S2E1: Letting It Fall: Amy Wilson's Lessons on Embracing Uncertainty

There was always a kid in my house who needed their jacket zipped or to be put in their high chair to be like thrown in the bathtub. And if I was around and I had a free hand, I was expected to participate, which I did happily and willingly and really enjoyed that. I loved taking care of my brothers and sisters. As I look back, there was no part of this fourth grader that was seething with resentment that she, you know, had her little sister in her room all the time. I loved my younger brothers and sisters, but I think I downloaded from that death definitely. You're a helper.

Yes.

You're good at it. You whistle while you work. But then that can get like flipped into and you mustn't make it seem hard. Right. That that is part of the assignment that you seem pleasant, you have a servant heart and you make it seem fun and you make it look easy.

Yeah.

Which when you get so good at that, I really do believe, like, that does confuse the people around.

Hi, I'm Paige Nolan. Welcome to I'll Meet yout There. A place where heart centered conversations are everything. Living what matters is the truest thing and sharing the journey is the best. Hi everyone and welcome back. Today is the first episode we're releasing in 2025 and it also marks the beginning of I'll Meet yout There season two. I was intentional about choosing my guest today, Amy Wilson, to head into this season and this year because our conversation and the message that Amy brings is a starting place. It's an invitation to start showing up differently in your life and to start taking care of yourself in a new way. Amy is a writer, podcaster and performer. She's written a memoir entitled When Did I Get like this? She's the co host of a Webby honored, hugely popular parenting podcast entitled what Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. And Amy has appeared on Broadway and has been a series regular on sitcoms and made a ton of other tv TV guest appearances on all sorts of shows as a performer. She also brings her podcast to life on stage for audiences all around the country. Amy is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, and a woman with a very full plate like so many of you are. I wanted to meet Amy here because she recently wrote a book of essays entitled Happy to Help, where she takes a closer look at the times in her life where she's been happy to help, even with her plate overflowing and how these experiences changed her, shaped her, and led her to question her own relationship. With helping, of course, When I read the book, I could relate to Amy's stories and I thought about y'all and how I think you're going to be able to relate to these stories and appreciate Amy's honesty, her wisdom, and her thoughtfulness. In our conversation, we talk about helping, specifically how women tend to take on so many roles in their lives and how that stress and overwhelm can often be met with unhelpful advice if our overachieving isn't working or if it doesn't feel good. Too often women feel at fault and add themselves to the list of things that need to be fixed. Amy shares how she's changed since writing this book, how she's more aware of when to help and when to say no, and we talk about how that's uncomfortable and why it's so important to stay present through that moment of discomfort. This is definitely an episode for the type A doer, get it done and have it be perfect people. And it's also an episode for people who extend themselves emotionally and there can be some perfectionism and some some overdoing in that way as well. On a personal note, this episode was meaningful to me because I met Amy through my coaching work in 2017 when she was juggling so much in her life and one of the balls in the air was her daughter's health, which she writes about in the book. And so to sit down with Amy's writing, knowing intimately how she dug deep for these essays and has stayed committed to her creativity and has continued to reach for this soulful insight was especially inspiring to me. This is a great episode to share with your girlfriends and to start a conversation with yourself and with each other about how you relate to helping and how you can continue to help in a way that informs your happiness but doesn't undermine it. Enjoy my conversation with Amy Wilson. I'm opening up with this poem that you shared with me that is the epigraph in your book. It opens with this line from a poem written by Rose Cook, and I've never opened with a poem before, but I feel like it's a short poem and it was so meaningful to me because it captures so much of what I'm dealing with in my life right now. And I know what our listeners are dealing with, so I'd like to read it aloud and kind of set the tone for this. This is a poem for someone who is juggling her life. Be still sometimes. Be still sometimes. It needs repeating over and over to catch her attention over and over. As someone who is juggling her life finds it difficult to hear. Be still sometimes. Be still sometimes. Let it all fall sometimes. So today I would love to talk about the juggling, what it's like to maybe be still sometimes, the falling, and take us into this book of essays, this brilliant, wonderful, funny, light hearted, but deeply observed, poignant book of essays entitled Happy to Help. So did you start juggling? Were you born juggling? You know, when does the juggling. When do we start getting the messages of juggling? We're in it.

It starts early. One of the things I had to unlearn, to my surprise while reading this book, is the idea that women are better multitaskers because our brains are better at that. I definitely, and I still thought that was settled science, that women's brains were uniquely able to handle more than one thing at once. That's why we couldn't really expect that of the other people in our lives. We just had to do it ourselves. Turns out that grinds our gears just like everybody else. The headlines that said women's brains were different and could multitask, that wasn't really true. So that means we've been doing it all this time without being any better at it. Which was a sobering realization.

Yeah, the unlearning is difficult because you're in the culture and you're breathing, breathing the air of the culture. So it's like, how do you even start to have the courage to be countercultural? And I talk a lot about that with my people. Like in order to start to look at these messages that we get about how to behave and how we should show up as women and as mothers, you have to be countercultural. And that's a little bit of a risk.

That's right. That's right. And I really believe, have come to believe, writing this book, that it's sort of like a neat trick that we do both take on the work of caring so much for everybody around us and buy into the idea that it's because we're just better at it. And then when we say, wait a minute, I don't think I can handle this, to be told back that it's our fault for making it this way.

Yes, yes.

That all we had to do was change our mindset or not pick up so many heavy things and it would have been easier all along, why can't we see that? That's not very helpful, as I found out along the way.

Yes.

And I don't think it's true. I don't think it's fair.

Did you have a moment where you actively and intentionally said, I'm questioning this. Or was this a slow, like over the time, becoming a mother, doing all the things that you do professionally and creatively, kind of burning out and saying, I have to change this.

