it right. So I try to help people just think differently about the ways that they’re potentially burdening the other person. So this curiosity is burdening the person, right, with the need to explain this to you and make you feel better, that you don’t have this disease, or that the person in your life is not going to get this disease. Um, the, the platitudes thing is, is a burden, right? You’re throwing these platitudes at someone who’s going through something really painful. Assuming that it’s going to give them comfort when in fact it may not, it may infuriate them. Right. So, so it’s just what can we do to minimize the burdens that we’re placing on people who are going through a tough time, but more importantly, show up meaningfully, carefully, lovingly, thoughtfully. If I text someone who’s going through a tough time, I always say, thinking about you today, don’t respond right, don’t respond. Don’t feel like you need to respond. I bought you a ticket to this thing. If you want to come, great. Let me know if you don’t want to come. Totally ignore this. Yeah you are. So what you’re doing is saying, I see you. I’m thinking of you, I love you. I hope that you’re okay. Here’s something I’m offering to you. But if you don’t want it, if you’re not here for me today. Just just ignore me. And I’m not going to take offense by the fact that that you haven’t responded to me, right. You know, when my husband’s mother father passed away a few weeks ago, people texted me and I got a lot of texts, and then someone texted me later and said, you never responded, so I’m worried. Like, I didn’t respond because we were burying my father in law, right? Like it’s not about you. Yeah. Send me another text and say, hey, hope everything went okay. I’m thinking about you. That’s all. Right. Right.

Alison: But the words you just said. I’m worried about you.

Natalie: Mhm.

Alison: Bug me. I can’t even describe it because for some reason, like I’m leading a life or I’m doing a thing, right. Like that sort of. Oh, I haven’t heard from you. I’m really worried.

Natalie: Worried –  i know.

Alison: Not. I’m a full adult, right?

Natalie: Right. Right.

Alison: Do you know, like  Im not a  fawn in the woods with a broken leg. You know. Right. If I need something, I’ll let you know.

Natalie:  That’s very akin to the pity conversation, right? It’s right there with the pity. Right. So you’re saying I can’t. I’m a grown adult. You’re thinking I can’t take care of my business like I really can. And I think we all want to be seen in our as our full selves, as people who can handle this. And if we can’t handle it, I promise you- I’m going to reach out to the closest people in my life and say, I’m really having a tough time now. Maybe I’m super evolved and there are people who don’t reach out in that way and say, I really need your help. And maybe there are people like that who and, and we all need to get over that. Everybody needs help sometimes. Right. I always say this when I’m talking to folks about when we have to teach kids that when we’re doing service out in the community, it’s not like us saving them and coming in like on a, you know, on a horse, like white knights. No, no, no. We are here to help because we have the advantage today of being able being in a position to help because someday, for sure and for certain, we’re going to be in need of help and other people are going to come and help us. And we have to accept that help graciously. And so that’s all it is. It’s a, it’s it’s we’re all on even footing here. We’re all on even footing.

Alison: That’s exactly right.

Jean: It’s so true.

Alison: It’s because that is, I think in this day and age right now, we’re in a time when that is not the thinking.

Natalie: Yes.

Alison: That we’re all on even footing. Right. Or let’s make a conscious effort to remind each other that we’re on even footing, you know? Right. And, um, also what you said, you say a couple of things about keeping things normal. Um, one of my friends was going through lung cancer and I would just go there and we would talk about I was there all the time, but we talk about like movies and we laugh like not everything was like, oh.

Natalie: Lung cancer,

Alison: Like there were times that we would really be laughing.

Natalie: of course.

Alison: You and I, through really tough times, we would, we would laugh, you know, and, and I love that you said that you picked up your friend in the minivan and just made her laugh.

Natalie: Make jokes. Right? Right. Or gossip. We’re driving up. We’re driving up for her to have chemotherapy and radiation on the same day or something bizarre, right? It’s a terrible, terrible disease. Glioblastoma. And we start gossiping about the kids or the other mothers in the school or whatever. Like give her something to think, to take her mind off of this terrible, terrible thing that she’s going through. People want to be invited to the mahjong game. They want to be invited to the book club, even if they can’t come. It’s nice to know that there’s still a full human being who has interests and reads books and wants to talk about politics, or not talk about politics or movies. Like you don’t lose who you are, your essential humanity, your personality. You don’t lose all of that when you get sick. And that’s, that’s the real bummer, right? And that we put that on people. They, they become their disease.

Alison: Yeah.

Natalie: And that’s really not fair. There are a whole person without the disease. And please God, they should someday be without the disease. In my husband’s case, he won’t. This is a disease that he will have for the rest of his life, right? But he’s a whole person with so many other aspects of his personality and things. He’s, he enjoys and like, let’s just the people that we responded to the most positively and who are our closest people are the people who were devastated by this news. And the next day just invited us to dinner. Yeah. And we kept on doing what we’re doing and talking about all the other things and the kids and the house and the life and whatever, because that’s what people who are going through really tough times, any tough time, a divorce, a loss, a disease, they want to still be a person. Yeah.

Alison: That’s right. Yeah.

Jean: That’s such sage advice. Something really great to remember. And, uh, I, I think, uh, one of the other great stories you mentioned, Natalie, is, um, you were sitting next to a woman at a banquet and she shared with you that, that her daughter had passed.

Natalie: Mhm. Yeah.

Jean: And then, you know, you were like, you know, what do you say?

Natalie: Mhm.

Jean: All you did was you just grabbed her arm and yeah, acknowledged – I see you.

Natalie: There’s nothing to say. Her her daughter was actually murdered. Her little girl was shot when a politician was was shot in a mass shooting incident. And she dropped that in my lap when we were in this meeting. And because I said, how are you here? Why are you here? That’s why she’s here. This is her reality. She lives it every single day of her life. She doesn’t need to hear any, not one word from me, because I am. I promise you, I’m not going to come up with anything better than anything anyone else has said to her over these many years since her daughter died. And so what was there for me to say? So I grabbed her arm and squeezed it, and she nodded at me, and I nodded at her. And we went on about our business here, and I just, you know, from one mother to another, right? Like, I just wanted her to know that I, I heard her and I saw her, and I wasn’t going to burden her with words of sort of hollow comfort, because there is truly —ya know when everyone says, there are no words for me to say, there really are no words.

Alison: Yeah.

Natalie: There aren’t. Yeah. When something really horrible happens, sometimes the most honest thing to say is I don’t know what to say because there are no words for this.

Alison: That’s right.

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: Which is which is. I think we feel so much of our day with words. Of course, now, as opposed to just, you know, like, you know, a similar thing happened to me at a class I was taking. And this woman, I just asked a very innocuous question, like, have you even been here for a while? Like something like that. And then she opened up about something and I was just like. And finally I said, well, thank you for sharing and being so vulnerable. Right. Can I, can I, can I give you a hug?

Natalie: Right. Right.

Alison: She said that felt so nice. And, you know, because I couldn’t say, oh, you know, like nothing. There’s nothing. There’s a great.

Jean: There’s a great book for you to read.

Natalie: Right, right, right, right for you.

Natalie: Or, you know, the other thing that happens a lot, and there’s a chapter on this is this comparison thing, right? So Jean, I’m not sure if you’ve had this, but you’ll be in a room and you’ll, you’ll mention that you lost your husband to a particular kind of cancer and someone else like, oh, my uncle had that. It was horrible. Like, okay, I’m pretty sure I know how horrible it was. And I obviously we get this quite a bit. You know, Parkinson’s touches many, many people. And it will typically be, you know, a parent or a grandparent who had this disease. Again, not a perfect comparison because my husband was young onset and he was, you know, almost 50 when he was diagnosed. So like, here we are with young children and we’re living our lives. You know, you’re I’m pretty sure your grandpa, you know, I don’t know that for a fact, but like, you know, to compare an older person and a younger person, to compare anyone, anyone with the, with the same disease. It is not it’s a, it doesn’t it? What it is trying to do again is create connection.

Natalie: I see you, I know what you’re going through. I’m so sorry to hear this. I’ve had a similar experience. You know someone you can say that differently. You can say I’ve had a similar experience. You know, this was what was helpful for us. If you’re curious about this or whatever, like there are ways to approach trying to make a comparison like that, that I think are more gentle and a little easier for someone to, to, to accept rather than like, oh, that’s a terrible disease. Oh my God, my grandfather, that was awful. Right? You know, and again, it’s just we talk because we’re trying to fill the space in the air and we’re trying so desperately to connect and to be seen ourselves. And so if we can all just try and shift our focus back to the person who’s sharing their news to us and think in that moment, like, I’m going to just try and gently subjugate my own need to be the center of attention in this conversation and put it, put the focus back on the person who’s suffering. Um, I think that they would appreciate that.

Alison: And how about even not? Who’s suffering? How about just putting the attention back on the person who’s talking?

Jean: Do you know?

Natalie: Sure.

Alison: So, you know, so what I loved about this, and I hadn’t really seen before, is that you are taking, um, the stance of talking to the people that are talking to the caregiver, right? As opposed to like, we read a lot of books about care, like, The caregiving stance.

Natalie: Yes.

Alison: You know. Yes. Um, do you because you’re actively caregiving now for ten, ten years, do you, do you have any, um, thoughts on any words of wisdom for people that are caregiving right now as opposed to like their their pals?

Natalie: Sure, sure. Well, you know, I like to say care partner, right. So we are, um, you know, we’re, we’re living our lives. And my husband worked for several years after his diagnosis and he, you know, he more recently retired. Um, we have a youngish child. Our youngest is just has just graduated high school. So we’re still, you know, we’re still very much in it and he’s still well and, and, um, you know, so, so that’s, you know, again, trying, trying to, to ward off the pity, like, you know, be with us in this acknowledge that we’re, we’re dealing with this, but, but, you know, understand that we’re still, um, you know, we’re still in this thing together. Um, but yeah, I think that caregiving, there’s so much written about this, um, uh, Bruce Willis wife, Emma Heming Willis, has written a beautiful book about caregiving. Um, and she touches a little bit on some of the themes in my book, which I appreciate, but it doesn’t focus on that in terms of like, here are things that you shouldn’t say to someone who’s going through this, or here are ways that you can be helpful versus, you know, sending a lot of food that no one’s going to eat.

Natalie: Um, I think, um, the bottom line here, we all know this is that caregivers need to take care of themselves. And it’s the, you know, very, very old expression here of putting your own oxygen mask on first. Like, you know, we know that people who are caregivers, um, for a very long time tend to sometimes die before the person they’re caring for. Um, and that’s the studies have shown that in terms of older people, I think because they’re so drained and they are so they have, they have done so much to hold up the world themselves that they are not taking care of themselves. So taking care of oneself, taking the breaks that you can, if you are able to, um, you know, finding other help for the things that you need help for such so that you can take a break. Um, those are, I think these things are critical, you know, more and more of us are going to be caregivers, right? Everyone is most likely going to be a caregiver at some point in their life and probably more than once, right? So caregiving for children while you’re caregiving for your aging parents, and then caregiving for your spouse or your sibling or on and on and on.

Natalie: So, um, and then eventually needing care yourself. And so hopefully caregivers are getting the message that if they don’t take care of themselves, um, everyone’s going to suffer here, they’re going to suffer. And then their person is not going to be cared for. And so by eating right, sleeping, taking breaks, exercising, getting fresh air, right, all the things. And that’s a luxury. I appreciate that there are people who can’t afford to pay someone else to come when they’re taking those breaks. But again, hopefully people have community around them and friends and family who can allow them to, you know, get the rest that they need, get the sunshine that they need, get the time and space just to just to feel human and just to feel supported. Um, but that’s, I think that’s the number one, two, and three thing for caregivers is to remember that they have, they have needs too, and that their health and wellness is, is primary because they’re, they’re, they’re the person that’s taking care of maybe one, maybe more than one person. So they have to, they have to take care of themselves first.

Jean: Yeah, yeah.

Natalie: Self love.

Jean: Yeah. I mean it’s not always easy as you mentioned.

Natalie: No it’s not.

Jean: And, uh, again, just to reiterate what you just said, it’s like hopefully you have a community.

Natalie: Sure.

Jean: And to, and to step out and, and ask for help. It’s so hard for so many of us to ask for help.

Natalie: Mhm.

Jean: Um, but it’s been my experience that people do want to help, so.

Alison:  yeah, I think they do.

Natalie: And they, and you should be specific about that help. I need tomorrow afternoon. I need a couple hours so I can go.

