How to Be a Better Human - How to navigate complicated family dynamics (w/ Emerson Whitney)

0:02This is how to be a better human. I'm your host Chris Duffy. Today's guest is Emerson Whitney, the author of the new book, Oh Mother. And before we dive in, I want to just give you a quick heads up that today's episode is going to discuss suicide. So if that is not a topic for you right now, totally understand. We will see you back here next week.

0:21Now, Oh Mother is a very personal book. It is a book about Emerson's complicated relationship with his mother, about moving back home to an island in Maine to be closer to her, and how that decision does not go at all how Emerson had planned, ultimately ending in tragedy. But as specific as Emerson's story is, the themes in this book are incredibly universal. This is a book that asks questions like, what do we owe our family members? What about if our relationships are really, really, really hard?

0:51How do we handle the difficult things that we inherit from our families, both biologically and emotionally? It also asks questions like, what makes a life livable? And can we accept it if someone decides that their life is not livable? To me, these are the kinds of questions that get at the heart of what it means to be human.

1:10These are questions that everyone ends up wrestling with at some point in their lives, but we often wrestle with them all on our own. And maybe that's because we're ashamed or scared, or maybe we just think that you're not supposed to talk about these things publicly. Well, today's guest, Emerson Whitney, talks about them publicly and writes about them and thinks about them really deeply. And I'm so glad that we are gonna get a chance to hear from Emerson today on the episode. To get us started, Here is Emerson reading a passage from Oh Mother, and the book is all written in second person, so it's all directed towards his mother. Here's Emerson reading that passage now.

1:54Roland Barthes writes about this in his morning diary, a book of notes compiled after the death of his mom. He writes about how he notices a totally different feeling after she's died. He no longer cares about posterity and writes of a complete acceptance of vanishing utterly, no desire for a monument. He goes on to write that he can no longer bear traveling. Why is it that I keep trying like a lost child to get back home, though mama is no longer there?

2:20I relate to this so much. Before this, I was working toward being interesting and cool, at least in my mind I was. I thought so much more about what people thought of me. The approval I was seeking and others was maybe your approval, which I guess is a standard thing.

2:35You'd warned me forever about not staying in the house like Grammy, the value of trying to have friends and being out. I'd been letting go of this performance for a while in little ways, leaving the city, being more honest with myself about what this body needs, but your death gave it that final push out the door. Everything was leading to this. I've put up a cattle gate a few yards from my house and I want to stay inside it with the dogs and your ashes.

3:02That was the author Emerson Whitney reading a passage from his new book, Oh Mother. And we are going to talk a lot more with Emerson in just a moment, but first we are going to take a quick ad break. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

3:43Here are lessons to help you find success at work, build better relationships, and more. Find rethinking wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. In today's episode, we are talking about inheritance. We're talking about health, and we're talking about complicated family relationships with the author Emerson Whitney. Hi, I'm Emerson Whitney, and I'm an autobiographical writer. My most recent book is Oh Mother Out with Mick Sweeney's. Well, Emerson, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so excited to talk to you.

4:17loved your new book, Oh Mother. I think it is like just beautifully written, but also so moving and thought provoking. And it's about so many different things. So as a person who has had to talk about this book and think about how to explain it to people who haven't yet read it, how do you explain what Oh Mother is about? I'm really grateful to use the term immersive memoir. It's about the last two years of my mom and my time together. So really, it's the story of our time together. It's also the story of our shared disability, our shared chronic pain, and our shared life experiences, which have a lot to do with this island where we lived. Just so that people know the kind of like plot pieces of it's a real story, but the plot pieces of what happened here so that we can have this conversation. I think you just brought up a bunch of the things that led to it. So it's

5:15You have this kind of troubled childhood with your mom. Sometimes you're extremely close. Sometimes she and you can butt heads and not understand each other. In some ways, you write in the book that you and your grandmother feel more like a mother and child relationship. And then you want to have a closer relationship as an adult with your mom. You move back to the island in Maine.

5:39It seems like it's going to be perfect. Then there's this real distance. Yes. You and your mom actually aren't seeing each other as much as you thought. And then the end of the book is your mother has done really well and then kind of has some sort of backslide into depression and suicidality, but also maybe drinking. And there's this moment where she is Arrested for stealing from Walmart and knows that that's going to go into the paper and that is what you believe was the driving force for her to Take her own life. Yes. The book is obviously about that story But it's about so many different things as well You know in the book you talk about before your your mother passes away. There's this There's a lot of things that you and your family share chronic pain neurodivergence

6:28relationship to the outside world, to, you know, socioeconomic background, but you never really get the opportunity to fully talk about these things. And a lot of the book is a conversation. It's written in the second person. It's a conversation with your mother. What kinds of things you wish you could have shared with each other while you actually were both in the same place? I wonder if the book brought up new ideas of things that you wish you could have talked about.

