Amy Wilson, HAPPY TO HELP: Adventures of a People Pleaser
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[0:44]Amy Wilson is the author of Happy to Help Adventures of a People Fleaser.
[0:49]This is a Zibi books published book.
[0:52]I am so excited you'll hear the whole backstory of how this book came to be, but let
[0:57]me just say that I am obsessed, obsessed, obsessed with this book, and you must read it.
[1:03]Amy Wilson is the author of The Memoir, When Did I Get Like This, and The co-host
[1:08]of What Fresh Hell, a Webby-honored podcast.
[1:11]Amy is also an actor who has appeared on Broadway as a series regular on TV sitcoms and
[1:15]in films.
[1:16]She lives with her family in New York City.
[1:18]Welcome, Amy.
[1:19]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss happy
[1:23]to help adventures of a people pleaser.
[1:25]Congratulations.
[1:26]I can't believe.
[1:27]I can't believe it's finally here.
[1:29]This book that was a twinkle in both of our eyes for so long.
[1:33]It's so exciting.
[1:34]The book is so good.
[1:36]I wrote you a little long thing about it, but I literally felt so seen in your book in
[1:41]a way that I haven't in anything else I've read in a slightly different way.
[1:46]Your whole point of view is just a little bit different and so accurate and it's amazing
[1:53]and great.
[1:54]And then I don't know.
[1:55]I am just so obsessed with it.
[1:57]It's so good.
[1:58]Thanks, Vivi.
[1:59]Thank you so much.
[2:00]Well, you know that this book was born on this podcast.
[2:04]I don't know if I presented this podcast.
[2:05]Yes.
[2:06]Let's explain to people listening how amazing it is.
[2:09]It's crazy.
[2:10]So I wrote a book that came out in 2010 called When Did I Get Like This that was about
[2:14]my years parenting my kids when they were small.
[2:16]Say like birth to age seven and I think I ran into you with a party.
[2:22]I knew who you were.
[2:23]You said, have you ever written a book and I said, I did and I told you the book and
[2:27]you said, I've read that book.
[2:28]You should be in my podcast and I said, well, came out 10 years ago and you're like, I
[2:31]don't care.
[2:32]I'm talking about my podcast.
[2:33]That's how you are.
[2:34]So I came on your podcast and it was on this podcast talking about when did I get like this
[2:38]that you asked me why I hadn't written a second book and I sort of said, well, yeah, I've
[2:42]written a second book and a third book and things have never come to fruition for different
[2:46]reasons.
[2:47]And on the call you said, well, you should write a book for Zibi books and I thought, yeah,
[2:51]she's just, you know, she's just saying that.
[2:53]And then after the call, you weren't just saying that and we were off to the races.
[2:57]It's so crazy.
[2:59]I mean, I wasn't just saying that, but it's one thing to suggest a project to someone
[3:04]and then another for you to actually say, you know what, I'm ready to do this.
[3:08]I'm going to do it and here we go.
[3:10]Right?
[3:11]I mean, that's a huge, it's a huge leap.
[3:13]I mean, I recommend books to people who I think have good book ideas, but they don't always
[3:17]become books.
[3:18]Right.
[3:19]You know, you have to do it.
[3:21]I think as the record will show, I love a challenge and I love hard things.
[3:26]I'm going to hard things.
[3:28]I say that too.
[3:29]People are like, oh, well, it's just hard and I'm like, but that doesn't mean you don't
[3:33]do it.
[3:34]Right.
[3:35]Right.
[3:36]Right.
[3:37]That's hard is just to, you know, it's an invitation.
[3:38]Right.
[3:39]Right.
[3:40]So you and I are like in that way.
[3:41]Yes.
[3:42]I know.
[3:43]I feel like parts of you, I share a brain with having read your books.
[3:45]Why don't you explain what the book is basically about?
[3:49]And once you, once we talked about the idea for the book, what drew you to it?
[3:54]What did you say?
[3:55]Okay.
[3:56]This is what I want to write a book about and I have to dedicate all this time, which
[3:58]you write about in the book, how hard it was even find the time to find the time.
[4:01]Yeah.
[4:02]Well, I mean, it's interesting.
[4:03]You and I first talked about writing a book about Slack, which is in the book a little bit
[4:08]about how women have to pick up the slack, give ourselves more slack, give other people
[4:13]slack and all the different properties of that.
