Florence Williams, HEARTBREAK: A Personal and Scientific Journey
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[0:40]Florence Williams is the author of Heartbreak, a personal and scientific journey.
[0:45]She's a journalist, author, and podcaster.
[0:48]Florence is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer
[0:51]for the New York Times National Geographic and numerous other publications.
[0:55]She's also the writer and host of two Gracie Award Audible Original series,
[0:59]Breasts Unbound, and The Three Day Effect, as well as Outside Magazine's Double X Factor podcast.
[1:04]Her book, The Nature Fix, was an Audible Bestseller.
[1:08]And this book, by the way, Heartbreak is available on Pushkin.fm and is an absolutely amazing, immersive audio experience.
[1:18]So definitely check that out on Pushkin.
[1:20]Welcome, Florence.
[1:21]Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Heartbreak,
[1:24]a personal and scientific journey.
[1:26]Thank you so much for having me, Zippy.
[1:28]Great to be here.
[1:29]I feel like I've been through the ringer with you after reading this book.
[1:33]I mean, first of all, I'm so sorry for everything you went through,
[1:36]but I'm glad it spurred this book because it was so interesting.
[1:41]And I loved how you worked together the personal and the research and the dating.
[1:45]And oh my gosh, all the stuff.
[1:47]Why don't you tell listeners a little about what your book is about
[1:50]and what inspired you to write it?
[1:52]Sure, yeah, I'm a science journalist.
[1:54]So I typically use events, I guess, from my personal life.
[1:58]Or just things that happened that I'm become curious about,
[2:02]you know, to sort of drive my work.
[2:04]And in this particular case, it was an unfortunate set of events.
[2:08]My 25 year marriage ended somewhat suddenly, not by my choice.
[2:13]And so for the first time in my life, I found myself reeling from heartbreak.
[2:19]And for some reason, I had been immune from this because I met the man who would be my husband when I was 18.
[2:26]And we stayed together for the next three decades.
[2:29]And mostly it was good.
[2:31]I mean, we had two kids and a lot of fun and exciting, you know, careers and fun adventures in the downtime.
[2:39]But yeah, I mean, he just basically decided he wanted something different once our kids were teenagers.
[2:47]And I felt that that pain registered in my body.
[2:52]And the way that I wasn't expecting that really surprised me also freaked me out.
[2:58]I mean, I got sick.
[3:00]And I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
[3:03]I had trouble sleeping.
[3:04]I lost all this weight.
[3:05]You know, I felt like I had been plugged into,
[3:08]I think I said a faulty electrical socket that kind of weird, like,
[3:13]I'm really freaked out and I don't even understand it.
[3:16]Like why am I feeling this so much in my body?
[3:18]I thought heartbreak was supposed to just be in our heads.
[3:20]And so that that sort of launched me into this investigation of why we need to take heartbreak really seriously.
[3:27]And why we need to take our emotions really seriously.
[3:30]For me, it was a whole lesson in sort of emotional intelligence.
[3:34]And yeah, that's how it started.
[3:37]Well, this is our Valentine's Day episode.
[3:40]So happy Valentine's Day, by the way.
[3:42]Right.
[3:43]Right.
[3:44]Sometimes it doesn't always last forever.
[3:46]But the way you wrote about heartbreak and the way, well, first of all,
[3:52]let me just say it's like a miracle that you and your husband got together the way you did
[3:56]and stayed together for that long.
[3:57]I feel like when you're so young, getting together any couple that got together young,
[4:02]like the odds are so much less that they stayed together forever.
[4:06]Right.
[4:07]Cause we all changed so much.
[4:08]So I think I thought it was like part of the story.
[4:10]That's amazing was was the success of it for so long to begin with.
[4:13]Yeah.
[4:14]That's especially recounting how you met on your, you know, outward,
[4:17]boundish, you know, tree, whatever time.
[4:20]By the way, I went to Yale and I don't remember that program at all.
[4:23]I obviously just didn't get it.
[4:24]Oh my gosh.
[4:25]Yeah.
[4:26]It's called foot.
[4:27]I was called foot.
[4:28]Oh my gosh.
[4:29]That's right.
[4:30]Yeah.
[4:31]I'm not a nature person.
[4:32]I was like.
[4:33]No.
[4:34]No.
[4:35]That's right.
[4:36]I forgot all about foot.
[4:37]And he was like your foot leader.
