Lee
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Kelly
What percentage of all pain in the world is related to wanting to belong?
Lee
That's Kelly Corrigan, host of PBS's interview show Tell Me More, and the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders. She's also the author of four New York Times bestselling books.
Kelly
And when you think about the political stuff, and this division, and like, the instant sense that you have nothing in common with a Republican or a Democrat, it's like... oh, don't be ridiculous. You've all had a first kiss. You've all had, like, unmitigated pain. There's a lot that we all have.
Lee
Today, Kelly Corrigan discusses her grappling with cancer and simultaneously her father's cancer and some of the beautiful lessons learned through such trials.
Kelly
It's just fodder for us to be closer. Like, the point is to connect. That's the point.
Lee
All coming right up.[00:01:00]
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
A good life, I'm convinced, begins with asking the question, what does a good life entail? This turns out to be a rather all encompassing, holistic question, out of which all manner of other perennial existential questions arise, like, why do we suffer, and how do we relate to others who are suffering, or how do we relate to others when we are suffering?
Our guest today, Kelly Corrigan, was a young mother of two young girls when she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. And then, in the midst of her own season of chemotherapy, her beloved father was diagnosed with cancer. One of the ways forward, through such an immensely difficult season: a pursuit of connection with others that required a profound vulnerability, even when that vulnerability might bring not only a measure of [00:02:00] joy, but its own attendant pain.
Here's our interview.
Kelly Corrigan is a four time New York Times bestselling author, host of PBS's long form interview show Tell Me More, as well the host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders, which just crossed 11 million downloads. O Magazine calls her "the voice of a generation." Huffington Post says Kelly is "our poet laureate of the ordinary."
Welcome, Kelly.
Kelly
Lee
Pleasure to have you with us today.
Kelly
I know. I wish we were in person. I love Nashville.
Lee
Yeah, well, you should come to Nashville.
Kelly
I'd love to. I've been there a few times, doing readings and stuff, and I love Nashville.
Lee
It's a lovely city. A lovely place. Well, we look forward to you coming back again.
I think I would like to start... At the end of your memoir, The Middle Place, this introduction that you do to this essay, which is, I think, what, called "Transcending..." And you talk about how, in doing readings, people would pull you [00:03:00] aside and tell you about some of the grief and the difficulty that they were experiencing. And if they asked for advice, you would try to sell them, you say, on sharing the whole thing.
And then you talk about, uh, the way in which your own mother believed in the sort of endless possibility of acts of kindness. But I just wondered if you would unpack that a little bit, about sharing the whole thing, which I think is what you do so beautifully in that memoir.
Kelly
So I'm 36 years old. I'm in the bath with my daughters, because I was getting so wet anyway, and my husband wasn't home, and they were 2 and 1 and I was always afraid they were going to, like, slip out of my hands and drown, and so I often found myself just crawling in there. And I brushed past my breast and I felt something super hard.
And I had a friend who was an OBGYN. I'd never had a breast exam before. And um, um, I put my kids in their pajamas and we drove over to Emily Bierenbaum's house and the girls watched American Idol and Emily [00:04:00] gave me my first breast exam on her sofa. And the next day I went for a mammogram and the next day I went for a biopsy and four days later I was in chemotherapy.
And in the process of that shocking turn of events, I had this choice to make, day in and day out. Like, are you going to let people in? Are you going to... try to be stoic? Are you gonna, like, share the load, or are you gonna try to carry it yourself? And there was also this other option of, like, maybe I should just buy my way out of it.
Like, people were saying to me, you have to get a nanny. There's no way that you can be in chemotherapy and have a two-year-old and a one-year-old. You know, and the two-year-old's crawling up the stairs and stuff. Like it's a-- all of a sudden your whole house is like a death trap once your kid starts crawling and walking.
And of course, my mom, who is back in Philadelphia, said, "If you want us to pay for a nanny, you just say the word, I'll send a check."
And I [00:05:00] thought, I would rather do this with my people than bring in a stranger. I'd rather let this make us all so much closer than be over here alone with somebody that I don't even know, you know, that I can't even really talk to, that I couldn't really hug if I wanted to.