[4:16]So I sort of whiteboarded out a quadrant of all the different things, right?
[4:20]Okay.
[4:21]Here are the times I needed to give somebody else slack.
[4:22]Here are the times I needed to give myself slack.
[4:25]Here are the times I needed to pick up the slack.
[4:27]And no matter how hard I tried that one column, like there was nothing in it at the time,
[4:33]one of the times that I really should have picked up the pace and tried harder, I couldn't
[4:36]think of anything.
[4:37]And I thought, oh, that's the book.
[4:39]That blank space of I've always given things my all, even when they weren't deserving of
[4:44]that.
[4:45]And I thought, oh, there's a lot of relationships, things like that, things that were lost
[4:47]causes.
[4:48]I was the last one still billing water.
[4:51]And I thought, maybe that's what I want to talk about.
[4:53]Why am I that way?
[4:55]And why are women, I think more likely to be that way.
[4:58]And after this deep dive, why do you think you are that way?
[5:02]I think we're conditioned.
[5:03]I mean, I don't think it's our fault at all.
[5:05]You know, from a very young age, I was sort of made in a lab to be a happy helper.
[5:10]I think I'm the largest of the largest, I'm the oldest, I'm the largest, but I am the
[5:17]oldest of a very large family, six siblings, which in this day and age is pretty unusual,
[5:21]25 grandchildren.
[5:22]I'm at the head of the line.
[5:23]I was a girl scout, you know, I was class president in eighth grade in Balagatorian in high
[5:29]school.
[5:30]And you know, and I did all these things and I was a doobie.
[5:33]And I think I just drew a lot of identity from being good at things, from being handed
[5:38]a lot of things, from being able to accomplish a lot of things, but it was more than
[5:41]just I want the gold star.
[5:43]I think I, that was certainly part of it, but I think that I really liked helping people,
[5:49]making people happy, bringing people along with me.
[5:53]And I think I do.
[5:54]I think that's true, but I also think that's very much part of the assignment.
[5:58]You love making other people happy, right, because you're a big sister, because you're
[6:02]a mom.
[6:03]And so I think that's where it comes from.
[6:06]And you know, it's funny when we were talking about the title of the book, the subtitle
[6:09]of the book, I sort of realized, you know, for the first time like, am I happy to help?
[6:14]Was I happy to help?
[6:15]Like, I think I was.
[6:16]I didn't really ever, I feel like it was part of the assignment to be a helper and to be
[6:21]a happy helper.
[6:22]They went together so that I could do one and not the other never really occurred to
[6:26]me.
[6:27]Interesting.
[6:28]So you tell a lot of stories about your own life, which I loved hearing.
[6:33]I was just like out of it, you know, coffee date with you when you were sharing all this
[6:37]stuff.
[6:38]And I was like, this is great.
[6:39]Oh my gosh, some of which you make connections in the book about how they affect the trajectory
[6:44]of your life.
[6:45]You know, for example, you had a middle school experience with a friend group that affected
[6:49]your female friendships, you know, forever.
[6:52]Right.
[6:53]Talk a little bit about that because I feel like, you know, making people happy and having
[6:58]friends support you along the way, they're all intertwined.
[7:02]And how you felt like you had to hold back a little bit because of like a really depressing
[7:08]period of time in your right.
[7:11]And not so unusual.
[7:12]I think.
[7:13]And not so unusual.
[7:14]And you know, just to cop to this, like I was a mean girl and then I was attacked by the
[7:18]mean girls.
[7:19]And one of the mean girls was the mean, was the girl that I had bullied earlier on in
[7:22]my life.
[7:23]This, I didn't figure this out till I was in my 20s like wait a minute.
[7:26]Oh my God.
[7:27]I did it to her first.
[7:28]And this came out of that seventh grade, a couple of us and my friend group could move
[7:33]to the cool lunch table, but only if we lost the girl who wore weird pants under her
[7:38]uniform.
[7:39]I mean, her sins were to me obvious, ridiculous, right?
[7:43]I didn't like her pants and she was a little weird.
[7:46]So let's all not talk to her so we can lose the dead weight and move up in the world.
[7:49]But I was going to bring my other friends with me just not her.
[7:52]And it was those other girls who after at least a couple of days said like, this is, this
[7:57]is terrible.
[7:58]We're not going to do this.
[7:59]And then in high school anyway, long story, but it all, it all came back on me.
