Corinne: Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to To Tell You The Truth, the Summer sessions. It's June, and we're back with our conversation number two. So today, we're chatting about a conversation we've actually been having for years now throughout our creative process, and we thought we would bring it to this space for you to enjoy it as well. So thanks for being here and for listening in.
Sarah: We have been having a conversation recently that echoes the conversation we've really been having for years. I think back to when we were first dreaming about writing the book together and throughout the process of writing the book. And then recently you listened to an interview that sort of like, brought that back to memory. And it's something we kind of decided, like, maybe it'd be fun to talk about here in this space this week. Yeah.
Corinne: So I recently listened on Audible to Maggie Smith you could make this place beautiful. So it's her latest. If you've not read it or listen to it, ten out of ten recommend anyway, then I also heard her being interviewed on a podcast recently, and the piece that really jumped out to me, Sarah, that we've been chatting about recently is how she referred to being asked why she was airing her dirty laundry. And it was like that one, right? What I loved so much was that her response was less about what she says to somebody who's asking her that question. And what she was sharing was that the question that she always asks herself is, who does silence serve? So that piece where asking that question, there's a million different answers for each of us. So the answer isn't always to speak up, to speak publicly, to write, to share out loud. Sometimes for some of us, silence serves us in really important ways and is necessary. Sometimes it's a survival tool. Sometimes it is something that keeps us safe. So acknowledging right from the beginning that there's no one right answer to that question. I think that her even asking the question to begin with when someone comes at her in a way that is clearly questioning her motives, questioning her intentions behind having written so openly and so honestly and that that's her response is to ask herself that question.
Sarah: Yeah, it's so brilliant because what it does is it shifts the agency back onto the self that it's not about needing to provide proof of our good intentions or our purpose. That that's not actually what it's all about. That it's really about, what do I need in this moment? And like you said, sometimes silence does serve us, sometimes it doesn't. But being able to kind of check in, I think was such a brilliant point that she made, that that's the place that we're coming from when we're when we're putting things out into the world or we're choosing not to for a time. I think it's such a helpful framework because it's definitely a question that I've been asked in the past that throws me. It has thrown me in the past because I think I have such high value placed on feeling understood and feeling well represented that my intentions are good, that I'm not coming from a place of I just want to burn it all down or I just want to hurt someone, but fighting against that desire. Because the truth is that nine times out of ten, maybe ten times out of ten, a person that's asking that question actually not really interested in your answer. Right? Like they've already their mind about why. They already think that they know the reason. And so really it's a question that's more about trying to kind of put you in your place, or really it's a question that's more about control. At least that's my experience.
Corinne: Absolutely. Yeah. I was reminded as we were chatting about this last week, and I had to feverishly go digging through all of my saved Instagram posts of things that I found meaningful to find the quote that that reminded me of. And it was Audre Lorde who said, and I want to read it, “nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.” And I think that the beauty of that quote for this conversation, because it applies differently and the original context is obviously different. But the beauty of that in this context, I think, is that those intentions to wield that kind of a question so clearly are about control and about putting us in our place. Because I too have had that question, or I would even say someone couched it as a “concern” wielded against me. And that is less of a question and it's more of an accusation. It's more of weaponizing our decisions against us. And I think that when we accept something and when we reclaim it for ourselves, it can no longer be weaponized against us, at least not to the extreme extent. So when the statement has been said, you're just doing this for personal gain, that's tough. But really, when I started to think about it, I started to think, yes, because if personal gain is healing from something really traumatic, then yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Or if personal gain is safety for my family and protection against a threat, then yes, absolutely doing it for personal gain. And so that flipping of the script, when we're not afraid of the accusation, when we can take it, evaluate it and even own it and reclaim it, that's a game changer because now this idea that was a pejorative to begin with, personal gain, that implies greed, that implies selfishness. Yeah. Manipulation. Yes, all of that. It implies the question, who do you think you are? Or how dare you? Right, those arrows that are meant to hurt us. But when we can catch those midair and actually evaluate them from different angles, and we can then say we can reclaim that for ourselves. Yes, absolutely. Because what is art if not taking really shitty circumstances and the hard things about life and making something beautiful? That's what art is. Right?