And so it was like, well, we'll just try it a little bit at a time. We'll see if we can get through this first two weeks. And let's see if we can get through this first month. And we let people see and feel and touch and hear and participate in this whole crazy experience that we were having.
And I mean, this is potentially motivated reasoning, but in my opinion, it was good for all of us. Because I had done a dastardly thing. I had brought mortality into the room. You're a 36-year-old with two babies, one on each hip, and you don't have a hair on your entire body. [00:06:00] You're scaring people.
Lee
Kelly
And when you're gonna scare people that much, then you ought to give them something to do.
Lee
Kelly
And so, you know, they cooked for us, and they knit me hats that I probably never wore, and they took the girls to little, little playdates at the park, and, and we let them.
And I, I feel over all these years-- I've talked to so many women who have been in crisis. And of course, breast cancer is like a great crisis. It's like a marathon. Like, everybody knows what to do when someone has breast cancer. Like, a mental health crisis that you can't see, terrible. A crisis that goes on for 20 years, like the long decline that you see with dementia or Alzheimer's, terrible. A bad back, migraines, like these are not things that people can cheer you on through. They don't have a beginning and a middle and an end.
But we, we let people in, and, and I just feel so close to those people.[00:07:00]
I have this photograph from August 9th, 2004, which is the day I was diagnosed. I have like nine people on my deck. And people are holding the girls and we're all having a Corona. And, and that was my instinct... was like, people called and I'd say, "You should come over. Just come over. I know you want to hug me. And I, and I know I want to hug you. I know I, I know I'm scaring you. So why sit in your house and be scared? Come over."
Lee
Kelly
And that picture is so meaningful to me because it was this very instinctive, high agency decision to share the whole thing.
Lee
Kelly
And I think that's why we're here. I think that's the, I think that's the payoff of developing all these friendships.
Inch by inch, little by little, you know, reveal by reveal, share by share, breakdown by breakdown, like, this is the [00:08:00] Olympics of friendship.
Lee
I wonder if you weren't more predisposed in that way by just my experience of reading your memoir. I mean, for example, you... You, you show this sort of remarkable vulnerability in the way you write it and the way-- the stories that you tell on yourself and the things that you tell about yourself.
So there's one passage, uh, I don't have it in front of me here, but I remember just catching my attention, where you, you say... maybe it was the night that you'd gotten your diagnosis. And your husband, Edward, goes to sleep, and you say, "I'm happy that he was able to sleep." And then you say, "and at the same time I resented him for it." And then at the end of that paragraph, I think you say something like, "Married people are often alone while [00:09:00] they are together, many times throughout their marriage," something like that.
And, and then I could point to, you know, lots of other stuff, like you sharing how you lost your virginity, or, um, you know, a thing I'm going to come back to in a moment about something that happens or something that you say about your father. But you seem very predisposed to sort of vulnerability. What's the source of that for you, or why is that?
I suspect it's not just a literary device for you, but it seems to kind of... I'm speculating that it flows out of you.
Kelly
Yeah, it's pretty natural. I mean, I'm very aware of how many people are here on the planet at the moment. And really ruminating on that number, 8 billion, has set me free. Like, it's just, there's just so many of us, and we're all living our big dreams, and we're all on our epic journeys, and who cares?
Who cares how I lost my virginity? Who cares that I got caught shoplifting? Who cares that I got suspended from high school? Who cares that I got [00:10:00] 1090 on my SATs? Like, it's all nothing. It's all nothing. It's... It's just fodder for us to be closer. Like the point is to connect. To me. That's the point.
So, connection favors vulnerability. Like, connection favors ragged edges that can, where you can connect on a, on a bigger surface.
Lee
Kelly
If you're all tight and straight and hiding and perfect and wrapped up in your little packaging, you know, there's nothing to hold on to.
Lee
Kelly
But it's not even that consciously. I mean, it's really my nature.
Like, I just don't think it matters that much... the number of things I've done that are inadvisable or misguided.
Lee
Kelly
I just don't think it matters.
Lee
So, during your experience of going through breast cancer, your father's diagnosed with cancer.[00:11:00] Unpack for a little bit about how, how your story grappling with his cancer impacts, relates to, informs your own.