[8:05]And I do think there is competition among girls and women that we feel like somebody
[8:11]else's success is net zero that we're going to be seen as less than if somebody else
[8:17]wins the prize has the boyfriend, whatever.
[8:20]So I think it was a little bit of that.
[8:22]But it was also this idea that like while I was achieving that I needed to, I learned
[8:28]to sort of keep female friendship at bay.
[8:30]There was a latent distrust that I could count on other people, including girlfriends, I
[8:35]guess.
[8:36]I've always, I have to do this myself.
[8:37]I have to do everything myself.
[8:38]And that included friends.
[8:39]It's not a good way to go through life, but it was a lesson that I had to learn over
[8:43]many years.
[8:44]And then you go to the next stage in your life or your interrelationship for a very long
[8:47]time and you just keep holding on and putting, yes, but you're just putting your
[8:52]needs lower and lower on the totem pole is basically how I feel like the book trajectory
[8:57]goes, right?
[8:58]Yes.
[8:59]Yes.
[9:00]Yes.
[9:01]And you see why and how and you're just spelling it out for us in your own life.
[9:04]But it can mirror so many of our lives.
[9:06]Yes.
[9:07]That's right.
[9:08]Right.
[9:09]I had a sort of dead end relationship that was pretty evident to everybody, including
[9:12]my boyfriend, but not me, like I can stick this out.
[9:16]I can wait while you play out this other summer relationship because you'll come back
[9:22]back to me and then it will all be worth it.
[9:23]I thought it was a challenge to be withstood instead of a Lear son, I needed to go.
[9:28]I can explain it now, but that's what I felt at the time.
[9:32]And then you move into your acting part of your career, right?
[9:35]Yeah.
[9:36]These are all like attempts and navigation of finding your voice through different iterations
[9:40]of life, right?
[9:41]And so here you are trying to pursue a dream, which in itself is quite in your voice, right?
[9:49]It's another voice that you're taking on.
[9:50]Oh, that's a good point.
[9:51]Right.
[9:52]And I think I kind of liked that.
[9:53]I think I liked acting, getting the part and its challenge.
[9:56]I love a challenge, getting a role.
[9:57]But then that's right.
[9:58]You're saying everybody's.
[10:00]page to be there. Everybody's paid to listen to you hear these words. You're going to get to
[10:04]speak your piece in full. And yeah, I got to play some great parts, but there's a story in the
[10:08]book about a part that I was wrong for from the get go. I really should never have been cast in
[10:14]this part, but then had to play out a lengthy process of going to work every day knowing everybody
[10:20]was deeply unhappy with what I was doing, but it was because I just was, I was the wrong person
[10:24]for the part. I couldn't have fixed it. And yet you are so dedicated that you will stay in
[10:31]whatever to make it work. You're like, it's like, it's like, like one of those electric cars or
[10:38]something that unless you bang into something and get broken, you're just going to like go on
[10:43]going ahead. And in the acting case, it was that, you know, when you're on a television show,
[10:47]you have to sign a contract ahead of time that you won't quit for seven years. This might be different
[10:52]now, but in the heyday of sitcoms and the 90s, that was it. You were signing away seven years of
[10:56]your life and making fire you at any time, but you can't leave now. Chris, had I said, like, you're
[11:02]not happy with me. You've basically written me out of the show. I guess I'll be on my white. Nobody
[11:06]would have stopped me, but I never entitled myself to do that. So I feel like in the book, you're
[11:12]really step into finding your voice and like elevating what you want alongside your superpower of
[11:20]getting things done. When, right, they're like these two, like when you're adjusting volume,
[11:26]right? And one of them was too low. And so we had to keep raising it up. And it wasn't until
[11:33]advocating for your kids, which and you went through a bunch of different health things with
[11:38]your kids. And I'm so sorry. It's so scary and stressful and amazing that you finally were like,
[11:44]you know what? Like, I am not taking this answer anymore. This is like, I can't listen to this
[11:52]because this is about something I care about so much. So tell me about about that.
[11:57]That's such a good way to put it. And I think the my kids and I went through some specific,
[12:04]weird, ill-defined, unexplained things that are in the book. And you know, they're really specific,
[12:10]but I think that there's a universal experience there that something's something's wrong with
[12:14]your kid and you realize, oh, no, I'm in charge. And the doctors say, good luck, mom, they don't
[12:19]learn your name. They just call you mom, right? And they say, you have to figure this out. Good luck.