6:57I think of this question all the time. My mom and I had a really interesting and complicated relationship. We both struggled with so many of the same things that it often was hard to connect because we were both kind of in a way on our own islands. You know, the metaphor maybe of the island, not necessarily the material reality of the island and weren't always, they weren't always bridged in our lifetime. So most of what we got to experience that was that was about sort of neurodivergence or shared pain was often...

7:28in kind of this family joking or like the the large s of a family hangout where we got to make fun of each other for all the things that were hard or laugh with each other about what was going on. And now when I look back, I feel like the the book itself was absolutely a way that I got to process so much of that. My grandma, I hang out with my grandma quite a bit and she just has so many memories of hanging out with mom and I and not I guess she didn't have the same process. So she often talks with a tremendous amount of regret. And I feel similarly, I wish my mom and I, I mean, every day I'm like, I wish we could have gone to this.

8:09Random new restaurant. So like we could have gone to this like weird thing together. We could have talked more about class I think that would have been nice my mom was a housekeeper for one of the wealthier estates here and It was really hard on her for many reasons and I wish we could have had a chat about that definitely more about what it meant to be people who have autism and ADHD and to live on that spectrum I think is would have been really fun to talk about with her and we didn't get to do that. I mean there's so many moving scenes of the book about all sorts of different things but there's so much joy when you and your mom and your grandma are hanging out together just laughing around a table about things that no one else can understand but

8:56even things that everyone can understand just sharing these small moments. I think you capture that feeling of laughing with people who know you so well and have known you for your whole life in such a real, vivid way. I haven't really seen that in many other books captured so accurately.

9:11I really appreciate that. That's absolutely what I was trying to do because I really wanted it to be kind of glorious. In the book, I talk about wishing my mom could have had a parade. One of the saddest parts of this, I feel like I got these headphones like a few minutes ago or before this. And I went to the Walmart where my mom, because that's our one kind of electronic store nearby, where my mom was arrested for shoplifting. I feel like one of the most powerful aspects of this was was shame that she was really so scared of being seen as not totally capable. And I wish in the book that we could have like had a parade for her even in her even in her death because, you know, she had a self completed death or suicide. And it was in direct response to being arrested at Walmart. And it was obviously devastating to learn that. But it also did something to my

10:09to, I guess, our community expression of gratitude for her in her passing. There was so much shame. There was family shame that came up. Like, why would she do that? What happened there? But I'm grateful to have very little of that confusion because she and I were so similar. So I just wanted, I wanted this book to be that parade to some extent. I think it really is. I mean, it's such a beautiful parade of scenes and portraits and feelings and stories. I think parade isn't necessarily the first word that I would have come up with. But now that you say it, I think that it really actually is an accurate description of the book. I think when you're telling a story that involves suicide, there's this tendency to not want to talk about it openly. There's this we get awkward about speaking about it. And I think a lot of the book is about that, too, especially the second half of the book is about why do we feel like we can't talk about this on page 171. You talk about this idea that

11:09scholars have talked about that when you have someone you love who dies through suicide that you're called a survivor. And it's the idea that you survived another person's suicide like a car crash. And you said that you write about a scholar saying that that's reductionist. The quote is, it's focused on blaming the suicidal person and ignoring interlocking systems of oppression that lead to a life being unlivable. That was a line that just stop me in my tracks and I underlined multiple times. That idea of what is it that makes someone's life unlivable and how that has so much broader than any one story.

11:47feels like a really different way of thinking about it and a really important way of thinking about it. It was a turning point for me. I was I was really struggling, obviously. And in my own blame, I lived 15 minutes from my mom. And like as you were saying in your intro of the full scope of the book, she and I had been close and not close. But when I moved back here, it was with the intention of ideally building a space that she was going to occupy, too. She was always really tired. I mean, me too. I just today I was like, my God, like how much more work can be in my life because I'm so tired. And I feel like most of us feel that way that have jobs and maybe I've struggled to have also, I guess, whatever the word is self, the phrase is self care. But all of those things compound, I feel like when those of us need to work, have to work, whatever.

12:38And my mom certainly was somebody who worked way too much and really struggled to fill her cup back up when she wasn't working. So I had hoped that I would help with that. So it was it was really extreme to return and then to be literally working so hard to build something for her and I. And then right as I could put the key in the door and open the door of this physical house for the first time.

