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spreading. From TED and

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NPR, I'm

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Manusha Zamorodi. In

1:00

Northern California, in the 50s

1:02

and early 60s, all fourth

1:04

graders had to write their first research

1:07

paper. And you have a whole

1:09

semester to do it. One semester

1:11

was about Sacramento, our capital, and

1:13

one semester was about

1:15

birds. This is

1:17

best-selling author, Anne Lamott. So

1:20

my older brother, who did not like

1:22

school and was very bitter about

1:24

any homework he was asked to do,

1:26

had not started it. He'd had the whole

1:28

semester, and it was due that Monday. So

1:33

we were out at this one-room cabin we

1:35

had on the coast, and my

1:37

dad was trying to help him. And

1:40

they had photos of birds, they had

1:42

the National Geographic, they had Roger Torrey

1:44

Peterson and Audubon. But my

1:46

brother was crying because it was just such

1:48

a daunting project. And

1:50

my dad sat down next to him and

1:52

put his arm around him and said, just

1:54

take it bird by bird, buddy. Even

1:58

though Anne was just nine- years old

2:00

at the time, her father's words stuck

2:02

with her. That was the

2:05

best writing advice I've ever heard, that you

2:07

study about chickadees and then you write about

2:09

them for a little bit in your own

2:11

voice. Then you illustrate them. Then you think

2:13

about great pooh-hearons and you read what Audubon

2:15

has to say and then you put it

2:17

in your own words. And you've

2:19

really turned that into a metaphor for

2:21

starting so many things in our lives.

2:23

Everything. I mean, the American way

2:26

is that you should always know what you're doing.

2:28

You've made a decision and you should stick with

2:30

it. But the fact is that

2:32

no writer knows what they're doing until they've

2:34

done it. The way that

2:36

you get to the miracle

2:39

of writing is bird by bird. If

2:43

you know Ann Lamott, you've heard this

2:45

story before. If you don't,

2:47

it's a great introduction to her

2:50

because that phrase, bird by bird,

2:53

is also the title of one of her best

2:55

known books. Ann is

2:57

now the author of 20 books,

2:59

mostly filled with her own

3:01

memories of family, single

3:04

parenting, addiction, faith,

3:07

and forgiveness. For over

3:09

40 years, her work has touched a

3:11

nerve with so many people who

3:13

turned to her for wisdom and advice

3:15

on how to write, but also

3:18

how to live. And

3:20

so today on the show, an hour with

3:23

Ann Lamott as she marks

3:25

her 70th birthday, lessons

3:27

from her life, and more reflections

3:29

on the art of writing. Her

3:32

newest book is called Somehow Thoughts on

3:34

Love. But first, we need to

3:36

go back to bird by bird,

3:39

her bestseller that came out about

3:41

30 years ago. On

3:43

the very first page, she begins

3:45

with a description of her earliest

3:47

memories. I

3:50

grew up around a father and mother

3:52

who read Every Chance They Got, who

3:54

took us to the library every Thursday

3:56

night to load up on books for

3:58

the coming week. Most nights after

4:00

dinner, my father stretched out on the couch

4:03

to read, while my mother sat with her

4:05

book in the easy chair. And

4:07

the three of us kids each retired to

4:09

our own private reading stations. Our

4:12

house was very quiet after dinner, unless

4:14

that is, some of my father's writer friends

4:16

were over. My father was

4:18

a writer, as were most of the men with

4:20

whom he hung out. They were

4:23

not the quietest people on earth, but

4:25

they were mostly very masculine and kind.

4:28

I love them, but every so often one of

4:30

them would pass out at the dinner table. I

4:33

was an anxious child to begin with, and

4:35

I found this unnerving. I

4:38

love this because it's

4:40

such a California scene in some

4:43

ways, but it's also, you know,

4:46

you say you were anxious, you

4:48

were an anxious child to begin with. How did that

4:51

manifest itself? What were you like? Well,

4:54

first of all, my parents were very, very

4:57

unhappy together. And so I was on red

4:59

alert a lot of the time because I

5:02

didn't want to walk into any traps. I

5:05

had migraines by the time I was

5:07

five. So I think that would indicate

5:09

that there was an issue.

5:12

And then not long after, my mom

5:15

had my baby brother and I

5:17

just felt really positive

5:19

that I had to help raise him

5:21

because my parents were so

5:24

preoccupied and so out

5:26

of their league in terms

5:28

of trying to keep their marriage together. My dad

5:30

was a writer, so he was trying to keep

5:32

the family together financially. There was

5:34

so much going on. So I took on raising

5:36

the baby brother at five years and 40

5:38

pounds or whatever. And

5:40

that did not reduce my anxiety.

5:44

You worried about him a lot. I worried about

5:46

him a lot. I thought about him dying

5:49

all the time because people weren't

5:51

paying attention. And I

5:53

had terrible dreams of him drowning.

5:55

I mean, I can still vividly

5:57

remember a dream. And I think I'm six or seven.

6:00

And I can remember the details of

6:02

the trees of this dream I dreamt

6:04

when my younger brother was just a

6:07

little one. Do you

6:09

remember when you started to realize that

6:11

the observation, the vividness

6:13

of dreams, the remembering of small,

6:15

small details, that they were all

6:17

fodder for writing? Was that from

6:19

the beginning, just because of your

6:22

dad encouraging you to do that? Or was

6:24

there a moment where you're like, oh, look

6:27

at me, I'm actually really good at this?

