Julia Gets Wise with Anne Lamott

This episode features a deep conversation between Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Anne Lamott, exploring personal growth, life transitions, and coping with change through anecdotes and spiritual insights.

1. Transitions in life, whether small or significant, can be profound and challenging, but also opportunities for personal growth.
2. The importance of self-acceptance and understanding one's worth without external validation.
3. Coping strategies for life's challenges can often be simple, like reconnecting with one's breath or finding joy in small moments.
4. Aging brings its own set of insights, emphasizing the value of reducing life's clutter to focus on what truly matters.
5. Embracing the mystery and synchronicities of life can provide comfort and a sense of belonging in the universe.

1: Life Transitions

Julia discusses her emotional journey through various life transitions, using personal anecdotes to underline the emotional impact. "Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Transitions are brutal for me, like going to college or moving my parents into a senior home."

2: Finding Comfort in Familiarity

Anne Lamott discusses finding comfort in small coincidences and familiar sensations during significant changes. "Anne Lamott: Hearing the clock tower's chimes was like hearing the sound of my childhood."

3: Embracing Aging

Both discuss the lessons and freedoms that come with aging, such as accepting physical changes and appreciating life's simplicity. "Anne Lamott: At 70, I appreciate being physically and cognitively youthful."

4: Practical Wisdom

Lamott shares practical wisdom on dealing with life’s struggles, emphasizing simplicity and self-care. "Anne Lamott: Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."

1. Embrace life's transitions as opportunities for growth.
2. Find comfort in life’s small coincidences and familiarities.
3. Appreciate the lessons of aging and reduce life’s clutter.
4. Use simple, daily acts of self-care to maintain mental and physical health.
5. Accept and embrace the mystery and uncertainty of life.

This week on Wiser Than Me, Julia gets schooled by 70-year-old author and Sunday school teacher Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird). Julia finds solace in subtle signs from the universe and learns the importance of shutting the hell up when it comes to parenting adult children. Anne also shares wisdom on recovery, perfectionism, and falling in love at 65. Plus, Julia and her mom, Judy, explore the inevitable role reversal that comes with aging parents.

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People

Anne Lamott, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Companies

None

Books

"Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott, "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

Guest Name(s):

Anne Lamott

Content Warnings:

None

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
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Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Oh, aren't transitions hard? Maybe they're harder for some people than others, but I have to say, for me, they are brutal. My parents divorced when I was really little, and I would go back and forth between my mother's family and my father's family on the old eastern Airlines shuttle, and that was the granddaddy of all transitions for me. It was absolutely excruciating. But even run of the mill transitions are rough, like going to college, for example.

I remember having a moment of abject fear when my mom left me on my own with my eleven bags at Northwestern. Yeah, I brought eleven huge bags to college with me because I have always traveled very light, leaving people that I love separating, even happily separating. It's just heartrending for me. So recently, my parents moved from one place to a new place, and the new place is this kind of just amazing, wonderful, cozy, cottagey, senior living thing, which makes sense since my mom is 90 and my daddy, Tom, is 92. My sisters and I worked so hard to help them with that move.

Maybe we went overboard, I mean, because we were involved in every design decision at the new place, hiring movers and contractors and picking colors and putting things away and organizing and saying this out loud right now, I think we might be helicopter children, but whatever, we got it done. I got to say, though, I was emotionally wrecked. There was a lot of anxiety about this move. Was it going to be smooth? Were they going to be happy?

And I was feeling a lot of, frankly, inexplicable separation anxiety. And I haven't lived with my parents in basically half a century. So I'm not going to claim that any of this has any rational basis, but a couple of things happened during this move. So just to give you a little background, my sisters and I, when we were growing up, we lived near american university in Washington, DC. And they had, and still do have an old clock tower there.

And it would go off every hour. You know, the dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. You know that? Okay, so I'm at my parents new place, helping them move in, and I'm putting boxes and keepsakes in a storage shed. And this is very nostalgic stuff.

It has almost a magical quality. It's ephemera from my parents, from our shared past, is very emotional for me. And then all of a sudden, I hear this, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. There's a clock tower somewhere close by. I don't even know where it is.

And it's going off, and it's exactly the same tune, you know, dum, dum, dum, dum. The sound of that. That sound, that was the sound of my childhood. And hearing it in that moment all these years later, my God, it just. It had this familiar cozy and at the same time, melancholic feeling to it.

All right, so that happens. Then after that, I go back from the storage shed to my parents new cottage. And the number on their cottage is 3107. And it totally blew me away because the address number of our house in Washington, DC, where we grew up, was 3710. And look, to me, it was kind of remarkable.

Now, I know it's not the same number exactly, but it is the same four numerals. And this is a small coincidence, okay, tiny, even. But I look for these signs that happen all around us. For me, they kind of confirm the mysteriousness of the world. Isabel Allende and I talked about that last year, right?

