#24 - L.L. Kirchner

L.L. Kirchner shares her story as the author of Blissful Thinking, a sweeping story of the search for nirvana that took L.L. Kirchner from university halls in the Persian Gulf to the streets of Manhattan to a sex cult in India. Between her family’s gym and the years she’d spent in substance abuse recovery, Kirchner felt grounded in physical and spiritual wellness. Then her husband demanded a divorce. Over the telephone.   

To avoid a return to her addictions the author tries yoga, meditation, chanting — all the things meant to cultivate bliss and regain trust in the universe. Each brings some relief, but her search for the answer outside herself ignores the fact that her painful family dynamics remain unresolved. Until she discovers the gift her mother had always 
given her — hope. Kirchner captures the terrors and joys of searching for radical 
honesty — and a second date.

An award-winning screenwriter and author of the forthcoming Blissful Thinking, L.L. Kirchner's first memoir, American Lady Creature, was named one of Bustle's "11 Books to Battle the Blues." She's a live on-air host on the Home Shopping Network, & runs a live, monthly storytelling show, True Stories. Her writing can be found in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and Salon among many others. She lives in Florida with her dog Hartley and her favorite husband. More at www.LLKirchner.com.
On socials everywhere @llkirchner_   

Made You Look Design
Podcast production and design services. We can help start your own podcast.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

0:11

This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It's all possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go. Hello, everybody. This is Angela Grayson from a Loving Life Fitness Podcast where we talk to professionals and everyday people about their fitness journey in life. Or maybe they'd like to talk about things that help others to live their best life. Okay. And today, we'll be talking to L.L. Kirchner about her life and her journey and the stories that she's written. So, hi, How are you doing today? I'm good, Angela. How are you? Oh, I'm doing great. Happy and excited to hear your story and have you share it with my listeners. Let's go back to the beginning. When you were a young woman growing up, what was your life like back then and maybe how it inspired you to become what you are today? Well, you know, it's funny because I grew up probably on a trajectory that might not have included indoor plumbing. I, I landed in rehab by the time I was 19. And it wasn't because my parents sent me. I actually dragged my own butt into into a rehab facility when I was in college. But, you know, my dad owned a health club, which is an interesting backdrop to, you know, becoming a burgeoning alcoholic and drug addict. And he had quit his, you know, job in corporate steel in order to run this business of his own, which was really unusual. Or back then, people did not have, you know, the entrepreneurial hustle was not a thing so much then. I mean, sure, you had mom and pop stores, but, you know, quitting a corporate job to open a health club was weird. But I was definitely around fitness trends from a young, young age, but very frustrated by my mom. What I saw as my mom's sort of passive acceptance of all the things that my dad wanted to do. And I kind of thought, I'm going to do the opposite, you know, which I don't even know. You know, kids are. The thing is, is I had started exercising from a young age when I was very young. I was trying to impress my dad, who was always into fitness. And I would try to run and pretend I was sporty. And I'm not a super sporty person, but if I don't exercise, my body is almost like I rusts or something, you know, is just doesn't function well. I discovered that really in my thirties when I moved to Qatar, which is, you know, the subject of my first book, American Lady Creature, where I wind up living in the Persian Gulf. I've been working, not working out and just getting more and more miserable. I don't have one of those stories where, you know, there's a massive change in like, I didn't go from being one size to a radically different size, nothing like that. It was really more a question of how I felt in my body. And it was terrible. I mean, I'd been sober for a long time at that point, so it wasn't even that. It was just working all the time and not exercising made me miserable. And the gyms there held ladies hours while this lady was working so I couldn't get to the gym. So I started doing yoga. And that really, I would say, changed the trajectory of my life. That happens to a lot of people with yoga. It's a lot of mental things that go on when practicing yoga. If you get involved with the books and the Buddhism doesn't have to necessarily be deeply, but it definitely can make changes in your life. I also know that you got involved in meditation pretty deeply. Do you think that that had an effect on where your life went? Well, absolutely. So when I was living in Qatar, my my husband ended our marriage over the telephone. He had gone there with me. I actually took the job there in order to try to help boost his career as a freelance journalist. You know what better place