6:29

That's a good question. I

6:31

think it really molded me into a person

6:33

who had a lot of fear about whether

6:36

or not the world was even safe. The

6:39

world never felt safe to me from kindergarten

6:41

on because I got bullied so much and

6:43

I responded by getting

6:45

a sense of humor. I did discover that

6:47

the best way to fight back was to

6:49

come up with the right retort. And

6:52

then I went to college when I was 17 and

6:54

dropped out when I was 19 at the end of

6:56

my sophomore year. I

6:59

was writing little pieces for the college

7:01

paper. I went to Goucher College in

7:03

Maryland and I just wrote about being

7:06

young women at this feminist college

7:08

coming into our own and they

7:11

were pretty funny. I

7:14

understood that if I wrote this way, people

7:17

liked it. You

7:19

got a book deal in your early

7:21

20s, right? Your first one? Uh-huh, for

7:23

Hard Laughter, my first novel. And that

7:25

was about your father's death. And I

7:27

think what strikes people also so much

7:29

about your writing is how shockingly

7:31

honest you are about your life. Did

7:34

you feel like this is just me on the

7:36

page? Were you writing for the reader or

7:38

were you writing for yourself? Well,

7:40

my father got sick with a metastasized melanoma

7:43

in his brain when I was 23

7:45

and he was still the

7:47

center of our family. My brothers and I

7:49

just adored him. He was like

7:51

our higher power. And

7:54

he got sick and he wasn't going to live. And

7:57

I Went to the library and I

7:59

looked everywhere. talk to the research librarians

8:01

for books about families coming through cancer

8:04

and it just wasn't Sarah doesn't Nineteen

8:06

Seventy Seven? you didn't say the word

8:08

cancer. that's why And hard laughter. My

8:10

Dad and are really dear friend Susan

8:13

like to sit around at the cafe

8:15

and Baleen and they'd say the word

8:17

cancer really loudly. To each other to

8:20

make people uncomfortable, Dad would say

8:22

oh Susan, how is your cancer

8:24

is a so well chance my

8:26

cancer is not as bad as

8:28

I think that was just last

8:30

week. how is your town since

8:32

And so I started writing a

8:35

book that might be helpful to

8:37

people in whose family they were,

8:39

was with somebody with a really

8:41

significant kind of cancer and pupil

8:43

them in the books. Insists on

8:45

thirty five hundred copies in. Hardback

8:48

didn't wasn't a big seller, but people

8:51

came. Up to it's I got

8:53

the kind of feedback that made

8:55

me think wow and I tell

8:57

this these stories that you're not

9:00

supposed to say out loud. it's

9:02

a guest people who are going

9:04

through that same. sort of thing. To

9:08

we talk about your literal process of

9:10

writing, There's a passage again and bird.

9:12

By bird that I'd be so grateful

9:15

if you read for us, sir, it's

9:17

on page sixty four, sitting. This.

9:20

Is how it works for me. I. Sit

9:22

down in the morning and reread

9:24

the work I did the day

9:26

before and then I would gather

9:28

staring at the blank page or

9:31

off into space. I imagine my

9:33

characters and let myself daydream about

9:35

them. A movie begins to play

9:37

in my head with emotion pulsing

9:39

underneath it, and I stare at

9:41

it in a trance like state

9:43

until words bounced around together and

9:46

form a sentence. Than I do

9:48

the menial work of getting it

9:50

down on paper because I'm the

9:52

designated. typist and i'm also the person

9:54

whose job it is to hold the

9:56

lantern while the kid does the digging

9:58

what is six digging for? The stuff.

10:03

Details and clues and

10:05

images, invention, fresh ideas,

10:07

and intuitive understanding of

10:09

people. I tell you,

10:11

the holder of the lantern doesn't even know

10:13

what the kid is digging for half the

10:15

time, but she knows gold when

10:17

she sees it. Is that

10:19

still your process? What'd you say? Yeah, I'm

10:22

just writing a piece today and

10:24

it is exactly that process. That

10:27

you have an idea, I have people

10:29

that I'm writing about, and I stare

10:32

off into space and then some words

10:34

start bouncing around. And then I just

10:36

keep doing this paragraph by paragraph and

10:38

I dig around and and then all

10:41

of a sudden I might on

10:43

a good day have an insight about humankind.

10:45

And then I think of

10:48

a funny little story that just happened

10:50

that I want to remember. And I

10:52

get that done. I always have

10:54

a pen with me and I always have a pen

10:56

and almost all of my genes have little dots

10:58

of ink in the back pocket and you

11:01

just have to live with that. There

11:03

was a point where people started

11:05

asking you for advice about how

11:07

to write and that is the

11:09

book Bird by Bird. I'd

11:12

like to play actually some of

11:14

the advice that you put into that book that

11:16

you also shared in your TED

11:19

Talk about the act of writing.

11:22

If you don't know where to start, remember

11:24

that every single thing that happened to you

11:26

is yours and you get to tell it.

11:29

If people wanted you to write more

11:31

warmly about them, they should have behaved

11:33

better. You're

11:41

going to feel like hell if you

11:43

wake up someday and you never wrote

11:45

the stuff that is tugging on the

11:47

sleeves of your heart. Your

11:49

stories, memories, visions and

11:51

songs. Your truth, your

11:54

version of things in your own

11:56

voice. That's really all you have

11:58

to offer us. Publication

12:02

and temporary creative successes are something

12:04

you have to recover from. They

12:07

kill as many people as not. They

12:10

will hurt, damage, and change you

12:12

in ways you cannot imagine. The

12:15

most degraded and evil people I've

12:17

ever known are male writers who've

12:20

had huge best sellers. And

12:23

yet, it's also a miracle to get

12:25

your work published, to get your stories

12:27

read and heard. Just try

12:29

to bust yourself gently of the fantasy

12:31

that publication will heal you, that it

12:34

will fill the swift, cheesy holes inside

12:36

of you. It can't.

12:39

It won't. But writing can.