13:04Within a couple weeks she she had passed and it was because you know I knew because sheriffs came to my house to tell me which was really the worst one of the worst parts of the of the whole thing just because I don't think I got over the shock for probably I didn't get to grieving for probably a year or so because I was still in shock and me Engaging with this kind of theory or with Braille's theory around around this was my attempt to sort of Call my system enough to really understand that I didn't I didn't I didn't cause this. But of course, the mind goes, well, if I'd have just gone over there, why didn't I text her when I was thinking about her two days ago? There were a million things in my mind that I could have done to break this chain of either errors or horrors that led to this, and I didn't do it. I was actually trying to not do it.

14:05And if anyone in the world both wanted me to be a hero and I wanted to be her hero, it was my mom. And at the same time, what I really hung on to when I was engaging with some of this scholarship around suicide and self-completed death was that Part of what happens in our culture is that there's no talk of if somebody is feeling suicidal, they're usually not allowed to speak of it because institutionalization is what results from that. And my mom and I shared so much, but we never shared this. The only reason I ever knew that she was having thoughts of...

14:46of killing herself was because she had a few bouts of being in the hospital prior to this. But you know, my family definitely struggles with with alcoholism. And I've learned a lot about what it means to I want to say be at the bedside of someone struggling at this level. I'm emotionally at the bedside, but I'm not necessarily physically there because there's nothing I can do. So I have I've had a bit of a detach with love.

15:14thing around family members like my mom. And I think because I didn't really know the extent of what was going on, I wish I'd have been able to just love her out in the open and not try to change her. And if this is what she wanted to do, I and my grandma and even my grandpa say that we would have supported her. If she didn't want to live here anymore, we would support her in that. I mean, in some ways, how incredible to have that. I don't want to make this sound like I'm condoning anything in particular, but I don't know that I'm as brave.

15:55as her to have been able to make that kind of decision. I don't think I'm that brave. But if our family had known that that's what she wanted to do, we would have supported her. We just wish we could have told her we love her beforehand and to have said goodbye. And the worst part to me is that she lived with both so much shame for the actions that she felt like she was taking that led her here and also shame for having these thoughts.

16:24I wish she didn't. And the only reason I know that is because I inherited all of her journals and her notebooks and what have you and so I was able to sort of see what more of what her thinking was at the time. And yeah, I know she was scared and ashamed.

16:38I had this thought which I think is like very pervasive that is like you don't want to give the person the idea. So you can't talk about suicide because like then if you say the word all of a sudden they go, hey, hold on. That's an idea. And it's like, of course they know like the whole point is that they know that. And if you like don't talk about if there's this shame and this darkness and this stigma, you can't you can't share how you're feeling. And when you can't share how you're feeling, you can get stuck in a place where you feel like there's only one way out. Yes.

17:05And so that I think is like one of the biggest things that I learned is that if you have if you know someone who is suffering like talk to them about don't dodge it Don't say like that is kind of tough lately. It's like hey, are you thinking about hurting yourself? What what are you feeling? Are you feeling trapped like you can say anything to me and it'll be okay But then the other part is and I think this goes to so much of what I think is so beautiful about a mother is you know Even in just you and I talking about it. You said like I don't want to condone Like it's it's hard to not fall into the idea of like good or bad like crime or and punishment as opposed to thinking about like there may not be as Simple a situation as a person who is suffering thinks there is right, right? It's easy when we're suffering to think like there's nothing could solve this the only solution is for me to die Yeah, and I think one of the really incredible parts of time but also talking

18:03is to realize like that thing that I thought was black or white is actually much more gray. There are other ways through this. Absolutely. And I'm not. I'm actually borrowing a phrase from Alexander Braille. I want to let me see if I can pronounce. Yeah, it might be Alexander Braille. I don't know. Alexander Braille Braille in Undoing Suicideism. The framework that he's working through is really that the one that you named, which is about reducing the blame.

18:33on the person who's died because the framework of suicide is within the jurisdiction of obviously words like homicide, all the sides that have to do with specific kinds of killing. Different cultural groups have different responses to suicide. It's been criminalized in various ways across cultures. It's also been not. I think there's examples in, I'm forgetting the time frame in England where if your family remember had killed themselves, you paid a penance and they didn't get a burial and their body was like dragged through the street. If I'm remembering correctly, Simon Critchley writes about this to some extent in his book, Notes on Suicide. But the idea is that the person

19:19did something wrong. They murdered. They murdered themselves. And in the case of my mom, and again, linking back to this scholarship, I really felt as if this was compounded by all these interlocking systems that affected my mom and that affect so many other people, which, of course, like we were we were naming earlier, neurodivergence, disability, and especially in her case, a tremendous amount of shame. She worked again as a housekeeper, and I think there was a part of her that just felt like she spent a lot of her time comparing herself. Like why didn't she get to have these high-bush blueberry sod paths that she didn't get?