than to be located at the center of world news, right? In 2004, the Persian Gulf was hot in terms of all of the world News events that were happening there when he left. The idea was he was going to go restarting lives back in the United States. And then he called and he told me he wanted a divorce. Actually, I called him. It's very intense. I like to say our marriage ended a lot. Like the whole part of the marriage was, you know, I he basically said it and I made it happen. But there I was. I have this corporate job. I mean, I was teaching yoga already at that point, not as a certified teacher, but as just a very eager student, because when I knew my husband would be leaving, I signed up to teach this class because I knew that I needed something more to do. Because there's a nondrinkers who doesn't really like to shop. It was not a lot for me in the Persian Gulf to do. And so I went to India initially and got this yoga teacher training because to me it felt like a way of showing I hadn't been just completely mowed down by this divorce. I was not just quitting my job and, I don't know, going back home and gosh, what would I do at home? People would be like, So where's your husband? I mean, I don't know. You know, I didn't want to face all that. So I, I signed up for a yoga teacher. I was never going to teach yoga. I mean, come on. I was 40 years old. Who's going to want to take fitness classes from a 40 year old woman, let alone yoga? You know, I just. It just seemed ridiculous. Me Which is funny because, again, my dad had started this health club when he was around 40. And in a weird way, I was doing the exact same thing. He did the exact same thing, sort of starting my own business, but I didn't do it intentionally. I went to go take this yoga training and it was like it gave me a deadline, like a reason to finally get out of Qatar because I sort of like spun around in Qatar for another nine months. After he left, I was like, Oh, I know what to do. What am I going to do? You know, I get there and through all this I was a smoker, right? I had been smoking. And, you know, I thought, I'm never going to be able to quit because I tried all kinds of ways to quit. You know, the pill patches, the gum sometimes all three at once. I get to Qatar and I have a miracle. I just quit smoking. I do. A few days went by and I before I realized, like I am a cigaret in a few days and I have this carton of Dunhill that I hang on to and I'm taking it with me everywhere because I think, well, this madness will end and I will want to go back to smoking. And it just never did. There have been a very few times where I have thought about smoking. Very few in the last. I mean, gosh, how many years has that been now? 26 to now? You know, I don't believe I could ever quit on my own. I truly think that was a miracle. And and so that's what set off this frenzied spiritual search that became, you know, the second book, Blissful Thinking, because I definitely needed something more out of my life. And I was afraid I was going to potentially relapse because my heart was just broken. And I knew that the answer was more spirituality. And I thought, well, if if India can serve up this miracle of quitting smoking, what happens if I apply myself just a little? And that's, you know, basically what the book is about, what brought you there and kept you there was your search for spiritual while. No. Yes. Yes. And after your divorce, you were heartbroken. I'm sure you feel emotionally broken. Were you looking for another relationship? Well, gosh, no, not I mean, not in the short term, that's for sure. I didn't start actually thinking about a relationship until almost probably two years after that marriage ended. I was in unions. I remember it very clearly. It's actually a scene in the book. I was in the Whole Foods in Union Square, New York City. And this couple was just they're just standing in a grocery line and, you know, they're sort of being affectionate and like rubbing each other's backs or whatever, looking at the candles and talking about like how it's going to go in their living room. And I just was seized with this just like I miss having a partner. I came to the realization that no matter how crappy my marriage went, I wanted to get married again. I would like to have that kind of relationship Now. By the end of this story, I could not have cared less if I got married again. But that was a long journey to get there. It didn't mean that I didn't want to have relationships, but it didn't need to look like that. That set off that other kind of longing. And again, I had I was operating under, you know, that assumption that so many of us have, Angela, where we think I seem more normal if I have a relationship, people think something's wrong with me if I don't have a relationship. And especially if your marriage ends in spectacular fashion, it's like, Whoa, son must really be wrong with her. He had a run screaming into the night like he had to travel eight time zones away before he could let her know that it was over. And then there was no explanation. You know, it wasn't like we lived in the same city or we saw each other. We had absolutely no reason to connect except, you know, some like minor financial things. And that