You don't have to be religious to believe that there is mystery in this life. So somehow the combination of those numbers being related to one another and the clock tower gonging, this synchronicity, it gave me a sense of real well being that something was at work here that felt correct, and that I was being reassured. This move from my mom and dad, which is a loaded thing, moving into probably what is their last house, this transition was eased by that synchronicity. We pick up little random artifacts in our lives. Images, numbers, sounds, smells.

Mmm. Smells. My God. And each one marks a place in time. And we carry them forward with us.

We bring them through our transitions. And when they bump into each other, there's a little comfort there. And sometimes a little comfort is a powerful thing. Ann Lamotte says that holy rollers see coincidences like the ones I just described as God, working anonymously. And, you know, maybe she's right.

I take some solace. I take a lot of solace in these kinds of life. Coincidences. I just love them. And so today we're talking to Ann Lamott.

Hi, I'm Julia Louis Dreyfus, and this is wiser than me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me.

And that really is what we do here. We talk to smart, thoughtful, funny, accomplished, wise women. And today is no different. Except. Except I think it actually is a little different.

Because today I'm talking to somebody who is kind of professionally wise, right? I mean, what do you call somebody who is a spiritual and philosophical guide to millions of people? Somebody whose stock in trade is their ability to actually communicate wisdom and deliver enlightenment? You call that a sage? Right?

So get ready, guys. Today we're talking to an actual modern sage. And she's not a bullshit sage, either. She's the real deal. Even her bon mots are secretly meaty.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. I love that. It's simple, right? Hardly. And you'll find a million things like that in Anne Lamott's 20 books.

20 fiction and nonfiction. Her writing just has this incredible mix of raw transparency and humor that hits you right in the gut. The first book of hers that I read was operating instructions, which she wrote about the first year of her son's life, and which I read in the first year of my son's life. And I guarantee you we're going to talk about that today, because it was a game changer for me. Her straightforward, open, honest, daring approach to her work is just unique.

And she's not writing about easy stuff, either. Her words on addiction, shaped by her own struggles, carry immense significance within the recovery community and have truly shifted perceptions on how we view sobriety and substance abuse. And she's got one of those top to bottom amazing resumes, all kinds of awards and Guggenheim fellowships, fancy teaching positions, all these bestsellers, plus meaningful important essays published in meaningful, important places. Look, let's face it. She's kind of perfect, this show, right?

So I'm not going to waste any more time yacking away about Ann Lamott. Because it's time to talk to Ann LaMotte. Hello, Ann Lamotte. I'm sorry that was so long. That went on forever.

Apologies. Hi. Hello, love. I could listen to that all day. I'm happy to read it all over again if you're over.

Anne Lamott
Okay. That'd be great. Thank you. Hi, I'm Julia Louis. No, I'm kidding.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
So, are you comfortable if we share your real age? Yeah. And what is your real age? My real age is 70. I'm a very young 70, though, except for physically and cognitively.

So, how old do you feel? I feel that I'm 47, except for my body, which things are sort of deteriorating slowly. My feet and my hip hurts. So some mornings I wake up and I limp around like Walter Brennan, you know? But your inside person doesn't age, right?

Anne Lamott
Right. Your inside person is all the ages you've ever been and will be and shall be forevermore. And so I trust my inside age more than the physical. Hey, can I ask you a question about your feet? Yes.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
We'll edit this part out. But what part of your feet are hurting? Because I'm having this issue. Oh, I don't think you should edit this out. I think I have had planters off and on in my arch.

Anne Lamott
Most people get it in their heel, but my arch hurts. I really limp. I was limping. It's getting better. But here's the thing.

You have to do what the doctor says, which I don't like to do, but what they say is you stay off it for a while. But I'm a little neurotic because I've also had a lifelong eating disorder. So I feel that if you don't get 10,000 steps a day, you can't tell where you're going to end up. So I would always get my steps, and coincidentally, my feet wouldn't get better. And so this is funny.

I was. My husband and I were in Cuba in the spring, and my feet hurt, but I had been in this cuban church, and I was by myself, and I stopped suddenly, and I said to myself, what if I do what they say? And it was so profound, I wrote it down because I never do what they say. I kind of do reform what they say, right? Yeah.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Yeah. So they say, don't stay off of it for a month. And I think, well, I'll do half as much walking for a month. And I started doing what they say, and my feet are so much better. But what helps is if you have.

Anne Lamott
Where do your feet hurt? Well, it's the top of my foot. The top of it. That's funny. Yeah.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
It's like. I mean, I don't know if you. Can see, but, yeah, I can see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know what's going on.

After we do this podcast, I'm gonna call my doctor. Yeah. And then you. And I'm gonna do what he says. You have to do what they say.