[4:38]Right.
[4:39]And I was a foot freshman.
[4:41]Oh my gosh.
[4:42]Yeah.
[4:43]Yeah.
[4:44]So you took us through your whole relationship.
[4:46]And I feel like the first stumbling block.
[4:48]Of course, of course, the first stumbling block was when you had kids.
[4:52]Because the two of you were so adventurous.
[4:54]Going out and doing all these fun things.
[4:56]And then you referenced.
[4:57]Now you were in the wilderness.
[4:59]But you had to remember, you know, diapers or whatever.
[5:02]And you had a baby in a.
[5:03]And you were in.
[5:04]Or whatever.
[5:05]And how that automatically changes the tenor of two adventurous.
[5:09]Seekers.
[5:10]You know, it raises the question.
[5:11]Like what do you do in a relationship is based on mutual interest.
[5:14]And then all of a sudden, one of you can't do it as well.
[5:16]Or as whole hearted.
[5:17]And what does that do?
[5:18]Right.
[5:19]I mean, it's a whole, you know, parenting.
[5:21]It's a whole new adventure.
[5:22]Right.
[5:23]And yes.
[5:24]Not one I would have traded traded for anything.
[5:26]But it changed our relationship in that.
[5:28]I think I had hopes expectations that we would have a more sort of equitable parenting.
[5:35]You know, burden.
[5:36]Yeah.
[5:37]And it was disappointing to me that we really didn't.
[5:40]You know, his his career sort of took took priority.
[5:44]And I was not happy about that.
[5:47]And I also felt just sort of, I think, you know, abandoned in some way.
[5:51]And that's sort of like, you know, difficult journey of parenting.
[5:56]I was, I was kind of on my own there for large parts of the top time.
[6:01]And I'm sure that, you know, these sort of small resentments and also just like points of disconnection.
[6:08]You know, feeling like you're not really being supported in the way that you would like to be.
[6:12]You know, they add up over time, unfortunately.
[6:14]And I don't, I think maybe because partly because we got together so young and had so little experience with other relationships that, you know, we,
[6:23]we didn't really have the language for communicating, I think, as well as, I mean, I know now.
[6:29]I know now how little we knew about about kind of communicating our needs and then meeting them.
[6:36]Unfortunately.
[6:37]Well, this concept of sort of midlife heartbreak, right?
[6:41]You always think about when we think about teens sort of sprawled on the bed with tears and sad music.
[6:48]That's what heartbreak conjures up for me.
[6:50]But it's very different when it's not just breaking your heart, but this broke your whole life at your whole foundation like shattered because it affected everything.
[6:59]And you have some line in here about how all of a sudden, you know, you had to do these adventure.
[7:03]You had to go on these adventures without your life partner who had literally been by your side for your whole adult life.
[7:09]And then what do you do that day when you wake up and he's not there and your kids aren't there and how do you handle that?
[7:15]Yeah, I mean, it's two things. One is that I still felt like I was a histrionic teenager.
[7:20]I mean, I was still, you know, lying face down on the bed listening to sad music. I did that plenty.
[7:25]And I think no matter what age you are, you know, heartbreak is going to hit you in sort of similar ways.
[7:30]But yes, it's almost like having a brain injury or something that you have to relearn everything.
[7:36]You have to relearn how to move through your world, you know, in this completely different way.
[7:41]And yeah, it's a huge blow to your sort of sense of self and your identity when you've been in a partnership like this for so long.
[7:49]And I will say, you know, it feels even though heartbreak is kind of a universal experience.
[7:55]At the time, it feels very singular.
[7:58]It's a lonely experience. And for college educated women who have been married for 20 years, the divorce rate is 15%.
[8:10]Like it's much smaller than, you know, we sort of think of it.
[8:14]I mean, overall in this country, it's 39%, which even that is less than the 50% you know, that so many of us I think grew up hearing.
[8:22]But people just don't, in our demographic, it's the divorce rate is half of what it was in 1980.
[8:28]So I didn't have any really close friends who'd been through this or who were going through it certainly at the same time.
[8:34]So yeah, you have to just, you have to sort of move through the world in a different way figure out who's going to help you and support you.
[8:41]You know, in a way that perhaps you're not accustomed to sort of seeking.
[8:45]I mean, I had been, you know, sort of super competent and super together.