Jean: Get a massage

Natalie:  or go to the doctor or go to the doctor myself and get my mammogram right, or go get my hair cut so that I feel like a human being. Can you come over and just sit for a few hours in whatever situation it is? If it’s a person who’s has Alzheimer’s or a person who’s in treatment for cancer or something, like, there are times when you know someone just has to sit there and be there, right? And or respite care that people can arrange and other things. And, and also, you know, um, Emma Willis actually, I heard her speak recently and, you know, she, she received a lot of negative feedback when she got help for her husband, when she decided to move him into another space on their property so that he could be cared for properly while her young children are in her home. And people were very cruel about that and judgment, judgmental about it. And again, I, I hope this comes back to the themes of my book, which is just give people grace, right? Like people are doing the very best that they can under very, very challenging circumstances, and you hopefully don’t know what it feels like to walk in that person’s shoes. So try to be kind and gracious and not judge when someone is doing the thing that they need to do for themselves, for their person. They’re caring for, for their children, for other members of their family. Like, I just think we all should operate from a position of believing that everyone’s doing the best they can under tough circumstances and kindness.

Alison: What you said is so perfect

Jean: Yeah, so beautiful.

Alison: Be kind.

Natalie: And that comes back to my other work is like, this is all we’ve got, right? Like, be a little kinder than necessary. It doesn’t hurt. It’s free. Yeah. Right. Just be kind.

Alison: And it feels good.

Natalie: Yeah. Right. And assume and understand and assume that everyone you meet,  and it’s like an old expression. But it’s so true. Every person you meet is  dealing with something or burdened with something or is hurting or is grieving. I live in Manhattan. There are millions of people here. I can’t walk down the street without passing someone who is hurting, who is grieving, who has someone sick in their life, who’s lost their job. Right? We don’t know what’s going on for people, right? And so give people a little bit of grace, give them some space, be a little kinder than you need to be, right? It’s going to come back on you and it’s going to come back on you in kindness. If not from that person, then from someone else.

Alison: I believe that I believe that energy. That’s just so beautiful. Natalie, thank you for thank you for this wonderful, like reset. That’s, that’s what I feel it is just to kind of look and think, oh, yeah, I could change that. Just changing one thing, right?

Natalie: One little thing, I hope, I hope that’s what the book can do. Thank you so much.

Alison: We have two quick questions to ask you.

Natalie: Okay.

Alison: Our podcast is inside wink and I was wondering what you think inside wink means.

Natalie: So I think that when someone winks at me, it feels like a little secret connection between us. Because a wink is always between two people. I don’t really see anyone winking at a big crowd. Right? Like you wink between two people. And so it feels like this little moment of spark, of a connection of I see you, I like you, I love you, you’ve got this, we’ve got this together. We have, we know, we know what’s going on here. You and I, we’re together in this. And so I think an inside wink is an even more intimate connection between two people. So it’s really saying, like, I’m here for you. I’ve got you. This is we are connected in this. So that’s, that’s what it kind of feels like it means to me.

Alison: It’s perfect.

Jean: It’s beautiful.

Jean: It’s so in alignment with you and your message, so I love that. Okay. And our final question is, do you prefer cake, pie or ice cream?

Natalie: Very important question. Very important question. I shared with my husband.

Jean: What Caregiver should know.

Natalie: Exactly. I shared with my husband this question and of course he was like, well, of course ice cream. So in our family, he’s a very funny situation with ice cream. My husband loves ice cream. I love ice cream too. So if I had to choose for myself, I would probably also say ice cream. Although I do love a good piece of cake. But my husband and I were walking down the street once, coming home from dinner a few years ago, and a person was walking with an enormous ice cream cone and he he clocks it right. He sees it as we’re walking and he just because we’re just being quiet, the two of us walking down the street and he goes, ice cream, ice cream. Like apropos of nothing, he just like sort of needed to verbalize that the person had a beautiful ice cream cone. So I told my kids this story. And so now literally all the time, we’ll all just go ice cream. Or if we, you know, we pass one of the trucks on the street or pass the ice cream shop, somebody will just go ice cream. So and we got him a sweatshirt one year for Father’s Day that just said ice cream. So in honor of my husband and my own love of ice cream, I will say ice cream.

Alison: That’s great, I love that. And you know what’s so funny? We talk to all these people and they’re writing books like you, scholars, and sometimes they get hung up on the question. Like they’re like, they’re like, well.

Natalie: What kind of pie.

Alison: You know?

Natalie: Is it pie a la mode? Because if it’s pie a la mode, then it’s really two things, right?

Alison: That’s right.

Jean: It’s both.

Alison: People have snuck that in on us. So there you go.

Natalie:  Love that you asked that.

Natalie: Thank you so much.

Jean: Natalie, this has been such a treat. And, uh, many blessings to you, your husband, your family, and lots of joy.

Natalie: Thank you.

Jean:  I know your book is going to really, uh, benefit so many people.

Natalie: And I really appreciate.

Alison: I hope our paths cross again?

Natalie: Yes, I hope so, I hope so. This has been such a joy. Thank you both so much.

Alison: Have a beautiful day.

Natalie: Thank you.

Natalie: You too.

Alison: Bye.

Natalie: Bye bye.

Alison: Oh!  How nice is she, right. And she seems funny and just really, uh, you know, the whole thing about, just be kind. Don’t we hear that a lot?

Jean: It is. It is so true. And it’s. I think it’s sometimes a little challenging to be kind when you’ve got a lot on your plate. And, and it goes both ways. The, the person that is actually going through a situation, the care partner, as she puts it, which I love, and, um, you know, her, as you just said, the whole message is be kind. We all are going through something. Um, that was a great read. I loved it.

Alison: And you don’t have to be. I think the main thing that I got from this, you don’t have to be a savior or it’s not about you.

Jean: It’s not about you.

Alison: Do you know? And so we need to be reminded of that because we’re living in a society where everything is geared to like, what are you doing? You know, everything is about you. And it’s just nice to hear it’s not about you. Right. You could just listen.

Jean: Yeah. How did I sound on the podcast?

Alison: You were excellent.

Jean: Thank you. Allison.

Alison: It’s about you, Jean.

Alison: But she is wonderful. Natalie. Thank you so, so much.

Jean: That was a real treat.

Alison: Yeah. And we hope that, um, everyone out there is treating everyone with kindness and love and, like, giving each other some grace, right?

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: That’s what I’m going to do today.

Jean: Finally.

Alison: Yeah. I’ve learned something after all this time. Okay. Bye.

Alison: Hi, Jean.

Jean: Hi, there.

Alison: How you doing?

Jean: I’m great. Would you just do me a favor?

Alison: Sure. Yeah.

Jean: Just say the line. Just say the line.

Alison: Just say it..Leave yourself alone. Leave yourself alone.

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: Jean is so teasing me because, as you guys know, I act. And today we are interviewing Chris Fields for his book, Leave Yourself Alone, Zen and the Art of acting.

Jean: Good job.

Alison: And I have to say, I’ve known Chris, actually, Chris’s father and my father worked at the Daily News together.

Jean: I did not know that.

Alison: They worked at the Daily News together. And my father had passed away, and Chris’s father, and we found this out just on the lark when I was in a play of his. I said, what does your father do? He goes,  he was a reporter. I’m like my dad was a reporter. I’m like, where did he work? The New York Daily News? My dad worked, and it turns out that Sy Fields was my parents’ friend.

Jean: what a small world.

Alison:  Right, and when I called my mom and said, hey, you’re not going to believe who is directing my play,  chris Fields, the son of – oh my God. Sy I loved… So they all knew each other. Isn’t that funny?

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: And here we are in LA. But anyway,

Jean: I love that.

Alison: Yeah, I love that that there’s just connections. I’ve been in a bunch of plays at the Echo Theater Company. It’s a really innovative-  they do new playwrights, new plays. Uh, world premieres, California premieres, LA premieres, he’s the artistic director, of it. And I have to say he’s an excellent director because he does leave you alone. Yeah. And he questions you like, what are you what’s going on for you here? What’s happening? What are you thinking about this? Like he’s not going to, like, stand over there, which is a relief. And so when he said, I wrote this book, I thought I’d love to read it, and now we’re going to interview him on it. But you’re not an actor. What did you make of the book?

Jean: Oh, I thought his book was brilliant.

Jean: I love how he tried, you know, acting with spirituality. I mean, it’s such a beautiful pocket book of wisdom for just living life in the zone. In the zone, meaning in the flow. Not overly thinking.

Alison: Yep.

Jean: You know, and not overly living in the mind that that kind of puts puts us all in a box. It’s just like, let yourself be. And I love the title of his book. I thought his book was so great.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. And he’s a funny, interesting guy. So I’ve never known him in this way. So it’s going to be cool to interview him, right? Okay, here we go.

Jean: Okay.

Alison: Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi, Alison. Hi, Jean.

Alison: How are you doing?

Chris: I’m doing okay. Every day is a good day, as we like to say.

Alison: That’s excellent. We really enjoyed this book.

Chris: I’m so glad.

Alison: Leave Yourself Alone – Zen and the Art of acting. I don’t I don’t think this book’s about acting, though. I think it’s about how to live your life in a in a way where you don’t want to bang your head against a wall.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a good way. I, you know, I just after a while, I think the road just narrows down and you realize it’s all about… I mean, I don’t want to be pretentious, but it’s all spiritual.

Alison: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chris: You know.

Alison: Acting is a spiritual path.

Chris: Yeah. For sure. I mean, the more you do it, the more you realize, oh, you know, it’s…. I mean, look, there’s I don’t want to come off sounding zen and I don’t want to come off sounding pretentious or pretentious, but, you know, everybody wrestles with their ego, right? So actors are wrestling with their egos all the time, you know, and when you realize when you it can be a very profound thing or it can be a simple thing when you realize it’s not about you. You know, then you’re freed up to really act well, and you’re also freed up to be of service. I mean, you know, I talk about it in the book. The model for me is always it started with music. I mean, and I talk about there’s an example in the book, it’s like you don’t sit there and go, gee, I need to make Brahms more interesting. Or if I if, if I do this, Beethoven’s going to be better. I mean, but, you know, there’s this thing in the theater and in acting where it’s like, it’s, it’s about me making it better or improving it or-no, not really. Not no, not really. Not at all. It’s really not about that, you know. So you know, what are you left with?

Alison: So so it’s about it’s about leaving it alone.

Chris: Well, you leave yourself alone, you know. Look, you know, Toscanini, these great musicians in the early part of the century, they called them literalists. And these, they kind of went against the romantic tradition where everybody was embellishing stuff and really kind of making, you know, the romantic approach. And it’s a very similar thing. It’s just about, you know, it’s about getting out of the way. You know, the other night in class, I said somebody was working. I forget the playwright, but I said, oh no, it was actually Joan Didion. They were working on a piece by Joan Didion, and I said, let Joan Didion do the heavy lifting. You don’t have to do the heavy lifting. You know, Shakespeare’s going to do the lifting. You don’t have to do the lifting. You know, in music, what you do is you learn the piece and it’s technical and you learn the notes, and you know that at a certain time, as you get the notes into your body, you’re going to respond to them. And that’s what you call making music. But it’s not really an intellectual thing. You know, an image might come to you or a memory might come to you, or they surely do, but you’re going to respond to the music, you know? And again, I think I talk about it in the book. And if I, if I didn’t, my teacher was great. He would do this thing where I would work, work, work, work, work on the piece. And then he was this little Russian guy. He was so cute. And then he would walk across, he would walk across the room and he would take the music and he would turn it away. And then he’d say, okay, now make music.

Alison: Wow.

Chris: And it’s the same thing with acting. It’s the same thing with anything, really. You know, just get out of the way.

Jean: Yeah, I, I think that advice is so profound and so simple, and it has an elegance to it. And, um, so Chris, what got you interested in Zen and what does Zen mean to you?

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: So those two questions.

Chris: Well, first of all, just let me respond to what you said. Yes, yes, yes, I couldn’t, but it’s also really hard, it is really hard.

Jean: You know, and that’s the thing with, uh, spiritual mastery, it sounds like, oh, that’s going to be.  It’s going to be all light and tulips and lollipops. And it is… It’s why it’s a mastery. It’s a practice. Practice.

Alison: Yes.

Jean: Some days it just is not there at all. Months it’s not there. And you just stay in the practice.