[12:24]And you think like, how can I be taking home this tiny baby, this kid with two broken wrists,
[12:28]whatever, you're somehow in charge. But it does teach you, I was so able to advocate for my kids.
[12:36]I was so able to separate out this applies, this doesn't. I'm not here for this message.
[12:42]And you're right, why are I think that's common for women that we are able to be fierce advocates
[12:47]for our children, our loved ones, our parents, our spouses, but not for ourselves. And so then,
[12:53]yes, could I could I turn that around and say, hey, this isn't working for me anymore.
[12:58]I think I did. I'm not sure I could have done that without the experiences that you go through,
[13:03]right? It's just like in a movie. Harry Potter can't become Harry Potter until he goes through
[13:07]all the hero making adventures of getting to Hogwarts and then being at Hogwarts. He had to do
[13:12]everything in the book. So I mean, I thought about that in a very structured way writing this book,
[13:18]like what is this character who is me going to learn along the way. But I do think it's true that
[13:24]all those things had happened for me to become a kind of person who finally said, you know what,
[13:28]this isn't working for me. Wow. You have a scene that I relate to so much. In fact, I was
[13:34]telling a group of women about it yesterday, where you get in touch with a friend of yours. And
[13:40]even though your kids have left the school, you decide with your friend to go like wait in the
[13:45]back of the Christmas pageant or whatever it was. Yes. And the Christmas pageant. And just like
[13:50]sort of stay there to be part of it and part of this whole community because you miss it so
[13:56]much. And yet the time is over. It's like, and that point, the poignancy and the visual, like
[14:02]the scene of you in the back of the dark theater. And obviously any of us can put ourselves in that
[14:08]moment because we've all been there in the seats for the kids. And then your time ends, right?
[14:12]Your mess up. And then what do you do? And just like the sadness and moving on from that moment
[14:19]and how you felt about it and how it affects the friend group and your whole life. And anyway,
[14:23]talk about that. Yes. It was so sad. And this was my my youngest kid had kind of finished
[14:30]grade school during the pandemic. So first there was no Christmas pageant and then the Christmas
[14:34]pageant was a video instead of a show, you know, that kind of thing. And the first real,
[14:38]let's all gather as a community after three years apart was after my youngest had left the school.
[14:43]And I would never have entitled myself to go back. I have a friend who speaks up to the
[14:47]come on, let's go stand in the back. And I did. I was so glad I went. But yeah, it was also very sad
[14:53]for me because it's oh, I don't I don't belong here anymore. It's time for me to go. And going
[14:58]back to those female friendships, I think I have in my life over relied on the parents association
[15:04]and the soccer parents and the it's built in friends, right? It's built in community. It's people
[15:09]you stand around on the sidelines with or sell raffle tickets with. It's easy. It's fun. It's
[15:16]fleeting. And I realized in that moment that I had sort of let the school be my community without
[15:22]investing in relationships that would exist once I was not supposed to be at the Christmas
[15:27]pageant anymore. It's hard. It's something I'm still thinking about.
[15:31]I read an article recently, which I have to forward to. It's by a woman named Tara Ellison
[15:35]in the LA Times. And it's about this theme. You two should like do an event around it. So,
[15:38]okay. Yeah. But she pointed out that part of like this empty nesting and the stage of life and
[15:44]why it can feel lonely is because of the same time that your kids are moving on all the
[15:49]the systemic the structures that are in place also evaporate. So, it's not just that you're sad
[15:54]your kids go to college or move on or go to whatever. It's that you also lose your entire
[16:00]like all the groups you're part of, just like what you're saying, like everything else
[16:04]structurally in your life evaporates at the exact same time. And you're just left standing there
[16:08]with like nothing or the work or whatever else. But like it all goes away. And so there's this
[16:15]tide of loneliness for midlife women essentially because everything that you relied on for
[16:21]somebody years has gone, which is like evident in the back of you standing in the back of the
[16:25]theater. And like what do we do about that? Right. Right. Good question. Right. If we've done our job
[16:30]well, then we were very invested in we were very invested in our kids in the Christmas pageant,
[16:35]whatever. We put them first. Yeah. But then you're left. I mean, so I'm on the other side of that.