was, again, I felt like I had to just chase and down and get that stuff to happen. And it was was such a drag and yet so difficult. But did you feel like he left you because of things going on with you, or did he leave you because of things going on with him? Well, I mean, that's really the great mystery at the center of of both books. Really. I had no idea. I mean, he did grant me one one out was because I forced his hand, like I took home his dogs. And from Qatar to the U.S., he granted me an hour long meeting to pick up his dog. And he basically said he didn't feel like being married anymore. Now, at this point in my life, I can say we were not a good match. But then, I mean, I grew up moving around a lot. And like I said, I was resentful of how it looked to me, like my mom was just kind of going along with everything that my dad wanted. So it wasn't an example. It wasn't a couple. It was not a like a hashtag couples, right? I never thought I would get married or have children, you know? And I was pretty well convinced that if I called my mother and said, you know, I'm I'm going to be out hard driving career woman never married to nothing but my my job and never having children gentlemen like to go achieve like she never she never made the house or you look like it was any fun right? She she was a very typical seventies suburban mom. I mean you know Erma Bombeck famously did a survey of her audience asking if you could have children. Now, knowing what you know now, would you do it again? And like 78% of the respondents said no. And I think my mom would have been among those you know, you have to remember, birth control wasn't legal. Abortion was definitely not legal. You know, it was very different times, except it was also very much the same times. We saw a few more options, like birth control is more accessible to unmarried women. But other than that, we're regressing. We're going in the wrong direction. It'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, she didn't have a choice. She wanted me to have choices and ultimately I realized that, you know, the choices that I would want. I do like being in relationship, but, you know, it doesn't need to look completely standard, although at this point in my life, I am in, you know, a heteronormative standard kind of relationship. I'm a new grandma. Okay. That's all pretty interesting stuff to see how your your mom's life was going in her marriage with the decisions that she made or she was forced into. And so you wanted to live your life differently, we see. So that you could make your your own decisions about where your life was going to go. One of the things that you said you would like to talk about is what early menopause led you to discover about internalized misogyny. Explain that. Well, first, I will say that's really the theme of the first book. You know, how living in one of the world's most patriarchal cultures really showed me how I had internalized misogyny. But I didn't I didn't. That sentence is not in the book. It's definitely a story. But for me, you know, when I came back and again, this is going way back again to the first book, this other book just came out, but the first book, when it came, before it came out, when I first came back to the States from Qatar, this was when Hillary Clinton was running against Barack Obama for the nomination for the Democratic Party nomination. And we also had John McCain just announcing Sarah Palin becoming his vice presidential choice, which is interesting because if you think about it now, they don't announce that soon. They're not bringing that up to the table. But anyway, all over the media, it was Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. They were presented as our options. Right? You can be a bitch or you can be a bimbo. That was it. And I would tell people, I'm just back from Qatar and they'd be like, Oh, how can you stand it there? Now, feminism also at the time was considered a dirty word, so, Oh, happy just in living there. They treat women so badly there. And I think and you really think we're doing so much better here. You know, one of the many things that that happened through the course of my time in that book, I had to deal with a lot more sexism and bad behavior, you know, of bad behavior. I was sexually harassed by a Western colleague and then basically told I should brush it under the rug by my Western colleagues. And I was treated much better. I had much more interesting interactions with the people from Qatar, the Qatari, not necessarily Qatar. I mean, there are a lot of expats. They might have been Yemeni or from Bahrain or you know, there's there are a lot of expats there, not a lot of American expats, which was another thing. So I could be in a room with all the people who maybe English was their native language, but some of them were first from New Zealand, so then from the UK, Ireland, Scotland, like, you know, it would be a it was a very interesting time and place anyway. So when I, when I got to the point of it was time to, you know, figure out where I was like the whole idea of misogyny and how that fit into the book. At 38 years old, I moved there when I was about 38, and when I was 39, I, I hadn't had my period for a year, but I had also been very