Chris: Yeah. There’s a couple of famous Zen stories. One is where guys polishing a tile and the guy says, what are you doing? He said, my practice, he’s polishing a tile. He’s just polishing a tile. You know, there’s tons of Zen stories.  I was doing a workshop of a play at the O’Neill conference called An Undivided Heart.

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: And it was and again, I talk about it in the book, but, um, it was about toxicity, both literal and physical. And Alison, you know it well, because I directed you in it.

Alison: I know I loved it.

Chris: It was great. And that hook that was the this is, this is grace. But do you see Grace?

Alison: Yes. Hello, Grace, The cat.

Jean: Is she a Maine coon?

Chris: No, she’s a Norwegian Forest cat, She’s try to steal the show, but there was a.. Do you remember he goes to the priest. There’s a priest who’s looking for a bad priest and is in a spiritual crisis. And. And the priest’s brother is a Buddhist. And the brother sends him to his teacher and he goes to the teacher and she’s giving a talk and she talks about it’s a very famous cone called Nansen’s cat.

Alison: Right.

Chris: Knife in one hand, the monks were arguing and the teacher said, knife in one hand, cat in the other. Save the cat. Save the cat. As a response to the arguing, monks. Eventually what happens is he talks to the teacher and the teacher says, no, you don’t have it. You don’t have it, you don’t have it. And at the end of the play, he goes to the hospital, the teacher’s dying, and he says, I’ve figured out your riddle. And she goes, what are you talking about? What’s the thing about the cat in the knife? And she says, what, what, what what’s the… And he says, take me. And that used to make me sob. I still get emotional, you know. Take me. And then she says to him at the end of the play, she says, you know, you’re going to pray and I’m going to I’m going to meditate. We’re going to keep doing this. And she has a great line. She says, we could shine off each other forever.

Alison: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: Which is just the most beautiful line. So that hooked me and I didn’t, I just and then once I was driving up the PCH in the rain after Christmas, I was going up to Big Sur. I was being very California spiritual. And, um, and I was listening and I was, NPR was on, it was great. And they had Alan Watts. Oh. So I’m like listening to it going, I got to do this. And then I did another play and I was directing a play down at South Coast Rep. And, um, there was a. This guy has an occasion to go see his Zen teacher and his Zen teacher tells a very, another famous story which really hooked me, which is the story of the fisherman and the boat. And the fisherman is out and out of the mists in the morning, you know, humble fisherman, little boat…. Out of the mist comes another boat rams into him. It’s a mess. And he gets so pissed off. And for the rest of the day, he’s just harboring that anger at this other guy. And he’s going in at the end of the day. And what do you think he sees? He sees that boat and he heads to the boat, and he’s going to hit the guy with his oar. And he gets to the boat and there’s nobody in the boat and in the in the in the play.

Chris: Eventually he says, uh, says there’s never even if there’s somebody in the boat, there’s nobody in the boat. There’s never there’s nobody in the boat. And I realized I’ve been carrying an oar around for a very long time, you know, and whether I was looking to hit you or hit myself, I had an oar in my hand. And what literally happened was, um, I, I went online…. I saw Zen Center of Los Angeles and I didn’t know what that was. So I went down on a Sunday morning and there was a teacher there. This wonderful woman. And whatever she had, I wanted. And I, and I started meditating. I’ve been meditating, you know, I guess it’s going to be 20 years, you know, at this incident. But that’s what happened. And I went down. And then what was really amazing was I stayed for the morning. I never tell people this. And there was a talk and there was this woman there and she said, you know, I went to see this play last night at South Coast Rep and it had all this, and, and I said to her that I, I directed that… So and I’ve been coming back every, you know, it’s like, it’s like a puzzle piece, it’s like I was waiting all my life to, to do.

Alison: Now, for someone that’s not familiar with Zen or you, how is there not a person in the boat? How can somebody walk around in today’s world and not feel there is somebody in the boat, because I feel like everybody’s walking around with an oar.

Chris: Well, you could also say you could say there’s nobody in the boat. And you can say, of course there’s somebody in the boat, which is a very Zen thing to say, you know. Um, but the point being, and again, you know, I talk about it in the book, I use the example of Harvey Weinstein.  you know, people, you know, my original example was Trump. And then I figured I’m going to take it. But but Donald Trump trumps. He is who he is, right? That’s what he does. That’s who he is. And that’s what he does. You know, doesn’t mean you have to take it. You know what I mean? Doesn’t mean you can’t resist or or politic or anything. But as soon as you realize, you know, every,  people are who they are and they’re going to do what they do.

Alison: Mhm. Right.

Chris: You know, I don’t know if that explains it, but, you know, in a way you could say, of course there’s somebody in the boat.

Alison: And then and then what though? And then what though?

Chris: Well, you know, you could say in Zen we say, and I am not a teacher, by the way.

Alison: Right.

Chris: I am not a sensei. So, you know, I’m a whole there’s a whole thing. There’s a I’m an instructor of meditation right now, but I’m not a sensei. I don’t think I’m close. And then there’s the Roshi who’s like the head teacher. Right. You know, but, um, what was I going to say? Oh, you know, we say that they’re, you know, they’re the three pure precepts and then they’re ten grave precepts. And the ten grave precepts are a lot like the Ten Commandments. Do not be angry. Do not kill, do not lie, do not criticize others. Uh, do not be deluded. Which means don’t be intoxicated or take intoxicants. Don’t be stingy, you know, uh, and, uh, and if you get serious about it, then you do a ceremony. It’s called jukai. And that’s like being confirmed. I was raised Catholic, so I always have the, you know, so you get confirmed and you’re kind of in, you know, in Zen, but when you study those precepts, you know, uh, you can, you know, you can take them literally, which is don’t kill, you know, but we all kill. I mean, you’re not, you can’t have lunch without killing, right? You know, you can’t we all kill all the time, you know, um, but there’s literal, you know, and then there’s, uh, and then there’s relational, um, you know, and that’s where we kind of live. You kind of live in the real world. I mean, there’s a, I don’t want to get, I mean, there’s, there’s a big thing in Zen, which is, you know, you can be all Zen and they call it Zen stink, which is, you know, you, you can live this, you can live and you can be… It’s like the, it’s like the stereotype, right? I can live in what’s called my samadhi and I can be all Zen. And that’s, I mean, the great teachers and everybody will just call you out on it and say, that’s nonsense, because you have to drive on the 405.

Alison: Exactly.

Chris: You know, you have to go to Trader Joe’s. You know, you have to, you know, you have to live in a world where, You know, Ken Paxton is running against James Talarico in Texas. You know, you have to live in that. So it’s all relational. So it says don’t kill. Look, if somebody was to go after my child to try to kill me, I, I, I, I fight back.

Alison: Mhm. Right.

Chris: You know, and do you know, um, the time of your life by William Saroyan?

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: Do you know the preface to the time of your life? I’m not going to grab it off the refrigerator and read it to you, but it’s just he says, whatever you do, really do it. And it’s just like Zen, you know, look, I, I say it in the book, you know, my teacher, my heart teacher, we call him the heart teacher was Roshi Goku. She’s retired up in Seattle right now with her husband, you know, and I went in to see her and I was a mess. And I said, you know, Roshi, just tell me what to do. Just just tell me what to do. And she looked at me and she said the next thing.

Alison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris: I don’t know if I don’t, I don’t think I really answered your question, but maybe I did.

Alison: I think you did. I just, I just I just want to make sure that people that are not an actor or aren’t into Zen realize that this book is for them.

Chris: Oh, great. Yeah.

Alison: You know,

Jean: There’s so much wisdom and life affirming practices. And just one thing, Chris, in there, just like you open up the page and it’s, uh, I’m like, oh my God…. That’s so great.

Chris: Oh, I’m so glad you feel that way. I mean, my gosh.

Jean: My book is Allison’s, you know, it’s earmarked constantly. I got you a new one, by the way, because this is yours,  i got you a new one.

Alison: Thank you.

Chris: Wow. Thank you so much.

Alison:   so I like here I have some of your quotes. I have to be willing to not know.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s that, that’s the first, that’s the first pure Zen precept. And that’s also just just just in terms of life.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: Do you know I do you know the author, um, George Saunders, he wrote Lincoln in the Bardo and he was being interviewed, maybe it was, uh, Terry Gross, Fresh Air… Maybe it was fresh air, but, you know, he, he had a great he had a great he said this quote, this Longfellow quote that I’m going to find for you. And it blew my mind.

Alison: About Not knowing.

Chris: Sorry. Okay. Um, no. If we could read the secret history of our enemies. We should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Alison: Oh, right.

Chris: Isn’t that great?

Jean: Beautiful.

Chris: So not knowing is. You know, you might have. You know, you might have cut me off in traffic. Okay. You know, you might. Somebody might be sick at home, right?

Jean: Sure.

Chris: You know, it’s really that simple, you know?

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: Somebody’s having a bad day, and they give you the stink eye.

Alison: And it’s sort of like that thing in our family. We say everyone’s got a bag of rocks they’re carrying, you know?

Chris: Yeah.

Alison: Everyone’s got a bag of rocks. And, you know, they carry it over the back. You don’t see it. And that’s just the truth. Because sometimes, um, I feel like now we’re living in a world where everything looks shiny and perfect, you know, on Instagram or Facebook and everything. And I don’t think it is at all. You have to be able to just, you know, people are people and everyone’s got their bag of rocks, you know.

Chris: Well, Rosie once said to me, she said, you know, you make a mess every day and then you clean it up.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: She said, that’s what we do. We’re humans. We make a mess and then we clean it up. I mean, really, the book, when I say leave yourself alone…. Look, that was the most profound thing for me when I studied repetition with Fred Carmen, who I talk about in the book, and he was constantly saying, leave yourself alone. And that is that is so, so profound. It’s so profound.

Jean: Well, it reminds me of the chapter that you write on validation, that needing that validation from outside is, is such a sneaky energy and thought process. And it’s like when you recognize it like, wait a second, what’s going I’m, I’m actually seeking approval outside of myself. You know, and you talk about that in a very vulnerable way, Chris,  and I love that.

Chris: Well, I’m laughing. I’m laughing because I, you know, it’s like I had this moment, I don’t know, you know, I’m, I’m a little older now, but, you know, when I thought, really, have I been waiting my whole life for my parents to say to, to, to love me really, you know, so much therapy, so much meditation. So much you don’t have. And you’re like, you got to be kidding. I’m still waiting around for my mother to pat me, to tell me I’m cute and to push my hair off of my forehead. You know, my mother died a long time ago. I moved out way long ago. But yeah, well, that’s the Zen thing. Is the hungry ghost.

Alison: Yes, I love that.

Chris: The hungry ghost. Well, listen, you know, to to kind of pitch the Zen Center of Los Angeles, there was Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and his first Dharma heir was a guy named Bernie Glassman. And Bernie Glassman’s whole thing was his mission was to try to take care of everybody’s hungry ghosts. It was a ceremony. But wait, I was going to say something. It wasn’t about the Hungry Ghost. It wasn’t about, gosh darn it, but oh, I know what it is. I’m about to direct this play. Uh. Effing strangers. Let’s say it’s called Effing strangers. And you know what came to me the other day is this. You know, when you first fall in love or when you first It’s like it’s perfect, isn’t it? It’s just perfect. And it’s the best. And it’s replicating the love, i think, that perfect love with the parent and it’s ephemeral because reality is, is, you know, your parents are people too. There’s ambiguity and they’re not, you know, they’re not the perfect beings that you as a child, you think they are, of course, we all nod our heads, but the play is about that. The play is about people who are trying to maintain and replicate that perfect love.

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: You know, that perfect love. And it’s it’s it’s impossible.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: It’s impossible. You know, and part of maintaining a relationship, I think, is accepting that, of course, you can’t have that. It’s not going to be that way.

Alison: You know – you saying that it brings up an emotion for me and it’s sadness.

Chris: Yeah.

Alison: Because ultimately it’s not it’s not the truth. It’s all just subject to what we’re thinking it should look like. You know, there is a should involved,

Chris: Well, you carry that with you, but then it’s all the stuff that happens in therapy, all the stuff that happens in meditation, or I talk about it with acting. It doesn’t even have to be anything. You just come upon it in your life where you realize people love in the way that they love, and they do the best that they can, or slash the only way that they can, and you accept it, or you try to accept it. And when you do that, okay, when I did that or when I try to do that, I let go of so much, you know, if that makes sense. Yeah. And, and I think there’s absolutely, you know, uh, you have to grieve and you have to mourn.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: You know, but at the same time, isn’t it? You know, it’s kind of it’s kind of wonderful when you realize I’m just human, you know?