Amy Wilson 7:38

Yeah, no, I think it was a drip over time. So I have a parenting podcast called what Fresh Hell that I've been doing. This is in our ninth year now. And you know, one of the things that's come to be very important to us over time is to never accept or take at face value that it's annoying moms that are the reason something's happening or that stop doing that mom is the way to have less anxious children or whatever, that it's about the mom, really, that can't never be the only answer that we offer our listeners. And when I really stopped and looked at so much of the advice we're given as women, because I think we take on also so much more of this. If only I was a little bit of a better person, if only I could just work on this part of myself, that my life would be better, better. The lives of the people around me would be better. I need to do more self care so that I can be a better parent or partner instead of so I can sleep better at night. We take on so much of this stuff and I think we just so readily accept that there is some failing within us that's causing our lives to be unsatisfying or too much or whatever it is. And really working on this book, I really kind of became radicalized. Like sometimes it's the situation, it's the you need help and don't accept advice. What needs to happen is redistribution of the situation, not your mindset. There's only so many meditations and things you can do to change. When you have a sick kid and a sick parent at the same time, it's not your fault that your life is too much.

Yes, that was absolutely redefining, earth shattering, just to use your word, radical for me. Also that moment in therapy, my beloved former therapist Greg, who I've written about and mentioned, talked about the word responsibility, being able to respond. And that reframe of taking responsibility for my life doesn't mean that I define the thing in front of me as my fault taking and try to fix it, which we'll get into that word fixing. But that responding to the thing in front of me, that's an invitation to accountability, that doesn't have that stigma of then being internalized. And to your point that you just mentioned, just all of A sudden it's about my inadequacy, and it's about me trying harder as opposed to being about my ability to respond. I mean, that's one of those moments in therapy where you, like, sit back on the couch and you're like, whoa, how did I miss that? You know, and thank God that this person can see it and be a guide for me to step out of that so I can have a little bit more freedom.

And it's so easy to see for our friends, I think, of course, you can't also take this on. You are responding to as many things as you can. You can't respond to everything 100% of the. And it's very easy for us to see that and to offer that to maybe a friend who's struggling. Just that you're doing great and that looks hard is also not specifically exactly help, but it's a lot better than. Maybe you should develop more of a sense of humor about this. Maybe if you didn't let it bother you so much, it wouldn't bother you so much.

Yeah. Or let it go.

Or let it go.

Sometimes I feel like when somebody says, just let it go, it's like saying, calm down when you're angry. Yeah. No one is going to calm down when they're angry on the spot because they were told to calm down.

Right.

It just doesn't work like that.

Right, right, right.

You know, something's coming to my mind about reading the book and then just what you said, it's the word capability, you know, because I think sometimes the women who are particularly capable, and men, by the way, it's just that this book is. Has a large resonance for the unique kind of experience of a woman to me. But I feel like it's still, you know, men can gleam from this, too, can benefit from this conversation too. But I feel like this idea of being a capable woman, and if you're capable, then you can do it like you should do it, and we need you to do it. Did your messages around capability start young? And did you feel like that was kind of shaped in your being the eldest? You know, you can tell our listeners about this. Give us a look into your childhood environment.

Yeah. So I am the eldest of six kids and 25 grandchildren. My mom is the oldest of eight. And like I said, you either are an older sibling or older sibling or you're not. But I do think there's something about that cumulative effect of being the oldest child of an oldest child and then the oldest child of a big family that really did affect me. And so in a way that I loved. While I was growing up, I was busy around the house helping my mom. My dad was at work, you know, all the time. He was building a career, and he was not around a lot. She had no household help besides our grandmother, who lived upstairs, and her mobility had gotten limited, but she was very helpful also. But anyway, there was always a kid in my house who needed their jacket zipped or to be put in their high chair or to be, like, thrown in the bathtub. And if I was around and I had a free hand, I was expected to participate, which I did happily and willingly and really enjoyed that. I loved taking care of my brothers and sisters. And as I look back, there was no part of this fourth grader that was seething with resentment that she, you know, had her little sister in a room all the time. I loved my younger brothers and sisters, but I think I downloaded from that, definitely, you're a helper.

Yes.

You're good at it. You whistle while you work.

Yes.

And. But then that can get, like, flipped into. And you mustn't make it seem hard. Right. That. That. That is part of the assignment, that you seem pleasant. You have a servant heart, and you make it seem fun, and you make it look easy.

Yeah.

Which, when you get so good at that, I really do believe, like, that does confuse the people around you. And so then all of a sudden, when, you know, blow up at your family, nobody ever does anything around here. They don't know what you're talking about. They're baffled. And that doesn't make them bad people. It's just you really are capable and have been doing such a good job of making everything smooth and undisturbed that they thought it was easy.

Yes. Yes. And do you feel like, as you grew up in that family, are you. Do you still maintain that role with your family of origin now that people are, as they became more independent, or do you feel like you've outgrown that?

I think I've outgrown it. I think I try to outgrow it. Writing this book and thinking about this and trying not to step in all the time or assume it has to be meant to do this, to leave more space for things. That's the biggest way I've changed after writing this book and through writing this book is to not raise my hand. To me, it hasn't been about being like, somebody else is gonna have to do it this year, because I'm not doing it. I'm setting a boundary. It's not really that it's either not saying yes in the first place or not offer just waiting, just pausing has really been the change for me rather than, you know, there's gonna be some changes around here that never really worked for me, but sort of waiting to see what happens next and being curious about it and not so sure I know everything has been the real path to change.