[16:40]I don't want anybody listening to this to feel like, oh no, it's going to be terrible. That
[16:44]transition is difficult. Like I'm on the other side. Now I have one kid left at home to in college.
[16:49]And even that kid, she goes to a high school where she started going in high school. I don't
[16:53]have friends for life on that parent association. It's a different relationship. And you do have to
[16:58]sort of rebuild. You can do it. But yes, you're right. It's quite a transition because you thought
[17:05]you had all of this identity, but really it was in service of other people, not yourself.
[17:09]But I feel like this is when the people pleasing, this is like the car crashing into the wall,
[17:17]essentially. But I was talking about because what do you do? And there's nobody left to please
[17:22]right. Right. Right. Right. Well, exactly. Am I happy to help it? What do I want to do with
[17:27]my time? That's right. I remember saying that to a woman in my life when her youngest went off to
[17:33]college and she was expressing this to me. I was in my 20s at the time. So I was like, get a
[17:36]subscription to Oh, magazine, you can do anything. What do you want to do? You can do anything.
[17:41]And I remember her saying, I don't know what I don't want to do any. I don't want to do,
[17:44]she couldn't, she couldn't express to me what she would want to do. And I thought, how strange.
[17:49]And then I wrote a book about the same thing 20 years later.
[17:53]It's amazing. There is a big opportunity here, though. Right. Because I don't know my mind is
[17:58]sort of spinning. Like, how do you make it an advantage that you like enter this next club, essentially?
[18:04]Yes. Right. I need to like rebrand this thing. Well, you know, Gretchen Ruben is doing that right
[18:10]now. She's working on an idea about sort of reframing empty nesting. She was telling me about it
[18:15]the last time I saw her Lauren Steinberg wrote a book called Crossing Paths. And I
[18:20]talk about it in the book. And it's just one of these ideas that every time I tell somebody I
[18:23]can tell they're saving it for later, that it is especially for women, the emptying nest,
[18:28]that is the moment of crisis, not the empty one. This feeling of like, Oh, no, I don't belong
[18:33]here anymore. And what am I going to do? It is a crisis. It feels like a crisis. But then on the
[18:38]other side, when you have all this time, Oh, no, what am I going to do? You do feel that way. And
[18:43]then you start to fill it with things that are for yourself. And it's huge opportunity.
[18:47]Yeah. True. Kind of like doing this podcast or something. Doing this podcast.
[18:53]Right. My friend Christian is like, you'll always have your weird projects. I'm like, that's me.
[18:56]I will. I will always have my weird projects. That's what I'll be doing.
[19:00]You dive into marriage as well and sort of the division of labor and all of that sort of in the
[19:06]fair play, Rodski ish thing. And how do we empower the people in our lives to not only do the
[19:14]tasks, but like take all of the tasks, like, great thing that the dog food is out. And you have
[19:19]this great scene in your bag where your husband calls you from the pet store to say like, which is
[19:24]the dog food. But you didn't you didn't notice that the dog food was out. He noticed he didn't ask
[19:29]if he should go to the store or whatever. He just went and you were lied on you then. And you
[19:33]were basically like, honestly, that looks great. Right. Right. Which I loved. That was like perfect
[19:39]scene. Talk about that. And how to get how to create that and how to foster that and empowering the
[19:47]people to actually pick up the slack, if you will. We know when you when you say that you need more
[19:53]time for yourself more bandwidth for yourself and the things you want to do instead of dog food
[19:58]and the Christmas pageant.
[20:00]I realized after having done it that, of course, my family's first reaction was, okay,
[20:05]just give us a list. Just tell us what to do and we'll do it. And I don't want to make a list.
[20:08]I don't want to tell you what to do because, as the rod skis pointed out, that's also work.
[20:13]That's, that you need the noticing, the remembering, the tracking, the completion,
[20:19]Allison Damager says that, that each task you have to complete actually has four parts,
[20:23]all of those parts. Yeah. And they're very, they are not used to doing that because they're not
[20:29]used to doing that. And so what you really have to do is have patience. So in that moment,
[20:34]it came after me saying, I just need people to notice things around here. And that was the day
[20:37]that my spouse noticed a dog who was out, went to the store. And then he had that moment of resistance.
[20:43]He texted me like, I can't find it. I can't find them when she likes, you know, it helped me.