Kelly
Well, I mean, one, one thing about having cancer is that if you're lucky, if you have a good circle of support, you kind of get to revert to childhood. Like, you know, you have cookies for breakfast, and you're napping. And, and people are doing your laundry for you, and you go from like a very exhausting, very hassled adult life of caring for two small kids and a household, to being the cared for person.
And so I was as soft as I had ever been, you know? I was, like, living in my pajamas and treating myself to whatever I wanted. Like, if I wanted a lollipop at 6 a.m., [00:12:00] like pop it right on in there, no problem.
And then, the most adult thing that had ever happened to me happened. Which was this guy, who had made the world a safe and good place for me, this guy who loved me so well, was threatened.
And it was like, I, I can't do this. I-- this can't happen. I can't handle this. I have to have him. And I know it, because I've just had him. I mean, I had to have him anyway, but then that whole fall, from August to December, I had him in spades. I talked to him all the time and he was right there for me and he was coming out to California repeatedly. And, and I was just drafting off of his optimism and his joyfulness and, and his confidence in me.
And then it was just like-- I just remember thinking, I, I, I felt like, [00:13:00] I felt like I wanted to have a fit, like I wanted to throw my glass against the wall and run out the front door and slam the door and, and slam my fists on the, on the outside of the car and just go crazy with like, you, you just cannot do this.
This cannot happen. I just worked so hard. I am such a good girl. I did every god**** thing those people told me to do. I lost every hair on my whole body. I got surgeries ahead of me. I have radiation ahead of me. And I'm taking care of these girls. And I'm making lemonade every day out of these lemons. And this is not my reward. You cannot take this guy.
So I felt very threatened. And I felt very victimized. Like, it was like, you just... this is not the next beat of the story. I won't have it.[00:14:00]
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and a conversation with Kelly Corrigan, discussing her memoir and New York Times bestseller, The Middle Place.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a PDF of my complete interview notes, and a full transcript.
We would be delighted if you'd tell your friends about No Small Endeavor and invite them to join us on the podcast. It will help us extend the reach of the beauty, truth, and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world.
Coming up, Kelly and I continue to discuss the life lessons drawn from her experience with cancer, as well as what might connect human beings together in a world [00:15:00] of so much presumed difference.
The pictures of the two primary men in your memoir, including your father, that you describe, and your husband... I paused numerous times as I was reading your memoir and just thought, these are beautiful pictures of beautiful relationships with men who are showing up in beautiful ways.
When you think back about... this has been, what, almost 20 years now, I guess, um, and you were young married at the time, in your, what, mid-thirties... when you think about what your experience did, how it informed, how it shaped your early marriage, what do you look back and think about what, what that experience of cancer did for your marriage [00:16:00] or did to your marriage or how it informed kind of longstanding habits of your marriage?
Kelly
I mean, it, it was a total fortification.
Like you hope... you hope that you married somebody that's gonna be sturdy under pressure. And I did.
And in particular, there was this glorious emotional synchronicity... or, it wasn't even synchronicity, it was more of a following. So I would have an emotion and he would adopt it. In other words--- and I think it's one of the most lovely things that one person can do for another person.
Which is to say, if I want to ignore it all and go sit on the deck and put my feet in his lap and drink a Corona at three o'clock on a Monday afternoon, he'd just do it with me. And if I wanted to look up the odds of survival for a 36-year-old with stage 3 cancer with a tumor that's 7 centimeters by 4 centimeters, he didn't try to stop me. He'd look it up too, and, like, validate my [00:17:00] numbers. And if I wanted to go somewhere or have people over, then we went somewhere or had people over. If I wanted to go for a walk, if I wanted to cry... everything was okay, and he did not oppose me, he did not try to guide me emotionally. He just followed my emotions.
And we... that does not happen in our normal healthy life.
Like, that's my biggest complaint about my marriage, is that so often Edward takes the other side of the bet. Like, he's kind of an academic that way.
Lee
Kelly
He's very bright, and he just likes to argue out corner cases and--
Lee
Kelly
--and whatnot. But during that period of time, and other high stress periods of time, times of real crisis, where the cognitive load is like, ****, they're gonna knock you to your knees.