busy working. So I went to the doctor at the urging of a friend. It hadn't occurred to me because I was so busy and he said, He's the one who ultimately told me that I was in menopause. I mean, this was after a surgery to take out a cyst in my ovary. And then after that he was like, Oh, by the way, you're in menopause. And you know, what is it? Because the surgery that was what was happening. And I was shocked. You know, I had been angry, I had been sweaty and I had been overwhelmed, but I was living in a desert culture where the language was on my own. You know, it was hot. People didn't understand me when I spoke. And my friends and family live eight times on the way. This is very much mimics menopause. Like I had no idea that I was in menopause. So I woke up to the the fact of being menopausal and, you know, then my husband left. We at first we tried to actually like last gasp, have kids and we did a little IVF and that didn't work out. And, you know, then he left and I was in a country where it's illegal to date, so I had to rediscover who I was as a woman within the confines of this culture. And I really realized how I had, as I said, internalized misogyny, because, for instance, you know, I when the dust kind of settled, I was like, Oh my God, I I'm going to turn 40. I can't have kids, and I'm divorced. Like, who is going to want me now? Who's going to want to date me? And I had to recognize, like I had long been criticizing the country culture for valuing women primarily as wives and mothers. And I was like, I do the same thing. I just decorate it a little differently. You are interesting, but so telling you I read your blissful thinking is very, very good. I recommend that highly to the listeners, so I'm going to have to read the first one. Now it's free on Kindle Unlimited if you have that so parcel. So living in a in a culture where you're not allowed to date, even as an American, I mean, you have to abide by their rules, otherwise they look down on you. Yes. Oh, it's more than looking down. They'll kick you out like they're kidding around. Yeah. The penalties are stiff for cultural infractions. And how long did you live there? Three years. And you're not allowed a date. So where does that take you? Where does that take your mind? You're a young woman. How could you not date? What would you do? I did not date. I mean, first of all, one of the things that you have to keep in mind is the husband I like, he left. So I actually went back and did a another job there in date. But you're also very consumed with your work. When I was there the first time, he had been there for about a year and a half, and then I was there for about another year after he was gone. So, you know, I was not really in the mood to date. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't want sex. Those are two different things. But I would travel to have sex. I love the country. You know, when you're traveling, this is the great thing. This is why so many post-divorce memoirs are about travel, because, you know, you go traveling and you're in a different place and you get to try on different personalities and you meet lots of people if you're traveling alone. I mean, I think that if I had traveled with other with groups or something, I would not have met nearly as many people or add nearly the variety of experiences that I had. But because I went everywhere by myself, I met a lot of people. And so, no, I didn't. I didn't date. I did have a torrid affair with a coworker, but he had a girlfriend who he was doing a long distance relationship with. Again, this is all in the book, so I don't know if that answers your question or not. Yeah. Okay. So also you do it secretly. I guess. There's always secrets. More fun that way, right? Okay. So you ended up visiting different cults. Yeah. So when I left Qatar, I and went to India. Now there's a couple of different things. One, and I talked about this in the book, Amanda Mantel's book called Cultish, which defines cults kind of as any group that sets itself off by a means of language. And I think that's a very interesting way to look at it. And when you think about it that way, we all participate in a number of cults. And I think the reason for me it's really important to talk about that is because it's very easy to otherize people who end up in cults, right? Well, that would never happen to me. But, you know, you send them to an Orange City class and they're talking about their splats and they're you know, they're they're squats and they're burpees. And you know, you get a whole language going. And how is that a cult? Well, you might think, okay, people in cults, they live together and they dress weird and they don't have any money. And that's not true of every single cult, Right. So, you know, it's just a framework that I quite like. And I think one of the reasons that I didn't get sucked in, as it were, to any of the cults that I have belonged to, although I still belong like Orange Theory is one of my cults. I and yoga is definitely one of my cults. But the reason that I haven't ever gotten really sucked in is one thing that my mother did give me was a terrific love of language. And I just I can't like, like hokey linguistic conventions kind of at a certain point, I'm