I'm gonna do what he says. And have you tried icing it? No, I haven't tried anything. Okay, here's what you do. You do the rice diet.

Anne Lamott
You rest it, you ice it, you use a compression, get a brace, one of those elastic braces at CV's, and you elevate it and do that for a few days, and it'll be better. You also need to take Advil for the inflammation, if you ask me. And do you take insurance? I do, yes. Perfect.

I take most insurance. Great. Well, I hope you take mine, because I'd really rather not pay for this out of network. Hi, guys. Julia here.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Okay. Just want to give you a quick update in case you were concerned. I did go to the doctor after we recorded this podcast, and he diagnosed this problem as tendinitis, and he said that under no circumstances should I be icing the area. So, yeah, Doctor Lamont's advice was ill advised, and I'm actually considering a malpractice suit of sorts. But anyway, I still love her.

So I guess the next question I was gonna ask you is, what's the best part about being your age? And I think I might answer it for you. I think giving medical advice to people might be one of your best things about being your age. Do you agree with me about that? Well, being my age means that everything has, at one point or another.

Anne Lamott
And I know what to do for a lot of different ailments. Yes, everything. That. One of the things about being 70 is that everything has happened at least once. Almost everything.

Like you, I know you're very young, but. No, not really. Medium. Medium young. You're medium young.

By a certain age, we have all had unsurvivable losses. Right. Oh, boy. Right. And I know how you come through them.

I know what helps, and I know what doesn't help. Little nice christian bumper stickers don't help, that God never gives you more to carry. Blah, blah, blah. What a crock. Bumper stickers and platitudes don't work.

What works when somebody's going through unsurvivable losses? That you show up and you sit with them, and you are willing to feel like shit with them, and you don't try to get them to feel any better than they do for as long as it takes them. It could be years. Some losses we never recover from, but it's like having a badly broken leg where it heals, but you dance again, but with a limp. Yes.

And so I know what people, I know what life has to offer. And I no longer. I no longer think that it's anything like in the movies or the ads. I know you don't buy it, rent it, lease it, achieve it. It's an inside job.

And it has to do with the inner healing of the spirit. And it has to do with having people that are not trying to get you to be a different person than you are or feel any differently than you are, who look at you and say, God, I get it. Me too. I've been there. Can I get you a cup of tea?

Do you want to put your feet up in my lap? You know, I had cancer a few years back, and that was my experience, too. I had a group of friends who would show up in that kind, even just to sit there. They didn't have to talk. I found that to be very comforting.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
They weren't saying things like, what can I do? Which is exhausting. It was just being there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so let's talk about your wonderful husband, Neil.

You got married in 2019, right? Yes, I got married three days after I started getting Medicare. Okay. Why Social Security? I want to know why you decided not.

Because I don't think you should have. By the way, that sounded kind of aggressive. I didn't mean it to. Why did you decide to get married at 65? We've been living together for a few years, and he's really lovely and he changed my life.

Anne Lamott
And on our third date, he taught me about this inner critic work. You know, I call it KFKD. I don't know if we can say that word on your. We can. Oh, absolutely.

In bird by bird, I call it k fucked radio. And it's that thing in stereo that out of the right hand speaker says, oh, you're different than, you're better than. You're certainly more humble than. And then out of the left hand speaker, it just says, you're a fraud and that the jig is up. And talk about beating a dead horse.

And if people really got to know you too well, they'd run screaming for your cute little life. And he taught me to isolate this voice of k fucked radio and to talk to it. And he taught me to say, oh, it's just you. And then to kind of help it figure out somewhere else to go while I get that day's work done. And as soon as he taught me that, I thought, this guy's a keeper.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Yeah, I love it. Talk about falling in love and how it felt falling in love in your sixties. If there is a difference between falling in love in your sixties versus in your twenties and your thirties, is there? Well, we're different people, you know, we're a little bit wiser. Yeah.

Anne Lamott
And I knew when we hit it the first date, I had come there anxious and uptight and guilty and full of shame. And I was instantly had a lot of relief. And so I thought, yo, and then we were jamming. We were just jamming. The way you do with your best girlfriend.

Yeah. And I had always held out for being with a man who I would want to be best friends with if it was a woman. Yes. And before then, I had often been with men that I loved or I was addicted to or I liked to be with. But that wouldn't have been my best girlfriend, and Neil would have been.

Cause he's so real and so honest and so just funny and so on. About the 34th date, when I realized we were gonna be talking for the rest of our life, I said, I wanna keep this in the soda shop stage for a while. And we did. And that, you know, when you're 40, 50, 30, you don't. It's like you immediately have all this adrenaline, you know, and you're kind of this.