Yeah, I love that you said that. Because as I was reflecting on our conversation today and how I related to the book, because the book is particularly relatable to type A, you know, like that high achieving spreadsheet person. And I interestingly, I love to help, but I'm not that person. I was thinking as I went on a walk this morning, you know, how has helping really overwhelmed me sometimes in my life and gotten in the way of the life that I want to live. And it was really starting my own business as a coach and I was coming out of a traditional teaching path and I hired a coach for a one day retreat and I went to Santa Monica and met with her and we like laid out my whole life. And she looks at me. We did a time inventory of where I was devoting my time and what activities and what obligations were really draining me the most. And she's like, well, if you're going to start your own business, where are you going to do that? Let's look at this calendar. And the thing that was really draining me was volunteering. And it wasn't like I was an uber volunteer. It wasn't like I was the head of everything. So this is important for the listeners who are hearing this who are not the head of everything. But this is so insidious in women's lives, how it creeps in. And I remember going to the school cause I had twins and I would volunteer separately because I wanted to give them individual time because a twin mom needs to do one on one time. And then I had a third kid three grades later. And so I went into my third child's second grade classroom and I love this teacher. And I had volunteered with her in the past and I said, I'm not volunteering this year. And she's like, wait, what? And you know, kind of made fun of me. She has a great sense of humor and it was funny. But on the inside it was actually really hard to step into that and say, look, I've been doing this on the side, like game on. And the word that you said that triggered this memory in me is the word space. I needed the space to even think about What I could create, the life I could live, like the experiences that I want to have. And even now I have this reputation. I wear these noise canceling headphones around the neighborhood and take walks and the neighbors are like, I waved at you and you didn't see me or you were out in outer space. I mean, people have said that word, outer space, because I have this quality where I have to space out. And I just think that it's beautiful that you've had that realization that you need the waiting period or the space to make the decision. And women don't often take that. So that's a really long share. But I'm inviting people in to reflect. Like, do you have enough space in.

Your life sitting in the uncertainty? Which is kind of like where the book finally ends up. In that moment right before something new happens. And not saying, well, maybe I can be the vice president this year or maybe I will do it until somebody else can step in, really was the thing that changed everything. I don't need to fix uncertainty for the people I love or for myself. You need to make friends with it. That that was really what changed things for me. And to realize that, yes, when the people I love are suffering or having a bad day, they don't expect me to make them happy in the first place.

Yeah.

Even my kids, Right. If one of my kids is unhappy, they want to be happier, but they're not. Like, why isn't my mom happy? Why is she doing this to me? Right. Maybe sometimes they are. That's. Why is she like this? But my mother, the architect of everything that's wrong in my life, maybe they do go through those times, but it doesn't make it true and it doesn't really make it yours to fix. And. But sitting with the idea, less than, like somebody else is going to have to step in. And getting to the, like, maybe nobody's going to step in. Maybe this problem is just going to sit here in the road unsolved, and maybe we're all just going to live with this. That's not easy. But that's where the change happens.

Yes. How do you do that? Do you replace it with something? Has it made you more faithful? Like, are we supposed to pray in those moments, you know, or is it just the choice, the conscious choice, to have the feeling, go about your life, get a bigger Yes. I always tell people, whatever you're saying no to, you're saying yes to something else.

You know, for me, and again, like, this is the last moment of the book after unlearning all this, it has to be you. It doesn't have to be you. You're just thinking that it has to be you, and you need to stop, you know, and all the lessons that I'm trying to engage with put aside and get in the last moment of the book, I am finally rejecting the call. Like, I am not going to raise my hand. This is an unfixable, unsolvable situation that nobody's asking me to fix in the first place. And then somebody turns and say, amy, it's up to you. You're going to do this. It has to be you. And my first reaction was really like, maybe it. Maybe I've been wrong all this time. Maybe it does have to be me. And then actually crying, because I was like, don't say that to me. Like, that's the worst thing you could say to me. And the person was like, no, no, tell her. Everyone, she. We believe in her. She can do it. I'm like, no, I can't. And I'm crying and sitting there with something that's unfixable and thinking, like, somebody has to do something. But no, we didn't. And in that moment when I was the one who needed to be comforted, the comfort that I needed was people sitting with me and the sadness not handing me a solution. There was no solution. The solution was to sit together with something that was hard. And that's all there was, and that's all I had needed all along was not to fix it and not for somebody to tell me that I needed to just believe in myself more. Yeah, fix either.

Yes. It gets also to the heart of perfectionism. You know, when we seek these expressions of perfectionism, it's really to protect us from the messiness of all of that. All of what you just described, the sadness, the grief, the longing, just that quality of how messy and mysterious and incomplete and confusing the whole thing is, you know, and our perfectionism can kind of put that in a box and put it in a bow for a minute. And I think also it's pretty gratifying to. To pull off something in a way that's organized and accomplishes the goals and creates the experience for other people. So, you know, I think really confronting perfectionism and understanding what that is for you, like you, Amy, and also you. The listener is, you know, first to be aware of it and then to get in there, it's really tricky business.

I think I have really identified less with the sort of people pleasing aspect, because that, to me sounds like somebody who cowers and worries and doesn't get stuff done. And I very much get stuff. I more see myself as the protagonist and the, you know, here I'm up front with the flag. Follow me, everybody but that. I like taking charge and I like seeing something that needs to be done and just getting it done. And I think often the people around us might think we're a little bit extra or annoying, but they also depend on us.

Yes.

They don't necessarily want that to change. They want you to relax, but they don't want to change what they're doing necessarily. Right. They want your chilling out to come at zero expense to their own list of things to do.

Yeah. And it's a combination of. To the poem's point, letting it all fall where it will and also, you know, dealing with the potential relationship consequence of you not doing what is really working for other people. I mean, the dynamic functions that way because it works.

