Tara Schuster: Self-Healing in the Dark
Tara Schuster is the author of the breakout hit, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies. Tara joins us today to discuss her ongoing work to unravel the mystery of the self—tales and tribulations captured in her latest book, Glow in the F*cking Dark: Simple Practices to Heal Your Soul, from Someone Who Learned the Hard Way.
By all external accounts, Tara is someone who had it all figured out—by the time she was in her late twenties she had worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was a rising star at Comedy Central where she was in charge of critically acclaimed shows like Key & Peele. Beneath it all, she was on the road to rock bottom—anxious, depressed and haunted by her chaotic upbringing. She wrote her first book, in many ways, for herself—a candid and practical guide to healing on the inside through the implementation of simple, daily rituals to transform mind, body, and soul.
But just as Tara thought she had gotten through the hardest work, and even wrote a book to bring others along with her, she suddenly lost her job—in the middle of the pandemic. One terrifying, dissociative experience while driving down a highway late at night later, she had to come to terms with the fact that her hardest internal work was just beginning. Tara shares with us the things that helped her the most along the way—from journaling to build internal safety and wisdom, to rejecting helplessness and restoring faith in our own agency—Tara makes the sometimes lofty lessons of complex theories such as internal family systems and deep trauma therapy accessible. Self-awareness comes from perpetual curiosity, she reminds us, and we must learn about ourselves before we can extend those learnings for the good of the world.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Self-retrieval…19:18
Trusting internal authority…28:51
Perpetual curiosity…44:30
MORE FROM TARA SCHUSTER:
Glow in the F*cking Dark: Simple Practices to Heal Your Soul, from Someone Who Learned the Hard Way
Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There
Explore TARA'S WEBSITE
Follow Tara on INSTAGRAM
ELISE LOEHNEN:
Well, it's always good to see you.
TARA SCHUSTER:
It's such a pleasure to see you, and thank you for having me. I'm a real fan of this podcast, so it's just really cool to be with you.
ELISE:
No, you're the best. I feel, even if our stories are different, our interests are deeply aligned, and we have walked many of the same paths with the same people. And it's interesting reading both of your books and having this experience, a very intimate experience, which is really brave and vulnerable. And thank you for modeling this for people, I know you have really tapped a vein with a lot of women and girls even, right? You’re sort of providing an on-ramp of what it looks like to engage with this work, so I just wanted to say that cause I think it's a great service.
TARA:
Thank you.
ELISE:
And really interesting to actually have these two books in a row, to watch your evolution over time, as you figure out the mystery of yourself.
TARA:
Oh, thank you. You know, it's when I wrote my first book, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies, I definitely was writing it to two people. One was to younger me who could have used it and the other was as an offering to this like person I had in my mind who might be able to use it too. So for me, whenever I get the feedback, like, how were you in my brain? Like, I felt like I was having a conversation with you. I'm like, well, I know how, because you were sitting with me the whole time I was writing it, and it sounds so woo woo and cheesy, but it really felt that way for the selfish reason that I needed to know all this, it would've been such a help. If someone had just held out a hand and said, hey man, there's another way to live. You don't have to live in a crisis where you 10 out of 10 hate yourself. There's another way to live and here are some tips. Because what I drives me insane is when a self-help book says, let go, feel joy. I'm like, Duh, but how? What are steps one through five in that process? And I think a lot of these bigger theories, things you and I talk about, like internal family systems, you know, deep trauma therapies, they seem so big and ethereal and they've got all this like opaque language but they can be broken down into free or very low cost things any of us could do. So what I hope I'm doing is kind of just breaking it down, making this stuff a little easier, and hopefully making you laugh a little so that this isn't the driest, most horrific journey into the soul. Like hopefully I can bring like a little bit of levity too it.
ELISE:
No, certainly. And one of the spiritual teachers I work with is this woman Carissa, who people have probably heard on the podcast and she, at a recent journey, one of the transmissions was about the difference between wisdom and knowledge and this idea that knowledge is personal; we don't all know the same things, and certainly our stories are not the same they're not equivalent. But wisdom is universal. And so the kind of admonishment was, yes, your stories are important, but you have to begin distilling it for the wisdom, the moral that can then be shared instead of a projection of just story and horror and unresolved issues. Those are things to work out within the sanctity of special relationships, healers, communities that are set up for that. But what I think is really lovely about your book is that it is both a work in progress and also there are resolutions in steps and experiences, like you're extracting the moral as you go, even at the same time, you're not promising like, I'm fixed, I'm perfect, it’s resolved. I have all of the parts of myself back.