like, Oof, no, no, thank you. Like, I can't I can't sign up for that. So that probably saved me. But yeah, I went to you know, you could say the first one was the ten day silent meditation that I did at the beginning of the book. That's a kind of occult meditation. And in New York I visited some different, you know, I felt like chanting groups were a bit of a cult. And then when I went back, that's when I went to the sex cult, which, you know, this is the other thing that I like to say about cults is that they don't become wildly popular because they have nothing of interest to offer. Right. So Osho is a very famous cult. This is the cult that I visit, the sex cult that I visit in the book. And it was made more currently well-known by this recent documentary called Wild, Wild Country. And it was all about the Rajneesh. She's so Shree Raj. One magnet was the it was his name before he sort of became this eponymous guru, Osho, which is what his place in India is called in Puna. But here in the States, which I had no idea about this, he had established an outpost in Oregon and that outpost really went off the rails. I mean, they basically tried to take over the governance of a small town because they were having trouble doing the kinds of things that they wanted to do within that town. So they wanted to be in charge. You know, if there's making rules, they're not going to get in trouble. And they tried to do things like put salmonella poisoning into the unless it was botulism, but I think it was salmonella into the local food bar. And, you know, and I'm say like they really went for it. And the thing about it that was, you know, again, unbeknownst to me at the time. But the thing about Osho, his message essentially this is what was compelling is that, you know, we should love everybody and that's compelling. And he again, you can take a look at it from his background as a as an Indian man, which is a very repressive, sexually repressive culture. You know, he thought that sex was the closest that we get to the state of no mind when we're in orgasmic the orgasmic state. But this is not why I went. The reason that I wanted to go to Osho was for family, constellation therapy and the world of other alternative healing modalities that they had. They're like under one. It's like this smorgasbord of alternative wellness, right? You couldn't get cranial sacral massage in the morning and you're doing entire Vedic astrology course in the afternoon, and then you do the mystic Rose meditation at night. So you can just go from one thing to the other all day long, which I did and I kind of loved. But then, you know, after I'd been there for a while and nobody was coming on to me, I was like, Wait a minute, what's the while? How long did you stay? I was there for just two weeks. But, you know, believe me, it starts happening quickly. You're like, Wait a minute, Why is no one going on to me? Okay, So is that why you ended up not staying at any of the Colts? Because ultimately it was okay for the time that it lasted, but then on to the next thing? Well, no, I think that it's the hokey linguistic conventions. Right. Talking that the language that they use, it's just it's it's not meaningful to me. It stops being meaningful when everybody's parroting each other. It sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I don't take it seriously. So I can't I can't buy into it. So I find cultish language to be off putting. I think it's one of the reasons why I don't like, like a boot camp style training crusher. I like all that's like, okay, okay, please just let me figure it out myself, okay? Something and some people really respond to that, you know, the energy of a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. They modeling and it's not like I judge and I think that that's a thing. And that's one of the reasons why it can be easy to end up in a cult is if you think that that's not the kind of thing that will ever happen to you. Are you still teaching yoga today? Well, you know, I've taught a couple of yoga workshops and since my this new book came out, but really with the pandemic, I kind of stopped teaching yoga. It was really challenging, as you know, or maybe I don't know, I don't know. I work for the Home Shopping Network. I'm a I'm an on air guest, so I don't often have control over my schedule. So it makes it very challenging to teach yoga when you can't do it on a consistent basis. And what about your meditation practices? Do you still go back to that? So it's very interesting and I think I'd share with you, but I'm not sure and I need to I need to revise this piece. I made a quiz about figuring out what your ideal meditation style was based on, you know, answers to questions. And the quiz would show you to basically a meditation style after you answer the questions. But then at the bottom, it's like, or you might like one of these and you go through the process. And what's interesting about that for people is that and for me is that part of the discovery was, oh, I don't have to just do silent meditation and be miserable because, you know, Silent Mentation in some sense was like the sex cult, right? I was like, Why? Everyone's finding their bliss? I'll all I can find is my inner bitch. And she is