He knew, to drop that and to follow. And that's [00:18:00] really been a lovely experience that I draw from when my kids are in crisis, who are now 20 and 22, is, don't lead them. Don't nudge them out of their emotion. Don't yuck their yum and don't yum their yuck. Like, whatever they feel, just try to feel it with them.
Lee
Kelly
And it's very contrary to my instincts.
Lee
Kelly
My instincts are to coach 'em out of it.
Lee
Kelly
But it's much nicer, much nicer, and gentler, and more loving, and frankly, intellectually simpler...
Lee
Kelly
...to just, "tell me more, what else, go on."
Lee
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that that way of being with another, or being with a spouse, being with our children, friends, whatever... that it's very contrary to my [00:19:00] intuition and even contrary to my training as a-- my raising, I think, because... and again, I don't know how much of this is a Southern thing, how much it was a Southern Bible Belt Christian thing, but for us a lot of times it was, you know, be happy. And just, just be happy. And you know--
Kelly
Be grateful, people are starving in Africa. That whole line of thought is just so useless.
Lee
And so, learning to let my kids be angry has, has been a real stretch. And, you know-- and my wife and I have wondered sometimes about whether or not we didn't sometimes let that go a little, little too extreme. But, but, but in the end, what we, what we've discovered is that our kids seem comfortable being themselves with us, um, as they're now young adults.
And that's, um, I think that that has been a payoff, if we want to use financial terms, financial metaphor for it. You know, it's been a payoff that's kind of, is a good return on investment, you know, because it's, we're deeply grateful that [00:20:00] they can be themselves with us. But I think it was, it was very costly for me, emotionally, to let them be angry or let them be whatever they were as we went along.
Kelly
I agree. I mean, I'm not very good at it. Believe me, if my kids were listening to this, they would say like, "Uh huh." Like, "Okay."
Lee
So as you have been... uh, done the work that you've done, you've undoubtedly heard untold numbers of stories of people going through their own travails, and cancer, and, and other afflictions that they've had to deal with.
What are some of the stories or what are some of the practices, lessons learned out of that experience for you that you take away from seeing other people, what they've been through, that you've, you've tried to say there's something true and beautiful about the way they've processed that that I want to hold on to?
Kelly
I mean, one macro observation is that a lot is survivable that doesn't seem like it would be. [00:21:00] People figure out how to keep going, and stay in their lives, and laugh again, and love again after very hard things that the moment they break, you think this is going to kill her. This is going to kill him. And it doesn't. So that's a backstop that I'm aware of.
I also think that I have learned through my deepest friendships that it doesn't mean they're not unchanged and it doesn't mean that a lot of their days aren't compromised by deep sadness. And that makes you want to be the friend that they can say the awful thing to and not put a smiley face on it for you.
I mean, my friend Liz, who died... I know, I know that's who I was for her. I was like the only person that she could say, "I think I'm dying." And I [00:22:00] didn't, I didn't try to talk her out of it. And I didn't try to, like, put a button on it. And I didn't bring up some future ovarian cancer trial that maybe she could qualify for. I just let her say it.
And I have a friend now who's really devastated after a hard divorce. And I don't think she's allowed to say to anybody, like, "It still hurts so much." You know, I think, like, the world is telling her, you're supposed to be pretty good by now. And it's like, I don't know. I, I, I think, I think people are a lot of things simultaneously. I think she's very good. And it still hurts a lot.
And that, that coexists in many, many, many people. Like, I think that the way we interact with each other is so silly. Because people will be like, how are you? [00:23:00] And I, I feel like a weenie for saying this, but I kind of want it to catch on also... which is, "oh, I'm everything."
Lee
Kelly
I'm tired and I'm happy and I'm excited and I'm a little nervous and I'm worried about this but I'm psyched about that. And, and then they say, how are the girls? I'm like, the girls? The girls are everything.
Lee
Kelly
The girls are thriving and the girls are dying and the girls are crying on their sofa and the girls are joining another thing and running for president of this and doing a job, getting a job offer there and also miserable and also, you know...
It's just not-- it's really a denial of the way we work to suggest that I, one person could say to another, how are you? And the other person could, like, give an answer.