Sarah: Right. Yeah. I mean, it's another form of telling the truth about our lives. Right? There's a side to it that's yes, it's about something beautiful. But art isn't always beautiful. But it is always it is always true. And I think that there's that piece of personal gain. Yes. I love that because I think it is it's flipping it and recognizing yes, it's about wholeness and healing. It's about being able to sleep at night with integrity and knowing we did what we could with what was given to us to do. And in doing that, we've talked about this before, but there are specific people that come to mind and books that we've read, music, ven poets, so many different things. I can think of where those have been significant moments where someone else went first and they talked about what happened to them. And it gave me some room to feel less alone or it gave me the courage I needed to kind of look at my own life and admit some things I didn't want to be true, that were true. There have been those moments. And I'd like to think that one way or another, I would have gotten there eventually. But I don't know. And what I do know is that I did get there thanks to someone else who made the decision not to air their dirty laundry but to show up in the wholeness of their truth and to tell the truth about their lives. And you so good at saying that. Sometimes we tell the truth about our lives and it's this kind of outward you were sharing that it's open and communal and then sometimes it's just telling the truth to ourselves. And all of it matters. All of it leads us towards, like you're talking about this beauty making this truth telling this art that we kind of bring into the world. But I want to kind of go back to the Arrows thing because I do think that I know, even, like, in our own lives, but in so many conversations we've had with people, there are things they want to do, things they want to make, risks that they want to take with their lives, even changes they want to embrace. And it's those arrows that have landed that have kept them from so those specific phrases like who do you think you are? That's a big one that I have heard. know I've experienced that internally and I know other women, especially, who have too, where it does put me in my place, it does make me shrink. It does make me go, who do I think I am? And over the course of my lifetime, it's been an effective tool to keep me from really living into the fullness of who I am and who I believe I can be, and who I want to be. So, yeah, I'm curious if even we talk a little bit about that, because it's really beautiful to say we catch them in midair, but I think there's something about part of the only reason that our beautiful book is coming into the world is because we had to do the work of being able to recognize what the arrows were. Sometimes digging them out and then sometimes catching them before they hit us. But I don't know. I'd love to hear your insight into some of that, too.
Corinne: Well, yeah, I mean, I would love to think that we could catch all of them in midair. Right. But really, that is, I think, much more rare than the ones that land and lodge themselves in us, and we have to pull out and heal the wound from. Right. I remember the words being said about me that this is what I do. This is my mo. And that landed. It wasn't until I was able to pull that one out and dig out, really, the damage that had been done by that. To be able to look at that and say, yeah, what was meant as a weapon actually was a really big compliment, because I am proud of being consistent in being willing to tell the truth. I'm proud of being consistent in standing up against injustice in the situations that I've been in personally. But that didn't go without damage. I would bear a scar from that. Right. But what I wonder is, I think that in that kind of metaphor, really, what we're talking about is no longer carrying the weight. That's not ours to carry. Right. So it's not whether or not we get hurt. We do. We're not bulletproof. We're not invincible. We're not so confident that nothing can ever hurt us. That's ridiculous. We have written from a place of tremendous vulnerability, from a place of recovery, from a place of having done so much healing work. And we've decided, like Ann Lamott would say, if someone didn't want to be written about poorly, they should have behaved better. Right. And that's a super quippy snarky way of doing that. But really, we're coming from a place of healing that if you speak too soon, you're screwed, because you should have waited until you healed more. If you wait too long, you're screwed, because you should have spoken up sooner. If the collective that you're seeking approval from is out there, you can't win. But when the collective is in here, coming back to that question that Maggie Smith asks herself, who does silence serve when the collective is in here, then that determines, am I carrying something that is actually not mine? To carry the weight of someone else's actions, the consequences of someone else's actions? Or am I carrying something that belongs to me? So when those arrows hit us, or whether we catch a mid air. It doesn't matter. The goal is to only be carrying what's ours. Right?