Alison: What’s the difference between a Zen model and avoidance or like, uh, like a spiritual bypass type of thing. What’s the difference between the two?

Chris: Well, you know, I think what you’re talking about is, you know, and I, and I was kidding about it before. You know, you can be, you can have what’s called the stink of Zen, you know, in a kind of stereotype is, you know, the three pure precepts are,  do no harm, bear witness or deep, deep listening and then right action. Yeah. And if you think about it, that’s a universal.  You know, do no harm really, for me, is now I’m not really answering your question, but I’ll get there, but it’s like you’re not reactive.

Chris: You know, my teacher said to me, Roshi Goku said,  “try not to react- respond, and wisdom is in the response.”

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: And don’t respond until you actually sit with it, which is bearing witness and listening to it. And it makes perfect sense. I mean, there was a teacher down there who said a great thing. Uh, this guy, uh, Sensei Nagy, he was great. He was a real character. But he said one day he said, look, you get presented with a hook every day… Don’t take it.

Alison: Wow.

Chris: Words to live by.

Alison: Wow.

Jean: Mhm.

Chris: There’s a hook every day. Every day there’s a hook. But you know, what you’re talking about is, you know, the stereotype of, you know, when you meditate, there’s a thing called samadhi. You know, I’m kind of meditating now. And the stereotype is that’s where Buddhists live. But as I said, you know, and, and the real teachers will tell you, you gotta, you know, I got to pick my kids up from school. You know, I gotta, I gotta clean the, I gotta clean the toilet.

Alison: Right.

Chris: So that’s, that’s part of it too. That’s very much Buddhism.

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: It’s really Buddhism. I mean, I was taught that, you get taught that in the sense it’s like, you know.

Alison: This is something else you say being in the moment with the partner, really listening, really responding, and emphasize it over and over again. Leave yourself alone. Put your attention on the partner.

Chris: Right.

Alison: Which is,  you know, I’m married, I have kids, I have friends, and sometimes my attention is totally just on me.

Chris: Of course.

Alison: and to try to focus that and listening to that, it’s tricky…Because I think I’m right sometimes.

Chris: Of course you are, Of course you are right. Of course you are. Well, it’s, you know, you can consider yourself to be of service, you know, that’s another way of saying it.

Alison: Right.

Chris: You know, I’m to be –  how can I be of service? So in terms of acting, in terms of life. How can I be of service to this relationship? And I mean, it’s it’s an aspiration. I mean, it’s impossible. You know, there’s a part of me, I’m a I’m a small little tattooed man running through the forest with an axe. You know what I mean? It’s it’s it’s like, catch me on a certain day and I’m out there, you know, in a loincloth running through the forest at night with a knife in my teeth, you know?

Alison: That’s funny. And, um, when before. And, you know, you direct a lot like what you’re talking about. You really don’t direct in a way of like, move there. Do this. Pick up the thing. You’re like, okay, go ahead, go ahead. And you let and then you ask some questions.

Chris: Yeah.

Alison: You ask some questions of the actor. And before you said, let the playwright do the heavy lifting. Right? Or let the let the composer do the heavy lifting. So in life, if I want to take this and apply this to my life, who then is doing the heavy lifting. God? The moment? Like, who am I relying on to leave myself alone? Does that make sense? Do you understand my question?

Chris: Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if it’s you know, I wouldn’t I don’t know if it’s a formula. You know, when you when you thought that when you said that I thought about, you know, in the morning, you know, I, I used to do this a lot more, but I think what am I going to apply to my life today?

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: Am I going to apply, you know, you know, and I see, well, there’s an opportunity for me to be a schmuck and there’s an opportunity for me that’s for me to be, um, this or to that, or am I just going to, or am I going to try to be humble? Or am I going to try to be of service or am I going to try to listen? You know, there’s a, there’s a really great book, uh, it’s called How to Train an Elephant to Dance. And it’s by a woman. She’s a roshi, and she came from the Zen Center. She’s an amazing woman. Her name is Chosen Bays, Jan Chozen Bays, and she’s up in. I think she might be in Seattle. Chozen and that book is 52 weekly exercises on mindfulness. Wow, you guys should read it. You guys would love it. And I’ve heard her talk and she’s also she was a, she’s a, she’s a pediatrician and she’s worked with abused children for 40 years.

Alison: Wow.

Chris: And she’s also a Zen master and she’s really special. But in this book, she has a whole chapter on listening. And she talks about absorptive listening and listening like a sponge, you know, because I realize most of the time I’m waiting for you to finish so that I can impress you.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: You know what I mean? Or, or you say something and it’s really, it’s really provocative and stimulating, and I can’t wait to respond to that. And in the meantime, I haven’t listened to the four other sentences you’ve said after that.

Alison: So. Exactly.

Chris: So how do you apply it? I don’t know, I think you try not to, you know, after look, after I meditate in the morning, I pray, I still pray, I don’t know who I’m praying to or what I’m praying to. I don’t think it matters. I really don’t.

Alison: Right

Chris: But I pray I, I say, let me be kind today. Let me be soft. Let me be compassionate. I talk about compassion in the book.

Jean: Yes.

Alison: Which I think, well, first what you said, um, what you said when I was saying, who does the heavy lifting? Maybe it’s that set intention that you start the day with. Let that intention do the heavy lifting. Like keep going back to that.

Chris: It’s also trying to, you know, trying to I don’t know, it’s hard, man. It’s hard, you know? Yeah, it’s it’s hard. I mean, what do you try? I mean, what comes to me is you try to meet the world on the world’s terms, not my terms.

Alison: Oh that’s good. I like that.

Chris: You know, but you know, I’m carrying myself around, you know, and I didn’t talk, i don’t think I talk about it in the book, but in Buddhism we talk about there’s the little self ego and the big self.

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: And when we talk about is we all know what the big self is. The big self is my compassionate self, the self that wants to do the right thing, the self that wants to be a good partner in a relationship, you know, the self that you know is humble, blah, blah, blah. And then there’s the small self. You know, as I said, the little tattooed man in the forest, you know, or you know, you know, what I always think about is the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs and Daffy Duck are going to Pismo Beach and they, and they come up by accident to the treasure. And Daffy Duck sees all the treasure and he keeps going, it’s mine, mine, mine! I’m independently wealthy. I’m socially secure. And he keeps, he keeps hitting Bugs on the head, you know? Mel Blanc said that his idea for Daffy Duck was that when he was a little boy, he got a birthday cake and they cut a piece and they put the piece on the plate for him, and he thought his piece was the cake and that that little slice was for everybody else. And that was his idea for Daffy Duck. And that’s, you know, am I going to be Daffy Duck today or am I going to try not to, you know?

Alison: Right. Yeah. Am I going to share the cake?

Jean: Right.

Chris: Am I going to share the cake or try not to be, you know. Look, it’s hard because what do you apply to the world? What do I slap on to the world?

Alison: Right.

Chris: You know, you’re talking about, you know, when you kind of or at least for me, when I got a notion of how literally self-centered I am. And I’m not talking about being arrogant, i’m talking about self-centered.

Alison: Correct.

Chris: Self referential, you know, I’m hungry. I’m tired what I want. Yeah. This is, you know.

Alison: Right.

Jean: But I think that’s so liberating. Also, Chris, that you accept that and own that that that’s where we start.

Chris: Yeah.

Jean: Going, okay, I, you know, I, it’s all about my hair color today.

Chris: Yeah. Well, it’s sort of  what does Hamlet say? Hamlet has a great line,  (filled in by AI Search on Hamlet’s quote- not Chris’ actual words ) “I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious… What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?”   You know, And then there’s a Shanley play. Where, where the girl goes, you’re lucky you don’t fall down. You’re lucky you don’t stutter.

Chris: You know I don’t. I don’t have the answer. You know, I try not to do too much, you know, I try not to make a mess today, I guess.

Alison: Do you feel peaceful, Chris?

Chris: Yes and no.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: You know, I’m I’ve slid over into some workaholism in the last, you know, half a dozen years, so, you know, I have to watch out that I’m feeling good when it’s, you know, because I’m typing an email at 12:30 at night. Yeah. As opposed to like, why don’t you just get in bed and read?

Alison: Yeah. Right.

Jean: And and so now you have this great theater, the Echo Theater in Echo Park, California.

Alison: It’s amazing theater.

Jean: I have had the privilege of seeing some wonderful plays there with Alison in it. And I’ve seen you direct, Chris. And it’s, it’s a real gem.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: Oh, thanks.

Alison: It’s always very interesting. It is always something going on. You cannot say that the Echo Theater is dull at all.

Jean: At all.

Alison: You will leave there and be talking the whole way home in the car. It’s it’s it’s very exciting. And this, um, this is, I think for someone that is not an actor, you can take anything that this book is about and change the word acting for life.

Jean: Yep.

Alison: And it’s, it’s like, it’s like perfect, I think. Um, I was, um, I’m just amazed at all the things that you have –  like the first name, the first thing is the thing or activity itself.   The second immediately follows me saying the thoughts in my head is an identification of the individual elements. It makes it an object of reflection that I get. This is so good, Chris. How long did it take you to write this?

Chris: Oh, about 3 or 4 years.

Alison: Really?

Chris: Yeah, I would, I would, uh, you know, you know, my dad was a writer, right? You know, and you told Jean the story. I don’t want to tell the story, but you probably told Jean our story a little bit. But so writing was kind of a bit of a minefield for me.

Alison: Yeah, sure.

Chris: You know, because both my parents were writers. So I would meditate and then I would, um, and then I would try to write 200 words a day.

Alison: Oh, nice.

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: That’s great.

Jean: Show up.

Chris: And yeah, just 200 words a day.

Alison:  like the Artists Way, just to set aside, you know, that’s really great. It’s really great.

Alison: Yeah. if you had something to tell someone that knows nothing about Zen or nothing about this, a listener that’s just interested but knows nothing, what would that be?

Chris: Well, if they’re interested about Zen. Zen meditation is actually very simple, you know, and I talk about it in the book. It’s really simple.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: Um, if they’re interested in meditating, I would say you could, you should find, uh, a Zen center and go and sit with people. Or there’s a book by John Dyson books called Zen Meditation in Plain English. Uh, you know, I’m getting a little in the weeds here, or, you know, there’s a book by Joko Beck. Charlotte Joko Beck, who also came out of my lineage at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. And she has a book called, um, um, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, Charlotte Joko Beck, it’s called Everyday Zen every day is in and that’s a great book. And I knew I was really hooked. I read that book and she said in the book, my Zen practice is fighting with my daughter.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: Mhm. Yeah.

Chris: And her thing was, everything is your practise– everything is, you know, we say and saying everything is your Zen practice everything. And it’s what you talk about with the book. Everything is a spiritual opportunity. Everything is, you know, I talk about that with, look, going to Trader Joe’s not to be precious, i go to Trader Joe’s a lot, but, you know.

Alison: But you’re not alone.

Chris: Well, my kids, my kids got me the Trader Joe’s Cookbook, which is a very good book, but there’s a plug. But, um, but going to Trader Joe’s, the parking lot is a spiritual opportunity. You know, that parking lot is absolutely mayhem. So it’s like I said to myself, okay, I’m just going to be a twig. Me and my car, we’re just a twig. And this is I’m just going to float around the parking lot. I’m just going to float around. I’m just going to float around the parking lot. Everything is, you know, again, I don’t mean, but everything really is, you know, everything is practice. Everything is a spiritual opportunity. I mean, look, the great thing about Zen is we say, whatever you do, do it fully.

Alison: Right? Yeah.

Chris: When I ask Rosie to be my teacher, I said, and that was like a big deal. I was really nervous. And she was really formidable. She’s a really formidable woman. She’s so. She’s amazing. She’s extraordinary and adorable, but really tough  and funny. But you know, I said, what do I do? I said, you know, what do I do? And she said, the dishes.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: And I was about to, like, go, ah. And I looked at her and she was not kidding. But the point being is you really do the dishes the next time you do the dishes. See where your mind goes.

Jean: Yeah. Right. Right.

Chris: You’re like doing the dishes, you know, and you’re putting up people in the post office. You got your post office. You put those pictures up in the post office, you know? You know what I mean? It’s like I’m doing the dishes and I’m yelling at my father. I’m doing the dishes, you know, and I’m thinking, why didn’t I, you know, when I was 23 years old, why didn’t I, you know, you know, as opposed to really doing the dishes.