12:42

So can singing in a choir or

12:44

a bluegrass band. So can

12:47

painting community murals or birding or

12:49

fostering old dogs that no one

12:51

else will. It

12:54

really is like monk's work. You know, you sit down

12:56

in a little cell, turn

12:58

off the outside world, go deeply

13:01

inside, and you do

13:03

your work. No one's making

13:05

you write. No one cares if you write.

13:07

See you better. In

13:10

a moment, Anne Lamott guides us

13:12

through more of her life's work,

13:14

her writings on addiction, faith, and

13:16

parenthood. I'm Anusha Zamorodi, and you're

13:19

listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay

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before we get back to the show,

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I want to tell you about our

15:39

next bonus episode for TED Radio Hour

15:42

Plus. It's a follow-up

15:44

to this episode with author

15:46

Anne Lamott. Anne tells

15:48

us what she is reading and what

15:50

she thinks you should be

15:52

reading. For all you book nerds

15:54

out there, that's coming Wednesday. Not

15:57

a plus supporter yet? Well, join your fellow listeners to get

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your book. get all kinds of

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bonus content and all our

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episodes sponsor free. Go to

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plus.npr.org slash Ted or

16:08

give it a try in the Apple

16:10

Podcasts app. And thanks. It's

16:14

the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.

16:16

I'm Anoush Zamorodi. And

16:18

we are spending this hour with

16:21

the very wise and very funny,

16:23

best-selling author and Ted speaker, Anne

16:25

Lamott. Anne's 20th

16:27

book is called Somehow Thoughts

16:30

on Love. It's full

16:32

of essays about the various shapes that

16:34

love can take and some

16:36

of the hardest things people need

16:38

to go through to attain it.

16:40

Anne, thank you so much for being

16:43

here. Thank you so much. I'm so glad

16:45

to be here. So

16:47

you have written extensively

16:49

about your experience with

16:52

addiction, about learning to

16:55

forgive yourself, to care for yourself.

16:59

For people who maybe haven't read

17:02

along in that journey, tell

17:04

us about when and how that

17:06

started, your addiction and when it

17:08

started to heal. I

17:11

think I just came this way,

17:14

you know. I think I just

17:16

had and have a very addictive personality.

17:18

I can remember being

17:20

on rope swings with my girlfriends when I was

17:23

really young, spinning

17:25

around, spinning around. And the

17:28

girls would stop before they got dizzy

17:30

and I would want to keep going.

17:32

And I would love to get off

17:34

that rope swing and then stagger around

17:36

drunkenly. And then, as I said,

17:38

I was shy and

17:40

I was very bullied. And I

17:43

remember the first time I chugged a

17:45

beer with my best friend,

17:47

Lisa Campmier, and she'd gotten a couple

17:49

beers out of her father's little fridge

17:51

in the man cave. And

17:54

we chugged them and the whole world sprang

17:57

into color like in the Wizard of Oz.

18:00

Dorothy opens the door into Oz and

18:02

I could breathe again and I

18:04

felt pretty and I felt happy

18:06

and I was so much less self-conscious and

18:08

I just felt like, let

18:10

me at it, you know. And

18:13

I sort of for the rest of my life, the next 20 years,

18:15

I just chased down that feeling of

18:18

feeling pretty and whole

18:20

and fully alive.

18:23

And of course, it's kind of

18:25

a cliche, but what happens is there's

18:27

three parts. There's the really

18:29

fun stage of alcoholism or addiction and

18:32

it's just a gas, you know. And

18:34

then there's the fun and trouble stage where

18:37

it's happening too often and you're sick in

18:39

the mornings and you're embarrassing yourself or making

18:41

people mad at you or making bigger and

18:43

bigger mistakes. And then there's the trouble

18:45

stage and you're waking up

18:47

pretty consistently, really sick and confused

18:50

or I would wake

18:52

up in this animal disorientation of

18:54

where am I? Why

18:56

did I do that? What did I do? Having

18:59

to call around to people to see how the

19:01

night before had gone. But

19:03

I didn't let that stop me for

19:05

a long time. And then finally, July

19:08

7th, 1986, I woke

19:11

up and I just had this feeling. I was

19:13

sick and tired of being sick and tired and

19:15

I reached out to a sober

19:17

friend I knew, an older man. And

19:20

I said, I think I'm done. Did

19:22

it surprise you? Did you surprise yourself? No, I'd

19:24

known I was an alcoholic since my early 20s. And

19:28

everyone in my family drinks, both of my

19:30

brothers were alcoholics. All three of us have 37

19:33

plus years clean and sober. My

19:35

dad drank a lot, all of our family friends. And

19:38

so it was fine. It was like, it just meant

19:40

that you were sort of a bon vivant and

19:42

he laughed about the hangovers and you

19:45

laughed about, oh, I'm such a lush

19:47

and boy, it becomes unfunny.

