Mary Pipher, A LIGHT IN LIFE: Meditations on Impermanence
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now
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[0:58]Mary Pfeiffer is the author of a life and light
[1:01]Meditations on impermanence
[1:03]She is a psychologist who has earned her title of cultural therapist for her generation
[1:08]She's the author of four New York Times bestsellers including reviving Ophelia
[1:13]The shelter of each other another country and women rowing north. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska
[1:19]Welcome Mary. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books and in this case
[1:24]Moms don't have time to drop off their kids at camp and be on time for podcast warning. So welcome
[1:30]Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here Zivi. I absolutely loved your book a life in light
[1:36]Meditations on impermanence the way you write is just absolutely gorgeous and the things
[1:42]It's not just the way you write in this very poetic way, but it's the sentiments behind it and the way you talk about your life and your childhood and
[1:51]How you interpret everything. I just it's it's really
[1:55]Really wonderful. So I really thank you so much
[1:58]Really enjoyed it. Why don't you tell listeners a little about what this book is about?
[2:02]Well, I wrote this book during COVID and I actually
[2:06]Needed to write this book. I hadn't planned to write in more books
[2:09]But I was lonesome during COVID and couldn't see my friends couldn't exercise as much as usual because I couldn't go in buildings
[2:18]I also realized that if I had a project that I felt could be useful to the world and to me
[2:26]I could make it through
[2:28]Lasted and so I decided that what I'd write about is something I'd really
[2:34]Been concerned about my whole life as a child with a pretty traumatic family and then later as a therapist
[2:41]Which is how to find life in dark times or resilience?
[2:45]So as I struggled with those issues for myself
[2:49]I wrote this book and I hope for the reader
[2:52]There's some some help or some teachings about resilience
[2:57]The other thing though is just a really simple happy thing zibi, which is
[3:02]My memories and coded in light and almost every scene in my childhood in my whole life
[3:09]Can be explained in part by the light a very light
[3:14]Focus person solo powered person and so
[3:18]The way the book is organized is around
[3:21]Where light played a role in every scene
[3:25]There's a beautiful word a japanese word comma ready that I introduce early in the book
[3:31]And what it means is the interplay
[3:34]of light and shadow in
[3:36]Least Apple leaves and I actually have a memory of that from when I was one or two years old
[3:42]Before I encoded things firmly
[3:45]And I also have memories of the best time I ever had with my dad
[3:51]The time I had with my grandmother encoded in life
[3:54]But comma ready also means something different, which means
[3:58]A melancholy longing for a person or place or thing
[4:03]And so part of this this book is about impermanence and it just a sense that
[4:10]Good times come and go people come and go
[4:13]Every minute is different and especially at my point in the lifespan
[4:18]I'm acutely aware of impermanence even my grandchildren are growing up now and
[4:24]Moving into lives of their own and of course is an older person. I'm losing people and so the great trick
[4:31]I think at this stage of life
[4:34]Is learning to find light within myself
[4:37]So that's the that's the basic journey of the book. No
[4:42]Well, you give so many examples of when light has helped you and
[4:46]Conversely, how detrimental it is when you're in dark places
[4:50]And you refer to this feeling of squishiness when you find yourself in places like
[4:56]The trailer you lived in with your father for a period of time for the one year when your mother was
[5:01]off doing her medical degree and
[5:03]Everything else and how that time of course was dark given your dad's PTSD and everything that he was going through
[5:10]But also the physical environment and how now you look to windows
[5:16]You look to you can't be in confined spaces and I had never really thought about
[5:22]light as something
[5:25]Like a measure on which to
[5:28]Always be aware aware of right? I don't measure my life and light and I hadn't even thought about it
[5:33]Changing it like am I happier in places with lots of windows like why does that happen?
[5:38]How how important is this to me?