Lee
Kelly
Like this summery state of affairs. It's like, what, are you kidding me? Like I kind of have a migraine, I'm sort of exhausted, and I have a trip tomorrow, so I'm kind of stressed about that, but I'm really psyched 'cause I just talked to this guy and he was really fun to talk to. And also I can't find my laptop computer charger [00:24:00] and-- like, it's a lot. Lots happening in any given, like, you know, cross section of a life.
Lee
Yeah.
Yeah. I find that super, I find that super helpful. Yeah. And I apologize to people listening because I think I said this on an interview sometime in the last six months, but it reminds me of, a friend of mine who was talking about-- had gone through his own very difficult time in life and he was in recovery and therapy and, and then he was sharing how he had been to one of the big art museums in Chicago or New York and had seen this one painting that was just white on white. It was just a canvas of white. And then he went a little further in the museum and he saw another one that was white, but just had a big blotch of red. And he said, that's what first happened to me as I got into recovery.
I was like, no emotions, nothing. And then when I started paying attention to my emotions, all I knew was... he was pissed, and the anger of the red. And he said, then I went a little further in the museum and he saw this Jackson Pollock picture that was just a splash [00:25:00] of every imaginable color. And he said, that's what I am now every day. There's a little bit of red. But there's everything else. I'm everything.
And, uh, that was, that's been so helpful to me because it just-- for one, it, it, it helps me not obsess about the anger, or obsess about the pain, or obsess about the sad. I can be sad, but it didn't have to be everything. I can be angry, but it didn't have to be everything. Because there's, you know, all this other stuff.
So, yeah, that's lovely, the way you describe that.
You tell a story about being-- I think it was your first chemotherapy treatment, and I believe your nurse was Catherine, maybe, what you call her in the book. And I was so struck by the way that you sit down, and so you start, you start having this conversation with this woman who's attending to you. And [00:26:00] after you've been talking for a little while, you have invited her into opening up in such a way so that she shares that what got her into nursing and the nursing that she's doing was that her own mother died of cancer thirty years previous, when she was a child.
And then she starts saying, nobody here at the, at the treatment center even knows that. And so it's just remarkable that you sit down and you're able to have that conversation with her that gets to that point that quickly.
So the question that raises for me is, what are ways in which a sort of healthy curiosity about other people's experience has driven you? Is it something you've developed? Is it something you just kind of naturally have? Where does that come from, and/or how have you learned to practice that sort of curiosity about other human beings' experience?
Kelly
It's definitely natural. It's not... it's not something I cultivated. And [00:27:00] I'm... I think I'm, like, pretty tuned for connection.
So, you know, Catherine and I are gonna do this thing together. For four months, I'm gonna go in there. And you sit there all day. It takes eight hours to get your chemotherapy. And she loved me. Like, immediately-- not on my personality, but like, she loved me. Like, she cared for me. She-- I was one of her patients, and... And I was young, and I was probably on the younger end of people in that infusion center.
Of course, there are infusion centers with three-year-olds in them, but the one that I happened to be in, I, I was, you know, noticeably younger than the average person. And so there was this awareness that there was this young mom in there.
And I kind of loved her too. Like I, I kind of loved the way that she moved and how gentle she was with me and [00:28:00] she talked kind of slowly and a little bit quietly and... But she was never in a rush, never felt like she had somewhere else to be.
And I just wanted to know more, you know? And then, I mean, a big thing I feel, and I think it's from watching my dad in the world, is that everybody's got something to tell you. Like, everybody's just like a little mystery box to be opened, and you're allowed to try. You're allowed to ask a question or two, and you know, you, if you--
I mean, to the extent that there's any skill in it, it's in trying to be sensitive to the signals they're giving you back.
Like, are you allowed to ask another question?
Lee
Kelly
Are you allowed to ask a follow up? Are, are they open to that? What's their body language telling you? What's their eye [00:29:00] contact level? Is it changing? Are they... where are their shoulders? Are they towards you? Are they away from you? Like, all that sort of interpersonal intuition of, like, can I go further?
Lee
Kelly
And then, of course, because of where we started this whole conversation, like, you know that anything she asks me, I'm going to tell her. I mean, I'd tell a stranger, so I'm definitely going to tell Catherine. And she knows that. So she knows that I'm going to reciprocate, that it's not a nosiness. It's an eagerness to know each other more personally.