Right.

Like, no, no one's going to change you. You know, it's working for them.

Right. Right. For women, like all the systems we exist within still in 2025 depend on the unpaid emotional and actual labor of women.

Yeah.

Who won't mind doing this. One more thing.

Did you have many examples to draw from when you were curating the essays that actually landed in the copy of this manuscript and are going to publication, Was that a process of going back through your memory and your files and saying, wow, what were these earlier moments and more recent moments of how I've helped?

Yeah, like giving. Yeah. Giving time for things to sort of drop from the sky has happened sometime with creative stuff like, oh my gosh, yes, this is that. Yes, that's another example. And I really started with a sort of broad container of where were the times that again, I picked up the flag and rode into battle against something that seemed really hard. And sometimes you have no choice. Often you have no choice as a parent and as a woman. Sometimes maybe you did and other people quit sooner and you just kept going. You kept rowing while the boat was sinking and you didn't notice everybody else had gotten out of the boat. And when were those times? The times when I like went to the ends of the earth for something and it was exactly the right thing to do. And the times when I went to the end of the earth to. To find that the thing was still broken or that it was worse for my having over delivered. And so that container, just putting in, really reflecting on all that, it filled up pretty quickly with stories that I was then able to sort of put In a non chronological order of. Okay, so what did that character learn at that time? The character who was you. But it's a memoir is only interesting if there's the person living through the story and then the. The author who is me now or the author now.

Yeah.

Explaining like, here's what I thought then and here's what I understand now. If you don't have those two levels of awareness, it's just like reading somebody's diary. Yes, autobiography, which is okay, but what makes it a memoir are these slipping levels of awareness. So putting those in an order where that made sense, which wasn't chronological. It took me a while, but it wasn't as hard as you might think. It was more like, and so what does this mean? And so what is the answer? That was the hard part.

Yeah. And I love how the essays are titled things that we Hear people say, like, look on the Bright side. I want to talk about that one because I want to talk about worry in a second. That one really moved me. But I mean, all these. I'm trying to think of some other ones. Give it all you got.

This was my editor's idea at sort of the 11th hour. And it was such a good idea because it was in there. But the essays just had other titles because the book talks about how when we act, ask for help, we're often given back advice and invitations to fix ourself. And she said, okay, what if each essay was one of those invitations to fix yourself? Right. So look on the bright side. That's what you're told when you say to somebody, I am really. I am really struggling with this. And then somebody says, yeah, I'm really struggling with this postpartum, what I think might be postpartum depression. And then somebody tells you, well, like, look on the bright side. You have a happy baby and like, like you be happy about. And so then you're like, right, right, like dumb, dumb. Stop being sad. And that's not what's going to help you.

Yeah. It's just really powerful too, because it shines a light on how we respond to people over delivering or overachieving or over helping and the strain on those people and the real emotional experience of that. We actually don't know how to hold space, you know, for. To really sit in the discomfort of it.

Amy Wilson 25:58 -

That's a really good point. Right. It makes us profoundly uncomfortable to see anybody kind of fall apart. But I think particularly the one who always has their act together, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not supposed to be needy or Sad. Get back to the part where you're gonna look on the brake side and everything's fine. Right. That. The advice that is being offered is, please go back to the way you were. Don't show me too much of your mess. I don't. I'm not really interested in it. Which is also not helpful. But that's what happens.

Yes. I had this question that really helped me as I was going through my own personal growth and understanding how to be confident to live my own life kind of thing around age 40, which is an ongoing question, by the way. But really, for me, it was like a flood of that. Like, oh, my gosh, this is my own life. Like, right around 38 years old. And the question was, who am I if I'm not helping? And I would write it in my journal and like, your family of origin. I am the baby. I have only one older sister, but I really related to, as you described, your family of origin. It's like the feedback you are getting to be happy to help. That word, happy. I was definitely the cheerful one, and I really am optimistic and positive. I mean, people who listen to this podcast or have worked with me know that, you know, that's my natural kind of way of showing up in the world. But in that family dynamic, it was like I was the light, the. The cheerful one, the helpful one. And what's tricky about it is that all those things are true for me, but who am I if I'm not fulfilling that role? And that was really just. I don't know, it was a profound question for me. Like, is it okay if I'm moody? Is it okay that I have all of these feelings and I don't just intellectualize them and get practical and go journal and then move on? You know, what if I fall apart?

You see yourself to be the things that other people tell you that you are. If it happens often enough. So for me, that, yes, that I was happy to help was something I was told every day. And so I was. It isn't like. And nobody was listening that I really wasn't. No, I really was. But where you can get a little lost. It's like. But was I. Or did I just hear it so many times that I. Right. And so I think that I talk about in the book about the migraine personality that women with migraines and other, you know, complicated autoimmune things that women tend to get more than men. We're told that it's, again, that it's our failing, that we. It's too Much stress, that we're too type A, that we do this. And so even Joan Didion had migraines and was told that she was type A. And. And her doctor said to her, like, you know, your hair is a mess, but your house must be perfect because you have migraines, therefore you must be a perfectionist, type A. And she said in this essay, well, that wasn't true, but I do. I am a perfectionist about my writing. And Joanna Kepner had this connection. It wasn't me, but she said, like, isn't that interesting, that Didion. She said, no, my house is a mess, but I am a perfectionist in this other way, because I must be, because you're telling me that I am. So I'm gonna meet you halfway and do the work for you. I think that we do that, particularly women. And so all of a sudden, we've been told that we're perfectionists or type A or whatever for so many decades that we either start to fulfill that description or here we were. That was never the answer, but we always thought that we were because somebody told us we were.