Sarah: Right. I think that's so true. I think in alignment with that too, it's like one of the ways that the perspective can get shifted where the whistleblower gets blamed for blowing the whistle instead of the one who did the harm, being held accountable for what they did in the first place. And so there's that piece of like, what's ours to carry? And that kind of accusation, who do you think you are? Or you're just trying to air dirty laundry or you're just trying to cause harm. Those pieces, really what they're doing is taking all the energy that should be pointed towards holding the person who inflicted the harm in the first place accountable and pushing it on to the ones who stood up and said, wait a second, this isn't okay. Right. Whether that's the victims or the people that stood beside them in whatever environment, not necessarily specifically just our stories, but so often you can't turn on the news without hearing some story of a similar, we say, like different stories, same playbook. Right? The core plotline runs so similarly that I think we see that more clearly now that we've lived through it. But I don't know that that's language that's been given permission to exist, right? And part of even that language of almost like telling people to shush, don't talk about it. If you do, then that means you're angry. Or if you do, that means all of that is really designed to sweep it under the rug. We don't talk about those things. And if you do, then you become the bad guy. Right? And that's so much like that's gaslighting. And it's such a mind eff. It's like actually not the bad guy here. Pretty sure I'm not the bad guy here. But when you're standing there by yourself, it's really hard to kind of am I the bad guy? Should I not help? When you kind of second guess. And that's where I think the value of reading other people's words and hearing other people's stories creates such a sense of connection and courage and this sort of like linking arms. And I know that in the midst of the vulnerability of writing our stories and sharing the parts of them that we are in this book, it's been actually surprisingly empowering. It was so difficult in the process and really painful to relisten those memories and really scary to put them out. And something about seeing them in writing makes it feel even more real in a different way. And yet, being on the other side of having done that work, I have a lot of hope, genuine hope that the same way that other people's words have helped me find courage, that the words that are in our book are going to help someone else find courage. And that's back to that. What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful way to take something really horrible that happened and refuse to just bury it. Right. Look at what's growing. Look what's growing out of that. It's really beautiful.
Corinne: Yeah. And how wild. You've been doing all of your own healing work. I've been doing all of my own healing work just from our own personal processes. And we knew that the writing would be healing. But I don't think I will ever forget the feeling of when we sat together in the same space and read out loud the entirety, and we got to really just see the trajectory of what we had written all together and hear it and feel it and hear each other's voices read it. We knew that the work would be healing, but I don't think I could have prepared myself for how that finished work would then be even further healing. And when you were talking about how scary to think that our work could be misunderstood, that's a guarantee. Right. We know 100% that there will be someone at some point who will read some part of what we've written and not understand what our intentions were. But the healing that has happened in creating it, and even the parts that we've shared with people and the response that we've received so far outweighs the possibility that someone somewhere might misunderstand us. That I feel like it gives me the stamina to allow that to be okay, to allow myself to be misunderstood, to not feel like I've got to hyper explain anything, but to rest in the possibility that it could be meaningful, not just for someone else, but it could be meaningful for me to have made it that's personal gain. What I have gained in this process of putting all of that and working with you, it has been so massive and so rewiring for me. That personal gain. Yes. Sign me up. Right?
Sarah: Yes. And I think that's I mean, if there's anything that I am taking away from this moment, it is that it's removing the shame and owning it and embracing that and saying, yes, actually not in the way that you think, but absolutely personal gain. And I wouldn't change a thing about this process in all the ways it was scary and difficult. In the questions we will have to face, I feel so confident at this point, just based on what you've just said. The experience that we've already had of feeling the healing process through it, it gives me so much hope for what's to come. And I think it's just such an encouragement and a reminder to, as my friend Margaret says, do it afraid. It's okay to be afraid. The goal here isn't to be fearless, right? But to not let that stop us from the thing that we know we want to do or make.
Corinne: And then Maggie Smith also said in that interview that the question was related to because she was writing about her marriage and her divorce and lots of hard, hard things. And someone said, what if you feel differently about that later on? And she says, Then we get to write about that too. So I just love the permit that just lit me up, because the permission to say what was true, to feel how we felt, to be who we were, like all of those, all the beautiful things. And then she says, it's a time capsule. Like, every book is the time capsule of that specific moment in time. And that allows me to feel so endeared toward any ways that we get to share and we get to talk about it and we get to offer it up and see how someone else might find themselves between the pages in the same way that I can have completely different experiences than Maggie Smith, and I can find myself all in between her pages. Right.
What else did you hope for, right? It's just such a beautiful there's so much permission, there's so much expansion in that perspective.
Sarah: Right. So powerful. Yeah.
Corinne: We don't have to have the same experiences as one another to have those with you. Moments where we get to have that solidarity or like you said, linking arms. Some of us answering that question of who does silence serve? And all of us being able to answer that differently.
Sarah: There's room for all of that. Yeah. So good.
Sarah: Thank you so much for being here with us today. We're going to have another summer session available next month, and so we hope you'll come back and join us for that. And between now and then, we have our weekly posts every Friday. And we're really excited because the next few months, we're going to have some guest authors joining us in the space, so we're glad you're a part of it, to tell you the Truth community. And we'll see you here next month. Bye.
The Summer Sessions: Part Two