[5:40]How important is it to like my husband who needs much more light than I do now that I think about it in your terms
[5:46]It's almost like you could give us a quiz on like light sensitivity
[5:50]But tell me about that squishy that squishy feeling
[5:54]Yeah, well, I think that squishy feeling is the sense of
[5:59]A physiological sense and embodied that's why I use squishy as opposed to some word for emotions or thoughts
[6:06]It's an embodied felt sense of vulnerability and fear and kind of a deep loneliness and
[6:16]From my child. I think was particularly likely to generate that feeling because
[6:22]I think I was about 18 months old when my dad left for the Korean War
[6:27]And just came home very short time in the next four or five years
[6:32]And then as you alluded to the trailer when he did find the come home from the Korean war
[6:37]He took my brother and I
[6:39]To the Ozarks to live in a trailer behind the sisters house
[6:44]And my younger brother went to live with some grandparents
[6:47]And I went a year with God seeing my mom
[6:50]And then that
[6:51]Continued I was always with my mom after we reunited when I was a second grader
[6:57]But that continued with my father. All of us left a daily diet
[7:01]He was with our family and not with our family
[7:04]Worked away from home and came home the occasional weekend
[7:08]And my mom was also gone a lot. So it was in some ways a very lonely child
[7:13]One of the things I I believe there's almost everything is both and so for example
[7:19]I can say it was it was both a very lonely child
[7:23]And a childhood where I had
[7:26]Norma cement freedom to develop a cell
[7:29]To define how I spent my time
[7:32]Learn how to do things to structure
[7:35]Time with my brothers the way I wanted to
[7:38]And I was sort of a leader of the kids. I'm oldest a family of depending on account for six
[7:44]My parents adopted two Korean orphans after I left home
[7:47]So they're my sisters, but I never lived with him
[7:50]But anyway, I still get squishy
[7:52]You know, I for example my daughter and her husband and my two young grand sons
[7:59]moved to Canada after they lived 20 blocks away
[8:03]And I felt that squishy feeling again
[8:05]There's a chapter in the book called teardrops in the snow
[8:08]Where I write about that goodbye
[8:11]But the antidote to squishy
[8:13]There's two or three anecdotes one of them this love
[8:16]One of them is work
[8:18]Another is the natural world
[8:22]And another is for me meditation
[8:25]I find great comfort with great calming and
[8:29]Simply sitting down and breathing
[8:31]So yeah
[8:33]I feel like your antidids discusiveness are often the one sighted as
[8:38]Coping mechanisms for depression. It's just another way. Right. It's another way to reframe the feelings and
[8:45]The solutions or the how to get through the the harder times
[8:49]You know, it's interesting because I'm a therapist. I know all the technical language when I was a therapist
[8:54]I never use dsm3
[8:57]I know
[8:58]I preferred to see people as individuals and I said
[9:02]distinct
[9:03]And I also thought that labeling did most people was serviced because they thought they understood something
[9:09]When actually there's no understanding to come from a label or very little standing to come from the label
[9:15]But uh, when I write I tend to
[9:18]When I was a therapist when I write
[9:20]I tend to write in very ordinary language
[9:24]And I tend to pull for resilience
[9:28]I don't for example label my own experienced depression very often
[9:32]I label it sometimes struggle
[9:34]More journey
[9:36]Because I don't claim even though I had a pretty difficult childhood. I don't actually claim
[9:41]I'm any different than most people most people have a difficult childhood most people's lives if you look across the timeline
[9:49]Have very difficult times and and so the the the journey. I like to explore
[9:55]Is how all of us lead these lives of light and darkness
[10:00]we all have within us the capacity to learn and grow from our struggles into people who are
[10:08]much more skillful of finding delight. I love that. You also have, and maybe this is part of the
[10:14]natural world, you from a young age would spend hours and hours and hours in the pool,
[10:19]and that was another sort of, is that still something you try to incorporate in your daily life?
[10:24]So happy. In fact, right after this interview, I'm heading to a swimming pool.
[10:28]Here you are. You know, that's an interesting thing to be because essentially, I've
[10:35]like the same things my whole life. I like swimming. I like being outdoors. I like animals.
[10:41]I like women, friends, girlfriends. I like my own family. I like walks. I like looking at sunset
[10:49]sunrise and like reading. That's pretty much, I liked it. 10 years old. I like it at 74 years old.
[10:57]It's just pretty much what I like. I also really like these basic things that people have enjoyed
[11:04]throughout history. I'm not so far. I don't watch TV, for example. I'm not very fond of technology.
[11:12]It's a general rule. I don't have any Facebook or I don't have these things that most people have.