19:49

And it's unfunny when you're alone with

19:51

yourself and you have

19:54

to come face to face with what it's doing

19:56

to your soul. In

19:59

your new book, which is called Somehow

20:01

Thoughts on Love, you

20:03

write about what

20:05

a man who was also in recovery told

20:07

you. Would you mind

20:09

reading that passage for us? When

20:13

I first got sober, a man told

20:15

me that upon waking every morning, instead

20:18

of reciting the standard flowery

20:20

recovery prayer, he said,

20:22

whatever. And at night, when

20:24

he turned off his light to go to sleep, he

20:26

said, oh well. In

20:29

between, he practiced simplicity. He stayed

20:31

sober, worked on acceptance, tried to

20:34

be of service to others, went

20:37

for nature walks, picked up litter,

20:39

made himself tea, and called it

20:41

a day. This is a perfect plan

20:44

for living. My way, trying

20:46

to nudge life and people into

20:48

submission with my sensitivity and excellent

20:50

ideas leaves me exhausted. The

20:53

antidote is to surrender, lay down my

20:56

sorry weapons, and step over to the

20:58

winning side of friends, service,

21:00

and fresh air. I opened

21:03

the windows. I savor the fresh air

21:05

whenever I remember to open them. The

21:07

fresh air breathes the whole house. Tell

21:12

me about this philosophy. Is it like the

21:14

thing where you're trying so hard to get

21:16

that job of your dreams and the minute

21:19

you stop caring, that's when you get the

21:21

offer? That kind of thing? Well,

21:23

it's not when you stop caring because that

21:25

might not ever happen. But for me, it's

21:28

when I unclench

21:31

my grip on it and when I

21:33

start to release and I start to

21:35

breathe again and I

21:37

just have faith

21:40

that whatever is supposed to happen is

21:42

going to happen because it's the only

21:44

thing that can happen a lot of

21:47

the time. It's when I release it

21:49

and stop breathing my hot

21:51

breath down its neck that

21:54

I often get what I

21:56

had hoped for. Do you

21:58

think that that's very American? as well, this idea

22:00

that like you just barrel through

22:02

and if you just knuckle down and want

22:04

it hard enough and work hard enough, you

22:07

could get whatever you want. Oh, definitely. That's

22:09

how I was raised. I call

22:11

it forward thrust, is that

22:13

you must always be advancing and on

22:15

the path of success. In

22:18

fact, I've written a lot about how part

22:21

of the reason our parents taught us that

22:23

way of life was because it would keep

22:25

you from falling in the abyss,

22:27

which might otherwise open up at your feet.

22:30

Now, the abyss is where

22:32

almost everything I've learned that's

22:34

really, really important about myself

22:36

and about life has

22:38

been found, but everything in my family

22:41

was about pretending there is no abyss

22:43

and that you just have to walk

22:45

fast enough and you'll be able to

22:47

outrun it. And so with

22:50

my students, with my son,

22:52

with my grandson, I really

22:55

encourage people to notice

22:58

the forward thrust and

23:00

that it really didn't serve them. Maybe it got

23:02

them into the school they wanted to get into,

23:04

but now they've got the rest of their lives

23:06

to live and how are they going to live

23:09

those precious, precious years? And

23:12

it starts to occur to you

23:15

that A, it never

23:17

really worked, you know, the forward

23:19

thrust that it didn't fill you up

23:21

and B, it really hurt you and

23:23

a lot of people along the way.

23:28

Can we turn the conversation to God,

23:30

please? Because

23:33

you are a devout Christian, you often

23:35

write about your beliefs, you

23:37

are a Sunday school teacher, but you did

23:40

not grow up that way. How

23:42

did faith enter your life? Oh,

23:45

well, that's a great question. I love it. My

23:47

parents were devout atheists, but they were also

23:50

devout liberal activists and I

23:52

end up being a believer who's

23:54

also a devout activist.

23:56

So I don't want your listeners

23:58

to get the idea that I'm

24:01

like the stereotype of

24:03

a Christian in America. It's like

24:06

Gandhi said, I love Christ, but I

24:08

just am worried about the Christians and I

24:10

feel exactly the same way. But

24:12

I always believed, it's funny because I just

24:15

had this thirst inside of me. And

24:18

because I was such a frightened

24:20

child in an insomniac and had

24:23

these migraines, when I got

24:25

in bed, I somehow

24:27

knew, don't ask me how, that

24:30

if I said in silence,

24:32

hello, something heard me and

24:35

I wasn't alone. When I

24:37

was in college, I took a lot of religion

24:39

and I took a lot of philosophy and I

24:41

can remember the day and I've written about it

24:43

when I made the decision to be

24:45

a seeker, to be a person who

24:48

tried to find a

24:50

faith for herself. And I was 18 years old. I

24:53

just started my sophomore year and we

24:56

were reading Kierkegaard in a philosophy class,

24:59

Fear and Trembling. And it's

25:01

such a wild piece of writing because

25:03

it's about like the

25:05

least lovely piece of the whole

25:07

Bible when God tells Abraham to

25:09

take Isaac, his precious young boy

25:11

up to the mountain and sacrifice

25:14

him. And he goes up there

25:16

and of course the angels meet him and say, well, God

25:18

has provided a lamb in the thicket and

25:21

Abraham goes back home to Isaac. But

25:24

the teacher talked about the leap

25:26

of faith that Abraham made in

25:28

that moment, that he decides for

25:30

faith instead of what he is positive,

25:32

it would be the right ingesting to do.

25:35

And I made the leap of faith that

25:37

day. It's very mysterious to me, but I

25:40

understood in that moment how

25:42

bleak and scary and dreary life

25:44

was gonna be if

25:46

I just didn't find something to connect

25:48

to that was bigger than my own

25:51

rattled pinball brain. And that

25:53

was when my search began. I

25:55

studied everything I could and I found

25:58

this kind of consignment store. faith

26:00

that was very, very ecumenical. But

26:03

I prayed all the time. I just prayed to

26:05

feel like I get to be here and that

26:08

I'm a person of value, whether or not the

26:10

world or the current boyfriend

26:12

saw me that way. And that

26:14

I prayed for peace. And I

26:16

didn't become a Christian. I mean,

26:18

I really resisted it. Oh, I

26:20

really resisted it. And then

26:22

one day I just surrendered, you know, I was

26:24

drunk. You were drunk?

26:27

Yeah, yeah, it was the year before I got sober. It was

26:29

1985. And I had been staggering over to

26:33

this flea market on Sunday mornings when I

26:35

was at my most hungover. And I had

26:38

staggered into this crummy

26:40

little church with a Charlie Brown tree

26:42

outside. And I was hearing some of

26:44

the old songs of the Civil Rights

26:46

Movement that my parents have been very

26:48

involved in, that were also gospel

26:50

songs from the Deep South. And

26:52

I never stayed for the Jesusy

26:54

parts, the sermon, but I loved the singing.