pissed, right? My inner Buddha was like nowhere to be found. Now, ultimately, and it was at another cult. I found my inner Buddha and it was a shock, but that's how buried it was. We all have all of these stories that we layer on top of our innermost selves to kind of put ourselves out there in the world. Mine just happened to be buried super deep, and when I got to it, it was a real revelation. Again, I didn't want to say that either because you talk about that a little bit more, how you were able to break down all those barriers to. Well, I think it was the culmination of all those years of searching for me. Some people, they can sit in meditation and connect with it right away, but I have a very hardwired, stubborn storytelling gene, I guess. And it's it it just covers over things. What I recognized was this sense inside myself that was free of stories, and it was at the Balanced View center in Goa. And she had been talking about their big thing is to observe everything that happens as data, not to take it personally, just to see everything as data. And when you allow that, you can allow yourself to just be you don't have to change anything. You don't have to modify anything. And this is all news to me. I was like, what? I because my entire search had been, Oh my God, what is wrong with me and how can I fix it so I can never make these mistakes again? And here is this person saying, you don't have to change anything. You don't have to do anything differently. There's nothing inherently wrong with you. Now, surely I had heard these messages before, like I had heard someone say something similar to that. This is just what resonated for me at that time. And I was able then I guess it it induced enough of a calm in me that I was able to be conscious of that. Once you're conscious of the of the inner Buddha, I think that you can tap into it much more readily. So once you have tapped into it, then I think you should you should go for it. And I definitely like their practice, which is taking short moments where you just release all storytelling and tap into your inner Buddha. But then I do lots of other practices too. I love yoga and Nedra to kind of full scale body relax. I love doing walking, meditation, moving meditation, eating, meditation, and sometimes still silent meditation. But I no longer labor under the belief that somehow silent meditation is superior and that the worse I feel, the better it probably is. Do you still find yourself layering on the storytelling? In what context? So everyday life, things that go on? Or do you try to stay? For sure I catch myself doing that right. It's just a it's a habit. But I don't believe it anymore. I think that's the big difference. Like, I used to really believe it. The first thing that punctured it was when I, you know, when I got into recovery and there's a famous passage in the seminal recovery text called Alcoholics Anonymous or referred to as the big book, where he talks about We saw the world is this is paraphrase, you know, we saw the world is our theatrical stage. And if only everybody would do what we wanted them to do of the players would move into the scenes as we dictate, you know, that sort of a thing. And I thought, Oh shit, I do that all the time like that, really. You know, I really had this belief, like I was some sort of master marionette player or something. And so that was a big that was a big puncture to that, you know, that was when I was 19, but that still wasn't the final the FE accompli. I think really a lot of the experiences of this book were what led to puncturing my belief that I'm right, you know, and even just living in another culture, you live in another culture and you see the world news reported from somebody else's perspective. And I'm not talking about your reading one story. I mean, everything all the time is this other cultures perspective and the next thing you know, you're seeing things differently, too. I remember I'll never forget I'm in the airport in Germany and this woman walks by in a mini skirt and like a halter top. And I thought, Cover yourself. You know what I mean? Because I was so used to being in a culture where women were wrapped head to toe in black and fully covered. And I also dressed very covered up because I didn't want to be judged for exposing flesh on my butt. It's like I just I don't want to deal with it, you know? That's not the hill that I want to die on today. So many other things. Now you do a story telling once a month, a live storytelling. I do, yeah. And you have one coming up November 30th. I know. This week. Yeah. I'm anxious to get on there and listen to that. Tell us about your storytelling. What? Well, you can't really listen to it. It's a live event. So, Angela, you got to come visit St Petersburg to go to the show. How am I? I love the storytelling community that we have here because it's all about telling true personal stories. You know, when I first moved to New York, I got involved with The Moth. I eventually became a story coach for them, and I just loved the community that it built. Because when when people go on stage and tell true personal stories, it's not just, Oh, here's a troll under the bridge. It was an interesting story, my friend. It's more like, Oh my