[20:47]And I did. And then I had my own moment of resistance because he sent me a picture that I'm just going
[20:52]to get her this one. And my immediate reaction was like, no, not that one. That's the wrong kind. She doesn't
[20:55]like that kind. You know what I mean? That I, I was also ruling back downhill to, you're going
[21:01]to go and you're going to ask me which one or you're going to text me a picture. I don't want to do
[21:03]this anymore. Right. So I said, that looks great. She'll love that, I said. And and she did the dog
[21:09]liked it. And I liked it. And that's, you know, that's the end of that story. But for both of us,
[21:14]there's many steps along the way that you have to catch yourself, not returning to the way things
[21:19]were because the familiar is at least familiar. Can I read it a quote or two? Yeah, dog
[21:24]like 100 different pages. You're funny diary to that was awesome. Well, this is, this is based on
[21:31]the instinct to jump in like we were just discussing for women with too much to do. The things that
[21:35]impede our productivity are not caused simply by laziness or procrastination for women with too
[21:40]much to do. The almost overdue permission list for the field trip must go atop the list of important
[21:45]things to do next unless we follow the one minute rule and just dash that permission slip
[21:50]right off, right then, following that one minute rule again and again for the rest of our lives,
[21:54]there will always be something I could do quickly right now and cross it off my list. And while
[22:00]knowing that makes me more productive, it also creates an unrest that is hard to call happiness.
[22:06]Talk about that because I am always like trying to just do something right then,
[22:10]otherwise I forget it. So I'm like, let me just get it done. I'm just going to stop with like this,
[22:14]you know, talk about that. And well, the productive mavens of the world would say that's the
[22:18]one minute rule and that you are supposed to do that. And I have the worst quote, I put it on my
[22:23]list, like I send a quick note to Peter and then I don't do it because it's on my list, like my
[22:29]ever lengthening list. I think you should dash that off. But then that's the problem is that you
[22:34]there's always one more thing that you could just get done right now. There's always one more
[22:37]email you could just quick send before you get to writing chapter eight. But if you don't
[22:42]cut those things off, I mean, I put myself in such a forked knocks to work on this book so that
[22:47]those things couldn't interrupt me because they're comforting, they're familiar. But right,
[22:52]you can keep yourself pretty busy going to buy your daughter's ballet slippers, right, and answering
[22:57]40 emails. But I think that also then leads to the, oh my gosh, what about me? What do I want?
[23:03]I have no idea when you've never that silence just exist without rushing to fill it with the
[23:10]permission slip. Literally as you're saying that I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot to get the shoes
[23:14]class and I just like wrote it on my note. Right. Right. So I do keep that list. And when I'm,
[23:21]you know, writing and I'm in the cave, I do keep a list of like here it is, do it later, do it
[23:25]later. And that list, that list is longer than your ability to complete it ever will be, right?
[23:31]There's just more things on your list. And I just think it's true. So I'm not trying to say, and so here's how
[23:37]you handle that. I guess I'm saying, accept that and don't feel bad about yourself. That's the case.
[23:44]One day I was like, I'm never going to be able to cross breakfast off the list. Like, I'm never
[23:48]going to finish it. I finish it every day. And then it comes back. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's
[23:53]something never going to get done. Somebody made the point about the division of household labor
[23:57]that I thought was interesting through the traditional division of household labor in a marriage
[24:02]between a man and a woman that women tend to get handed breakfast laundry. And the guys do like
[24:08]putting up the Halloween decorations, mowing the lawn, you know, cleaning out the gutters,
[24:13]unpleasant tasks. But they're, they're, they're one and done. They're, they're specific.
[24:18]They're not sort of all the time. There will always be more laundry. I thought that was an
[24:22]interesting point. That is interesting. Actually, and I should say my husband does help me with
[24:26]breakfast. So we pretty much split that task. I have to say, okay, let me read just one, one more
[24:31]part. And this is on the heels of a very traumatic experience. You had this passage is after you
[24:37]have just gone through a very stressful health crisis with your daughter. And you say it was just the
[24:42]the same for me. I had to force myself to find small moments, then larger moment, then larger
[24:47]ones where I could exist without the worry. First, I had to forgive myself for crying at the
[24:52]sound of the kids running and shouting on the playground out our apartment window when my own child
[24:56]was in too much pain to go outside. Then I had to forgive myself for going out into that same
[25:01]sunshine without her for taking a walk with a friend for having moments and then entire afternoons
[25:06]when I managed to forget if part of me believed my work of worrying could relieve my children's
[25:12]another part of me feared that anything I did to ease my own burdens might make them suffer more.