Paige Nolan 29:19 -

Yes. And in my experience, too, of working so closely with women and being a woman and a lot like you, like, I've read a lot of feminist literature and study and been interested in the truth of women's lives. It's this idea that the relationship is so central to our experience, and we're socialized to be so protective of the relationship. So it's a real shot to our ego if the relationship falls apart or if there's stress, because we're the ones that are the masters of relationship. So it's not only, I'm going to meet you halfway, but I'm going to meet you halfway, and then we're going to walk together the rest of the way, even if it's uncomfortable for me, because I don't want to live through the discomfort of meeting you halfway and then you can't keep going, which would result in maybe some relationship loss or a shift in the relationship. I'm gonna go with you, extend myself. And it just. It exhausts us. And then the other side of that is, but we're the keeper of relationships. So what happens if we don't work as hard as relationships? And I hope what is gonna happen, this conversation, along with millions of other ones like this, is that men rise, that we empower men. And that's what I see happening. Even the difference between my husband and his father or my husband and my dad, the evolution. Like, yeah, they can Rise. If you don't do all of the relationship work for them, like, let them rise.

I think you're right. And I think that men, in this traditional binary, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. They might also suffer from the. You're bad at relationships you don't care about. Right. You're absolutely told that you're bad at this stuff and you don't care about this stuff stuff. And you know, your wife won't let you help around the house because there's maternal gatekeeping. You're like, oh, okay. Like, you, you buy into all these things too. You're, you're. We fit ourselves to the things that other people tell us that we are or should be.

Yeah.

And then I think that, yeah, there's this eternal, like something that's not quite making sense. And I think it's. That it's where. Who am I, really?

Yes. Who am I if I. Yeah.

If I don't do these things that everybody told me I was, so therefore I thought I was. And what if that changes? Right.

And. And who am I if I'm not leading? And who will lead if I. If I don't lead?

Yes. And that's another part. It's hard when you're the identified, capable one in the groups that you exist within. I think I definitely felt like I had to. I was there in the race and I've been running and I'm holding out the baton behind me and I can't stop running until somebody picks it up and keeps running. It's hard for me to let go. It's hard for me to disappoint people. It's hard for me to let people down. I'm not going to be able to do that this year or anymore, you know? And yeah, I think I thought I had to find my replacement, which actually there's a story in the book, right. Had a very demanding job.

Yeah.

As a personal assistant where the person told me. When I said. When I finally was like, I can't do this anymore. I have to leave. The person said, oh, that's fine. As soon as you, you find your replacement and train them, of course you'll do that first. And that wasn't my job. I was not even a salaried employee. I was being paid by the hour. That was not my job. But I was like, okay, I have to find my replacement. Well, I couldn't find my replacement because nobody was as boundary less as I was. And so I couldn't find my replacement. But I thought that's. Yes. I had to find another me before I could leave.

Yeah. It's so hard to know the boundary, you know, like if you've never touched it before, it's hard to know what it feels like.

It's hard to know. Right, right. And of course, it's easy to look back, like, gosh, it's 25 or 30 years later now and think like, whoa, young one, why didn't you understand that you didn't have to do these things? But yeah, it takes a while.

Yeah. Do you think that people pleasing is the same as what you just mentioned, which is fear of disappointing someone, or do you think they're slightly different? Because I don't think of you as like a full on people pleaser like you mentioned earlier. You're a leader and you'd like to take charge and get the things done and take care of your people.

I don't really identify as a people pleaser so much, but it's in the subtitle of the book. So, like, what does that mean? How is it different from being like an overachiever? I think people pleasers, what we call female overachievers who say, I'm really struggling here, we tell her to stop people pleasing, which just is. It's pejorative and it puts the fix right back on her. But I do think when I'm sort of trying to tease out, like, being an overachiever isn't necessarily being a people pleaser, but you're a people pleaser when you. When your primary motivation for doing something becomes, I don't want to let the other person down, or I literally dread the conversation while I'm gonna say I'm quitting. So once that occurs, then you. Then I think, yes, those are people pleasing situations that you need to revisit if your primary motivation is fear of leaving. But. But no, there were other times in my life that, no. The struggles of things I was dealing with were real and not imaginary and not trumped up in my head.

Yes.

And not things I could resign from. I just had to do them.

Yeah.

And in those times, it's good to be somebody who sees something through. But even then, sometimes I think I sort of missed the exit or missed the. Like, I can stop now. I didn't think I could stop.

Yeah. And how has that gotten better? Are you getting the blinking yellow lights now before it's like crash and burn in the ditch?

I think so. Yeah. I think so. I tell another story in the book about, I have vitiligo, which is a good. You know an autoimmune condition. It's not dangerous or contagious or fatal, but it's chronic, it doesn't cure, it can be in remission or progressing and it just, it bleaches out your skin. And I'm a very compliant patient. No surprise. So I was using like a hand held UVB thing at home that I would hold to the spots on me. And I was supposed to Keep increasing at 10, 20, 30 seconds at a time. And so after a while I was doing like eight to nine minutes on one spot. And like the machine would be getting hot in my hand. And I think, this could, this can't be right. And so I said to the doctor, I'm just supposed to keep turning it up, turning up the time forever. And he said, no. When you wake up burned, that's when you'll know that it was too much and then you'll stop. There, there. But I had to wait till I wake up burned to see it. And so I thought, that can't be. That can't be the lesson for my life that you wait until you wake up with little. I go to say, oh, I have too much going on. Yeah. Right. You have to learn to stop sooner. So I think I'm seeing the yellow blinking.

Yeah.

Lights. But on the other hand, it's like you're not an idiot for not having seen the yellow blinking lights because nobody's running alongside you saying, here, let me have some of that. It's something that is happening inside you.