[11:18]I don't want to be on my tombstone. Remember, guys, she answered all the emails,
[11:24]or she kept this up to speak with everything that happened in her life. So I'm not actually living
[11:30]too much differently than I live as a little girl. The only thing really different is the first
[11:37]five or six decades of my life. I was very keeps thinking mammal. I wanted to find people to love
[11:44]me. I loved to love people and be connected to them. So I've put a lot of energy into my family,
[11:51]my aunts, my grandmother, who I just dearly loved, and also building friendships and just having
[11:58]lots of women, friends, lots of a couple of friends. My husband's a musician. So we have writer,
[12:04]friends, and I have music friends through him. And then we've, of course, cancer friends and
[12:10]neighbors. So I built, you know, big networks of people I love to be around and plus my children,
[12:16]grandchildren. Well, that's all changing now. That's all really changing now. And one of the things
[12:22]that I think the last decade or two of love and many people that changes is we need to not learn
[12:30]to attach, but learn to detach and move away from being dependent on relationships for our
[12:37]happiness. And instead building up what we need inside ourselves for happiness.
[12:44]Yes, the elusive inner happiness. That's a wonderful goal, though, for everybody to feel that
[12:53]without needing the connections. Although I do feel like part of, I mean, that's why
[12:59]speaking to your COVID experience is we all can relate to you. That's why when you're
[13:03]robbed of that day-to-day interaction and, you know, you take it from in your book all the way
[13:08]to making your first friend and how transformative that was in your life, all the way to
[13:14]when you're alone during COVID. And we take for granted all these interactions and the day-to-day
[13:20]stuff, even like the summer I've spent so much time on Zoom, like in my house, like away from
[13:25]the regular city that I'm like, you know, okay, you know, where are the people? So, yeah, there's
[13:34]something I think we can convince ourselves. And I saw Malcolm Gladwell actually just had some
[13:38]big thing come out about how working from home is like destroying the social connections and the
[13:43]social fabric. And people think it's more convenient to be at home and do the things and save time,
[13:49]but really, we're losing something so vast and important in making that decision.
[13:56]I think he's right about that. And I've noticed that people are less extroverted and out there
[14:03]since COVID. That's almost like even right now, for example, we're having the fundraiser this
[14:08]next week, which is really going to be a party with a band playing and food and wine and all this.
[14:15]And I'm realizing as I get this organized, this first party I've had or been invited to
[14:21]a long time. People just don't tend to do that right now. They're more stay home, see a few
[14:27]close friends, not be out the world so much. And it's a tremendous loss. We're very, very
[14:34]connecting animals. You know, it's interesting because we have a, we've sponsored an Afghan family
[14:41]issue and our family ended up being part of a big extended family of about 70 Afghans who moved
[14:49]to our town. And the Afghans are so interconnected. Like they'll end up 10 people spending a night
[14:58]in the apartment because they all want to be together. You know, and it's really an on Sunday,
[15:04]all the men sit in one room and drink tea and all the women sit in the other room and drink tea.
[15:09]And it's just really lovely to see a people so connected and so connected to each other and so
[15:16]dependent on relationship to help the women all help each other with the children, the men all help
[15:23]each other with everything. And it's, it's really kind of beautiful. It makes me more and for
[15:28]a more connected world. Of course, I always personally believe that there should be a law that
[15:34]nobody could live further. That's from their family that in one mile. But that's interesting.
[15:38]An enforceable in America. You know, I do want to say thing about something about happiness and
[15:46]inner happiness and peace, which is it's much easier to find those things at 74 than in the stage
[15:53]of life here. In the stage of life here and you've got to make a living. You're very concerned
[15:59]with caring for kids. You've got a house to maintain and groceries to buy and cars to keep running
[16:05]etc. And at 74, I mean, I have some of those things to do, but it's very, it's for a very small
[16:12]population of two. And we've got our house, we're retired, except for my writing and Jim's music.
[16:18]And so there's more time to do things like take a morning walk at sunrise and take an even walk at
[16:25]sunset and lie in a hammock all afternoon and read a good book and go to Sanga where I can meditate.
[16:33]You don't have these lectures. You're busy all the time. And we have some young parents in our
[16:39]song. And they just consistently are struggling more than the older people because they just
[16:45]have so many more disruptions and such. And they're happy. They're happy. They love their kids
[16:51]engaged with the world. But they just have so much more to deal with on a daily basis.
[16:57]So funny. I visited my dad briefly yesterday. And we were just together for about an hour. And of
[17:02]course, my kids face time me like two different kids. And I don't want to go, I don't want to be here.