26:57

And the people never hassled me or tried to

26:59

get me to sign on to Bible study

27:02

or try to figure out who

27:04

shot the Holy Ghost. They just could

27:06

see that I was in pretty desperate

27:08

straits and they got me tea and

27:11

they gave me hugs and I left and

27:13

then I stopped leaving. And then I stayed. When

27:16

did you decide to come out as

27:18

a religious person? I wondered if you

27:21

worried about that and whether

27:23

you've ever felt the need to censor

27:25

yourself or you appeal

27:27

to a progressive liberal audience, which is

27:30

generally not religious. A

27:32

lot of people though in my audience are people

27:34

who ran screaming from

27:36

their cute little lives as

27:38

children and fundamentalist Christian

27:41

families who didn't think that there could

27:43

be a place in the

27:45

greater body for someone like them who

27:48

was maybe gay or who was just

27:50

a free spirit and who didn't

27:52

buy the doctrine and didn't buy

27:54

the harshness of fundamentalist

27:57

Christianity. So

28:00

I got sober and then I

28:02

started writing a book that ended up being

28:04

called Operating Instructions, a journal

28:07

of my son's first year. And that was

28:09

when I overtly came out as a believer

28:11

in someone who went to church and prayed

28:13

and did

28:15

the work. In

28:17

your TED Talk, you talk

28:20

about faith in a way that

28:22

appeals to me as someone

28:24

who did not grow up with any religion. And I

28:28

find it very moving. So let's listen.

28:31

Grace is spiritual WD-40

28:34

or water wings. The mystery of grace

28:37

is that God loves Henry

28:40

Kissinger and Vladimir Putin

28:42

and me exactly as

28:44

much as he or she loves your

28:46

new grandchild. Go figure.

28:51

The movement of grace is what changes

28:53

us, heals us, and heals our world.

28:56

To summon grace, say, help, and

28:59

then buckle up. Grace finds you

29:01

exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave

29:03

you where it found you. And grace

29:06

don't look like Casper the

29:08

friendly ghost regrettably. But

29:10

the phone will ring or the mail will

29:13

come and then against all odds, you'll get

29:15

your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter

29:18

really is carbonated holiness.

29:22

It helps us breathe again and

29:24

again and gives us back to

29:26

ourselves. And this gives us

29:28

faith in life and each other. And

29:32

remember, grace always bats

29:34

last. God

29:37

just means goodness. It's really not all

29:39

that scary. It means

29:42

the divine or a loving

29:44

animating intelligence, or as

29:46

we learn from the great

29:48

ditiriarata, the cosmic muffin. A

29:51

good name for God is not me. Emerson

29:56

said that the happiest person on earth

29:58

is the one who learns from

30:00

nature, the lessons of worship. So

30:02

go outside a lot and look up.

30:07

Every time it's the reset button, get

30:10

outside, you look up and it

30:12

starts everything over again. As

30:16

you mentioned, a few years after

30:18

you got sober, you became pregnant with

30:20

your son, Sam. He's now

30:22

in his 30s. At

30:24

the time you were unmarried and

30:28

the biological father didn't

30:31

want to have any part of it, but you decided

30:33

to go forward as a single mother and you

30:36

turned the experience that first

30:38

year as a single mother into

30:40

the book, Operating Instructions. This

30:44

book means a lot to me

30:46

because when I had my first

30:48

child, I was looking for

30:51

a book, just like you were looking for

30:53

the book about cancer that told the truth.

30:55

I was looking for a book about parenting

30:57

and what it was really like. There

31:01

was really, at the time, not that much out

31:03

there and I found your book and you, I

31:06

felt, just seen.

31:09

Thank you. Yeah, well,

31:11

it wasn't out there. It just wasn't

31:14

that a mother or a parent was

31:16

writing about how bored you can be

31:18

with an infant and how

31:21

exhausting it is all the time,

31:23

how ambivalent you feel. I

31:26

had a colicky infant and no money.

31:28

There's a line in the book

31:31

that said, oh God, now he's

31:33

raised his ugly reptilian head and

31:35

no mother had ever said that before. And

31:38

there was a line in the book about casually

31:41

thinking about bundling him up really well

31:43

and putting him in a basket outside

31:45

for the night so I

31:47

could get one night's sleep and get

31:49

a second wind. And it

31:51

just wasn't out there. And so I

31:54

wrote it as a love

31:56

story that some days you could die of love.

32:00

You could literally pass out from the love you

32:02

feel for this tiny creature and other

32:04

days are just too long. Throughout

32:10

his childhood, Sam makes appearances

32:13

in your books, but

32:16

he had his own troubles as

32:18

an adult. Can you tell us about

32:21

how you and Sam proceeded

32:24

into his young adulthood together and

32:26

what he faced? He

32:29

got very lost at

32:31

about 14 with drugs and alcohol. We

32:33

live in a really druggy part

32:35

of the world, Marin County, and I

32:39

could just see that he was going

32:41

down the elevator of addiction. The elevator

32:43

only goes in one direction. We've

32:46

always been very, very close and it got

32:48

to the point where I just

32:51

thought he was going to die. Nine

32:53

days before he graduated

32:55

from high school, this is how scared I

32:58

was, I sent him off to this

33:01

recovery place in the highest peak

33:03

of the Allegheny Mountains, 3,000 miles

33:05

away. He

33:08

was there for a number of

33:10

months and came

33:12

back and was dealing by the

33:14

next day. How

33:17

it happened was he had a baby when he was

33:20

19 and he was just

33:22

a mess. He would agree.