Yeah.

And there are some people who never started running in the first place. Right. I don't do that stuff. I don't volunteer at school. That's a waste of time. And it's easy for those people to say like, no, it's a complete sentence. Right. But nobody would have asked you in the first place. And now I've been running and I need to stop. That's. That's complicated.

No one's asking you because I'm doing it. So need to ask you.

Right, right. It's if you're the person who never said yes in the first place. No is a complete sentence. If you're the person who's always said yes in the past, you're saying no is the first step in this very extended renegotiation that can occur. That has occurred for me, but it's not one and done.

It sounds like so much of this is self compassion, you know, so much of this is hearing that voice in your head and stopping her or that voice or him if it's a male voice telling you that you gotta step up, you gotta carry the flag, you gotta push through. It's almost like that process right there of pausing in the space we mentioned earlier, putting some space there and saying, well, how can I be kind to myself through this very imperfect, you know, process of experiencing myself in a different way?

The advice we give to women who are struggling is almost always with the idea that this was a choice. Right. That you make things harder than they need to be. You secretly seek to be busy. And am I ever guilty of that? For sure. But it's not always true. And I think then we over apply that to actually hard times. I'm a mom of twins who are six week old and they're not sleeping that well. You're not making things harder than they need to be. And so it's not your perfectionism or people pleasing that's going to get you to the other side. But I think almost no matter what it is, women will accept that there is some failing in themselves that they have to address first. Instead of, I need to get somebody to come and stay over so I can sleep in tomorrow morning three times a week, and then everything will be much better. That's the solution. Not reading a book about how to be more patient.

Yes, yes, Amen to that. Can we talk about worry for a second? Sure. Since we're on this motherhood thing, I was very moved by look on the bright side, of course, because I had met you years ago when you were more in the throes of that experience of your life worrying about your child. And I'm really curious about your thoughts about this phrase. You're only as happy as your unhappiest child, which won't surprise you. I have heard that phrasing. I have grown up with that phrasing from the deep south, like love, my family, very committed loyalty, engaged family, you know, all my extended. And I've heard family members say that before. And it's just something that's upheld in our culture. And I've thought so much about it and it's a little bit tricky to confront someone when they're really holding tightly to that idea. And you do a beautiful job in that particular essay about looking at that and touching it in your own unique way and storytelling. But it's really about worry. You know, the way that we get into that phrasing and your experience with worry. Will you share with us how you relate to worry now, how you related to worry then, and what role you feel like worry plays in our over helping.

So when you have a kid that's sick, which is what this essay is about, you, the default parent, are in charge, and you're in charge of the kid getting well, even if you're not getting a lot of certainty from the medical professionals. And in that moment, of course you're going to worry. Of course you are. Or if it's any loved one, spouse, whatever. And when it's your child, spouse, whatever, you're going to be super worried about what's going to happen. Worried about whether you can really handle being in charge. Because who put you in charge of this? You don't know anything. And hiding that worry from the person you're worrying about is also part of the thing. Right. If you're, like, ugly crying in front of your kid, forgive yourself, but go do it somewhere else when you can. Right. You have to, like, your kid will get better sooner if they believe everything's going to be okay. And so you have to present that to them as your parent, even when you don't think so. And I think that's all true and unavoidable. But we can, I think, sometimes start to slip into the. That the work of worry is for women to do, and that when we worry about our children, that somehow magically makes it less likely something bad will happen.

So true. I'm like, yes, that is exactly how I feel about worry. Yes.

Yeah. Like, I'm going to worry so much. And Natalia Imperatori Lee, she's a theologian, and I talk about her in this book. She writes about how Latina women in particular have these morning rituals they do at home. You wear a mantilla and you pray your rosary, and you're so sad thinking of your boy taking his finals at college. And you're so worried about it, but it's actually like an act, a loving act that you're doing because your kid will therefore do better on his finals because you've been up early worrying about it and doing this ritual, just to make up a hypothetical example. And I recognize myself very much in that. But I wasn't praying the rosary, but I was getting up early to do yoga and cry so I could be totally peaceful and calm and that these were offerings so that my kid could float above those things.

Yeah.

But so what I had to let go of was the idea that you're a bad person for worrying. You need to stop worrying, Mom. Right. Because you can't. And it's easy for other people to say, well, I've decided everything's going to be Fine. If you're doing the worrying that they can say, look on the bright side because they're standing outside it, so you're not a bad person. You can't. I can't look on the bright side. On the other hand, you can get, I think, a little stuck in the loop of the more I worry, the more likely it is that everything will be okay. Which is not true. And for me, I had to do this sort of gradual, like, it's okay for me to go out to lunch. It's okay for me to spend a day not googling things or thinking about this. It's okay for me to laugh. It's okay for me to do more and more of those things. As my child was returning to health slowly, I was also returning to health slowly and letting go of this idea that I, that the harder it was for me, the easier it would be for my child.

Yes, I have that same response to worry that I do around this phrase that busyness is a badge of honor in our culture. I feel like worry is this badge of I'm a really good mother because I am really worried and I am tracking and I am double checking and I know where my, my kid is through their device all the time. And it's tricky in our culture because I don't want to do those things and I'm not good at those things. It goes back to that. I'm not type A, I am supposed to be tracking my kid. I forget, I literally am absent minded. So I forget to look at the thing, at the phone or check the thing or the form. And so then I think to myself, well, am I not worried enough? Am I not engaged enough as a mother? Cause I'm not worried because I worry about a whole bunch of other stuff. You know, it's not like I don't love my kids. It's just this interesting cultural. It's just this undercurrent of, well, we're all worried, you know, especially the college application process, which you also write about in the book. It's a whole thing and I'm just coming out of that. My twins are seniors this year. And so we're still waiting to hear. We're done with the applications. We're still waiting to hear, and we'll have our choices later on in the spring. But it's like, how much of that process do I need to be fully engaged in? And you know, it means I'm a good mother. If this has come out this way and what I tracked and what I didn't Track. It's not really an option to not track it. And honestly, it's not an option. Not to worry. I don't know one person in my situation who walks through the college admissions process us like it's a walk in the park. It is not.