[8:50]And very much wanted to convey that, you know, kind of persona to the world as we do.
[8:56]And as we are taught to do in this culture.
[8:58]And suddenly I was like, oh no, I'm really kind of a mess.
[9:02]And it's actually in some ways not so bad being a total mess.
[9:09]This is my body hurt and was freaking out.
[9:12]You know, eventually I came to recognize that that these human emotions are actually a huge part of kind of, you know, understanding who we really are.
[9:21]And, you know, ultimately it makes us more empathetic.
[9:25]I think to other people's pain.
[9:27]I really it changed me in that way a lot.
[9:29]And we know we can talk about more of the upside that comes out sort of later on.
[9:33]But it doesn't necessarily that does not become apparent.
[9:37]In the first throes of heartbreak.
[9:39]Well, what is it give me some hopeful tips about for anyone who has suffered heartbreaker.
[9:46]This is also very similar to loss in a way, right?
[9:49]You lost your life partner.
[9:50]That's a longer accessible grief.
[9:52]Grief as you point out.
[9:54]People write about grief all the time.
[9:56]Right.
[9:57]How grief affects the brain and grief fog.
[10:00]And there's all this literature and documentation
[10:03]on the fact that grief becomes very physical in its form.
[10:06]And you're taking heartbreak
[10:08]and applying that same filter.
[10:10]Yeah, I mean, with heartbreak, you have all the grief.
[10:12]But you also have these sort of other layers.
[10:15]For example, rejection.
[10:17]There's kind of this emerging field,
[10:19]psychological field of what happens
[10:22]to your brain on rejection.
[10:24]And as human animals, you know,
[10:26]we are hypersensitive to the group
[10:30]and to the feelings of the group
[10:32]and whether we feel like we belong in the group
[10:34]or whether we've been kicked out.
[10:36]And so when your primary attachment partner takes off,
[10:40]you know, you're dealing with that sort of ostracism
[10:43]kind of feeling as well.
[10:45]And your body basically responds
[10:48]as though you've been left to the jungle by yourself.
[10:53]So you're sort of expecting predators to show up,
[10:57]you know, humans were not supposed to move
[10:58]through the jungle alone.
[11:00]Like we're just not.
[11:00]We had safety in numbers.
[11:01]That's why we are social animals.
[11:04]That's why we're hyper social animals.
[11:05]It's just safer.
[11:06]And it's better for sort of functioning in society
[11:10]or functioning as an individual in a society.
[11:12]And so that's why your nervous system completely freaks out
[11:16]and produces all these stress hormones,
[11:18]nor epinephrine sort of floods into your muscles
[11:22]into your organs, into your brain.
[11:25]And your immune system changes.
[11:27]Like very, very clearly changes.
[11:29]And so one of the first conversations I had
[11:31]was with this researcher at UCLA.
[11:34]And I told him that I had just gotten diagnosed
[11:37]with this autoimmune disease,
[11:39]you know, and I was heartbroken and blah, blah.
[11:40]And he said, well, why don't you come into the lab
[11:43]and we can run you through these studies.
[11:45]I do this blood analysis that's not available,
[11:48]you know, in a typical doctor's office.
[11:50]And we could look at your blood
[11:52]at various time points as you try to sort of recover
[11:55]from this heartbreak and see if your immune system changes.
[11:58]And so that's what we did.
[11:59]And that became kind of one of the backbone
[12:01]sort of scientific explorations that I did in the book.
[12:04]That's really interesting.
[12:05]And can you share the finding?
[12:07]Yeah, so in the first time point,
[12:08]which was, I don't know, five months after the split,
[12:11]it turns out that my white blood cells were changing
[12:14]such that, well, this doctor, Dr. Stephen Cole,
[12:18]he's a neuro geneticist at UCLA.
[12:20]He said, yeah, you look like you have the blood
[12:23]of a lonely person.
[12:24]Oh.
[12:25]And we know that lonely people do have a much higher risk
[12:29]for chronic diseases.
[12:31]They have a higher risk, significantly higher risk
[12:33]of dying early.
[12:35]And so his lab has been looking at why,
[12:37]like what's going on in the immune system,
[12:39]people who feel like they don't have social support.
[12:42]And it is, by the way, a subjective feeling,
[12:44]like you can live in a family,
[12:46]you can be in a marriage and still feel unsupported, right,
[12:49]and still feel lonely.