And she was so sweet, and she just kept her head down, but she said more than she had to say, you know? I was like, why do you do this? And she could have said anything. I don't know the truth. She could have said, I'm a, I'm a math geek. Or, my sister was a nurse. Or, they had good benefits. [00:30:00] Or, or, or... but she didn't.
And I think her intuition was telling her, like, this will be okay. It will be okay if you, if you tell this one patient, this one thing.
Lee
Kelly
And we, we love each other forever.
Lee
Kelly
Like I'm going to send her this so she can hear it. Like we, you know, it's twenty years, and I'm special to her and she's special to me and it'll never change.
Lee
Yeah. Thank you.
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, more from Kelly about the connection between grief and love, the distinction between sadness and bitterness, and why what we humans have in common vastly outweighs our differences.[00:31:00]
I think you were... some hiking trip in the Himalayas or something, which made me think maybe I need to try to go there someday.
You tell the conversation that you're having with some-- a woman one evening, about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. And when it comes to letting go attachments, you follow up with her and say, "You mean letting go of attachments to people?" And she responded in the affirmative. And you, in the book you say, "Well, no way. I'd rather suffer and hold on to my attachments."
And it seems to me that the whole memoir is a sort of... in some ways that little anecdote is a sort of microcosm that you can abstract and see the whole of your memoir, because you so desperately hold on to your attachments to other human beings in this beautiful way, and it leads to such suffering.
But [00:32:00] unpack that some for us.
Kelly
That's about the sum of it. You will suffer.
I mean, that, that idea that, you know, grief is just the flip side of love. Like you'll pay it all back. You'll pay back every minute in grief.
Lee
Kelly
And so be it, I guess. I think that's where I am.
Like, I mean, I cried so much when my dad died. I cried for like six months. And I have cried so much in my empty nest. Like I really, I don't like it.
You know, it's fine. And I can come up with lots of great work to do and whatever, but I don't like it. It's not what I want. I mean, I want them to be independent and I'm glad they're out there and I'm glad that they're, they're launched. I wouldn't want them to not be launched. But if I could roll back, would I? Of course I would.
I'd do it again and again and [00:33:00] again and again and again.
You know, so that's what it feels-- that's what love feels like to me.
Lee
Kelly
And I accept that about myself That it's, it's gonna hurt. Like, this whole enterprise is gonna hurt like hell.
Lee
Kelly
And, and... there you have it.
Lee
Yeah. Well, I want to come back to that.
But first I want to, I want to shift to your book, Lift. And just as a parenthetical insert, that I, I liked the premise of the title of the book because I also fly gliders myself.
Kelly
Lee
Kelly
Lee
And that you got this notion of lift from a friend who flies hang gliders. I don't fly hang gliders. I fly sailplanes. But same, the same idea.
You got to go find thermals if you're going to stay up, and follow the thermals up to cloud base and so forth. And you use that as a sort of metaphor for, uh, this terrifying notion of finding turbulence. And it's the, it's the turbulence that's going to keep you, give you a lift. It's the [00:34:00] turbulence that's going to keep you alive. And that it's just this sort of reality of living, is that, if we're going to live, there's going to be turbulence. In which I find it very helpful--
Kelly
And it's the connective tissue between us.
Lee
Kelly
I mean, this is, this is how we're going to love each other.
Lee
Kelly
Is that you and I know the same turbulence, and so we can just go so deep on that.
Or, or that we can abstract one kind of turbulence for another and meet there in the abstraction.
Like, the funny thing that people say a lot that I'm always like, "Hmm, I don't feel that way," is, you know, "I have no idea. God, can you imagine? I can't even imagine how that would feel."
And I think, really? Like, you can't get there? Because I can get, I can get there with almost anything.
Lee
Kelly
That's, that somebody-- I mean, I can imagine a little bit how it would feel, because it always ladders up to unfairness or loss. Or these kind of archetypal themes of human experience where [00:35:00] everyone has lost something. Everyone has wanted something that they cannot have.
So sometimes my husband and I will be talking about something that's going on with the girls and he says, "I just can't relate. You know, I just, that would have never bothered me." And I'm like, no, no, no, you can relate. You never had that one version of it, but like, flip through the files. Like, it's, they're all the same. It's just you getting cut from a soccer team isn't the same as her not getting asked to the prom. Like, that's the same story.