20:06to have a really cute little shed that was nice and the doors open fully and you could put a cool lawn mower inside. She would have loved any of that kind of stuff and I think she took it in a way as a personal failing that she didn't have that. That plus being totally and sweetly and amazingly Audi HD as am I, she I think just didn't feel like she fit at any point.

20:35And it just really worked against her for her whole life. So I really do think her life could have been more livable given totally different circumstances. We're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back with more from Emerson. Hi, I'm Adam Grant, host of the podcast Rethinking.

21:07A show where I talk to some of today's greatest thinkers about the unconventional ways they see the world. On Rethinking, you'll get surprising insights from scientists, leaders, artists, and more. People like Reese Witherspoon, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yo-Yo Ma. Here are lessons to help you find success at work, build better relationships, and more. Find Rethinking wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. Here is Emerson Whitney reading another passage from his book, Oh Mother.

21:39I was standing with Char and our group of friends in the lemonade line when someone with a bleach blonde ponytail tore to shell glasses and a pink flannel passed by in front of me. The person caught my breath. I could feel you. I don't know how else to say it. The sense I have of you was there. Warm and funny and kind. A pink feeling. As I was experiencing the lightness of seeing almost you, I was struck suddenly by the idea that I had been thinking of things all wrong.

22:06If I believed your death was caused by ableism, which I did, seeing myself as overly responsible or capable of saving you was a way for this same ableism to thrive. It was living in me as a mother load of shame. What if you were wanting me to just be your child? Maybe you didn't want me to build you a house and fix it all or keep you alive. I wanted to more than anything at all ever, but believing I could is harmful to us both.

22:33The person resembling you disappeared into the throng of people going into the Charlotte's Web exhibit, which was perfect because you love Charlotte's Web. Shar brought me my lemonade and leaned against me for a second. You, in addition to being an author, are also a teacher. In one part of the book, related to what we're talking about here, you talk about teaching classes at LACC, L.A. Community College. You talk about teaching the book, Laura Goddastiner's A Dream Foreclosed.

23:00alongside Dreams Deferred, Recession, Struggle, and the Quest for a Better World by Dallas author, Brandelyn Barnett. And both books are about the housing crisis in 2008. And you talk about how there are dozens of interviews in those books that have been done with people who had been targeted for predatory loans. And then they had eventually lost everything. And you say, all of these people had something in common. Nearly every single person who had been targeted blamed themselves.

23:28But the loans were predatory. My students would yell they were trying to trick people. So why did everyone think it was their fault? I get chills in the classroom when this kind of thing would happen because it's so clear that my students were all at once recognizing the violence of bootstraps culture that even when companies target vulnerable populations and actively trick loan borrowers, it is still seen as our fault. Yeah, I feel like that idea that even when we are the victims of Targeting even when it is a giant system that is actively doing something that is harming us. It's still somehow our fault for getting caught up in the scam toy That has so much to do with how your mom felt, but that also has so much to do with how all of us feel. Yes when like things go wrong. It's our fault Absolutely. I spend a lot of time trying to undo that and myself. How do you?

24:20undo that. I mean obviously your students are asking you that too. That's a whole class but how do you undo that at all? Well I do feel like disability justice work.

24:29speaks a lot about interdependence versus independence. And I do think that works together in that way. Like if I don't believe that I'm supposed to independently succeed, I also don't feel so tied up when I'm independently quote unquote failing. So I feel as if my network hopefully is larger because I am thinking about this idea of an interdependence. So there are things that I am Not good at all. I can't do math to save my life as not my thing my brain just like went this whole other direction It feels like soupy when I'm trying to do math, so I'm never gonna be able to do it Ideally I would go ask someone for help who is more capable if I need that or whatever and obviously that's like maybe Monday and see me example, but it's bigger too It's like there are so many things that people in my very small community love to do

25:23and I don't love to do it, and it's great when we can come together and make kind of wholeness in that way. If I'm really imagining myself as other, as not worthy, as trying but failing, I'm stuck not even being able to ask or show up or be part of because I'm so lost in the The that kind of back and forth of I'm not enough. I'm you know, I'm embarrassed All of that and I know that at least for me I I think becoming more honest with myself about what nerve divergence has looked like in my life Which is also in this book quite a bit because I've also had meltdowns like I believe my mom had when she passed or when she was feeling like she needed to die

26:16And they're embarrassing. It's been so embarrassing to be an adult and be like, wow, I just fully my system just exploded. And now I'm like running down my driveway like in a moment of like body panic for no real identifiable reason.