[12:50]But so my white blood cells were putting out more
[12:53]transcription factors that up-regulate cells
[12:58]that produce inflammation.
[13:00]So as if they're getting ready for an attack by a predator,
[13:03]right, or a wound, like a blood wound injury
[13:08]while you're stumbling alone through the forest.
[13:10]And at the same time, down-regulating cells
[13:13]that fight viruses.
[13:15]So because viruses are transmitted in groups,
[13:18]maybe our immune system makes this quick calculation
[13:20]and can't do everything.
[13:21]It's like, okay, we're not gonna do so much viral defense,
[13:23]we're gonna do more wound defense.
[13:26]But that's exactly the wrong call
[13:28]if you're living in modern life.
[13:30]And guess what, you're heading into a pandemic.
[13:32]Or in this case, I mean, Steve Cole has spent quite
[13:35]a bit of time studying people with HIV.
[13:38]And it's the wrong call, obviously, for HIV,
[13:41]where you really want that viral defense.
[13:45]And in our culture too much inflammation
[13:47]that goes on for too long,
[13:48]we know leads to all kinds of chronic diseases
[13:51]from Alzheimer's to heart disease,
[13:53]to cardiovascular disease,
[13:55]well, cardiovascular is the same thing,
[13:56]to things like diabetes.
[13:58]So you know what?
[13:59]No, yeah, but how can we reprogram the body
[14:03]in this lifetime, not lifetime?
[14:06]I mean, it's more than a lifetime.
[14:07]This, the way that we're actually programmed,
[14:10]how do we go about saying like, okay,
[14:12]well, if that's not the right call, now what do we do?
[14:15]So that was my urgent question.
[14:16]I was like, I need to get better.
[14:18]And I need to do it as soon as possible.
[14:21]So that's why I look to sort of these evidence-based
[14:25]heartbreak recovery plans.
[14:27]I ended up kind of busting.
[14:29]I think some of the myths that we're told,
[14:32]if you know ways to recover from heartbreak
[14:33]that didn't have signs behind them.
[14:35]And I kind of threw everything I had at it.
[14:38]So, you know, I tried to do things like meditating,
[14:42]which we know can help your nervous system
[14:44]get into a commonplace.
[14:46]For me, I had already written this book
[14:47]called The Nature Fix about how being in nature
[14:51]can make us happier and healthier and more creative.
[14:54]And I knew that I loved being in nature.
[14:56]So I turned to that.
[14:57]One of the psychologists I talked to,
[14:59]pretty early said to me, you know,
[15:01]she said, yeah, the statistics,
[15:02]the health statistics for people who are divorced
[15:04]are pretty bad, like people who are divorced
[15:07]have much worse health outcomes.
[15:09]And a 23% increased risk of early death.
[15:12]She said, but we know that some individuals
[15:15]are more resilient than others.
[15:17]And there are certain things that these,
[15:19]there are certain qualities,
[15:21]these resilient individuals have.
[15:22]And I practically grabbed her by the shoulders
[15:25]and to beg her to tell me what these things were
[15:27]because I wanted to be a resilient person.
[15:31]And she said, yeah, you know, it's really interesting.
[15:33]We find that when people have been through tragedies,
[15:35]it's the ones who are able to see beauty
[15:39]and cultivate a sense of beauty, a sense of awe.
[15:43]These are the people who actually seem
[15:44]to sort of come through these tragedies
[15:48]in a way that they can make sense
[15:50]of what's happened to them.
[15:51]They can find joy, you know, still on the other side.
[15:56]Their brains seem connected, have more connections
[16:00]on different parts of the brains
[16:01]that just help them put their own problems
[16:03]into perspective and help them tell themselves a story
[16:07]about what happened and how they can get through this.
[16:10]I thought that was fascinating.
[16:11]And so I left her office
[16:13]to just determine to spend even more time.
[16:15]For me, it was in nature, you know,
[16:16]for other people that might be listening
[16:18]to symphonies or listening to music.
[16:20]And then, you know, I spent time with people who have PTSD
[16:24]and are trying to recover from it to learn from them.
[16:27]I went on a backpacking trip
[16:29]with a group of fascinating women,
[16:31]young women who have been sex trafficked.
[16:34]And I mean, I could not in any way
[16:36]compare my experience to theirs,
[16:37]but they were exhibiting, you know,
[16:40]what I would call sort of post-traumatic growth.