Lee
Kelly
I wanted to be wanted. I wanted to belong. Like, how-- what percentage of all pain in the world is related to wanting to belong?
You know, like, a huge percentage. So we should be able to relate to each other, like, pretty easily.
And when you think about the political stuff and this division and, like, the instant sense that you have nothing in common with a Republican or a Democrat... it's like, oh, [00:36:00] don't be ridiculous. You've all had a first kiss. You've all had, like, unmitigated pain. You've all lost some money, you've all made some money. You all have a parent that you love. You all have a kid that you're scared to death might be going off the rails. You know, you all have the dream that you didn't hand in some paper in college and now you're not graduating.
Like, there's a lot that we all have. Everybody's been cold. Everybody's been hot. Everybody couldn't sleep one night. Like there's tons and tons of transcendent human experiences that we should be able to leverage in ways that sometimes I feel like it's this small thinking that's like, "literally, I have nothing in common with that person."
And it's like, no, you have like 90 percent of your life in common with that person.
Lee
In that book Lift, you dedicate it to your, one of your cousins, Kathy. And you share the story of her loss of her son. And [00:37:00] near the end of that section, as I recollect, you indicate that as you're asking her some questions about her experience that, I don't know if it's she says this or it's your commentary on it, that, that she's sad, but not bitter. And you say, "There is a difference."
And I think that there's a humongous importance in the difference. And I would imagine that you've seen people who have had to deal with great sadness, but sadness in some cases that has fallen over into bitterness. But would you unpack that kind of distinction a little bit for us and describe maybe the way, for your cousin or for other people, you've seen people be able to have to experience their sadness without then falling prey to that bitterness.
Kelly
Bitterness is such a small, rotten, horrible place to be. It's like a chokehold. I mean, it's just a [00:38:00] total-- I mean, you're placing yourself in the victim position. Something is not fair. Something has happened to you. And it's like tying yourself up in knots and, like, pulling, pulling on the rope.
Whereas sadness is like, I loved someone and I can't talk to them anymore.
And what it took for her was a dissolution of a narrative. And I think narratives are so powerful. You know, I interviewed Michael Lewis, the great writer who lost his daughter the same way that Kathy lost her son. Summer after freshman year, car accident, fatal. And Michael said, "I think we should be very careful about the stories we tell ourselves."
Because I had asked-- he said, "my whole life I felt lucky." And I said, do you [00:39:00] still feel lucky? And he said, "I have a very hard time thinking about myself as someone who is unlucky."
And I think it's dangerous to rewrite the narrative. And Kathy... there's a lot of narratives that you could come up with to process the loss of your child in a car accident.
And she said, you know, all these years I've been thinking, why did this happen? Why did this happen to us? But that's a different question. There's two different questions. Why did this happen? And why did this happen to us? And as soon as you take the "to us" off, then you, you can come to a different answer.
And her answer was, it happened because it can. A car can skid out on a wet road and a car can flip and glass can break and metal can pierce. And they're just bodies. And, [00:40:00] and that there's a physical world, that we exist in a physical world and all of those physics will be obeyed. And that was super freeing for her.
But once you say, "to us," why did this happen to us? Then you're in this dangerous narrative territory where you are the victim... which means that there is an aggressor. And that is where I think, that is like the fertile ground for bitterness. Once you're in that kind of story, then I think bitterness grows easily.
And I mean, bitterness will ruin your life. Like I know, I know people who-- I am thinking of someone in particular who is just so prone to bitterness. I mean, so prone to seeing himself as the aggrieved. And, you know, it's, it's, it's ruining his life.
Lee
Kelly
He, he, [00:41:00] everything is happening to him. It's like, no this happens to everyone.
I mean, I sort of remember flying with Georgia and Claire when they were really little. And we were stuck on the tarmac, you know, for like an hour once we landed. And one of them was like, "I have to get off this plane." And I stood 'em up and turned 'em around. And I was like, let's look at all these people. There's 400 people on this plane. We all have to get off this plane. Like, the stewardess cannot wait to get off this plane. The pilot cannot wait to get off this plane. Like, we're all want to get off the plane, you know?