You have this energetic trance with a person, you know, when you start to. And it's like the vampire dance floor. It gets very smoky and a little bit of strobe lights, and you get out there, and it's like, so much adrenaline. You're getting down with the get down. You're getting down, and you get so much adrenaline, and you get the endorphin.

So it's like a speedball. And I thought, I've been sober, clean and sober 37 years. Bravo. And I don't want to get stoned on anything anymore, you know, except for maybe nature. And so we did.

We got to know each other for a few weeks, and it was very different, and it was really fun. I know that in your book, in your. That's right. In the new book, I have all these books you've written. I'm surrounded by your books right now.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
And Neil said that 80% of everything that is true and beautiful can be experienced on any ten minute walk. I love that. I love it. And I believe it's true. And I think I also might be in love with Neil.

I've also fallen. I hope you don't mind. No, no. What have you learned since you've gotten married? What have you learned about yourself, Anne.

Anne or Annie? Can I call you Annie? You can call me Annie. Yeah, everyone calls me Annie. Oh, you know, I've just learned that, you know, once I wrote in bird by bird that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Anne Lamott
It's the voice of the enemy. And I've had, I grew up with a lot of shame. I grew up with pretty unhappy parents who were married 27 unhappy years. I grew up looking very, very, let's talk about shame later, too. It's my favorite topic.

But I grew up with this crazy, kinky hair and I got bullied a lot. And people threw stuff at boys, threw stuff at me. And, I mean, it was very crazy. So that my solution and something my parents encouraged was the perfectionism. I was always the best in my class.

I was a tennis champion. And it will make you sicker and more mental, mentally ill and crazier than any other quality. And so I learned little by little with Neil and then definitely after marriage, where, let's face it, I was stuck with him. I learned how that life is just, you know, it's very messy and it's very real. The miracle of being older is that you might go to the same default places, minus this victimized self righteousness and this weaponized silence, but you move through it in two or 3 hours instead of months, and in one case, an entire decade, you know, and that you, you know that you're going to come through.

You know, that the problem is mental. But so I remember it's not them. You know, it's like it's an inside job. I can choose serenity. I can pray for peace of mind.

I can pray to not be an asshole. Yeah. Amen to that. So tell me, though, what was it like to have Neil enter your life with your family? Well, you know, Sam is very used to me being there for him and Jax.

And so there was just a tiny, tiny bit of resistance to Neil. I mean, Sam has never been all that excited about long term boyfriends, but with Neil and with Jack's, liked him. He's great with kids. He's got a bunch of kids of his own. And so Jax was fun.

It's just like the mobile in that old John Bradshaw family systems mobile where one thing happens, a person gets sober and all the figures on the mobile start to move again. And sometimes the strings get caught up in each other. And it was like that for a while. It sorts itself out, but it's really lovely. Yeah.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
You know, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you how important operating instructions was to me personally. Wow. Thank you. It really was Annie, because actually, both of my kids. But my first son had colic, and I had same.

Yeah, I know. I just reread it, and I was reliving it, and it was so difficult. And I, of course, thought it was because of me and my bad mothering or bad something, you know? You talk about shame, right? And there was a me, too part of that book comforted me away from all of it.

And there was a quote that I pulled. Where is it? Yeah. My heart is so huge with love, I feel like it is about to go off. At the same time, I feel that he has completely ruined my life.

Anne Lamott
Yeah. Yeah. And I know it's like all truth is paradox. And I would feel like I literally would sacrifice my life for him. And then I'd look over and think of him raising his ugly reptilian head, you know?

And then there's a part, I don't know if you remember it, where the colic was so bad, and I just thought casually about bundling him up and putting him on the porch for the night so I could get one night's sleep. And every mother worth her weight in salt said, me, too. Oh, yeah. You're not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to say it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
There was so much you weren't supposed to say that had to be said in that book. It was critical. It was urgent that it was said. And it is such a shock to have a child in so many ways, in the most beautiful of ways, and in the most difficult of ways, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anne Lamott
But, you know, I wrote a follow up to operating instructions because Sam had a baby at 19. Right. And I wrote a book called some assembly required. Yes. And I think it.

I mean, if I had to go to a desert island, it's a book I would take, because spiritually, the toughest stuff I ever did was to have to let go of my son and to let him be the parent, because I'm sure you're not like this with your children, but I think I have excellent ideas for them. Oh, yes. I think I do, too, by the way. Right. In all areas of their life.

And that, you know, I finally heard someone say that help is the sunny side of control, but I didn't hear it in time for when Sam had an infant. That is great. Can you just describe the difference if there is one? Yeah. When you're a mom, they don't leave.

When your grandmother, they all leave at some point. Right. And that's a blessing. And so that when you're and also when your grandmother, you're older. I was a young grandmother.