Jean: And feeling the soap and feeling the…

Chris: So we say, you know, when she said, do the next thing what you really do, you really do it. Yeah. And that’s so hard. And that’s the thing about acting or playing music or driving on the 405 really driving. Do you ever drive somewhere and you’re like, I don’t remember how I got here.

Alison: Totally. Chris. Yeah.

Chris: You’re like, you’re like, that’s scary.

Jean: Yes.

Chris: I just drove to I just drove to, you know, the Pacific Palisades. And I remember one red light. I mean.

Jean: It is so true.

Chris: It’s really true. It’s like, what, where am I?

Alison: Very scary.

Chris: Where am I? About not being. If you’re really in the moment, you’re really. And that’s for life.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: You know. Really? You know, she, you know, Jan Chozen Bays, she has a book. She’s also an authority on eating. She has a book on eating. And she talks about the intimacy of eating and how we chew. And also, Thích Nhất Hạnh talks about that in his book On Anger. He talks about how we how we stack bytes and how we eat angry and how we’re, you know, it’s all of that. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, so how do you practice it? It’s the, everything is an opportunity. I mean, again, I keep saying I don’t want to be precious, but if you, if you really shine that light on it and it’s an opportunity to get the to get the fuck out of the way.

Alison: Yeah!

Chris: Get out of the way! No! Get out of the way!

Alison: I love that. The Trader Joe’s twig. I love that. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.  I try to apply that waiting online? I mean, waiting online is a spiritual exercise too.

Jean: Yeah, sure…Not going on your phone.

Chris: Think about that. Yeah.

Chris: Think about that. Think about think about how you wait. You ever wait online and you go, this person doesn’t know how to wait online. You ever do that? You’re like standing on the line and you want to go listen. Listen, could you just could you just I mean, you know, what do you what? Get up there, what are you what are you doing? You know, and then. And then you become aware of yourself. You know, Bernie Glassman, again, was one of the teachers. He said, you know what’s a really good spiritual practice? He said, you get up in the morning, go look in the mirror and laugh at yourself. Just laugh at yourself, right? Just have a good laugh at yourself. You know.

Alison: It’s like, A Course In Miracles –  don’t forget to laugh. You know.

Chris: Well, my first shrink, the great Harry Gershman, the great, wonderful, wise Harry Gershman. I said to him, I had that conversation with Harry when I was a young man. The same one I had with Rosie, like 30 years later. Like, what do I do? And I said, give me, you know, what advice do you have? Your grandfather, he was a big mucky muck. He did this, that, the other thing– I said, What do I do? No, I said, what, what advice do you have? And he said, never lose your sense of humor.

Alison: Yeah.

Chris: And I looked at him, I went, are you kidding me?

Alison: Yeah. How much have I paid you?

Chris: Yeah, right. For that.

Jean: Is That’s all you got?

Chris: Exactly. Yeah.

Alison: Chris, thank you so much.

Chris: Oh, well. Thank you. Thank you. I just I feel like, you know, what’s going to happen is I’m going to think, oh, oh, I got to call them back 7:00 tonight. I’m going to I’m going to want to call you back and go, listen, you asked me this question and I didn’t answer it. But thank you so much. You made my day. I mean, it just.

Alison: This was really fun.

Jean: You made my ours as well.

Chris: Oh, thanks.

Jean: Great to talk with you in person.

Chris: Well, sure.

Alison: Yeah, yeah. And we have two final questions for you. Mhm. Are you ready? What do you think the name of our podcast is inside wink. What do you think that means?

Chris: I think it means we’re all in this together.

Alison: Mhm.

Chris: You know, it’s the inside wink where it’s. We’re all in this together. We know. Yeah, we know. We’re all in this together.

Alison: That’s perfect. Chris.

Jean: Beautiful.

Alison: That’s perfect.

Chris: Oh, good.

Alison: And you get the last best question.

Jean: Uh, okay, so something that was keeping Allison and I up all night because we were so wondering, do you prefer cake, pie or ice cream?

Chris: All of them.

Jean: Okay.

Chris: I like cake with ice cream. Look, there are five main food groups. I’m going to leave you with this. This is my wisdom. You ready? Pizza, donuts, French fries, potato chips and ice cream. But no, seriously, ice cream and cake. Yeah. What do you prefer? What do you like, Jean?

Jean: I’m going to say cake.

Chris: Yeah, cake.

Alison: I like the I have said this before, the turducken. I like all of it.

Chris: I just think ice cream with cake is just so…, you know.

Alison: That’s true. Me too. It’s delicious.

Chris: We could go on the Orson Wells Diet together and, you know.

Alison: Get out of your way. Leave yourself alone.

Chris: There you go. There you go.

Alison: Thank you so much, Chris.

Jean: Yeah. This has been great.

Chris: We’ll see you guys. Thank you so much.

Alison: Bye bye.

Alison: That was so fun.

Jean: That was beautiful.

Alison: He’s very smart. Like he’ll be like –  have you read Fragshonshive, by?

Jean: And you’re nodding. You’re like – yes!

Jean: And I’m going-  who???

Alison: I knew some of them, but I love the fact that you can read this book no matter where you’re from, it’s very short. Yeah. And, um, it’s, it’s a nice, it’s a nice reminder.

Jean: That was well said. Yes. It, it really, um, yeah, I can’t say it any better. It’s a nice reminder.

Alison: And that, and I think to, to keep in mind that that this is an opportunity. Like, I know sometimes when someone irritates me or bothers me, I kind of want to jump on it because I’m good in a fight. I can, you know, keep my own. But really it’s an opportunity just to listen. Yeah, it’s an opportunity to listen.

Jean: Yeah. And respond thoughtfully.

Alison: Right. And I think that right now is, is something that we could, we could really use. Do you know, like just listening.

Jean: Because we’re all breaking free of a lot of conditions that we think about, beliefs that we, we hold so dear and, and judgments and, and this really gives us some space to go, Okay, hold on a second. Let’s let’s be with this.

Alison: And I have to say, in our friendship, I feel like you really listen. You really take it in and listen. Which I just find so beautiful. Jean, I really appreciate that you really listen from your heart. And I can pretty much say anything, and you don’t judge. So thank you for that. Thank you so much.

Jean: I feel the same about you, Alison

Alison:  Well..I love you. All right. Have a great day. Have a great day and pick the book up because it’s really good. Yeah, it’s really good.

Jean: Leave yourself alone.

Alison: That’s right. Are you telling me….

Jean:  I just want to fix your hair?

Alison: No. Leave yourself alone. Goodbye.

Alison: Hi, Jean.

Jean: Hi there.

Alison: How are you doing?

Jean: I’m good. You look so cute today.

Alison: Thank you.

Jean: I love that top on you.

Alison: Thank you very, very much.

Jean: Well.

Alison: I’m looking at a picture of Alex right here.

Alison: Look at him. He’s so. Hello.

Jean: I love that photo of him and… Speaking of Alex. Alex is.

Alison: Excellent Segway.

Jean: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Alex is the one that introduced me to the man that we are interviewing today, Ken Craft.

Alison: Ken is, um, really an amazing I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times.

Jean: Right.

Alison: With you, an incredible man who started, Hope the Mission.

Jean: Right. And, uh, he, he has grown this company phenomenally. And his mission is to get people off the streets of Los Angeles.

Alison: Right. And his dedication and they they have quite a lot of locations now, I think. Right. And I’m excited to really talk with them because unhoused, the unhoused homeless people on the streets, it’s a real, it’s a real topic here in LA.

Jean: Yes.

Jean: And not not just here –  across the nation.

Alison: Across the nation. And I really, it’s so important to speak to someone who really is in the front lines of it. Right. And, and doing something to actually help. I feel like he, um, he, he, he’s not one of those people that just talks a good game.

Jean: Right? No, he, he is,  where the rubber meets the road.

Alison: Exactly. Yeah. I’m looking forward to it so much.

Jean: Same.

Alison: He’s great. Okay, so here’s Ken.

Ken : Good afternoon. How are you?

Jean: Hi, Ken.

Ken : How’s it going?

Jean: We’re just laughing here. We’re so happy to see you. And, uh, thanks for taking time out of your busy day.

Ken : Oh, no. Absolutely. It’s great to be with you.

Jean: You are a man on a mission.

Ken : Trying.

Alison:  I just would like to have you start by telling our listeners a little bit about what you do do.

Ken : So, you know, first of all, it’s a delight and pleasure to be with you. And, uh, you know, I have had the privilege of starting, uh, Hope the Mission – 17 years ago. And we started very humbly. There was a little church in Sun Valley, CA. I kept trying to figure out where can I start from? And, and so I asked this pastor, he was a Peruvian pastor and, and he really is community minded. I said, do you have any space for me? And, and he goes, if you have a heart to reach the community, then yes, come join me. And so he gave me a little office that he cleaned up. And then he said, you know, as a matter of fact, you can use our kitchen to cook your food and, and you can use our fellowship hall to serve people. And, and he says, and, and this, uh, you know, upstairs balcony, you can store your food here. And, and he just really opened up his heart and his facility to us. And so it was, uh, in August, uh, back in 2009 that we served our very first meal and we had 23 people show up and now we do 9000 meals every day, uh, without fail.

Ken : Um, we have 33 homeless shelters. We have 3000 people that live with us, uh, every day. And then we have another 11 projects that are currently in the pipeline and will be opening up those this year. Um, matter of fact, we’ll have, we have four projects that are opening in the next three months. One of them is a site that’s just for those suffering with severe mental health issues that are homeless on the streets. Another one is for transitional age youth, those who’ve timed out of foster care. And then we have a new tiny home facility in Van Nuys and another one in Sun Valley. So that’s just in the next three months. Uh, but over the next 12 months, we have these 11 projects. So, uh, we’ve been pretty aggressive in addressing the homeless crisis. And I think it’s important that we do that and that we don’t slow down or try to, um, normalize what should never be normal, uh, is that as human beings living on streets. And so that’s kind of been our, our, our impetus and our push, uh, to do all that we can to move the needle when it comes to homelessness.

Alison: That is, that’s so amazing that you had 23 people and now you do 9000 meals. Like, are you tired?

Ken : Well, fortunately, we have a really good team, right? You know, you’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with. Somebody once said, you can’t fly with the Eagles if you run with the turkeys. And so I try to fly with the Eagles and people that are like minded and have equal passion and a real sense of purpose. Um, but yeah, we have an amazing team. I mean, our chefs, as you can imagine, just the food procurement, the food preparation, and then the food delivery. We have to deliver these three hot meals every day to all 33 locations. And so just the logistics alone on food services is significant. And then you throw on top of that that every site has to have security. Every site has to have case management. Every site has to have housing, navigation, mental health services, substance use treatment and job training and job placement. And so when you put all of that together, um, it’s a very robust system because we know it’s not enough just to get somebody off the streets and put a roof over their head. We need a comprehensive program to address what are the underlying issues that led someone to being homeless? And what are those, and once we can stabilize people, then we can begin to address those issues to help them move out of homelessness and to be self-sustainable and to be self-reliant instead of dependent upon other systems. Now, of course, there are those that maybe because of a mental health break or a physical disability, that they just can’t do that. But that’s why there is a social safety net, and that’s why there’s Social Security with disability to try to help people like that. And so, um, I’ve learned a long time ago, there is no one size fits all. Everybody has a really unique story. And so we work with them to help address what are the specific issues that they need in order to rise above the station of poverty and homelessness and to actually being self-sufficient again.

Jean: Uh, you know, You’re reminding me of how much Alex was so inspired by what you did when he read about you many years ago in the newspaper and, and the work that you’re doing, Ken is, is so inspiring. So if someone was to, um, see, when someone sees a homeless person on the street, what would you do you think it’s give them the money –  um, like, what do you tell people to do?

Ken : You know, for the most part, I don’t necessarily recommend people just giving money. Um, but, you know, I also would never want to be emphatic about that because I think if there’s times that if you’re kind of listening to that inner voice within you, maybe there’s a, there’s a moment that could be the right thing to do. Um, but what I really try to do is encourage people to have, um, you know, kind of survival packs that they would keep in their car just with, you know, baggies that might have, you know, something simple to eat a bottled water, uh, and some basic nutrition that you can hand out to somebody, um, if they need that. And also it would have a card in it that would have, you know, say like, Hope the Missions phone number that they could call or they could call our access center so they could, you know, the key is they need to get in touch with somebody that can help them because, navigating the homeless labyrinth of services can be somewhat challenging in Los Angeles because LA is so big. And so you almost need a guide, you need someone to point you in the right direction and to connect you with the right people. And, you know, I was, uh, not long ago, I was driving and I needed to get gas and I pulled into a gas station on Nordhoff near the 405 freeway.