It's. It's not.

It's brutal.

It's more and more complicated if, if a kid has to do it without any parental support or oversight, they can do so. But that's not great for that kid, I think is the honest truth. So to be. Because it's getting impossible and the deadlines and this, it's.

And the struggle, don't choose this major because it's impacted. But then I'm supposed to look at my kid and be like, well, it's a fine line, like we should choose something else, even though you haven't really been interested in that. And the other part of your application doesn't really indicate interest in that. But go ahead and pick. You know, I don't even know like the most random major because it's not.

Impacted even just beyond the sort of gamification of it all the actual, just logistics of this school wants a letter from a coach and this school will throw the application away if there's a letter from a coach. It's so complicated. And meanwhile we're constantly fed that. The reason it's complicated is that annoying parents are ruining the process. That's the problem. And not that FAFSA is broken, that the AD system is classes. There's huge problems with this situation. And each of us in our homes are doing our best while also doing the work of preparing to have our child leave us. So they're more annoyed with you than ever. They need you more than ever. And they're more annoyed with you than ever. You're doing this high wire act together. When you think it's a lot, you're just told that you know, it's. Here you go again, overthinking things. And it's just, I think people outside it just think it can't be as hard as they say. And if it is, then they're making it hard on purpose. It's these annoying parents ruining it. And I don't think that's true.

Yeah, I think that's one of my big takeaways from the book and speaking with you and just connecting to the message of the book, what you just said, it's complicated. It's layered. I mean that's a big part of this because it's not like the book. You put the book down and you're like, I know exactly what to do. It's not a self help book like that. It's a much more of a reflective, you know, like a really, a real invitation to look at the different ways that this touches our lives and how we can engage in the experience of helping in a way that we don't lose our minds.

Yeah, I think that's right. Every, you know, everybody asks me, like, so what do you do instead? And like, exist in the uncertainty. It's not something that fits on the back of a soda can. That's what it is. I mean, I think it's just as simple as when things are hard. They might just be hard because they're hard. There might not be anything wrong with you and you're gonna do your best and you don't need to tie everything down before you can stop.

Yeah. Do you feel like you show up in relationship, whether it be your marriage, whether it be your motherhood, your life as a professional, your life as a creative in a different way? I mean, it could just be that you're older and wiser. It could be actually through the creative process of putting this out in the world and talking to so many people about the messages of this book.

But are you showing up profoundly differently? Yeah. And so it was very meta because I was writing a book about how to handle things when you have too much to do and you need to change how you do things. And in order to have time to write that book, I needed to look at what I was doing and find time and change how I did things. So I was engaging in an exercise to fix the very issues that I was struggling with in order to write about those things. And yes, so I talk a lot about that in the book about saying to my family, like, look, things are gonna have to be different around here. And they're sort of like, well, like what? You know, like, just tell us what to do and we'll do it. The repartee, the back and forth about readdressing, who does the everyday things in your lives. And. And yeah, like change is possible. And things are very different in my family because we did restructure things, but it's definitely not one and done. And everybody's really stepping up and doing the noticing, not just the mom told me to get dog food, so I'll go get dog food. Doing the noticing route of dog food and getting the dog food, that, that stuff. And for me, I think the biggest way I've changed is when I'm in conflict with somebody, I think I do feel the need to make them understand that they don't need to be mad at me because. But I actually, I didn't mean it like that kind of thing, particularly with the teenager. If a teenager wants to say, like, mom, you're so annoying, why did you ask me if I had my, my boarding pass? And because of the last time you forgot your boarding pass. You don't need to say that. You don't need to explain it to them. They can say, mom, you're so annoying. And you can just like you can just let that exist. And not. Okay, but just to tie up that thing we were talking about. I mean, you do understand that the reason I was asking, like, I, I've started doing that less in my relationships and just letting things be. And I think that really helps.

That is such a good one. I do that. I am so guilty of that. But let me tell you why I'm not a bad person. Because I want. This was my intention. And you don't have to be upset with me.

Right, right, right. This. Right. This engagement can't end until I make you understand why you shouldn't be upset with me. Right, right, right. That you can just.

And then the process of explaining and going back and back, it starts to get a little self focused. You know, I've been called out on that in my own therapy and coaching. Like, well, then it becomes about my discomfort. It's not even about meeting the other person's emotional truth. It's like, I'm so uncomfortable that I've got to convince you and then I'm going to go do this and then you've turned the whole thing around. And it's sneaky like that because you're doing the thing to try to get back to Harmony, but the thing that you're doing is all about you.

Yeah. I'm thinking of a particular time in my life recently where I gave an apology and I just made the apology without the like. But you do understand that when I did that, it was only because I thought that you didn't know. And to leave that part out, which maybe that is people pleasing. Maybe those are people pleasing tendencies all along. That you can stop before that part. You can stop before somebody takes over. You don't have to make sure everything is okay without you before you step back.

Yeah. Yes, yes. That's where perfectionism is really tricky. Because I do not have a super clean house. I mean, I try to keep my house clean because I'm married to a person who's very orderly and clean like that. And I don't have a perfectionistic appearance. Like, I don't care if my outfit is perfect. But that what we're talking about right now in relationships, when things are off in my marriage or when things are off with a kid or with a friend. Oh, it's so uncomfortable. I just wanted to go back to being tidy and perfect and let's get back in a line here. Let's be unified, let's be harmonious. And it's just not like that. It's not realistic.