I was 55. But, you know, I didn't. When Sam called me the night before Thanksgiving in 2018 and said he was going to be a father, of course I had 25 people coming, and it was not on my bingo card. It was not what my plan for him was. College was the plan, and a little tiny, tiny bit of a career like that would be so much scary off his nose.

And so I was young, and Sam was a mess. He was a mess head and alcoholic. And so because I'm a black belt codependent, I also thought that what he should do next was to get sober and so on and so forth. What he should do after that was to this and what he should do after that. And I had all these plans, and some assembly required is so much about how the more you offer your plans for your children, the more they need to resist you, because you're crazy.

And I really. Sam is 34 now, and without my recovery program and a lot of therapy, I would be running alongside him on his hero's journey, you know, with Capri sun and lip balm and sunscreen. And that's an insult. That's disrespectful, and it injures him, and it injures me, yes, but it injures our children to try to control them. So this book, some assembly, is where I kind of learned pretty much most days to stop trying to control them.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
So you could have called it, just shut the fuck up and sit down, right? I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a great acronym in recovery for people with tiny, tiny control issues. And it's. Wait, w a I t.

Anne Lamott
Why am I talking? And so I just sit there quietly, and I think, I'm not gonna compare. I'm not gonna correct, I'm not gonna complain. I'm just going to love these people. Just love them, love them, love them.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
And it sounds like you've gotten better at it as time has gone by, you get better. I mean, it's like learning to play pickleball or piano or something. You start off really badly, and you take the action and the insight follows. The action might be not saying what you thought, what was on your tongue to say, and instead just kind of gently stroking your shoulder and saying quietly to yourself, it's okay, honey. Why don't we get us a nice cup of tea until we settle?

Anne Lamott
And then, yeah, you get better. There is something about being a mom and having that focus and that grounding that is when it's working well, it really takes you out of yourself. Yeah. And that is one of the many blessings of being a mother, I think. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to take a short break right now. There's more with Ann Lamott on the other side.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
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That's pair iwear.com code wiser let's talk about writing. Okay? It would be horrible if we didn't really talk about that. Do you mind just briefly telling the story of the title of Bird by Bird and the story of where that came from? I love that story.

Anne Lamott
Yeah, well, okay. When I was coming up in California at the end, in fourth grade, you wrote your first term papers. Yes. And you have to do a bird paper. And so my older brother hated school and wasn't very good at it, because he didn't care.

And he had his bird paper, and you have the whole semester to do that. And it was due the next day. This was a Sunday, and it was due on Monday, and he hadn't started. He couldn't start. It was too much like any writing project you start.

It's like an unassaulted ice floe. And he was in tears. And my older brother's a tough guy, was a tough fourth grader. And my dad, who was a writer, sat down with him and put his arm around him and said, just take it bird by bird, buddy. And he taught him to read a little bit about chickadees, for instance, and then in his own words, which is the only way you can share what's inside of you to share with us.

You write, tell us about chickadees, and then find an illustration. Okay, next we're going to do great blue herons. I want you to read a couple pages of Audubon on great blue herons, and then I want you to tell me, in your own words, about great blue herons. So that's where it comes from. Oh, I love it so much.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
It's such a beautiful expression. In fact, my son had a teacher. It's not quite as beautiful, but she used to say, when he would get overwhelmed, she would say, just break it down into manageable parts. Which is exactly what you're dad was saying. Yeah, yeah.

Of course, you're known for your talks and your teachings on writing. Two things that you said really struck me. One was the act of writing turns out to be its own reward. Yeah. And publication is something you have to recover from.

Anne Lamott
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so struck by that, Annie, because, you know, you could really apply that to everything. Yeah. It certainly is applicable to acting and producing and editing a film or a television show or anything.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Crunching it, crunching it, crunching it down. I was amazed at how universal those teachings are of yours. Oh, well, thank you. Well, the publication is. It's that american fixation that what you seek is outside of you.

That's right. And it's a perfectionism. And El Doctor, the great novelist, Ragtime, in Book of Daniel, of course, he said in Vanity Fair 20 years ago, he said, writing is like driving at night with the headlights on. You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way. And that is the truest thing I know, whether it's about what you're working on, your production stuff, your creation stuff, or your spiritual life.

Anne Lamott
Being a mother, having a colicky baby, it's like driving at night with the headlights on, and you can only see a little ways, but you can make the whole journey that way. It's hard. Some days are so hard. And, you know, one of the attitudes, acronyms for shame in recoveryists should have already mastered everything, you know. And the terrible feeling you have when you haven't.

When you have a colicky baby, when you have a. When you have a very old parent, you know, how could we know this stuff? But we think we're supposed to, right? I know. And that reminds me of the piece that I read that you recently wrote in the Washington Post about the beauty, I'm going to say, the grace of not knowing.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
I don't know. How could you know? That really resonated with me. We think, like, we have to know that getting the answer is what you're striving for. But maybe living in the unknowing is its own sort of blessing.