Ken : And as I was just fueling up, I looked to my right and there was I saw something in the bushes, and it was a gentleman who was there, and he wasn’t moving. And I thought, oh my gosh, is he is he even alive? And I went over and I said, excuse me, excuse me. And I, and I wrestled him a little bit. And, uh, you know, he said, yeah. And I said, are you okay? And he says, he goes, I just I’m. Can you give me some money? And I was it was just one of those moments. I knew that money wasn’t what he needed. He needed real help. And I don’t recommend this, but I said, listen, I want you to get in my car, let me take you somewhere. And I mean, he was just super filthy dirty. And I’m like, okay, my car is going to definitely smell after this, you know? And I took his his backpack, I put it in my trunk and I set him in my car and I drove him to our access center. And when I got him there, we got out of the car and we went up to, you know, the kind of the check in point. And I said, are you thirsty? And so I got him a bottle of water.

Ken : He downed it. I got him another bottle of water. He downed it and I said, are you hungry? And he goes, yeah. And so we got him a meal and he ate the meal. And then he ate a second meal. And I was like, okay, this guy was really in bad shape. And so we then gave him a shower and we gave him clean clothes. And I was chatting with him after and, you know, I introduced him to our case managers, our case managers call me. I had to leave a couple hours later. And, uh, he had, he had a severe mental health issue. He had wandered from the East Coast getting rides and buses and made his way all the way here. He didn’t even know where he was. And so we were able to then connect him back with his family and, uh, and send him back home. Um, you know, but that was just one of those moments where I had just felt in my heart that, you know, this wasn’t a money issue. This was a service issue. Uh, and so I as, as a leader, I try to be sensitive to that. Um, but, you know, I think, um, we have so much resources that we need to connect people to. Uh, and so whenever we can do that, I think that’s definitely to be preferred.

Alison: Are all your facilities full?

Ken : Yeah. They are. And that’s important to note because there seems to be this false narrative, at least as far as I’m concerned, that, oh, you know what? Yeah. The city, you know, the in the county, we, they’ve built all these homeless shelters, but, you know, nobody’s even in them. Uh, nothing could be further from the truth. Uh, as a matter of fact, there was someone at a couple people forward me an Instagram of this guy that over the weekend, he went outside of one of our shelters and he was trying to and he was recording and he had a lot of followers and he goes, I’m here and I’m going to expose fraud and abuse. And he goes, you know, hope the mission receives money from the state. And and I want you to look I’m looking through the fence right now. I don’t see any people in there? I don’t see any kids. And, uh. And then he tried to just barge in and our security stopped him. But he’s recording all of this, and he’s got all these people saying, oh, yeah, way to go. Way to discover, you know, fraud. And I responded to him, you know, online, you know, and I said, listen, my name is Ken Craft.

Ken : I said, I’m the founder and CEO. Here is my cell phone. And anyone in the in the chat could read it. And I said, call me. I will personally give you a tour of the site and you can video it. And I’ll explain to you where every dollar goes. And the reason you didn’t see kids on on the campus is because they’re in school when you were there and parents are working. And I said, not to mention our security will not let you just walk on because we have so many women on site that are fleeing domestic violence. And if we don’t know who you are, no, you’re not walking on site. And you know, and so, but you have these people that are trying to create these narratives that aren’t based on reality. And for us, we are at capacity at all 33 shelters every night, and the only way we would have an empty bed or two is if somebody moved out and we’re in the process of getting somebody in. But no, we do not have any empty beds.

Alison: Wow. So then when you see someone that’s unhoused, where where would they go?

Ken : Well, fortunately there is what’s known as there’s a connective system, the coordinated entry system, CES, where just we are connected with all the other service providers, just as they’re connected with us. And the central hub of that is Lhasa, which is the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority. So anybody, if they came to us and we didn’t have a bed, we’re going to contact Lhasa and say, who does have a bed within this coordinated entry system and then get them to go there. So, you know, because we might be the ones that have an empty bed because we’re in transition. Somebody has just found permanent housing or somebody left or someone was reunited with their family. And so, you know, on any given day, it’s very fluid and dynamic, uh, when a bed becomes available. But if it’s not with us and we’ll work to make sure that we get it with somebody else.

Jean: Wow. Mhm. That’s fantastic.

Ken : Yeah.

Jean: So can you have a partner?

Ken : Yes.

Jean: Right. Yeah. Talk. Just share with our listeners how you met Rowan and what you guys do that’s so out of the norm in your in your fundraising strategy.

Ken : Well, there’s, you know, when it comes to nonprofits, there’s funding and fundraising and they’re very different, right? You know, funding could be contracts with the city or the state or the county. Uh, funding, uh, you know, comes in many different forms, but fundraising is actually trying to raise those dollars. Uh, you know, we do have thrift stores, which I’m thankful for. We have social enterprise, and we’re reopening the original Pantry cafe in downtown LA, which is going to be a social enterprise where 100% of the profits are going to go back into homeless services. But early on, Rohan and I realized, you know, we needed to raise money. And so for a number of years, we just ran the LA marathon and asked people to sponsor us. Then Covid came and they shut down the marathon. So we said, well, let’s do something else. Let’s do something ourselves. So we said, you know, let’s run from our furthest shelter north, which was in Lancaster. And so we said, let’s run from Lancaster to LA, you know, and down to the valley. And so we did that, and we visited all of our shelters and we raised some money. It was good. And we said, well, what if we go further? And so we developed this campaign called, uh, you know, it was all about going from your lowest place in life, Death Valley. Okay. Running from Death Valley back to a place called Hope. All right.

Ken : And so we did this campaign. We ran from Death Valley all the way back to LA. And, you know, I think we raised about 300,000 on that. That was great. So let’s go a little further. So we said, you know, let’s go to Vegas. That’s even even further. So we went to Vegas. We jumped off the stratosphere. And it catches you at the bottom 108 stories. And then we run into the casino. We pushed in all these chips, and we looked at the camera and said, we are all in for housing. That was our all in campaign. And then we went out to the strip. We had a fire escort, a fire truck escort in front, a police escort behind us. We ran all the way down the strip, all the way down to the to the far south end, and they peeled off. Then we ran to Primm and then we ran across the dry lake bed and the Mojave Preserve all the way back to Los Angeles. And so that one, you know, we raised about $350,000. Oh, this is great. And we said, okay, let’s, uh, you know, we know that homelessness isn’t just an LA problem. It’s a national problem. So let’s do something that’s national and neither one of us are cyclists. Okay? I don’t even own. I didn’t even own a bicycle. But we said, let’s ride our bicycles from Santa Monica to Washington, D.C. and, uh, so we did.

Ken : And we rode, uh, you know, to Palm Springs and then to Phoenix and Albuquerque, Amarillo and then Saint Louis, and then all the way back to D.C.. Well, while we did it, we also did a documentary. And the documentary is titled- Breaking the Cycle. And so it’s been in film festivals. It’s actually won seven film festivals for best documentary, and it’s going to be released in the next, I think, 2 to 3 weeks. Uh, so people can watch it. And it’s about two idiots, you know, who decide to really try to change the world. And, you know, let’s ride bikes across America. And I didn’t even wear clips because I didn’t have time to train to figure out how to use the clip. I just wore tennis shoes and rode all the way across America over the Southern Rockies, the Ozarks, the Appalachians, and came to DC. And, you know, we met with a lot of politicians and we’re doing advocacy work. But ultimately, you know, I politically, I probably lean a little right of center. Definitely. Roman leans left of center. And so you have these two guys even arguing politics across America, going through red states and blue states and cities. And but ultimately, when we got back to DC, we’re sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. We look at each other and we say, you know what? Somethings aren’t political. They’re moral. Yeah. And it’s immoral to leave people on the streets.

Ken : And so really, this documentary is about a call to unity for us to come together and to find common ground and to work for the common good of humanity. And so, and I think that’s really been one of the strengths of Hope The Mission – is that Hope the Mission we we are a 501 C three faith based organization, but we’re an inclusive, faith based organization. So we have people on our board of directors of Jewish faith, Christian faith, Muslim faith, no faith. But the important thing is, is that we all respect each other, and we’re working together in harmony, in unison, to address a humanitarian crisis that is too big for any one organization to address. And so we need to come together. And to me, I love it. I love the fact that we can work together, set aside any differences, and, and come together, grab hands across the aisle and build bridges, not walls and barriers. And so yeah, so we did that. And then after we did the bike ride, uh, we did another one. This one was called the Long Walk Home- where we walked from Seattle to Los Angeles. Uh, and that one was interesting because, um, we’re going through, I would, I would walk from, uh, 2 a.m. until 2 p.m. and Rowan would walk from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. and we just kept doing this nonstop. We had a support vehicle that would kind of, you know, be in a stationary place and I’d have to walk there.

Ken : So I’m walking pitch black forest at night. I had my bear spray my bear horn and it was some little sketchy at times. It really was. And, but what really impacted me was just outside of Portland. I ended up developing a stress fracture in one of the bones in my foot, and my foot started swelling and I still didn’t know what it was. I thought it would just go away. I made it to Bakersfield and out just outside of Bakersfield. The bone snapped and, uh. And all of a sudden I heard it. It was just like, okay, something seriously happened here. Um, but like an idiot, uh, I figured, no, I gotta finish this thing. And so had to walk up and over the Tehachapi Mountains and then through Lancaster, Palmdale and I walked all the way from Bakersfield to Los Angeles on a with a broken bone in my foot. When I finally went to the doctor and they did the X-rays and it was like just totally broken in two. And he said, what were you thinking? And I said, well, maybe I wasn’t. I just knew. I mean, we were raising money and I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to let Rowan beat me, you know, because he would never let me hear the end of it. And so I’m going to finish this thing.

Ken : And so yeah, so we’ve done a few crazy things, but part of it is, is, you know, we, we do silly things sometimes to inspire people to want to support the work that we do. And, you know, I don’t want to just focus on someone in the midst of their calamity and try to seize that moment to raise dollars. I’d rather tell the story and encourage people to be part of the solution. And speaking of, you know, part of the solution, which is really beautiful, what Alex and Jean did, if I may tell that story, because it’s such a beautiful story. Um, you know, I was, uh, this was a number of years ago. I was in my office in Pacoima and, uh, little tiny office, and, uh, I get a phone call and it’s from an unlisted number, but I picked it up and he says, hello, is this Ken Craft? And I said, yes. And he says, This is Alex Trebek. And, and in my immediately in my mind, I’m thinking, Alex, is this like the Alex Trebek or is this Alex Trebek from Pacoima? You know, it’s like, uh, and, uh, and I said, yeah, this is he goes, I hear you’re opening up a lot of different housing facilities. I’d like to come look at one, if that’s okay with you. And I’m like, I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to meet Alex? Right? And I’m like, yeah, we’re open.

Ken : How about in North Hollywood? Here’s the address. I can meet you there tomorrow at 9:30. And he goes, I’ll see you then. And so there was almost like we had this bet going on in the office. Do you think it’s really Alex? I don’t know, it’s like, you know, maybe it sounded like him, I couldn’t tell. And so I’m there at 9 a.m., you know, I’m just waiting, okay? You know, and then, you know, at about 930, here comes this Ram truck. Okay. I’m like, oh, okay. And, uh, and at first I wasn’t quite sure when I saw him from a distance, you know, because he didn’t look like he did on Jeopardy. Like I said, you know, a lot of a lot of work goes into that. He doesn’t look like just normal, you know, normal alex and with a ball cap on and he was um, and so, you know, he, he got out of the truck and, and I greeted him and, uh, I gave him a tour of that particular site, which was under construction. And I was amazed because, I mean, Alex knew a lot about construction. I mean, he’s just, he’s noticing how things are being done. And, and he was, you know, very engaging. And, uh, and I, and I thought, well, you know, would you like to see another site? And it was one right down the street. It was in the access center we were building.