[17:07]Why do I'm sitting here? And like all this stuff. And he just looks at me and he's like, whoa,
[17:11]you have a lot coming at you all the time. Like you have a lot more going on than I do. And I'm
[17:16]like, I don't think so. He's still running a business and everything. And has a lot going on. And
[17:20]he's like, no, no, no, not compared to you. Like this is crazy. All the inputs. But I don't know.
[17:26]I see your point. And it does sound lovely just waking up and sitting in it.
[17:30]Oh, my kid going on a walk and writing books. Oh, my gosh, that sounds amazing.
[17:35]But also this this period of time is deeply rewarding and watching kids grow. And you know,
[17:40]I am lucky personally. I mean, I guess I shouldn't say lucky, but I am divorced and remarried.
[17:44]So I do have these breaks every other weekend, which give me all of that nice
[17:48]and a time to just regroup and appreciate and miss and then get back into it. But before I was
[17:55]like constantly depleted, like always just like, no, no gas in the tank. But you know, now we have
[18:00]your life to look forward to, which is which is wonderful. I was trying to find this one beautiful.
[18:07]There were so many beautiful lines. But I feel like it was the way you also do in the book,
[18:11]you do such a great job of ending each chapter with like a not a cliffhanger because it's not that
[18:18]type of book, but a sentence that makes you totally of leaving us wanting more. And also you too,
[18:25]so great job weaving in books, which is something I did. I just wrote a memoir myself actually called
[18:30]bookends. And I have books with every point of my life. And you do something so similar,
[18:35]but far better than me here, which is weaving in everything you're reading. And maybe I could just
[18:40]read this one one passage that you wrote if that's okay about reading. He said, with the librarians
[18:45]guidance, I eventually read novels by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and a great many others,
[18:49]including Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, and Les Miserables. These books helped me inhabit
[18:54]worlds very different from my own and increased my sense of the wide range of human experiences.
[18:59]I came to understand that many people suffered his children. I was not alone, but part of a
[19:03]community of sufferers that included much of the human race that realization was oddly comforting.
[19:08]Over time, the library became my church and reading became my way of understanding the world.
[19:13]I built myself from books. Reading offered me hope soothe me in difficult moments and gave me
[19:20]a sense of the immense complexity of the human spirit. There are all kinds of light in the world
[19:24]from the sky during moments of bliss and awe and from the lemony circles on the tables of the
[19:29]Beaver City Library. Oh, thank you. That's a nice paragraph. I love that. Well, that's so true. And
[19:36]you know, it's very interesting because I have a lot of friends, women, friends, who are writers,
[19:41]and they all could have written the same thing. There's a lot of children who find in their
[19:47]salvation the library, you know, that it's just, and if you're lucky enough to have a good
[19:52]librarian who sends it to you are, and so will guide you towards certain books. You know, an
[19:58]interesting thing about it.
[20:00]which I read as a child.
[20:01]And the books are very different now.
[20:03]Well, in our library, almost all the books
[20:07]were biographies of heroes.
[20:09]So we had the books on Helen Keller
[20:13]and Dr. Tom Dooley, Eleanor Roosevelt.
[20:17]And so I think the average child grew up thinking
[20:21]it was important to be heroic in some way.
[20:25]And I sort of wish we had a line of those biographies
[20:28]now for children.
[20:30]Because for me, at least, they're very inspirational.
[20:32]And I was very lucky.
[20:35]I got the message early that it was important to be good.
[20:40]And I don't know if I'm good or not.
[20:42]I would not do that.
[20:43]But I did end up spending a life where
[20:45]I took pleasure in being good.
[20:47]And that's really what I want to say.
[20:49]Is this wonderful, the plato line of education
[20:53]is teaching children to take pleasure in the right things.
[20:56]And it's wonderful if children learn
[20:58]to take pleasure in being good.
[21:01]So I love that.
[21:03]The kind of light, isn't it?
[21:04]Oh, we're you surprised by the massive success
[21:07]of women growing north.
[21:09]You know, I'm always surprised because I'm pretty humble.
[21:13]And I generally think, well, I don't know if this book
[21:16]is good enough to publish.
[21:18]In every book I've ever written, there's a moment of crisis
[21:22]where I call my agent and go, maybe I should just abandon
[21:25]this book.
[21:27]Yeah, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
[21:29]And usually when I turn over a book to the publishers
[21:33]is at a moment where I'm not sure if it's good or not.
[21:37]But I'm absolutely sure I can't make it better.
[21:41]Then I'll just hand it to her.