Anne Lamott
Yeah. My mom had Alzheimer's, and she was living an independent living, but falling apart. And so we, my brothers and I, were just. Just trying to manage it all. And she also had diabetes.

And she'd sneak over to Safeway and steal bread and cookies, and the cashiers would pay for it because she was such a lovable person. And then. So we had this nurse, and my brothers and I were with her, and we said, oh, we don't know what we're doing. We don't know how much longer she can. We don't know how to get her to stop eating the carbs and the sugar, and we don't know if she's even doing the insulin.

And we went on and on, just in that grief, but also that self doubt, that toxic self doubt. And this gentle, gentle nurse looked at us and she said, how could you know? And that literally hadn't occurred to us. Well, that is incredible. How could you know?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
How could you know? And just so you know, at thanksgiving this year or this past thanksgiving, I should say, I referenced that in a toast that I made to our family, because we so, thank you for sharing that as I start to cry. But the reason being is because we've got a lot of family stuff. People getting older, people are struggling with health in our family, different people. And so it's forgiving yourself for not knowing, and being comfortable with not knowing is an okay place to be.

And I. It's not only okay, it's the portal. It's the opening to something more spacious and more expansive where there might be great, and there might be fresh air instead of, you know, going over and over and over again, your ideas and your plans, none of which work. Right. Can you talk about how your writing changed after you got sober?

Annie? Oh, my God. Let's see. I got sober when I was 32. I had published three books.

Anne Lamott
I had. You know, I was born and raised in the same county I still live in. So I was loved out of all sense or proportion. And I just. I just thought I was.

I mean, my insides were like swiss cheese from the bulimia. And I was addict and alcoholic and all that. And I got sober July 7, and I didn't think I'd be able to write again, because certainly what you learn is the writers you love most are alcoholics. Is this true, really? No.

But I was raised by a writer. He was an alcoholic. His friends were alcoholic. Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Shirley Jackson and Dorothy Parker. And all the writers I love most were very severe alcoholics.

But anyway, I didn't know if I'd write again. And that bad voice said, well, that's that. You can either get sober or you can keep on being a writer. And I decided to get sober because I thought I was going to die otherwise. And this guy said to me, when I first got sober, he said.

He said, at the end of my drinking, I was deteriorating faster than I could, lower my standards. And I had gotten there. I had nowhere. I had no more good ideas. So I stopped drinking.

And for a while, nine months, just like what it takes to have a baby, I didn't think I could write. And my friends and the sober women said, don't worry about it. Go to a meeting. Do you need a meeting? Do you need a ride?

Do you want to have coffee? Come with me. I'm coming over. And I'd say, no, no, don't come over. Don't come over.

They'd say, I'm coming over, you know, because your mind is a bad neighborhood, and you shouldn't be in it alone. And they'd come over. And so I wrote my first book, my novel, which is called all new people, which is, in many ways, I think, the best thing I've ever written. But it was the first thing I wrote sober. And I had this strange feeling one day that this story was inside of me, and I felt that it had come and was tugging on the sleeve of my sweater.

And it was trusting me to get it right finally. Cause I wasn't drunk. I didn't think I could write without it. I didn't. And it tugged on my sleeve and it said, you know, bird by bird, I always had my writing students get one inch picture frames and give them to, or two inch picture frames, give them to each other to remember.

You just have to do that one passage that you can see through the one inch picture frame, that one scene. That's all you have to do today. So I started doing that. I started slowly doing what I've always told my writing students, and you do it badly. You do shitty first drafts, and then you do a better 2nd, 1st draft, and then you do a really decent second draft and give it to someone to read.

So it was really slow. It's a long road back. And I did it one day at a time with a lot of help, with very profound people along the way. I am in awe of the courage that that took and the, and the. I just admire you so tremendously.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
And I really, my. I have a sister who unfortunately died of a drug overdose. And I really wish I could have gotten you and your people together with her because I think, well, anyway, it is what it is. But I do admire you. I'm in awe of the strength that that took and the power that that took.

That's a lot of power. That's a lot. It's a lot of help, too. And if you ever said to me, Annie, I need you to go to New York or Chicago, because I have a niece and we're afraid she's going to die. And I want you to spend a couple days just having walks with her.

Anne Lamott
I would go as God as my witness. You know, I'm a Sunday school teacher and I mean it. I'd go like that. Because that's what the women, that's what the sober women did for me. They said, there's literally nothing, no way that you need help, that I won't try to get you that help.

So, angels. Angels. Angels. Angels. Angels, angels.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
We'll get more wisdom from Ann Lamott after this break.