[16:43]In a way that their trauma,
[16:45]the resilience became contagious,
[16:47]not just the sort of feelings of stress.
[16:50]I went through this workshop for divorcing people,
[16:53]that was EMDR, was a psychotherapy intervention
[16:57]called EMDR, which utilizes sort of eye movement
[17:01]and bilateral stimulation.
[17:03]That was kind of interesting.
[17:04]And maybe someone helped Walt.
[17:06]It is an effective treatment known to be effective
[17:08]for trauma.
[17:10]I went through psychedelic therapy with a therapist
[17:14]using EMDRMA and Solis-Ibin
[17:17]as sort of a decoupling drug,
[17:20]which is not often how we hear it.
[17:23]And then I put myself through this wilderness adventure
[17:27]where I spent 30 days on a wilderness river,
[17:31]including 14 days of it alone,
[17:33]to try to learn how to be alone,
[17:37]how to rely on myself, how to access some bravery.
[17:42]Yeah, so I did all that,
[17:43]and I ended up writing about it.
[17:44]Wow.
[17:45]So for people who can't necessarily take off
[17:49]and, you know, take a canoe with a bathroom
[17:51]and one side of it and you know,
[17:53]just try to go camping and doing all this stuff
[17:57]from all your research.
[17:59]What is the best thing for people to do?
[18:01]What can people do?
[18:02]Well, I have this kind of three-part plan
[18:04]that's sort of general enough
[18:06]that people can kind of customize it to what works.
[18:09]So the first, well, I'll tell you the three parts,
[18:11]and then I'll go into them.
[18:12]It's number one, calm.
[18:15]You have to calm down.
[18:16]Number two, connect.
[18:19]And number three is purpose and meaning.
[18:23]And so should I just dive in
[18:25]to like sort of the first part there?
[18:26]Sure.
[18:27]Yeah, so I mean, you know, your body basically,
[18:30]as I said, is kind of in a fight or flight.
[18:32]And so you have to figure out how to get out of that
[18:35]so that you can then do the work for healing.
[18:38]Because none of that's going to happen
[18:39]when you're sort of in the grip of a giant freak out.
[18:44]So do what you do that can help you calm down
[18:48]and sort of get you out of this kind of zone of acute trauma.
[18:53]For me, that was movement, it's breathing,
[18:56]it's nature, it's meditating, dancing, whatever.
[19:00]Okay, so then the connection piece is both
[19:03]connecting authentically with people you love.
[19:08]So family members, you're good friends, lean on them.
[19:12]You'll find out who's there for you and who isn't.
[19:16]And you know, with divorce, I think sometimes people
[19:19]feel like it might be contagious or something.
[19:21]And so much of our social world is built upon couples
[19:25]or on family units.
[19:26]And so when yours kind of dissolves,
[19:30]it is interesting like who really shows up for you
[19:33]and kind of who doesn't.
[19:35]But also connecting to nature and connecting to beauty.
[19:38]So anything you can do that helps you feel
[19:42]like you're part of a larger universe
[19:45]that puts your own sort of dramas into perspective.
[19:49]When we feel connected to other people
[19:51]and when we feel connected to the world around us,
[19:53]it does kind of shrink our egos
[19:55]in this really, really beneficial way.
[19:58]I'm not in a way that damages.
[20:00]our self-esteem, just in a way that sort of raises the importance and significance and beauty
[20:04]of everything else. And I talk a lot about the power of awe, you know, to do that in the book.
[20:10]So that's part of the connection piece. And then finally, it's this purpose and meaning. And when
[20:15]I worked with this blood geneticist at, when this geneticist at UCLA, you know, he said, we, what we
[20:22]have found when we, when we analyze blood and groups of people, and we, we give them interventions to
[20:28]do, like volunteering, you know, at schools or whatever. He said, the healthier immune system
[20:34]is not really linked to sociality or hanging out with people or even like rating yourself as
[20:42]happier. It's not sort of about feeling happy. It's really about finding purpose in your life.
[20:50]And so if you're volunteering in a way or whatever, you know, you could find purpose in your
[20:55]family unit, you can find purpose in your work. If you can do that, then you may not feel like you wake
[21:01]up every morning, like merciful and giggling, but you have this sort of like north star that,
[21:07]that really fulfills you. And a way that Americans just aren't, I think, used to sort of
[21:12]equating with well-being or happiness. But he said, those are the people who actually have the best
[21:18]immune systems and the best-looking blood. So that's a really hugely important antidote to
[21:25]both loneliness and heartbreak. I want to like FedEx him some of my blood and see what you think.