33:24

I stopped letting him be a mess at our house

33:26

with the baby. He and his baby

33:29

mama and baby had been living in San Francisco

33:31

and she and the baby had moved in with

33:33

me. I said to him, you can't

33:35

be here when you're crazy. You can't be

33:37

here if you're

33:39

using or if you've been drinking. I

33:42

threw him off the property. I

33:45

set that boundary and about 10 days later

33:47

he called and said that the guys

33:49

in the recovery community in San Francisco

33:52

had taken him under his wing and

33:54

he had one week clean and sober.

33:57

Now he's about to celebrate 13 years.

34:00

So, I mean, we have been through

34:02

it. We have been through the dark night of the soul

34:04

and those 13 years have not

34:07

all been easy, but we found our way

34:09

back into deep closeness

34:11

and respect and

34:13

that is predicated on having

34:15

released him to his

34:17

own life. When

34:20

we come back, Anne explains more

34:22

about how we can accept

34:24

that we can't always help the people

34:27

we love. I'm

34:29

Manousha Zomorodi and you're listening to

34:31

the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll

34:33

be right back. Support.

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36:27

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36:29

of food, sometimes all three. So

36:31

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up your week and listen to The Indicator

36:40

podcast from NPR. It's

36:42

the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

36:44

I'm Manu Szomorodi. We're

36:47

spending this hour with TED

36:49

speaker and best-selling author Anne

36:51

Lamott. Anne has written

36:53

in depth about overcoming her addictions.

36:56

And how she handled her

36:59

son Sam's struggles with sobriety,

37:01

too. These days, Anne says

37:03

readers often ask her, how

37:06

can they help their loved ones? And

37:08

Anne's response is, well, sometimes you

37:11

just can't. Here she

37:13

is on the TED stage. This

37:16

is the most horrible truth, and I so

37:18

resent it. But

37:20

it's an inside job. And

37:23

we can't arrange peace or lasting improvement

37:25

for the people we love most in

37:27

the world. They have to find their

37:29

own ways, their own answers. You

37:32

can't run alongside your grown

37:34

children with sunscreen and ChapStick

37:37

on their hero's journey. You

37:39

have to release them. It's

37:42

disrespectful not to. And

37:46

if it's someone else's problem, you probably don't

37:48

have the answer anyway. Our

37:51

health is usually not very helpful. Our

37:55

health is often toxic. And

37:58

help is the sunny side of control. Stop

38:02

helping so much. Don't

38:04

get your help and goodness all over

38:07

everybody. It

38:12

can be so hard to love

38:15

someone so much and

38:18

want to say something to them that you

38:22

know they're going to not want

38:24

to hear anyway. And sometimes

38:27

we can't help ourselves. What

38:29

do we do about that? Well

38:33

it's hard because most

38:36

of us have this generosity

38:38

in us but there's also the

38:40

insanity of thinking you can save

38:42

and fix and rescue people especially

38:44

those who don't want to be

38:46

saved or fixed or rescued. Like

38:48

when Sam was sick I

38:51

came to feel that I

38:53

had this rusted fish

38:55

hook in my chest and it was connected

38:57

by a fishing line to a rusted fishing

39:00

hook in his chest and

39:02

I had the delusional belief

39:04

that somehow that was keeping

39:06

him afloat and if I

39:09

got it out of my own chest he

39:12

would sink and die. But that's

39:14

a little bit crazy to think that

39:16

you're that powerful over another adult. So

39:20

at some point and

39:22

it really hurt I jiggled the rusty fishing

39:24

hook out of my chest and I waited

39:26

to see what would happen and he floated

39:29

you know and it's

39:31

a very very hard lesson to

39:33

release somebody to what might

39:36

be catastrophe

39:38

or even death and I had

39:40

to accept at some point that

39:43

my endless nagging and foisting

39:45

my attentions on him was

39:47

making everything worth and

39:50

I stopped doing it. I let him stay

39:52

in jail overnight because I thought

39:54

that if I fished him out he

39:56

was going to die and in fact the bail

39:58

up bond officer said said, you're the first

40:01

mother in Marin County who's ever said no.

40:04

But I think that if I bailed him out,

40:06

he might not still be here. I don't know.

40:10

We have talked a lot

40:12

this hour about how to

40:14

live, how to work, how

40:16

to parent, how to find

40:18

joy, grace. And that brings us

40:20

to another theme that

40:22

you often visit, which is

40:25

death. You

40:27

are honest about it. You

40:29

talk about your father's death, your best friend,

40:31

Pammy's death, and you talk about it in

40:34

your TED talk as well. It's

40:37

so hard to bear when the few people

40:39

you cannot live without die. You'll

40:41

never get over these losses. And no matter

40:43

what the culture says, you're not supposed to.

40:46

We Christians like to think of death as

40:49

a major change of address. But

40:52

in any case, the person will live

40:54

again fully in your heart if

40:56

you don't seal it off. Like

40:58

Leonard Cohen said, there are cracks in

41:00

everything and that's how the light gets

41:03

in. And that's how we feel our

41:05

people again fully alive. But

41:07

their absence will also be a lifelong

41:09

nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief

41:12

and friends, time and tears will

41:14

heal you to some extent. Tears

41:17

will bathe and baptize and hydrate

41:19

and moisturize you in the ground

41:21

on which you walk. When

41:23

you're a little bit older, like my

41:26

tiny personal self, you

41:28

realize that death is as sacred

41:30

as birth. And

41:32

don't worry, get on with your

41:34

life. Almost every

41:37

single death is easy and

41:39

gentle with the very best

41:41

people surrounding you for as

41:44

long as you need. You

41:46

won't be alone. They'll help

41:48

you cross over to whatever awaits us.