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Anne Lamott
I love her and I love her. Love her. And she loves you. And she quoted you. She quoted you.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
She said no is a complete sentence, as Ann Lamott said. And here's the incredible thing. At the end of the season, our final guest was Carol Burnett, and she quoted you, too. No way. I swear to God.

No way. Yeah. Oh, my God. I have to write that down. Isn't that cool?

Anne Lamott
Yes. Yeah. Wow. Love that. Yeah.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Which is. It's a fabulous expression. It's a fabulous idea. But also, I get the sense that you're a yes person, that you're somebody who said yes to a lot of things in life. Is that right?

I mean, you teach Sunday school, you're church, you write, you're in the recovery community, you take care of your grandson. So what are you saying no to? Because it seems to me you're really saying yes a lot, which I also admire. Well, I say no to things that I really don't want to do. I say no to things that I only used to agree to do so people would like me more because before recovery, I got all of my value from how other people thought about me.

Anne Lamott
And if they. If I was a value to other people, then I felt that I was a person of value. But I say no now to stuff that is just damaging to me. I do, as an older woman, have less energy than I used to, and so I say no to trips, even if they pay well, if there's not a nonstop, you know, I don't want to do that anymore. And so I say no to a lot more things that people ask me to do because you know what I want to do?

I want to be at home. I want to be in my funny little town. I want to be with the people that I have my spiritual and walking and pickleball life and Sam and Jackson Neil and the kitty and the dogs. And, you know, I just want to. I just.

I'm caught a lot of the striving, but it's a huge change as you get older, is that the striving really quiets down, you know? Oh, interesting. And the being grows the longing for the being, you know, what ee cummings called the human being instead of the human doing and the impressing people and moving my numbers up. And the striving is just organically quieted down for every single person I know. Yeah, the pond of the striving settles down and you kind of think, well, I can give you an image in the Hebrew Bible, the famous psalm 23 that ends, my cup runneth over before recovery and before I got older, it's like I had this cup, this chalice, and I ran around trying to get everybody's overflow because I had such shaky self esteem and such a raging ego, you know, this terrible ping pong game going on.

And as you get older, you stop running around trying to get other people's leftovers, and you start letting your own cup be filled up with that. That really hydrates and nurtures you and fills your cup with love and memories. Sweet memories. You know, you start making sweet memories instead of working on your flabby thighs. And I think, you know, another thing that you talk about in your writing is breathing, which also.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Which also resonates with me because there have been moments in my life where, you know, everything feels like it's so bad that you can't escape it. Yeah. You can't get your head away from it. Yeah. I mean, like, it feels like you physically cannot escape.

Anne Lamott
Yeah. And in those moments, I have found that if I can just remind myself that I can still breathe, I'm still able to get breath. So I'm not. Even though it feels like I'm suffocating, I'm actually. I can breathe.

Yeah. You could put your hand on your tummy and just breathe into your hand. Yeah, just breathe. Yeah. But I'll tell you the most perfect breathing mantra and exercise I know.

I have this tape to my bathroom. That's how you know it's important. It's thich nhat hanh who just died maybe a year ago. But he has this mantra, an exercise, and he says, breathing in, I calm myself. You take a deep breath.

Breathing in, I call myself. And then, breathing out, I smile. And it's not a big phony smile. It's the tiniest smile, like Mona Lisa. Or just a tiny smile of, thank God, I'm breathing again.

And you do that for three minutes. You go breathing in. I call myself breathing out. I smile. And it breaks the trance.

It breaks that terrible hook into your mind that is spinning like the rat exercise wheel. And it, I promise you, it connects you umbilically to something beautiful and outside, outside surrounding and indwelling us for just three minutes. So I'm totally doing that. I love it. Yeah.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Yeah. And it's not like a 20 minutes meditation. You can get it done in three minutes and get on with it. I love it. Okay.

We've run out of time, of course, which is a bummer because I could talk to you forever, although I'm sure you have a million other things to do. Let me ask you a couple of really quick questions that we sort of end with, if that's all right. Sure. Is there something you go back and tell yourself at 21? Oh, wow.

Anne Lamott
I would tell myself, you are so beautiful as is. You don't need to change a thing. You don't need to worry about your hair or what your butt looks like. You don't need worry about anything inside of you. This is an inside job.

That's what I tell my Sunday school kids. You know, it's an inside job. You are loved and chosen as is. And I would have said there is nothing that any man out there can ever say to you or think about you that matters. An angstrom unit.

It is not out there. It is not what they think is a value in a person. What is a value in a person is what you learned at those women's meetings. What you learned is that all of your feelings are okay. It's okay to be mad.

It's okay to feel really ugly inside. It's going to heal you. You're anger. And it's okay to be grief struck. When I was coming up in the fifties, women couldn't be angry or grief struck.