[21:42]I've been very lucky to have a lot of great women
[21:45]publishers.
[21:46]I'll just hand it to her and say, you evaluate this,
[21:49]decide if it's good enough, and then we'll work on it together.
[21:53]But I'm always surprised.
[21:54]You know, starting out with reviving of failure,
[21:58]I expected it would be a very small book.
[22:00]I sort of my publisher, everybody was shocked by that book.
[22:04]But women growing north, I knew it would find some women
[22:08]readers my age.
[22:09]But I was very surprised how many women wrote me
[22:12]and engaged with that book.
[22:14]And I love it.
[22:16]This has happened with multiple books of mine,
[22:18]but readers start groups where they read the book
[22:22]and talk about it, or it becomes a book club book.
[22:24]Or that is so great when something I write inspires people
[22:29]to think and talk and maybe change their behavior in some ways.
[22:34]You know, it's a way to be an activist on paper.
[22:37]And I really like that feeling of maybe helping
[22:41]create positive change in the world through writing.
[22:44]I love that being an activist on paper.
[22:46]That's beautiful.
[22:47]And I also think there's not enough written for women
[22:52]getting older, which I know I'm in my 40s.
[22:54]But I view myself as much older than I am.
[22:59]I feel world weary, old soul.
[23:02]And I don't know.
[23:03]I'm always contemplating end of life and all of that.
[23:06]And so when you write for a group of people
[23:08]who have been underserved, it's very rewarding.
[23:12]And I don't know.
[23:13]I think women in their 60s, 70s, 80s
[23:16]like have the best stories around and so much potential.
[23:20]And it's just like I feel like there needs to be a rebrand
[23:22]on that time of life.
[23:24]Total rebrand.
[23:25]You know, I've actually written books,
[23:28]people happen to have read on my books.
[23:30]I doubt anyone has read them in order.
[23:32]They would have a pretty good sense for my life
[23:36]from the time I was in my 40s up until now.
[23:39]It's less because I read what's important.
[23:42]I write what's important to me.
[23:43]I always write what I'm trying to figure out.
[23:47]With reviving Ophelia, it was my teenage daughter,
[23:50]my teenage clients with another country.
[23:55]It was dealing with my ill mother
[23:57]who just conceptualized the world so differently than me.
[24:01]And I just, the medical situation,
[24:04]the communications between us around medical,
[24:08]she was like many people of her generation,
[24:11]very passive and compliant with doctors.
[24:16]And I'm inclined to complain.
[24:20]And so I remember one time a doctor goes,
[24:24]well, how are you today?
[24:25]Ava's first name, Ava's.
[24:28]And she goes, I'm better.
[24:30]And I go, what do you mean you're better, Mom?
[24:32]She was, well, yesterday my back just hurt so badly,
[24:36]but it's better.
[24:37]Well, she didn't tell anyone when you're bad.
[24:39]Let us know when she started feeling better.
[24:42]And that kind of thing, you know, it was kind of like,
[24:45]I wrote the metaphor in that of the older generation
[24:49]was the queen Elizabeth, the younger generation
[24:52]was the princess Diana's.
[24:54]We went into a mode, we wanted to be more assertive
[24:58]about medical care.
[25:01]We wanted things to be a little different.
[25:02]So I wrote about that and what my mother died.
[25:06]Well, I have to say, I am just such a fan,
[25:10]not just of how you write, but just how you get life.
[25:14]Your whole take on it, I'm such a fan
[25:18]of the way you really distill it down to its essence
[25:22]and communicate it so well.
[25:23]And I don't know, it's very, it's very, very comforting.
[25:27]It's like very wise and comforting.
[25:29]And anyway, now I have to go back.
[25:30]I've obviously, I have women growing north.
[25:34]I have to go dig into that.
[25:35]And I'm gonna go through your whole list backwards
[25:38]because I am now, I'm just the biggest fan.
[25:40]I just love to life and light so much.
[25:41]So thank you.
[25:43]Well, thank you, Zibi.
[25:44]And thanks for having me on your show.
[25:46]I enjoyed it very much.
[25:48]Thank you.
[25:49]All right, have a great day.
[25:49]Bye bye.
[25:50]Bye bye.
[25:52]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[25:54]Have Time to Read Books.
[25:56]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[25:59]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:01]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[26:03]And sign up for my virtual book club
[26:05]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:08]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[26:09]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[26:12]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[26:13]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.