gosh, that happened to me too. You know, my my, I had a boyfriend dumped me just the same way or whatever it is. And then people can connect and relate off the stage. It made New York a very small city for me and just loved it. And it was a very casual, you know, vibe. It wasn't like you had. It's not like famous people are going on stage and doing a performance, you know, a story That's part of the the beautiful thing about this community or the storytelling community in general is when you encourage people to just share their stories, it's different. You know, it's not a performance. It's not meant to be performative. So you get to know people. But this show, the thing we're doing this month is adulting. Next month we'll do family. I always do some variation on that around the holidays, but nothing too loaded, you know. And so more than one person talk. Oh yeah so it's I mean similar I don't know if you're familiar with the moth but when you go to a slam, you everybody puts their name into some sort of container and bucket hat or whatever, and the names get called out at random and it lasts for a certain amount of time. Okay, So Saint Petersburg and how long do you usually talk for? Well, everybody gets 5 minutes to share their true personal story. Yeah, it's it's a great container one because it's it's challenging, right. Yeah. But two, it's also great if you're in the audience and somebody is telling a story and it's not going anywhere and you're thinking, oh my gosh, when's it's going to be over? You know, nobody's going to take the mic hostage except me. I probably taught the most. Okay. To maintain your your sobriety. Okay. This is something that you have to work really hard at throughout your entire life or has it become easier for you? Yeah, I don't know if I would call it hard work. I mean, hard work as being an active alcoholic or and drug addict, Right? That's hard work. Yes. Recovery is something that you always have to or, you know, I always want to be mindful of because it's never going to be okay. Now, we we you do it all the time, that one. That's just not how it works. So from that aspect. Yes. And then, you know, when you look at long term recovery, the challenges are very different than they are. Like when you first get sober, it's like, oh, God, where's my car? Is that my urine? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, when you're like, at this point I have 27 years of sobriety and the challenges are more like, Oh, I wish I didn't say that thing than my mother in law. Do you know what I mean now? But it can it can create the same level of discomfort like that. That level of discomfort is what makes it difficult to to process. So for me, I need to not be in that state of discomfort caused by my own bad, unfortunate, ill timed actions. That's not the same as saying you not ever feel uncomfortable because, you know, risk taking is all about feeling uncomfortable. And discovery is about a willingness to feel uncomfortable. I would never put out a book if I was not willing to feel uncomfortable. Right. Because nothing will make you feel uncomfortable. Like, you know, somebody review of your book. Well, that's part of growing and learning, right? And moving on to the next thing. Feeling uncomfortable and getting gas up and dealing with the discomfort. Oh, yeah. So now you're living with your your dog Hartley and your favorites. I hear you've got Hartley with you, too. Yes. Keep our pets close by. Yes. He's smaller, though, so you can't really see him. He is fading himself right now. And I like the way you call your husband. Your favorite husband. Yes. That's so far. So far. So far. And where did you find him? Did you find him abroad or did you find him at home? No, actually, we met here in Florida, which I certainly would never have imagined. You know, and it's I kind of glancingly referred to it at the end of the book, but not really head on, because it was really important to me not to tell a story where the happily ever after is based on getting into some other relationship like that to me is incredibly not satisfying because I think, well, you might just end up having the same problems that you had before. And like I said, I start off thinking that's going to kind of show that I have overcome my obstacles. And I at the end, I recognize really that that is is not an indicator of obstacles in life, is to have a relationship. It's just it's just not the most important thing is to have that comfort in your own skin, no matter what is happening, because uncomfortable things will always be happening, whether it is to improve yourself by working out or taking a different job or, you know, staying put even. And that can be very uncomfortable. Yeah, life is a journey and no matter where it takes us, we have to work our way through it. And that's part of it. That's a big part of it. It's not always about the destination and getting to the end, because then the what? The journey has to continue. That's right. Yeah. All right. I always like to ask the question if you would like to give a goal to our listeners to reach for so that they can live their best life, what would you like to share with them? Well I mean, I really think that knowing yourself is extremely important to being