They got, they were exiled. They were either institutionalized or divorced. And then the men all got cute new 15 year old wives. Right? And so I would say all of that stuff inside of you is the way home.

Talk to another person about it, talk to an older woman about it. And I think that's probably the most important thing that I would have said, is that we're starting over. We are starting over as of now, and this is a new page. And from now on, it's what we think about us that we're going to go by. Oh, I love that.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
And I'm not going to ask you one more question because that is just, like, the perfect wisdom to end this conversation on. I just am in awe of you, and I thank you for being here today. You are such a dream boat. You are a positive dream boat. Thank you, love.

Oh, that was so much good stuff. I gotta get my mom on Zoom and process all of this.

Hi, mommy. Hi, sweet. Okay, so today we had the great pleasure of talking to Annie LaMotte, and I know you're a fan of her work. Absolutely. So, she's 70, and I was asking her about, because she's a grandma, the difference between being a mom and a grandma.

And she was saying, the thing about being a mom is that they never leave.

What's your take on that? How would you characterize the difference in the mother relationship versus the grandmother relationship? And for our listeners, my mom has three daughters, myself included, and then five grandchildren. You know, parenting requires. It's a big responsibility, and you have all kinds of worries and so forth.

Judith Bowles
But with your grandchildren, there's a sheer joy, because, as she says, they go home at night. In other words, it's like taking care of somebody else's garden. But. But you know that it's their garden to really tend, and that releases you from the kind of worry and the tension of being a parent. And you have the sheer joy of everything.

From their first immersion for the first time, you see them coming out with a little wet hair and all the things along the way. It's not that, you know, I have any worries about them, but you, compared to being a parent, it's just like having the sheer joy of every moment that you're with them is. Is because you know that you're not the. You know, you're not the final. The final vote.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Wow. I think that that makes complete sense. And. And that's something to look forward to. She was saying that in terms of her parenting, she's somebody who really wants to, like, fix things and get in there and offer her help.

And she said, and the more that she tried in the past to offer help, the more resistance she got from her son. And there's this acronym called wait. I think it's something from aa that she sort of falls back to a lot, and it stands for. Why am I talking?

Judith Bowles
That's so good. Yeah, it's a good one. That's a good one. Why am I talking? I think that's very interesting.

And to turn it on its side, I would say that you girls have helped us move into this place that we've come to, done so many things and so many things, and so I was talking to your sister today, and she. And I was talking about something that doesn't work. And she said, oh, I'll call and I'll take care of that. I said, listen, you're so wonderful, but it makes me weak. If you are going to do all the.

I mean, it's time for me to start the struggle and do the adjusting here. And if somebody else is always coming in to save you and to save you from struggle and so forth, it makes you weak. Right. Right. Or, you know, if you give in to that.

So. So I think that's sort of interesting that I felt that at this age. Yeah. Isn't that funny? And we felt the need to get in there and help and make decisions for you and daddy.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
It's so. It's a real role reversal, it. Complete role reversal. Yeah. But also, it's one that is because you have to worry the same way you worry about over parenting.

Right. So I've over. I've over parented you is what's happened. I'm not saying that you are a little. But that's okay.

I get what you mean. I totally get it. Well, it was interesting just being with you and your sisters and having all these decisions that, you know, were and so forth. And that's. And by the way, it's critical because we're old, and it would have been.

Judith Bowles
The. The move was very difficult for us at this age, so it was essential that you guys do that. But also, it's essential now that we take charge of ourselves and of our situation. Yes, yes, yes. Remember, we got tied a big thing of tide, and I'm trying to do a laundry today, and I couldn't find it.

I was gonna call you and say, where'd you put the tide? Did you find it? I opened up looking for some toothpaste, and I found it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Good for you, mama. I know. I felt like a huge success. I got my PhD. You got your PhD?

In life.

Okay, mom. I love you so much. Have fun in your new digs. Oh, thanks, honey. And thanks for helping me with my new digs.

You're welcome. I love you. Call me if you need to find things. I'll find them for you. Okay.

There's more wiser than me with lemonade. Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content from each episode of the show. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts. Make sure you're following wiser than me on social media. We're on Instagram and TikTok at.

And we're on Facebook at Wiserthanmepodcast Wiserthan me is a production of lemonade media created and hosted by me, Julia Louis Dreyfus. This show is produced by Chrissy Peace, Jamila Zara Williams, Alex McOan and Oja Lopez. Brad hall is a consulting producer, Rachel Neil is vp of new content and our SVP of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson. Producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles Wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Farber, and our music was written by Henry hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music.

Special thanks to Will Schlegel and of course my mother, Judith Bowles. Follow wiser than me wherever you get your podcasts, and if there's a wiser old lady in your life, listen up.

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