26:33And maybe my neighbors saw that or whatever. It's embarrassing. I guess part of what we could name here too is that I didn't necessarily know that my mom was self-diagnosing or thinking about the fact that she had autism. I knew she had ADHD. She and I were both diagnosed with ADHD at the same year. Many years ago when I was in middle school, she had had a rehab at that time. I think this was like in then.

27:00in the mid 90s and Dallas tell her that she had ADHD and I was sort of like at the time as a kid I was like that is insane like this person has a problem with drinking so like why are we even worrying about that but now I'm so appreciative that there were people trying to help her in that way I know that my mom didn't identify with it very much because I think it didn't mean much to her especially because women often have a different relationship to neurodivergence that doesn't look like what you know all men seem to show up.

27:28as in terms of neurodivergence so I think she downplayed her own experience of that but when she passed I was going through her stuff and I found just a sticky note sort of flitted off of her her a photo I was looking at and it said like do I have autism is that what's going on and I found more of her writing about it too and it just it it tracks tremendously with who she is and who I am and who our family is and I was I was at the same time curious about that in myself and when she passed I was able to sort of revisit my childhood diagnosis of autism and ADHD that I had ignored for my whole adult life or my whole life pretty much because I just didn't think that was I didn't think it really fit but I've been really grateful for the work of Devon Price and

28:21and others who talk about his book on masking autism was extremely helpful to me, and I know to so many. So yeah, I feel like it was really cool to understand that part of what I get to do instead of feeling that tremendous embarrassment.

28:40I really do get to know myself a bit better and get to know my patterns and how my body mind works. And then it's not so embarrassing. And then how cool I get to ask for a very honest kind of support.

28:59And it isn't about me being terrible person or in lack. Actually, it's that I have really cool things, the things that I like to do that other people would love for me to do. And so in a way, I get to give a gift when I ask for help like that, too. But I didn't know that forever. So. One of your incredible abilities as a writer is to take a moment and make it so many things at once. So.

29:26the moment that you just talked about where you're you're kind of in full blown crisis, you're sprinting down the path of your driveway. You have this ability where you make that in the book is both sad and overwhelming and emotionally moving. But it's also really funny. You're talking about how you're simultaneously sprinting and your pants are falling down and you're holding your pants up while running at full speed. Yeah. And you also have the ability to do this thing that where you can quote, you know, theorists and writers, but then you also are talking about reality TV. And you talk about how there's this incredibly powerful scene in an episode of Survivor, where someone with autism says, hey, if I get overwhelmed, they're saying this to another contestant of who happens to be a firefighter. If I get overwhelmed, I might need you to hold my hands and squeeze my hands and bring me back down to Earth if I'm having a panic attack. And in that moment, you say to your wife, like, I need you to do that for me. I need you to be my person.

30:24And in a way that I thought was really interesting, your wife says like sometimes both of us are the one who needs our hands to be squeezed at the same moment. So I'll do it if I can, but we might both need to figure out how to.

30:33Give ourselves the squeeze when we need that. That's right. And I'm so grateful for my wife. She's She's so amazing in these ways and such a teacher for me and I I love that that came through in the book because what's fun too about speaking with you and To be in this framework of I guess the thinking around this kind of book As as maybe an offering to folks who might want to think more about how they could get support or what it looks like for them to be Um in relationship to these themes like I I think there is not one size fits all at all and I think the minute that I think I know How something's supposed to go or like how I'm supposed to deal with neurodivergence or how I'm supposed to deal with disability It does change it changes and what was really cool I guess is the the plasticity of that like I you know Ellers-Danlos Is something that my family lives with my mom had I have my grandma has can you just give us a quick like

31:30for people who haven't heard that. Can you just tell us really quickly what that is? For sure. I feel like if I'm on the internet for too long, there's like a million theories right now. But essentially what it means is that something about the collagen is in the body and the connective tissue is made differently. So there's different types and there is varying severity. But a lot of people or most people that have it right, at least at the moment are being diagnosed with it often have hypermobile EDS. And it just means that there's a lot of dislocation subluxations and pain as well as some internal weirdness at least that's what my family has I have I have a hiatal hernia and like weird things like that that or it's not weird I guess but but like a suffagus stuff like it's just I'm too flexible really and it just means I'm loose and in a lot of pain and that's what it is. As far as support systems and things that work