[21:31]So I would someday maybe we'll all be able to, it'll be on the Apple Watch eventually,
[21:34]but it's not there yet. Are you lonely today? Here's what you need to do. Here's what helps you,
[21:39]you see what helps you is taking a bubble bath. Interesting. But what helps me is walking through
[21:45]the woods. You know, eventually, I think it's not unrealistic to think that personalized medicine
[21:50]might be able to help us figure this out. Like when are our blood cells, when are our white
[21:56]blood cells happiest? Well, yeah, it all comes down to meditation. Meditation is certainly a huge,
[22:03]it's a huge intervention for some people, but not for everybody. Right. No, it doesn't. It's really hard
[22:08]to learn it. It's really hard to learn it. And then once a lot of times when people do learn it,
[22:14]then it falls off. Like it's hard to sort of make it sustainable sometimes for some people,
[22:20]obviously some people. Interesting though, that you can basically take an inventory of your life
[22:25]based on these metrics, right? Like as you're talking, I'm like, well, I live in New York City,
[22:30]when I'm here, I feel less happy, probably because I never leave my house except to like
[22:36]drop off the kids. And while I think my house is beautiful, it's a, it's not nature. It's not all
[22:40]inspiring, right? It looks exactly the same all the time. When we take a trip to California or
[22:45]something and the sky every morning, it's like, you just look at the sky and wonder and be like,
[22:50]oh my gosh, this is amazing. Right. That like fuels your soul in some way that I think we all know
[22:56]is obvious in some way, but not measurable. And maybe we don't prioritize it enough.
[23:02]Yeah. If we said it's like actually going to save our lives, that's right.
[23:07]You know, I think one of the almost definitions of awe is that it surprises you a little bit.
[23:15]Like there's a little bit of a novelty quality to it. And that's why it sort of pulls us out
[23:21]you know, of our sort of little comfort zone to to make us pay attention and go, whoa,
[23:27]what? What is that gorgeous like purple moon doing tonight? Right. Or are my God, wow,
[23:33]that butterfly. I did not expect that. But it doesn't have to be the grand canyon, you know,
[23:38]you could find awe in things that are close to home. I mean, if you had a houseplant, you know,
[23:44]that's putting out blooms and you really paid attention to that houseplant, you know, you could
[23:48]find awe in that you could find awe in your connections to your children. It would always do things
[23:54]that surprise you and make you just, I think, sometimes blown away, right, by their, you know,
[24:00]by their emerging intelligence or their intuition or their just, you know, the way they see the
[24:05]world, they can remind us how to find wonder and awe. But even in a city, you know, there are lots
[24:12]of green spaces. There is a sky. There is a rainbow. I know, I shouldn't have. I'm regretting even
[24:17]saying that as we're talking. No, no, I think it's a real that what you said is because very, very
[24:21]commonly experienced by people, but we do most of us do live in cities. And so if we're going to
[24:28]figure out how to make on beauty a part of our lives, we actually do need to work at it and be
[24:33]mindful about it. And when so, so I mean, there, there's this little acronym, AWE, that I find
[24:41]very helpful, I think, for people who live in cities. And it's like, go out once or twice a day or
[24:47]you're doing your house or do it with your in your kitchen or whatever. But, but the, the A stands
[24:52]for attention, like just pay attention to something beautiful and try not to like, you know,
[24:59]multitask and think of your to-do list or whatever. But just pay attention. And then the W is
[25:04]wait a minute. So like sit there with that attention. And the E is exhale. So, you know, take just
[25:12]two breaths while you're looking at something beautiful and sort of, you know, drop the soundtrack
[25:19]of your thinking brain for just a moment to wake up this sensory brain, you know, smell it,
[25:24]touch it. And even that little exercise has been linked to pretty dramatic increases in people's
[25:32]well-being. It's amazing. Okay. Done. I'm going to work it into my day. Okay, you know, and we can't
[25:42]see the sky. Look, I mean, I can just look at my window, obviously, and there is sky and we do see
[25:47]the changes in the sun. And, you know, I don't want to minimize it. There are ways. And there are
[25:52]birds. There are clouds. There are, yes, there. And dramatic weather. And dramatic weather.