[25:17]But as I looked back, no matter which child was taking their turn as my unhappiest,
[25:21]they did not suffer less when I worried about them more. I would never find freedom from worry
[25:26]if I waited for the worry to disappear. I was not only as worthy as my unhappiest child.
[25:33]I love that. Thank you. That you that everybody knows that saying, I'm sure that a mother
[25:37]is only as happy as her unhappiest child, which I think is sort of an assignment. I think people say
[25:42]that, but they're telling you that that has to be true. And you know, you have multiple children
[25:47]as do I. There's there is always an unhappiest child. There's always somebody who's not quite
[25:51]getting what they need or want from the world. And of course, you're going to feel that that's
[25:57]so strongly. But I did I did have to learn that it was okay to think about myself sometimes that
[26:06]that like I say in this story that when I'm out to lunch with the friend that that was worth doing
[26:12]and not only so I could be a better caretaker to my sick kid when I got home, right? Like I'm doing
[26:18]yoga, but it's only so I'm going to be the perfect parent afterwards. It's okay to do yoga because
[26:22]you want to do yoga. It's okay to go out to lunch because you are also a person who has needs.
[26:26]It took me a long time to figure that out. I like to think that people reading this book and
[26:31]jump the line. We'll see we'll see about that. So if there's something that you want readers of the
[26:36]book to take away, what would it be? I think I would distill it down to there will be hard times in
[26:42]your life. And when things are hard in your life, they're hard because they're hard, not because
[26:47]there's something wrong with you. But I think too often when women express that they're struggling
[26:54]and ask for help, what they usually get back is some form of fixing themselves in order to fix
[27:00]the problem. If you have too much to do, you need to get it up earlier, you need to stop trying
[27:04]to do everything, right? You need to get a sense of humor. Those are the solutions as opposed to
[27:09]how about your spouse gets up with the kids on Sunday morning so you can go right for two hours.
[27:13]That's the solution, not become a better person first. And I really, I chased all those things. If I
[27:21]just, if I just do, I just fix myself then this problem will go away. Sometimes your problems are
[27:26]just problems and you have to give yourself a lot of grace and then find the solution that doesn't
[27:32]involve a change in your mindset because too often I think that's what women are given and I think
[27:37]too often it's a waste of time. You're totally right. And I just love that. I mean,
[27:43]when you're like, no, actually I can't take stuff off. This is just my plate.
[27:49]Right. Right. Right. It is what it is. It's not going away. Like the stuff has to get done.
[27:54]So I'm going to do it. Right. I mean, if you're like, if you're always like that, then maybe,
[27:59]you know, consider how you can make that not be the case. But right, if your, your mom is sick
[28:04]and your kid is sick at the same time, you're not a perfectionist. You're just a busy, busy person
[28:08]and you need to give yourself some grace. Yeah. And there's just a lot. It's a lot.
[28:13]Yeah. It's a lot. That's what I'm saying. That's what this book is about. It's all a lot.
[28:18]Yeah. I just still need to. What?
[28:21]Three, like one in the cover. It's all a lot to be owned. That's it.
[28:26]Actually, I asked, I even got Kathleen and I was like, I want to actually blurb this book. And she
[28:30]was like, no, thanks. No, but I was like, I do. I feel so, I feel so seen, particularly in the first,
[28:36]I mean, I love the whole book. But you're the beginning of the book when you lay all this out
[28:41]and sort of throw it to the world. Like, look at how much there is going on. Look at how we've
[28:46]even talked to about it. And here's what the reality is. Like, it is a life-changing point of view.
[28:52]And I am so glad you wrote it. And it's so good. And I loved being able to see the evolution
[28:59]of your drafts and watches. This gets better and better. And like, it's so exciting. It's so
[29:04]exciting. I am so happy for you. You actually have helped. You've helped me and so many readers.
[29:11]And so I hope that makes you happy. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this book to be
[29:17]born at last. I'm really excited. Yeah, you should be. It's really good. Anyway, congratulations,
[29:22]Amy. It's really good. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you for being the midwife for this book.
[29:26]I'm really excited about it. I'm so excited that it's just a big book. No problem. All right.
[29:30]Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[29:35]formerly mom's don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[29:40]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[29:46]Oh, and bye the books.