41:51

As Ramdha said, when all is

41:53

said and done, we're really

41:55

just all walking each other home. You

42:00

start by talking about how we deal

42:03

with our loved ones' deaths, but then

42:05

you talk about how we

42:07

are inevitably going to have

42:10

to face our own. Do

42:12

you feel like people talk about that enough? Well,

42:16

they talk a lot more than they used

42:18

to. I mean, I don't think death really

42:20

came out of the closet until the AIDS

42:23

epidemic, you know? And

42:25

then people were saying, my brothers are dying,

42:27

our sons are dying. What's

42:29

really happening, it took

42:31

that level of crisis and heartbreak

42:34

for people to start saying people die

42:37

and we're going to stay with them and we're

42:39

going to be very transparent about our feelings about

42:42

it. Our feelings about it are that it sucks

42:44

and we hate it and that we're

42:46

not going anywhere. We're not going to

42:48

leave them. And that response

42:52

made one of the biggest differences in this

42:54

country that I can think of when

42:56

people started being willing to talk

42:59

about both the devastation

43:01

and the ordinariness

43:03

of death. I do think

43:05

I've had a lot more exposure to death and I've

43:08

been there for a lot of

43:10

people who were dying. And in fact, when I

43:12

met my husband, Neil, in 2016, he was a

43:14

hospice volunteer. And

43:18

so we came together very easily in

43:20

that realm that we really weren't afraid

43:22

of it because we'd seen so many

43:24

people dying and that

43:27

it had never been terrifying. You

43:29

just mentioned your husband, Neil. You

43:32

mentioned him a lot in your new book.

43:34

What was it like being a newlywed for

43:36

the first time in your 60s? Well,

43:39

it was a surprise, I'll tell you that.

43:41

Because it had never been, I mean, when

43:44

I was younger and probably

43:46

in my 30s, I'd always really

43:48

hoped I would find my soulmate and we

43:50

would be married. But it

43:53

wasn't a huge pressure on

43:55

me or a shame. And

43:58

I was almost married a couple of times. times and

44:00

I just thank God and all the Saints

44:02

that I didn't marry those two men. And

44:07

then I met Neil after a

44:09

year of being on match.com or actually

44:12

there's a offshoot of Match

44:14

called Our Time which is for older

44:16

people and I met him and

44:18

we just we just got each other we

44:20

just got it. And I knew I

44:22

wanted to be with him. I knew that we could talk,

44:25

keep the conversation going for the rest of our lives.

44:28

And then one day we were

44:30

watching the US open, this is funny, and

44:33

but our cat had just passed a couple

44:35

of months ago that's important to the story. And

44:38

we were watching the US open on TV and

44:40

he said, can I ask you something?