Ken : And he says, yeah. So we went there and I gave him a tour there. And about halfway through he goes, you know, Ken, he goes, uh, I probably shouldn’t have come today. I’m not feeling well. Uh, you know, I ended up taking nighttime cold medicine, and my wife Jean said I should just reschedule, but I really wanted to see it. Uh, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go, but I’ll get back with you. And so I honestly, I hear that oftentimes people say that, you know, and I didn’t have his number, so I couldn’t call him back. It was unlisted number. And so one week goes by, two weeks go by, three weeks go by nothing. I’m like, oh, maybe it just wasn’t his thing. You know, after three weeks, I get a phone call from an from an unlisted number, you know, oh, Ken, this is Alex. And I said, hey. And, uh, he goes, and the first thing he asked me, he goes, how much money you make? And he was very direct and to the point. And I said, you know, at that time I was a little over 100,000. And I said, would it help you if I sent you our audited financials? He goes, yes, I sent him our audited financials. And he calls me back. He goes, Ken, I’d like to see you tomorrow morning. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to come to my house.

Ken : I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to go to Alex Trebek’s house, right? I mean, come on. And so I, I drive there and the gate opens and I pull in and, uh, you know, and I walk towards the house and he’s standing outside his one door and he invites me into his library. Okay. And there on the desk of his library is all of our audited financials. They were like highlighted and notated. And he had me, you know, go ahead and have a seat. And so I sit down and, uh, and he says, I just want you to know that, uh, my wife and I have been looking for an organization that we can get behind that we can support and believe in. And so, uh, and that was kind of this, uh, he handed me one check, and then he spoke at the, at the opening of another facility. And then, you know, Jean came and I, I took them to another site and showed them a new facility we’re opening. And they ended up giving a, an even much larger gift. Okay. And I looked at it and I said, would you guys be open if I used this gift as a down payment on the next facility? And they said,  we’d be very open to that. And so now I’m trying to find this facility, you know, and I and I found that it was Skateland.

Ken : Okay, an iconic roller rink in, um, in Northridge, uh, in the San Fernando Valley. And so I was negotiating on that. And the pot growers, they were trying to get it. And I’m like, no, we should get this. This is better for our use. And, uh, and finally, we, we won the negotiations. And, um, and I was so excited and we’re going to close the deal. And I thought, you know what? And this was like on a Friday. And then the weekend came. I said, I’m going to call Alex on Monday. And I remember it was that weekend. I was just driving. I was listening to KNX and they announced that Alex passed away. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, I was going to call him on Monday. And I remember calling Jean and, you know, certainly extending my condolences. And I said, you know, , I, I was getting ready to call Alex and I was so happy, you know, we’re going to this facility. And I said, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful at all, but would you be open to us naming this site – it has  107 beds? Um, you know, after Alex and calling it the Trebek Center. And she said in her gracious fashion, she said, you know, let me make some phone calls, uh, and I’ll get back to you. So she called the kids and said, how would you all feel? And they said, yes.

Jean: yeah

Ken : That was, uh, a very, very special moment. And even to this day, I can’t walk through that site without remembering and without telling that story, which I tell all the time. Um, because it just shows the difference we can make. You know, I mean, Alex, he didn’t have to call me. He didn’t know me. I think it was one of his camera. Actually, one of his camera operators had said, you know, maybe they must have had a conversation. And one of the camera operators, you know, said, well, I know this guy. You know, you may want to give him a call. And so Alex, just out of the blue, he called. And, uh, and do you know how many lives have been radically transformed and changed because of that gift of love, uh, that Alex and Jean gave. And so every day, people are no longer living on the streets. They’re no longer eating out of trash cans. They’re no longer, uh, numbing themselves with addiction to try to stay, uh, to address the inhumane conditions of homelessness. So it really, uh, I love telling the story. I tell it frequently. And, uh, you know, Alex and, and Jean will always have this incredibly special place in my heart.

Jean: We feel. Well, I’m speaking for Alex now. We feel so in alignment with you, Ken. And, you know, lastly, and then I want to move on to some other stuff. What Alex saw in you was that you were a man that was actually doing something. You just weren’t a lot of lip service. I mean, he actually saw saw as something tangible, beneficial for people on the streets. So, um, thank you so much. We we love you and your staff and. Yeah.

Alison: So it’s, it’s a beautiful story. Ken.

Jean: Yeah. It’s a great and you tell it so great.

Alison: And it just highlights that, you know, there are really generous people in the world and you may not have the same amount of income as the Trebeks, but you can still make a difference.

Jean: Absolutely.

Alison: You know.

Ken : Everybody can do something. You know, I always say it’s it’s not equal gifts. It’s equal sacrifice,  You know, for one person to give $10, you know, may be the same level of sacrifice for somebody else that gives $1,000, And, you know, I think it sometimes people feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of the problem and they feel like, how can I, you know, they feel like I’m putting a drop of water in the ocean. What difference does it make? You know, one of the best stories I’ve heard on that was a gentleman who’s on a sandy beach. And he’s, he’s walking. And he it was after a big storm and there was all these, you know, starfish that were on the sea. And as he was walking, he noticed a little boy was picking up and throwing these starfish in the sea. And he and he stopped and he said to the little boy, son, stop for just one moment. Look to your left. There’s just like hundreds of thousands of starfish. He goes, look to your right, hundreds of thousands of starfish. He looked at the little boy. He goes, son, do you really think you’re going to make a difference? And the little boy, without hesitation reached down, picked up another starfish. He said, I will for this one. And he throws it back into the ocean. And I think sometimes, you know, we may not be able to change the whole world, but we can change the whole world for one person.

Ken : Uh, when we can be that point of intervention to help them to, you know, and the stories that that I see and hear every day of life transformation, that’s what inspires me. Um, it wasn’t too long ago I had cracked a tooth and I was like, oh my gosh, okay, I got to get this fixed. I called my friend who was my dentist and he goes, oh, hey Ken, sorry, I’m not doing dentistry anymore. He says, uh, here’s a number. Call this guy. He’s a, he’s a dentist, a friend, another friend of his. So I called him up and the lady behind the, you know, the receptionist said, yeah, you know, we can see you today. Feel free to come on in. So I drove there. When I got there, I opened the door and I walk in and this lady, this receptionist, she immediately looks at me and she says, do you work with the homeless? And it’s like, have you ever, like, not wanted to talk about what you do because I just wanted Novocain. I just need-  this hurts. And, uh, and I said, uh, I said, yeah, I do. And she said, and she looks at me and she says, do you remember me? And I’m like, I said, can you help me out? She says, yeah, a few years ago, me and my husband came to the shelter with our two daughters.

Ken : We had nowhere to go. You took us in and housed us. And she said, you know, she says, I’ve always prayed that one day I would have the chance to see you again and say thank you. And, and it was just so. And she says, I want you to know Both of my daughters are now in college. My my husband has a really good job and I work here. She says, can I get a picture with you? And I said, are you kidding me? I want a picture with you. I said, there’s so many times we we’re fortunate enough to help others, but we don’t get to see the chapters of what really happens with that compassion intervention. And so it was just really one of those special moments. But that story can be replayed time and time again when we care enough to act and to intervene, and to show compassion and love and to be sensitive enough to that because we’re all busy, we’re all in a hurry. And, and just to take those moments to say, is there something I could do right now to not think of myself, but to think about somebody else and to help them in their time of need?

Alison: You have got me crying. Oh, This whole. And it’s ridiculous. Um, is do you think first of all, I wanted to tell the listeners, I’m sorry, a little bit about when you were on the street.

Jean: Oh, that is a great story.

Jean: That was amazing to me. It was you and Rowan, right?

Ken : Yeah, yeah.

Jean: Please  tell us that story.

Ken : Okay. Because that honestly, it marked me. It imprinted me. And this was, you know, uh, back in 2020 when 2021. And we thought, you know what? We need to do something to really put a spotlight on homelessness in Los Angeles. And we said, okay, well, what if, you know, we document the process, but we’re going to be homeless for one week on the streets of Los Angeles. Each of us would have $5 to last a whole week. And so I’m like, okay. And I remembered it was, I believe it was December 13th on a and, uh, I was watching my weather app on my phone only to discover that, you know, and I knew, but a big Pacific storm was coming in at 5 p.m., so I asked the person who was going to dictate the terms of living on the streets for one week, because just leave it to myself, i’m going to cheat because it’s like I want comfort over inconvenience. And and so I said, well, can you at least put us out at 3:00 before the rain starts at five so we can make provisions for the night? And he said, no. He said, some people don’t get to choose when they become homeless. And I said, all right. So 5:00, sure enough, it starts raining. Then it’s pouring and it’s 7 p.m. it’s pouring as you can get in the van now. So Rowan and I, with backpacks and just the clothes on our back, we get in the van and they take us to an undisclosed location and they say, you can get out now.

Ken : And so for the first time, I’m thinking I need to survive the night in this weather. I said, okay, come on, let’s go. We got to make it to a freeway overpass. So we’re running through the rain trying to get to a freeway overpass. I’m soaked. That night, the temperature got down to 38 degrees. And I remember sitting underneath the freeway. I could see the rain, you know, just the silhouette with the from the street lights, the rain pouring down. And I was doing jumping jacks every 15 minutes because I was so cold just to keep the blood circulating. And the ground was so hard. And, uh, and I had the option to tap out and it was about four. It was after four in the morning that I turned to Rowan and I said, and I hadn’t slept a wink. And there’s two things in life I hate. I hate being cold and I hate not getting my sleep. Okay. And I said, um, I said, Rowan, I said, I said, I don’t think I can do it. I think I’m going to tap out. And he looks at me and he goes, yeah, I bet our guests wish they could tap out too. And I’m like, I really don’t like you right now. And and I said, okay, but then we got to go. I can’t sit here anymore. I am so miserable. And so we took off running down the street and there was a donut shop and we opened the door. It was the only thing open. We went inside and they had the heater on and oh my gosh, I started to thaw out.

Ken : It’s like, oh, heat had never felt so good. I took my $5 and I went to the counter. I said, can I have a cup of coffee, please? I spent half of my $5 on a cup of coffee. Best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. Then I got a refill, drank two cups of coffee. Um, now I need to use the bathroom. But they didn’t have a bathroom, so I had to run across the street to Taco Bell, use their bathroom. But now my phone’s going to die. I’m like, okay, we got to find a place to charge our phones. I said, okay, look, there’s a Starbucks on Sepulveda Boulevard. Let’s run there. So we run to the Starbucks on Sepulveda, on Sepulveda Boulevard. We go in there only to find out they’ve taken all the plugs out. They don’t want the homeless in there charging their phones. But while we were there, there was one homeless gentleman sitting in the corner. I said, let’s go talk to this guy. And so we went and I said, hey, how are you doing, man? He goes, good. And I said, where did you sleep last night? And he told me and I told him where we slept. And I said, look, man, I’m newly homeless. What advice would you give me? He goes, oh, you need to go to Hope the Mission. I said, really? I said, do you think they’d help me? He goes, they help everybody. I said, they help everybody.

Ken : Why are you here? And he said, well, I was part of the program. And when I was there, they helped me get a job. I saved my money, I moved out, I was living on my own, but the pandemic hit. I lost my job. And, and, and because of that, I became homeless again. He goes, I’m on the streets. He goes, but I’ve been calling him every day, but they’re full. And I’m like, oh, I feel like undercover boss. Like, this guy has no idea. I can make one phone call and change his world. And so I called our nearest shelter. I said, listen, I don’t care what you got to do. I need you to send a van as quick as you can. And so I went back to him. His name was Christian. I said, hey, Christian, look, I haven’t been totally honest with you. It’s like I am homeless, but only till Friday. And he’s all, what? And I said, yeah, I said, my name is Ken and Ken Craft. I’m the CEO at Hope the Mission. And his eyes got as big as saucers. And I said, listen, I said, I didn’t think I was going to make it last night. I was so miserable and cold, and the thought of you having to spend one more night in these elements is more than I can handle. And I said, so I made a phone call and about that time, here comes the van. I said he saw the van with the markings of hope the mission on it. I said, you’re back in.