It's. This is. I'm realizing now as you're saying this, like, we're trying to avoid discomfort. And somebody said to me along the way about this book, so how do you stop caring? Like, no, that's not the goal. The goal is to. To care that there might not be a choice for tots drive this year and still say, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be able to do it this year. It isn't. Who cares? I mean, there are people in this world who don't care. Who.

Yeah.

Who can just let these calls to action pass them by and they're not moved by them and good for them. But the goal isn't to turn into somebody who notices less and cares less. The goal is to be okay sitting with unfixability and uncertainty.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's a high goal.

It is a high goal.

I'm glad you wrote about it. Well, because I think reading about it and talking about it helps us. It gives more space and breathing room and attention to the complexity of it. You're not just like, oh, here, read the self help book. It's like, no, this is an experience. It's a whole full body, human thing that we do.

Yeah. And it is as hard as we think it is.

It is as hard as we think it is. That is the truth. So given that it's complex and we're going to hold the space and, you know, invite people into this conversation with themselves and reflect about this, is there any hope that you have for us, your readers and your listeners? And once again, stepping in to create content around this and create conversation around this as you do with your podcast, with your writing, with your performing, is there a hope for you that this ripples out in people's lives in a particular way?

Very much so. And it's funny, as I've gone on different podcasts, people will say, so what's next? What's exciting for you? Like, what's exciting for me is somebody reading this Book and liking it and engaging with the world maybe a little differently or just starting to ask questions. And that's what I'm really excited about. I hope it will resonate with people, and I think it will. And I'm excited to. I'm excited to help. Help somebody who really might be the woman who is juggling her life. Right. I mean, that poem you read at the beginning, I found that poem pretty close to the end of writing this book. Like, well, she wrote the poem, I wrote a 250 paige book and she wrote a poem. And it's the same lesson that you can let it all fall sometimes. And I heard anew the line that you said about it has to. You have to hear this over and over again.

Yes.

Right. And so sometimes I think I feel like, well, this conversation, is it too obvious? Is it too simplistic? And like, I don't think it is. It is the lesson we have to learn and relearn and relearn.

Yeah. One of the things that stuck with me in reading the poem again aloud at the beginning of our conversation is this idea of being still. When you say that, your hope is that it does reach people and it invites them and helps them think about it. That's my experience of reading this book, that we are invited to empowerment in all different ways. We're invited to step up and take responsibility for our life in all different ways. And in reading your book, one of the ways that I felt invited was to be still with just what it is. It wasn't this book of like, okay, now go take charge and change this relationship and draw boundaries. And this is how you draw a boundary, and this is how you keep a boundary. It was be still with it. Be with the reality and what it feels like for you and just the experience of it and let that be okay. And maybe that is the falling you know, is just letting it be okay.

Yeah. Thank you, Paige. That's great. That's exactly what I'm hoping for.

So we start. We start here with space. I'm holding on to what Amy has said about her path to change. It's been a path of creating space. We need to give ourselves and our lives some space by waiting and seeing what happens next without jumping in to fix it or solve it or help it. Change and uncertainty are a package deal. They come into our lives together. There's nothing to fix about uncertainty. All you can do with uncertainty is sit with it and relate to it with openness and curiosity. As Amy says, that's not easy. But that's where the change happens. And the change that we can seek to make is not about caring less. It's actually to care deeply and to sit with the unfixability of life. Life is really messy and complicated and every person, every family, every business, every school, every movement, every animal, our planet needs help. There's always something you could be doing to help, and I know if you're listening, you're capable of helping. We are a community of capable individuals, but to help beyond our capacity is not the answer. Right now is a start to this year. I hope that you'll sit and pause. I hope you'll take some space and consider what you need need. Maybe you need to ask for help. Maybe you need to say no. Maybe you need to just take a beat and be with your uncertainty and do that with a lot of self compassion. The essays in Amy's books are written with great compassion, self compassion and overall compassion for the ways people are interconnected and how beautiful it is that we all need each other. Amy's writing is funny, it's super smart, and the essays work together in a poignant and also lighthearted way, which is a combination I love. And you don't put the book down with everything tied up neatly in a bow, but you do put the book down so much more aware and I hope, willing to question the way that you play out the roles in your life. Thank you Amy. I loved having this conversation with you. I'm grateful you're bringing this message forward and delighted you wanted to share it here with us. And congratulations on the hard work that you've done to offer such an honest and authentic collection of stories that will make your readers pause and maybe even get still and be less alone when it falls. I hope you all will check out Amy's work. The book of essays, Happy to Help, is available to purchase wherever you buy books and you can find the link to her podcast, what Fresh Hell in the Show Notes. Okay y'all, that's it for today. I will meet you here again soon. Thanks to each of you for being here and for listening. I'm so grateful we get to share life in this way. As always, full show notes are available@paigenolan.com podcast there you will find a full summary of the episode, timestamps and key takeaways and any resources mentioned in our conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love if if you would leave me a rating and a review. You can do that by visiting paigenolan.com Love your reviews. Really do help people to discover the show and if you know someone specifically who would enjoy this episode, I'm so grateful to have you all share. I'll meet you there with your friends. Lastly, if you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to share any feedback with me, please email to meetme there@paigenoland.com I would love to hear from you. Thank you to the team that makes this show possible. Podcast production and marketing by North Node Podcast Network Music by Boyd McDonnell Cover photography by Innis Casey okay y'all, that's it for now. I'll meet you there again.