How to metabolize shame
lessons from Isabel Allende's mother
I interviewed author Isabelle Allende in her writing office a few weeks ago.
Looking around as I set up, I knew this would be special.
My time with Isabel Allende was remarkable. Our conversation, just out this week, covers everything from her early journalism work at a feminist magazine to political exile and loss, divorces and new marriages, and forgiveness that was helped along by an ayahuasca journey.
But as we head into Mother’s Day weekend, I also want you to listen for what she learned from her mother. They wrote to each other throughout Isabel’s life — letters by hand, and later emails — more than 24,000 in all. But there are just two words that I will remember to characterize their relationship: “Head up.”
Isabel told me that was what her mother told her when she left her husband and two teenage kids to run off to Spain with an artist she’d fallen for. Isabel thought she could divorce and the kids would join her in Spain, but her husband wouldn’t agree. Isabel returned home after a month, embarrassed.
I went to see my parents who were waiting for me. And my mother was still in bed, it was very early. And my mother hugged me and she said in my ear, your head high up. So, dignity. Don’t be humiliated. Don’t accept humiliation. This is what those two words implied. You have done a horrible mistake. Now you put up with it, pay the consequences and your head up….which is what she did when my father left.
Isabel eventually left that marriage and had to repair her relationship with her children. They all moved on. And for that to happen, her mother’s response seems key to me. Rather than judgment or condemnation, she offered fierce and compassionate love.
Watching the new season of ‘The Rehearsal’?
A listener named Matt and I think you will enjoy The Rehearsal, especially if you listened to our recent episode about pilots and mental health.
Matt in Long Beach wrote this week:
The newest season of his HBO series "The Rehearsal" focuses on the dynamics between airline pilots, and in S02E03, he did a lot of talking about airline pilots and mental health, even mentioning the same things you discussed on the podcast about how even talking about having mental health concerns could be a career killer. He made some comments about how when they were interviewing pilots to participate in this season, the found that lots of them talked about how great it was to be able to talk about this stuff and how talking to him was like therapy.
It’s true. This is incredible television and a strange sort of journalism.
If you are already a Fielder fan, you may want to pull up our 2023 episode with John Wilson of How To with John Wilson. Fielder was a champion of John’s and an executive producer of How To.
In my interview with John, there’s this lovely moment where he talked about meeting the roommate who would eventually help connect him to Fielder. It all started with Craigslist:
ANNA: Have you ever made a friend through Craigslist?
JOHN: Oh, totally. I mean, when I was living in Somerville in Massachusetts I was looking for a roommate. And these two people showed up. One of them was really bubbly and he worked at a coffee shop and me and my roommates were like, alright, yeah, let’s take him because we’ll get free coffee from him.
But then he didn’t respond to us so we went with the other guy who was much quieter and he became my best friend and he’s a big reason why the show even got made. Just through a weird series of connections, and it kind of terrifies me to think that we would have never met and I wouldn’t have met all the people around him and vice versa. I don’t think I would have a show probably if I didn’t meet someone on Craigslist a while ago. It’s weird.
ANNA: Who you tried to reject.
JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. And that was also a lesson in, “Don’t pick the bubbly person that works at the coffee shop. Pick the normal person.”
ANNA: That’s the life lesson?!
JOHN: Yeah. Because the one that is maybe a little harder to read might be more rewarding.
If you missed it, that conversation with John Wilson was a delight. Listen: Feeling Lost or Stuck? Try Craigslist, says John Wilson
Recommended Reading and Listening
I have been texting with friends and journalism colleagues about this conversation between Ezra Klein and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the Washington state Democrat in a Congressional district that supported Trump.
It left me thinking a lot about economic policy and what gets left out when technocrats in cities craft the desired outcomes. Big things are missed, and ways of life are denigrated.
Here’s how Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez responded when Ezra pressed her on the moral underpinnings of her politics:
I think that telling a child that what they’re interested in isn’t interesting, or what they’re good at isn’t good enough, is deeply toxic. There are a lot of forms of intelligence — millions — and exactly one of them is academic intelligence. To your point, it’s like: Well, we’re going to shut your mill down, and we’re going to stop harvesting timber. But hey, here’s a grant that you could apply for. If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll give you money.
That’s not what people want. People want self-determination and agency. And I think it presupposes a hierarchy that is pretty offensive to a lot of people I know — that you’re going to tell me I have a problem, and that you’re the one that knows how to fix it.
Speaking of different kinds of intelligence, I’ve started to chafe when people use phrases like “knowledge worker” or “knowledge economy” to describe workers like me, people who type on a laptop most of the day.
Think about the deep snobbery embedded in that terminology.
I call us “laptop workers” instead. That’s more upfront about how particular our type of knowledge is…and how useless many of us would be without an internet connection.
Until next week,
Anna
p.s. Will you be in New York City on June 11? Join me and Allison Williams at Tribeca Festival. Tickets here!
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4/22 Are Airline Pilots Allowed To Be Depressed?
4/22 Bonus: How to Handle Bad Bosses, Office Romances, and Other Workplace Headaches (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
4/15 How the Subway Takes Guy Became His Own Nepo Baby
4/15 Bonus: What the Heck is Going On With Student Loans? (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
4/8 Scorpion Venom and Coffee Enemas Didn’t Cure My Mother’s Cancer
4/1 Bonus: Can AI Help With Parental Decision Fatigue? (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/25 A Middle-Aged Couple Made Porn to Spice Things Up. Then One of Them Got Fired
3/25 Bonus: Anna and Husband Arthur Play the Not-So-Newlywed Game (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
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