Ken : He started to cry. I started to cry. I gave him a big old hug and said, you’re going to be okay. And he got in the van and took off. And, you know, I checked in with him and I checked in with him a couple of weeks later and he was doing great. Got another job and he was working. Um, but for that next week, every day, every night, um, I lived on the streets and I’ve never been homeless a day in my life. I’ve never been unsheltered. I’ve never been without food. I had to beg to try to get enough money to buy sleeping bags. I didn’t have a sleeping bag. Um, I went to a restaurant and I sat down next to someone and they got up and left. Or just the booth next to them because I looked homeless. If I showed you the picture of what I looked like at the end, you’d see. And it was one of those things that it truly marked me because I couldn’t sleep at night, because I was afraid and I would fall asleep in the daytime because I wasn’t sleeping at night. And, um, and my takeaway after just one week on the streets is that it’s nearly impossible to stay sober, sane, and safe living on the streets. And that’s why we have, as an agency have said we will do whatever it takes to bring people indoors. And so because of that, you know, even though we’re 17 years old, Hope the Mission, we’re the largest rescue mission in the United States.

Alison: Wow.

Ken : Okay. Just for perspective, many people in LA, maybe they’re used to the Union rescue mission, the LA rescue mission, the midnight rescue mission. We’re actually larger than all three of those put together. Times two.  And we are the largest provider of interim housing in LA County and in Southern California. And part of that, the impetus of that drive and that passion was I knew I could barely make it. And if I could barely make it, how are other people making it? And unfortunately, they’re not. They’re falling apart. They’re having mental health breaks. They’re numbing the pain with addiction. And so, I mean, for goodness sakes, if we can put a man on the moon, you mean to tell me we can’t solve homelessness? It’s a solvable problem. It’s not a funding problem. It’s a it’s a allocation of those resources. And that’s what we need to do, is to double down on things that work and be relentless. Um, I say it this way. God forbid if there was an earthquake in Southern California and there were 76,000 people that became homeless, um, because of apartment buildings that collapsed and they uninhabitable places, I say I use the number 76,000 because that’s how many people are homeless on our streets. But if 76,000 became homeless, the National Guard would immediately be mobilized. And we would make sure that nobody had to suffer and live on the streets. We would open up, um, community centers, we would open up park and rec centers, we’d open up churches and synagogues and other, uh, places for people to sleep inside. And yet we have a crisis on our hands that people living outside. And sometimes we just yawn and say, oh, well, you know, we’ll deal with it tomorrow. And, uh, I think, uh, our fellow brothers and sisters deserve a more compassionate response than that.

Alison: Talking about narratives, thank you for that. Talking about narratives is, um, I’ve heard a lot. Oh, they don’t people don’t want to go into shelters. People don’t want to be off the street. What do you think about that?

Ken : And the best way I can answer that is with a true story. And that is there’s a judge, a federal judge named David Carter, who’s been very involved in addressing the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. But before he addressed it in Los Angeles, he dealt with it in Orange County. And here’s what they did.  it’s illegal to have a tent in a park and to live in a park. Okay. Um, so what they did, they said, okay, we need to, you know, we have to balance law enforcement with compassion, right? That’s America, uh, without laws, it’s anarchy. And everyone does what they think. You know, you have to have laws. But we’re also a nation of compassion that cares about the vulnerable, the hurting, and those that have been misplaced. And so what they did is theoretically, let’s just say there are 100 people living in a park. You can’t do that. So they went to those folks and said, listen, it’s illegal. But we also want to show compassion. So we have created indoor space in housing for 100. All 100 of you. And what they found is that 20 of those people and they said, and we’re going to be back here next Saturday, and we will have enforcement to make sure you cannot be here. 20% of those people, when that was told to them, they self resolved. In other words, they had something else they could do and they did it.

Ken : Another 20%. They were shelter resistant and they said, no one’s going to tell me what to do. And they wouldn’t access it. But 60% of the people immediately took advantage of the other resources that were provided. And so, you know, I look at it that way. Um, if we can address the 60%, that’s the low hanging fruit of those that are saying, I need help, I will take help immediately. Then we do that. Um, and then the 20% that are shelter resistant, sometimes there’s many reasons for that. Uh, maybe there’s a lot of mistrust. They’ve been hurt. Uh, they don’t feel safe. Okay. Well, we can address those issues. And so, um, there certainly are people that, that, um, will at this moment are choosing to prefer that will say no to shelter. But oftentimes, um, those are issues. We build relationships with people and with relationship. We build their trust that a gentleman one time came into one of our tiny homes and he had never been inside since the Northridge earthquake. Never been inside. He was so traumatized. But he finally said he would give it a shot. And even though he had a bed in his tiny home, instead he slept with the door open and his feet outside. You know, being outside, in his body, inside. And sometimes we don’t know how people have been impacted and traumatized. So instead of judging someone, eventually he was able to sleep in his bed and sleep inside.

Ken : But sometimes that takes a minute when someone you know, I look at the numbers of people that have been, especially women that have been sexually abused and traumatized. You know, we had one woman, just a heartbreaking story. She was raped multiple times in North Hollywood on the side of the freeway. She started wearing a three pairs of pants, jeans, whenever she would try to sleep at night so that if any thing would happen and she had a whistle that she could blow that whistle and scream, hoping somebody would be there for her. When we finally convinced her to come inside, she was terrified, untrusting of anybody. But she came inside and she discovered she had a lock that locked from the inside. And she locked the door. And after a few weeks and she had actually shaved her head because she didn’t want she was. She was actually an attractive woman, but she didn’t want to look attractive because she didn’t want to be sexually abused. And when she finally, after a couple of months, she said, you know, you know what I really want more than anything. She says, I just want to feel like a woman again. She says, she said, I want eyelashes. We asked her, is there anything we can help you with? And she wanted eyelashes and we got her eyelashes and she put them on and she said, you know what? I just want to feel like a woman again.

Ken : And so just the pain that people go through, uh, it’s, it’s silent suffering and it’s easy to judge. Well, the homeless, it’s not the homeless. It could be a child. It’s a mom. It’s a domestic violence, uh, you know, issue. It’s a veteran, it’s a senior, you name it. And so, you know, I think if anything, we just have to we have to tap into our compassionate side and, and be willing to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. And by that moment of me for one week living outside, um, on the streets, it, it definitely created deep empathy and compassion for those that are going through a horrific situation. You know, I love speaking to elementary kids. And when I do, I ask the question, how many of you, when you grow up, you want to be a fireman? How many of you want to be a professional athlete? You want to be a doctor. How many of you, when you grow up, you want to be homeless? Raise your hand. No one has ever raised their hand. Nobody thinks they’re ever going to be homeless, right, as a child. But something happens along the way. The wheels fall off. Something happens to them. And so instead of judging, let’s love. Yeah, let’s reach out. Let’s serve. Let’s help people at their point of need. And when we do, that’s how we change our world.

Alison: Thank you so much. You really focus on the individual. Like I think what you said is so profound. Don’t just say, “the” homeless, the whatever this segment, that segment, really remember that we’re all people and we all basically want the same thing.  we want a chance. We want to be treated with respect. We want to feel safe, you know, and we forget that. So in the dialogues that we’ve heard that’s going on in the world.

Ken : Yeah.

Alison: Everything is so categorized.

Ken : Yes, yes, absolutely. And so for me, this has been that incredible opportunity to live out my faith and to live out my humanity to others that are hurting and broken. And I say it this way, nobody comes to the mission on a good day.

Alison: Right? Right.

Ken : Nobody comes to the mission on a winning streak.

Alison: Right

Ken : Everybody that comes to us.

Jean: Yeah.

Ken : Has been humbled. Yeah. They’re broken. And it’s hard to ask for help. And it’s funny, I, I to this day, uh, you know, we’re a very large organization now. And, uh, you know, we have over 800 employees. And, um, I, I’ve to this point, I’ve always said every time we hire a new batch of employees, I want to speak to them. And the reason why I want them to hear some of the stories I tell, and I want them to realize that this work is sacred, this work is special, and it’s not easy, and it’s not for the faint of heart because you’re not dealing with people on their best days. You know, it’s so much easier to deal with people that are kind of happy. And, you know, life’s going well.

Jean: That have had a shower the morning.

Ken : Yeah. And so we’re dealing with people that are so broken. And so but I want people to know and I tell them, I said, if your heart’s not in this work, I said, save yourself some heartache. Go get a job at In-N-Out Burger or Target. You’ll probably get paid the same. Okay. But if you really want to make a difference, then work with us and work with people and don’t give up on people. And oftentimes people will say to me, well, how long can someone stay with you? Until we get them permanently housed and back on the road to self-sufficiency. And why is that important? Because oftentimes people give up on themselves long before we would ever give up on them. People get weary. They get tired, they get worn out. They feel that, you know, they’re not going to get that break. And there’s a real challenge. There’s not enough affordable housing. So people end up getting stuck in interim housing much longer than we would ever want. And then when people get stuck in interim housing, then that impacts the ability and numbers of people that can move from the streets into interim housing. And with some of the budget cuts that we’ve seen from the federal government and the lack of a time limited subsidies and other subsidies, it’s impacted the whole system. And so I just encourage people, just be gracious, be kind, you know, try to try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and, and let’s practice empathy and radical hospitality and love. And I think that’s how we change the world.

Jean: Well, Ken, thank you so much. You are very inspiring in spirit. Inspiring. Thank you.

Ken : Well thank you. It’s it’s been great spending some time with you. Uh, and.

Jean: Two wrap up questions, which we ask all of our guests. So what does the the word insidewink mean to you?

Ken : I think an inside wink is you get it, don’t you?

Ken : Yeah.

Ken : You get it. Yeah. I think that’s what it means to me is we’re helping people to get to that place where you get it, don’t you? Yeah. And and but sometimes we need to help people get it. And when they do, we can give them that insidewink. You got it.

Alison: Mhm. That’s perfect. You asked the second one.

Jean: Okay. I’m going to do both questions.

Alison: I feel like I’m going to cry again.

Jean: Okay. Ken, do you prefer cake, pie or ice cream.

Ken : Cake pie or ice cream? That’s an easy one for me. I’m taking pie all day long. Uh, I am a, I love like a peach pie or a cherry pie or berry pies, and I can’t do pumpkin pie. I’ve never been able to do that or like, uh, you know. Yeah. Rhubarb. You know, banana cream is still okay. But so yeah, pies is I love, uh, not lemon meringue. Um, key lime pie is like the world’s greatest pie. Uh, so yeah, I’m a pie guy.

Jean: I love that.

Alison: We’re on a, we’re on a, we’re on a pie streak. Ken.

Ken : So I okay, okay. Well, wait till you see the pies we’re going to have at the original pantry cafe. Oh, I’m going to blow your mind. Uh, our chefs are amazing.

Alison: Thank you so much. I feel so emotional just talking to you, Ken. I really appreciate everything you’re doing. Really.

Ken : Thank you. It’s it’s been a real privilege and joy. Thank you.

Jean: Yeah. Many blessings to you, Ken. And we’ll be in touch soon.

Ken : Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

Alison: Wow, Jean. I didn’t think I was going to get through this. He’s so amazing.

Jean: Yeah. You know, I think when you have such a passion to, um, be of service, be of benefit to something other than yourself, you’re you you just speak so eloquently and so, um, enthusiastically about whatever your mission is. You could be a doctor, a teacher, you know, whatever that is for you. Uh, making beautiful coffee in the morning. But I gotta say, Ken Craft is he is a hero.

Alison: Thank goodness for him. Yeah. Thank goodness. Really?

Alison: Can you think that he’s making he’s in charge of 9000 meals. And just like, like what he said, 17 years. Yeah. And, and it made me feel so good to get some clarification on sort of the talk and the, the things that you hear either online or, you know, about, about unhoused people, homeless people.  Because really the narrative is like, oh, you know, they don’t they. And I love that he was like, they’re people, It’s not a they.

Jean: Yes. No, he, he makes, he brings it home into the personality, into the person, individual human. And, um, and I also love that you can give, if you see someone on the street, you can actually look on your phone, look up, just Google Hope the Mission you’ll see their phone number, give that to someone and say, hey, call this phone number. They will send out someone to to help.

Alison: And I feel like it made me realize sometimes I do feel like hopeless. Like what am I going to do now? Like everything just seems to be in a tailspin. But he made me feel like you do make a difference, a small amount. I’m throwing a starfish back in the ocean. Yeah. Do you know I love that. And so I know it was beautiful.

Jean: Oh, Ken, thank you so much. And and continue to do what you do. And, you know… Thank you.

Alison: Yes.

Jean: What an angel you are.

Alison:  Everyone, Everyone has the opportunity to be an angel, large and small.

Jean: Yes.

Alison: Right. Which I think is wonderful. Thank you so much, Ken.  Have a great day.