32:27I'd love for you to talk about how you can find some of those because another thing that comes up a lot in the book is you talk about how your grandparents and your mom don't have many friends, but you have a lot of really beautiful friendships and relationships who hold you in the ways that you need to be held, right? You talk about how after your mom's death you're at the state fair and your friends are with you and they don't care what you're wearing and they don't care that you have a thing of slime in your pocket that you can play with and they don't care about the fact that you're gonna cry and then laugh and and that

33:01That is such a beautiful feeling to be with people who just accept you exactly as you are. And yet there's a lot of people in your life who you love really deeply who didn't or don't have that as much. So how do you how do you consciously think about community and isolation?

33:16Ugh, I think about it all the time. I love that I do have people in my life that I feel that way about, and then I'll go home and I'll worry that I don't. You know, that's, I think it's part of the way that I've always processed, I guess, these feelings of difference. My grandma describes herself as a hermit. She comes from a family of immigrants. She is Hungarian, Slovak, Romani, and she tells me this story all the time that her mother, her mother and her mother's mother They only wanted to talk to the people through, the only one to talk to people through the mail slot. And they just never wanted to see anyone. And she, she's that way. Like they just, my grandparents don't like to see anyone. And I've never in my life seen them with a friend, like ever. And, and my grandma, when she goes to the grocery or whatever, she'll say, her friend, she'll be like my friend, this person who works at the grocery. And for forever, I was like,

34:11dismissing those as or like both dismissing those kinds of relationships that she has is sort of like obviously kind of sad because in my mind that's not enough but actually in recent years or in the last year or so I've been really grateful to be like no that's actually beautiful like that gets to be friendship why is that not friendship that's what fulfills her is to have the she has a lady that walks her dog by that's her friend Great, you know, I think what happens for me is I just get to comparing and that doesn't work. If I'm if I'm comparing my my friend experience to whatever I believe is as a cultural ideal, I'm lost. For me, it does mean that they're like, I don't know, I've gone through a lot of fears around what I thought it might mean to be an adult living here, not in a city.

35:04to be maybe further from communities that I'm involved with often. I guess I notice more and more that I am somebody who really feels fulfilled by my relationships with nature, you know, and like trees. Like I literally am in relationship to trees. I'm in relationship to the sea. I'm in relationship to people and animals and plants. And I I have a smile while I'm talking about that because I think my maybe teenage self, maybe 20-year-old self would have felt that that was really an embarrassing thing to say in some ways. But yeah, I've just been really on a journey of understanding that I've prioritized people a lot in terms of what a friendship or relationship is. And actually, I get to have relationships with all kinds of loving.

35:56entities and aspects of our world that aren't necessarily people and I mean obviously we have four dogs we wish we had 40 dogs like you know there's a lot of love in my life and the more that I expand what that means the more fulfilled and more content I am but certainly I've been really afraid to be Like my mom was which was somewhere between my grandma and I. I think she was really uncomfortable with her own version of isolation and yet she didn't have the like as we would say maybe the spoons to make friends and I watched her being so ashamed of that and she even asked me many times like as a when I'd lived back here like how do you even have friends and I told her it's because I'm trans and and I think she was like

36:48And it sort of ended there, but I wish I've maybe done a little more caring for her in what I said, which is that I think I'm part of maybe a community of people that are a little more willing to kind of find each other because of sometimes the difficulty of being in the world and being trans. So yeah, I have that on my side to be queer. But yeah, it's not easy out here.

37:19Hi, I'm Adam Grant, host of the podcast, Rethinking, a show where I talk to some of today's greatest thinkers about the unconventional ways they see the world. On Rethinking, you'll get surprising insights from scientists, leaders, artists, and more. People like Reese Witherspoon, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yo-Yo Ma. Here are lessons to help you find success at work, build better relationships, and more. Find Rethinking wherever you get your podcasts. Being trans makes you part of the community, but also...

37:51you as a person are open to being part of community. You're open to like letting people know you and spend time with you and, you know, have meals together or take walks or do the things that let you get closer and more intimate with each other. So I'm curious about that part of it too. Like the mechanics of how you've let yourself have community and not be isolated because certainly, you know, being trans gives you.