Lee
Kelly
So it's not happening to you. It's probably happening to all of us.
Lee
Yeah.
What do you do with situations where there are clear agressors?
Kelly
I don't know that I could really do [00:42:00] this, but sometimes I can... I mean I have not been, you know, attacked or maligned in, in any big kind of ways, but I have, of course, have had a problematic relationship or two. And when I'm in the throes of those, I can tell it like it's all his fault. I can't believe he did that. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.
On a good day, I can say, God bless his sweet heart, that is the very best that he can do. I'm sure he wishes that he could behave better. And he just can't, he can't do it. And it would be hell to be of that frame of mind. And it must be hell for him. Because today it's me and tomorrow it's the next person and the next day it's the next guy.
Like, if you are easily offended, you're going to be offended seven days a week.
Lee
Kelly
And, and, like, I don't have much conflict in my life, but if you're that person, you have conflict all the time.
Lee
Kelly
And that must be awful.
So [00:43:00] the only way I know how to protect against the onset of bitterness, or to derail it as it's coming for me, is to remember that there are reasons people are the way they are.
You know, like the perpetrators were the victims. And that it must be hell to be in that, to see the world that way. It must be torture. And God bless you.
Lee
In your book, uh, Tell Me More, you kind of lay out some, a number of stories, but stories that have an embodiment of some practical wisdom. As you look back on that particular book, what are, what are some of the practices, principles of, of practical wisdom that you keep trying to hold on to that have been important to you?
Kelly
I really like the point I was trying to make about, "I'm wrong, I was wrong," instead of I'm sorry.
Lee
Kelly
Like, I think that's really val-- turned out to be very valuable for me. Which is to say, like, it's one thing to say, "I'm sorry." Or, "I'm sorry that..." or, "I'm sorry you..." you know, or all those ways that we degrade our apologies.
Lee
Kelly
But to say, "I was wrong," is such a tone changer. It's such a massive shift in the conversation. And I think there's a very specific reason why, that's kind of awesome to remember. Which is, if I behave in a certain way, if I say something or do something, and then you say, I can't believe you did that, and I say, I'm sorry. That's like, I have regret.
But if I say, I was wrong, what it means, I think, is we agree. We share a worldview. We agree on what is right and wrong. And we agree that that behavior is wrong. And that when we do it, either one of us, [00:45:00] we are wrong, and that you can come back in to right. You're welcome back now.
And I think what we're craving in those fights that come down to I'm sorry or I was wrong, is unity. Is like, you, I want you to validate that my worldview is your worldview. Like, we agree! This is not how we're gonna act towards each other. Say it! Say that you agree with me. Let's realign, shoulder to shoulder, seeing the world the way we've decided to see it all these years.
And that's the comfort I think we're seeking. It's not to belittle the person and it's not to make them eat their weaknesses or, you know, like get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness. It's, it's kind of like the person saying, right? Aren't you with me here? Like, isn't this the way we work? Like, tell-- recommit to me that, like, this is how we work, and this is what we believe [00:46:00] together.
Lee
Kelly
So I like, "I was wrong," a lot.
Lee
Yeah, that's very helpful. That's very helpful. And can be very hard to do.
Kelly
I know, my husband can do it, bless his heart. Right in the middle of an argument. It doesn't even take him like an hour. He'll just say, "you're right, I was wrong, I shouldn't have done that."
And then it's like, eh, I'm not even finished being mad at you yet. Like, ah, I have all this emotional energy stored up. And it's like, oh, well I guess, okay, we can kiss and make up.
Lee
Well, we're talking to Kelly Corrigan, host of PBS's long form interview show, Tell Me More, and her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
Kelly, it's been delightful talking to you today. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for your good work in the world.
Kelly
Oh, my pleasure. See you in Nashville.
Lee
I'll look forward to that.
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Kelly [00:47:00] Corrigan, host of the PBS show Tell Me More, as well as her own podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders. Kelly's also the author of four New York Times bestselling books, including the ones we discussed in this interview, which are The Middle Place, Lift, and Tell Me More.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion. And the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad [00:48:00] Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together. No Small Endeavor is a production of PRX, Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.