44:42

And I said, oh sure, and I put the mute

44:44

on and I turned towards him and he said, will

44:46

you marry me? It literally

44:48

hadn't crossed my mind because we were so happy

44:51

together. And so I

44:53

looked at him because I was kind of in

44:55

shock and I said, well can we get another

44:57

cat? Because he's violently allergic to cats. And

45:00

he said, okay. And I said, alright

45:02

then I can marry you. And

45:07

then we got married in April of that

45:09

year, three days after I started getting Social

45:11

Security. I mean

45:13

the book somehow is not

45:15

just about romantic love, it's about all

45:17

kinds of different loves

45:20

that we can experience. But you

45:22

quote the poet William Blake who

45:24

said that I think it's we

45:26

are here to endure the beams

45:28

of love. Can you tell me

45:30

what that means to you? Yeah, thank you. Well the

45:33

book is actually hardly about

45:35

romantic love, a little bit

45:38

about my marriage, but it's

45:40

really mostly about the reality

45:42

for most of us that

45:44

despite our gravest

45:47

character defects and peccadillos

45:49

and annoying ways and

45:52

self-centeredness, we are just

45:55

deeply loved and

45:57

it's scary. It can be scary. If

46:00

you weren't raised in a

46:02

family for whom that was the

46:05

driving force, the

46:07

awareness of the love energy around

46:09

us and inside us and above

46:11

us and in nature and still

46:14

to come, it can

46:16

be scary to be

46:19

a person who loves

46:21

recklessly and who

46:23

allows people to love her. Blake

46:26

says we're here to learn to endure the beams

46:28

of love. Once you can

46:31

endure it, I think it goes without saying

46:33

that little by little, you will look for

46:36

it and welcome it. I

46:39

wonder if I could ask you to read one

46:41

last passage from somehow. It

46:44

kind of touches on all

46:46

the themes that you write about in your

46:48

body of work and that we've talked about

46:50

this hour. It's a

46:52

dream that you had one

46:55

night when you and Neil were

46:57

on a trip, a vacation in

46:59

Havana. It's a dream

47:01

about your father's girlfriend. And it's

47:04

intense. But I wonder, could you read us that

47:06

story? I was

47:08

walking in the fog afraid. The

47:10

fog is concealing the house where my

47:13

father lives with his last girlfriend, whom

47:15

we'll call Bev. Bev

47:17

and my brothers and I were, let's say,

47:19

not made for each other. It

47:21

was a miserable situation for her. She

47:24

and my dad started dating and four months

47:26

later he had brain cancer. He

47:28

moved in with her and she took care of

47:31

him for almost two years until

47:33

one day she asked him to leave when

47:35

he was at the mental level of a

47:37

five year old, barely mobile, showed

47:40

him to the road outside their house and called

47:42

me to come get him. She

47:44

had reached her limits. This

47:47

I understood but did not forgive. He

47:50

was in his bathrobe. My

47:52

19 year old brother and I took care of

47:54

dad the last five months of his life in

47:57

our one room family cabin. Bev

47:59

was there every day. helping and we did

48:01

the best we could. We were loving

48:03

and polite with each other. It was profound

48:05

and beautiful and it sucked. There

48:08

was subterfuge that I won't go into here,

48:11

and after he died, she spirited

48:13

away the one thing he left

48:15

behind besides us, which was a

48:18

magnificent jazz record collection. I

48:20

won't take her inventory here except to

48:23

say that if Bev had been a

48:25

contestant on this radio show I've invented

48:27

called Why They Hate You, the

48:30

panel would have focused on how she

48:32

viewed her frequently expressed opinions on all

48:34

of life as revealed truth. We

48:37

almost never saw her or spoke

48:39

again after Dad died. In the

48:42

dream, Dad appeared through the fog and said

48:44

that Bev didn't want me to see him

48:46

for a while because I always made everything

48:49

worse. Then Bev stepped

48:51

forth holding a gun and stood beside

48:53

him. It turned out I had a

48:55

gun too. I've never

48:57

even touched one in real life. I'm

49:00

pretty sure that if I so much

49:02

as held one, I would end up

49:04

shooting off my foot, but the dream

49:06

involved us chasing each other down. Shops

49:09

were fired. I was prepared

49:11

to kill her, but then she

49:14

sat down in a corner heaving for breath.

49:17

I didn't quite know what to do,

49:19

which is when historically I have experienced

49:21

the movement of grace in my life.

49:24

She sat with her knees pulled to her chest.

49:27

She looked defeated and she looked at me

49:29

adoringly. I thought about

49:31

shooting her. Instead, I

49:33

slowly, slowly bent down to my

49:36

knees and cradled her. I

49:38

said, I love you. My family

49:41

can never thank you enough. I stroked

49:43

her head like a mother or

49:46

a worried young daughter. I woke

49:49

up on my bed in the hot room

49:51

in Havana in shock. Bev?

49:54

Really? But wait, if

49:57

you believe Carl Jung, Everyone in

49:59

a dream... Stream is S So

50:01

this dream about a boss, he

50:03

greedy person who took the only

50:06

thing of value. my father owned

50:08

his records. This pride for woman

50:10

who saw it she was always

50:12

rights and always doing the right

50:15

thing was me darling evolved me.

50:18

I was bad and I was the

50:20

armed and furious Annie who stabbed her

50:23

foot and said he's mine and a

50:25

universal loose and I'm doing the right

50:27

thing. To.

50:29

Dream was saying to me tears,

50:31

letter, read it. To.

50:34

Letter was left over. pain and

50:36

anger hidden away deep insights I

50:38

couldn't tear it. Banging along beside

50:40

me like tin cans tried to

50:43

a wedding car I couldn't get

50:45

a letter to. My defenses were

50:47

down. There

50:49

had love my father and he had

50:51

loved her. They must have cried together

50:54

so often. I realize

50:56

stupidly that she had love me,

50:58

too. I hadn't really noticed

51:00

sit in the fog of brain cancer

51:02

or anger as a daily grief and

51:04

confusion toward the end. She

51:07

had said me sometimes android

51:09

me put. Up with my drunkenness

51:11

and jealousy. The

51:13

letter was love. Love.

51:16

Where's all these clothes? And it's

51:18

hard to see through all those

51:20

jackets? Because love is territorial. Love

51:22

is anxious and burdened. Rarely.

51:25

Can we get a gust of pure love?

51:28

But. I got one in Cuba from

51:30

the single last place. I ever expected

51:33

to find it. On

51:38

a just that dream was. To.

51:40

Yale. life changing really well because

51:43

they been a hard place in

51:45

my heart for bad even though

51:47

the been forty years forty five

51:50

years and that place of some

51:52

sauce and and that's the most

51:54

wonderful feeling of all. Forty

51:58

Forty Five years is Huge. Sad

52:00

that you've been writing and

52:02

the week that this episode

52:04

comes out. Ah, It's

52:06

and the mods birthday. You are

52:08

turning seven. D S Does it

52:10

feel like a big birthday? The

52:13

does she like a big birthday?

52:15

I mean sixty nine is so

52:17

much younger this assistance but I've

52:19

been practicing saying it. And to

52:21

arm all the people I know

52:23

that are in their seventies and

52:25

eighties are having really great lives

52:28

with me know comes with a

52:30

price. There's there's aches and pains

52:32

and loss and and some cognitive

52:34

decline and whatnot. But. I'm

52:36

not worried about being older, but

52:38

seventy does sound kind of dramatic

52:41

to. Me: These. Are

52:44

you working on the next book? I can only

52:46

assume No. No

52:48

No. I. Never I'm

52:50

working on a notebook until the last

52:52

one comes out and I don't have

52:55

a clue what I would write. This

52:57

somehow is really every single thing I

52:59

know about any saying and that includes

53:01

what may I hope be helpful for

53:04

on my son and grandson when I'm

53:06

gone and I don't know what else.

53:09

I have left to share

53:11

but probably something low. Flowed.

53:15

Into my head or tag on

53:17

my sleeve and announced that it

53:19

wants me to be it's typist

53:21

and and of think about. That

53:23

for awhile and I'm probably start

53:25

having to write some more because.

53:27

I'm a writer. And

53:30

the my is certainly are. Thank you so

53:33

much for spending the our with us. We

53:35

rarely. Appraiser so much and

53:37

limits new book is called

53:39

somehow Thoughts on Love and

53:41

you can see her full

53:43

Ted talk at ted.com. Think.

53:47

So much for listening to the show

53:49

the week it was produced by Rachel

53:51

Faulkner White and edited by Sun as

53:53

Mask and Poor and Me or Production

53:55

staff at Npr also includes James Celibacy,

53:57

Harsh in a Hot A Td, Not

53:59

Too Young. Matthew Cloutier and

54:01

Fiona Guiran. Irene Noguchi

54:03

is our executive producer. Our audio

54:06

engineer was David Greenberg. Our

54:08

theme music was written by

54:10

Romtine Arablui. Our partners at

54:13

TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle

54:15

Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela

54:17

Balarezzo. I'm Manoush Zamorodi, and

54:19

you've been listening to the TED Radio

54:21

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