38:17And in but you still are you still are doing things actively to make that happen the thing is at my core I am I'm friendly like I am so friendly like if a praising comes up I am so excited like I feel like I'm one of you know some of our dogs really like to see people some of our dogs don't I'm the one that's like yeah And like I'm so excited and it's really hard to turn that off like there have been times in my life where I'm like oh I should I remember when I first moved to New York when I was like 19 and somebody I cared a lot about a friend was like, you can't act like that here. You know, you need to put on some kind of emotional bubble when you get on the train. I was having people following me home and trying to chat for longer and whatever. And she was just like, you cannot do that. But at the same time, my core is just to be friendly. So that metaphor of like peeling layers of the onion is so apt in my life where it's like, you know,

39:12I think I'm done with learning this about myself. And then there's a whole other layer. And what I've been realizing lately is that I did put up a lot of walls to block me from those those sort of joy feelings about other people just as a protection. But when I'm OK with not ruminating about what I said at every gathering, which I always I have a tendency to do. I also I also definitely was afraid to be Hyperverbal I'm hyper if you can't tell I could talk for a really long time And I don't always know when to stop I definitely interrupt people I don't like sitting down like I'm ready to keep moving after we hang out a little bit

39:53So like I would I would always be a little bit embarrassed about how I interacted and it held me back from that just pure joy at and engaging with another person for a really long time and in the last again like I'm saying ever since my mom died I've been really Attending to that joy feeling and trying to cultivate it more. I always did try to cultivate friendships, but I don't think I worked as hard to cultivate authentically Authentically joyful ones where it's like I don't care if I I'm not being cute right now like I just I just want to hang out But I feel like there's something that is a thread between like grief and Mental health and sobriety and transness and and all of the things that we're talking about which is having to Sometimes in a way that is you know challenging or against your will having to get used to like

40:49cutting past the bullshit and just saying like, this is who I am. Yeah. This is who I am. And I'm not going to be ashamed of it. And I'm not going to try and lie or hide it. And I often have heard from trans friends that like just being like, this is who I am. It allows them to have this huge weight lifted and this joy and a new sense of life. Like sometimes trans friends talk about like going through like a second puberty, not just because of hormonal, but because of like finding who you are in all of those, though, there's this idea of like you have to get rid of the shame that forces you to like pile lies and deflections on top of lies and deflections so that there's all this weight of things you have to maintain versus just saying the thing that you actually feel.

41:32Right, and I think that gets us right back to that concept of like if only Suicidality or the idea of the thoughts of killing oneself if those were allowed if those were allowed out to the extent that maybe folks had them I want to say I feel like people would live longer, but I know people would live Or at least my mom would have lived more joyfully because as as Grammy and I say a lot We would have laughed with her about the Walmart thing My grandma and I were joking about how now Michaels, my mom was an avid crafter as is most of her side of the family and Michaels has a self-checkout. And so one of the jokes that my grandma made after mom died was like, she really would have loved that. You know, and it's I agree. She would have loved that. And it's funny. And the fact that because we're making a shoplifting joke, like we would have laughed with her. We would have been like.

42:29Are you serious? Like, what did you even take? Like, it was 60 bucks worth of stuff? Like, what were you doing? We wouldn't have condemned her. We would not have given more weight to her own shame. There's no way we would have done that. And that, to your point, that's exactly how it works in 12 Step World in AA where, yeah, suddenly everyone's laughing about all of those stories of using and drinking that were You know, maybe all of the embarrassing things, all of the nightmarish, all of the happy things, everyone's laughing. And everybody says, yeah, I did that too. And it's the same with, I agree, a lot of that was the same with me understanding more about what gender looked like for me. Just being like, oh yeah, okay, it's not funny. Hello. Here we are.

43:17There's this line that I thought I I know I'm gonna think about from the book a lot which comes from the writer Leah Lakshmi Piafsna Samarasinha, which is care is not automatically a burden and it is not automatically beautiful Yes, that when we get into the idea of thinking that caring for someone has to be one of those two things it can it can trap us into feeling like this is where the boundary has to be rather than what our boundary actually works for us. Totally. And I feel like boundaries as a term feels complicated because it seems as if, you know, whatever, I don't love the idea of something at all that's like a wall or a place of division that is maybe an imagined gate or something that's locking off.

44:00I guess a normal pattern of movement or whatever. I mean I think it's great to maybe have like traffic cones or something instead of like a wall like I can like move them around and it's okay if for some reason um that someone responds harshly to it but it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to stay so rigid, I guess, at least in my heart and mind. I don't know. You know, related to boundaries, I think, is inheritance, right? Because it's like, what are our responsibilities, but also what do we get from the people we come from? So what advice would you have for people who are wrestling with?