in communion with other people. And so I would encourage you to either read a book or watch a movie or go to a storytelling show and immerse yourself in the stories of someone who is maybe doesn't look like you or maybe experiences different cultures than you. And I think that's really important in today's society is to see the world from other people's points of view, because I think that at the bottom we all want the same things. And one of the reasons that the world is so broken is because we all get so invested in these stories or how they manifest so you and I both might care very deeply about the safety of our families, let's say. But, you know, you have brown hair. I have blond hair. You're wearing short sleeves. I'm wearing long sleeves. You know, we can make decisions about each other based on those things. And they're completely based on only our things. You know, if I'm making decisions about you based on what I think without checking in with you, I'm really just as we like to say, I'm out of my mind. Right? When you're having conversation with someone who isn't in the room, you're out of your mind. So but I have seen through doing this storytelling. So for years, people change so dramatically, myself included, because of what they learn not only about other people or other cultures, but then selves also as a as a result of seeing the world through somebody else's eyes. Do you still travel a lot? Let's see. We try. It's not the same. So my partner is he's got a regular job where he gets a couple of months off, a couple of weeks off, sorry. And so I don't go off for months at a time. But you know that that's happened before I met him, really after my last trip to India in the book. And we hadn't met. It was years before we would meet. And, you know, I really also come to the realization like I probably never needed to go anywhere to have all of this. All of these things happen, right? Anything Can become an opportunity to learn and to grow if you're open to it. It just so happens some people seem to think that they're more open to it when they travel. I mean, I think a lot of people I'm going to put myself in this category, romanticize going someplace else as an opportunity to start over or somehow be different. But that's not what happens. You get there and you are still you. So, you know, I love traveling. We just got we went to Italy this year, which was really phenomenal. But we also we just went to Key West a couple of weeks ago, which was I loved it like, you know, it doesn't need to be. I'm going off to immerse myself in some other in some other culture, but I still really love it. And I am looking forward to the day when he and I can do some travel to, say, India or Thailand, because it is, I think, an important experience to be in a culture where the language doesn't even use the same letters that you do then. And so everything is your whole reality must shift in order to survive in that experience. That's the the mind in a completely different space, mind, body and spirits hearing body and spirits. Yes. Okay. So what's in the future for you? Well, I I'm writing a new book. It's called Florida Girls. It's a historical fiction novel. I'm hoping not to live a life that's memoir at all. I never thought I would write memoir, and now I've written to her. But I do love writing. I do love stories, and I love making point through stories. And one of the reasons I got a degree in journalism then I worked as a journalist for many years, and one of the reasons that I like liked working as a journalist was because there's the opportunity to tell stories. And I feel like now the best opportunity that you get to tell stories is in a book because when you read a news article, you're sort of like, bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. You know? And when you read something today that's online, you kind of want the gist. Whereas we're we're more willing to immerse into full length longer works. I think it's really the old certain stories like there's I couldn't even begin to to tell you about American lady creature or blissful thinking with the kind of depth that you get from reading the books. You know, it's just it's not a soundbite. The idea of like how I discovered how I had maternal internalized misogyny. Again, even though that's the theme of the first book, it's very difficult to isolate that thread which runs throughout the book and again, which is not a sentence anywhere in the book. And the second, it's how I internalized wellness culture and allowed it to not dictate what I thought it was supposed to look like in the book. Well, your book was very good, blissful thinking, and I'm going to go back and thank you for enjoying it. So we are going to read Your Lady Creature, and I'll be looking forward to your new book. When do you think that'll be coming out about Florida Girls? Sometime in the next year. I'm not sure when exactly. So soon, and hopefully I can get a little trip together. So I can come see our storytelling and say, Pete, that would be fun. All right. Well, so nice talking to you and sharing your story with. We like You. And yeah, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It’s all possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go.