[25:58]I was thinking that during the big snowstorm, right, as the kids were outside and just like
[26:02]picking up the snow. And I'm like, how crazy is snow? Right. It is so crazy that we walk outside
[26:08]one day and then we can touch this. It's like, you know, people would pay for this, right? People
[26:12]would pay for the kids. Love it. They're like fully present. Yeah. No, I love it too. It's so
[26:18]fun. We were like snowball fighting. Anyway, but yes, I think all of this. And of course,
[26:22]the search for meaning, which I also think people know, but I think people struggle to find
[26:26]meaningful work and how to fit that in and what means something to them, especially when they're
[26:32]running, you know, they're like on the treadmill, right? At like 8.0 trying to figure out what's
[26:36]meaningful. It's really hard. So I'm sort of hard. That's really hard. But at least there's now a
[26:41]framework that's achievable. And that's great. And inspiring. And I love that. Yeah. And I think if we
[26:46]use it as kind of a signpost, like, you know, when we're making decisions or planning, you know,
[26:52]even just little and big events in our lives, you know, is this something that's going to give
[26:55]me meaning? Or is this something that's going to entertain me? Is this something that's going to,
[27:00]you know, amuse me? Or is this something that is actually, you know, going to fulfill me in a deeper
[27:04]way? And I mean, these are sort of some obvious questions, but I think we're not used to necessarily
[27:09]analyzing our decision tree with this as a goal post. Yeah. I find this all completely fascinating.
[27:15]And I'm just wondering, I didn't talk at all about like the writing of this book or anything,
[27:19]but what if you're giving advice to someone who's trying to do something similar and write a
[27:25]book like this, you did such a great job of weaving your story in with the science and making
[27:30]the science very digestible. Right. It's not confusing. It's lay people's science that's very
[27:38]impactful, great, because it has these action steps associated with it. So how do you do it? Like,
[27:43]what's the secret? How do I do it? Well, I'm doing it for 20 years. That helps. Yeah. I mean,
[27:48]I've been a science journalist for a long time. I find that humor is kind of a key ingredient in
[27:56]helping the science become digestible. And I apply humor, I think, towards myself. And I also
[28:03]sometimes apply it to other people, just to make them seem more human too. So the scientists I
[28:08]meet was so interesting when I was working on this book. It'd be because, you know, I would go to
[28:12]some lab and talk to some illustrious scientists. And I would say, yeah, you know, I was married for
[28:18]25 years. And then my hard got broken. And this is why I'm writing this book. And they would say,
[28:22]oh, yeah, hard break boy, when I was in graduate school, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or I just got
[28:27]this phone call, you know, about my mother. I mean, people, the scientists I talked to you instantly
[28:32]would share their own heart breaks in a way that was so just personally validating. You know,
[28:38]it's just nice to have people say, yeah, I've been there. Right. How helpful is that? But it
[28:43]also became, I think, helpful in the book because it humanized them as characters that I wrote about.
[28:49]Pretty true. All right, good tip. And also, I'm excited to listen to the push-in audiobook.
[28:54]Oh, fantastic. Yeah, I'm super excited about that. We did something really creative with that
[28:59]because I had done, you know, quite a bit of audio work. I took tape of like all these interviews.
[29:05]I took tape of my friends. I even taped my therapist talking to me on Zoom. I taped, yeah, some of
[29:12]the boyfriends along the way. And I spoken into an audio journal. And so we actually woven that
[29:20]sort of in the moment tape for a really immersive audiobook experience. Oh, my gosh, very exciting.
[29:26]I actually first heard about your book from someone at Push-In who I was. I was great having a
[29:30]meeting with anyone. It was awesome. Florence, thank you. Thank you for this Valentine's
[29:35]treat this inspiring roadmap to more fulfilling purposeful lives while we're
[29:42]heartbroken or not just how to live better. I mean, what better gift is that. So thank you.
[29:46]Oh, thank you so much to be. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate it. Okay, take care. Thank you so much.
[29:51]Thanks. Bye-bye.
[29:54]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[29:58]forget to follow me.
[30:00]On Instagram, at ZB Owens, and at Moms don't have time to read books,
[30:03]also sign up for my newsletter at zB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[30:08]lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact texture sound
[30:13]for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[30:18]now trim music.