44:36what you get from previous generations. It is larger than our family systems for sure. It's like the cultures that they occupied. It's the generational trauma that many of us have inherited from our cultural groups or what has happened to our cultural groups. There's just so much there. And one of the gifts, I guess, of living in an intergenerational family, like I'm so grateful that I got to grow up with my grandparents very much like you said earlier, as my parents. And I got to grow up with my mom right there too. It was really great.

45:06because they gave me so much perspective on who I am because I got to see through them what their relationship to raising my mom was and what her relationship to them was. But I guess I just, I don't know the word gratitude comes to mind. I'm so grateful to learn from my elders or previous generations about what Life has meant for them and I can it's almost like I'm tracing my own hand when I'm talking to them and at the same time That's not all there is there I'm influenced by so many things and people around me now that maybe they're they weren't a part of like I have trans Ancestors or you know trans sisters that some people say or like there are other there are other

45:51influences on me that maybe they didn't have so I do find a lot of gratitude for learning about inheritance and what it's meant for me and I do try to take it as loosely as you know.

46:05as maybe as possible because in some ways obviously I've inherited a genetic condition from these people, but I've also been raised by a step-parent and other people who I don't necessarily share genetics with, but have certainly influenced me in many, many ways. So I just kind of love the constellation of family that makes me up.

46:25and I'm kind of losing the the language for what would be the opposite of gratitude in this way. But like, I guess resentment is the only thing that comes to mind there. It was easy for me when I was younger to be resentful and be like, oh, my God, like these people were trying so hard to not Be themselves that they are isolated and locked away in this in their weird houses and they never brought me to any other kids how I never went to a party of any kind like I never like they were never like in They didn't know anyone so I didn't they didn't help me socialize it was easy for me to be in blame But my dad passed away that last year my biological dad and my grandparents are aging my grandpa is entering problem

47:10you know, the final stage of his life. My grandma's 84 and or 83, something like that, very close to 83 or 84. And I'm just watching sort of the sunset on the people that knew me when I was a baby and knew me when I was born. So I'm standing here.

47:32kind of in a really tremendous sort of quiet around that. It's amazing how quiet it's gotten in my head and my heart as they leave this place. And what I'm finding in that quiet is just a tremendous gratitude. There's kind of nothing else left. It's weird. I love that. Yeah.

47:52Well, Emerson, Wendy, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for writing the book, Oh Mother. It's such a fantastic and beautiful book. And thank you for making time to be here and talk with us. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for this and for you. That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human.

48:11I would like to make sure that anyone who is out there struggling or loving someone who is struggling knows that there are resources available. One of those resources in the United States is you can call or text 988 to reach the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline. It is free. It's confidential. It's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And there are similar resources available in many other countries as well. And wherever you are, know that you are cared about.

48:37Thank you so much to our guest Emerson Whitney. Emerson's latest book is called Oh Mother and it is out now. It is beautiful and powerful and I really, really recommend you read it. My name is Chris Duffy. I am your host and I am also the author of a book called Humour Me, which is also out now. You can find out information about my book and all my other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.

48:57This episode of How To Be A Better Human was brought to you by what is known in Maine as a wicked good team. On the Tedside from Inside a Lobster Trap in Penobscot Bay, we've got Daniela Balarezzo, Ben Ben Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bo, Hanini, Laini Lott, Tensukasung Manibong, Antonia Lea and Joseph de Bruyne. Ryan Lash edited this video while drinking a frappe, and Matteo Salas fact-checked this episode with the kind of careful attention to detail you normally only see inside an LL bean. On the PRX side, they've got a bucket of fresh blueberries, and it's going Kerplunk, Kerplunk, Kerplunk, Morgan Fle-

49:26When you're trying to figure out whether to leave a job, sometimes listening to your gut is the best place to start. If I have too many days where I say no, where I wake up and I don't want to be there and I say no, I get out.

50:03That's very clean. It is. Yeah. And it's hard to do that, especially if you're in a high level or what people consider a really good job. Like I was at the New York Times running a column. I just didn't want to do it anymore. One person was like, you don't leave the New York Times. I go, guess you do. Hear more from award-winning journalist Cara Swisher on why you need to take more risks, how to say what you need to say, and what questions you can ask yourself to actually move forward in your career. All on our podcast, Fixable, a show from Ted.

50:31Listen to this conversation and more as part of a series on how to take back your power at work, only on Fixible, wherever you get your podcasts.