TARA:
No, not at all. I mean, and I think what you're talking about, the wisdom, so a lot of the stuff I write about, for example, in this new book, Glow In the Fucking Dark, I give my take on meditation or my take on journaling, which is something we've beaten to death. Just Google: Is journaling good for your mental health? There are like 55 studies that are like explicitly, yes. You should journal three times a week for at least 15 minutes. This does work. But when I talk about it, I try to give a personal story, you know, of how journaling for me, having grown up in a really unsafe house, you know, I grew up in a neglected, psychologically abusive house where things came to die. The plants, the pets, the fig tree, you know, they all perished and it, and it was, what I write about in this new book is it was really physically dangerous because it was also an open construction site. So, and by the way, you know, the neighborhood. So imagine up on Hanley. Imagine in this pristine, architecturally controlled community, everybody's so uptight about what their house looks like. My mom decided to have a hasty remodel of the entire interior while we were on vacation. So the people had two weeks to do this. Come back to the house, everyone realizes, oh man, we didn't file any permits. We can't do any of this, and my parents decided to just leave it as is. So for six years, all of the walls were open. You know, we had a thing like stay away from the walls because you could get a splinter. There was insulation, the ceilings above us were just ripped open. It was an actually dangerous place to live.
And so I never learned that safety was a thing and to this day, people will say to me, you're so brave. You go on hikes in a slot canyon in the middle of Escalante staircase. And I'm like, dude, I'm not brave. I'm oblivious. How I walk in the world is feeling bodily unsafe. And you know the first time that actually even crossed my mind that, oh I deserve to feel safe, I was in Zion camping alone, and I went to dinner one night and there was this family sitting next to me. By the way, I was camping like in a tent, but I tried to use my little stove and it set on fire. I was like, enough of that. No, this is enough. I'm going to the nicest restaurant I can find in Zion. Goodbye camping stove, the end. As I'm sitting next to his family and I overhear this dad talking to his two boys and he says, you know, we're gonna go canyoneering tomorrow. And I've never done it, but I want you to know I hired a guide and so the whole time you're gonna be safe. He's done this hundreds of times. You're gonna be safe and I was like mind blown. Wait, parents tell you you're gonna be safe? They like they go out of their way and, not only that, it wasn't even that he'd said that to him. He had hired someone, he had made sure that the conditions would be safe for his children. And you know, when I realized, wow, a big part of my unease in the world is just how unsafe I feel.
I wondered like, well, how can I build safety for myself? Like, how can I build internal safety? And I turned to my journal. I was like, well, this is the place that no one can dispute me. I get to say I have a voice. I get to say I have a story. I can sort of untie what my usual tumult of emotions is. I can kind of see like what's inside of me. And so, you know, to get back to your point, something like journaling is, you know, it's just a wise practice and what I'm trying to do is tell stories of how I found that wisdom. I didn't invent it. That, you know, it's not my tool. I found it and now I'm just trying to share with people how they can deepen it, make it work for them, not be a miserable habit that every January they're like, I'm gonna start journaling, and then like never do, like how can you incorporate this in your life? So that's the mission of this book.
ELISE:
Yeah. And you tell. Oftentimes hilarious and insane stories, and what's interesting, you know, to me, yes, I live in the neighborhood that you grew up in. You went to the same preschool that my kids went to, and it's an interesting community. It's on the west side of LA It's largely incredibly affluent, but it has these pockets, these mid-century little small houses that make it a mix, socioeconomically, and as you said, it's an architecturally controlled neighborhood. It's, an interesting, slightly quirky neighborhood, but yes, people's houses generally are intact. You're a really interesting example to me, too, of someone who grew up theoretically in abundance.
Although I know that your parents were always on the precipice or in bankruptcy. I mean, it was like a financially ruinous or at least tumultuous situation at all times. But I think also you're an important, you're walking a path of someone who, from the outside and then you, you know, you went to Brown, you went to the school that you have to be exceptionally smart to get into in LA. I love, this is my favorite, busting you on the first dinner that we met.
TARA:
The thing you make the most fun of me for? Yes.
ELISE:
For everyone listening, there is a school in Los Angeles and you have to have a certain IQ to get into it and you went to that school.
TARA:
And got made and got made fun of it forevermore. Forevermore, I have been made fun of it.
ELISE:
When you revealed that to me, did you know that I would know what it was?
TARA:
I hadn’t, because I didn't even know that we lived in the same neighborhood. I knew nothing. So I said it thinking you'll never know. And I was like, great, awesome.
ELISE:
Oh, it's my favorite fun fact, and then you went to Brown and then you worked at Comedy Central. So the exterior presentation of you is of someone who is excelling. And I think we need more and we have some, and we're having increasingly more and more examples of this culturally, but that there can be an extremely different interior experience.
ELISE:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the title of this next book comes from that exact dichotomy between the external and the internal, which is, you know, I was working at Comedy Central. I had worked there one third of my life. I'd never had another job. I had climbed up the corporate ladder as quickly as I possibly could, and it was awesome.
TARA:
You know, I was overseeing shows like Key and Peele and working with people like David Spade and why it was so awesome was because, you know, as I said, I grew up in this really dangerous environment and I felt like a weirdo, I felt like a completely alienated person where nobody could understand and where I couldn't tell anybody. I didn't wanna be judged. I just wanted to be my professional self so I could point to this job and say, ha ha, you know, this is my happily ever after job. You know, like, I made it. I'm not that mess. I'm this amazing success. And I became so identified with it, to the point where people would introduce me as Tara Schuster, Comedy Central, like it was my married last name, you know. The job was where I got all my status and worth from, and then like so many at the very top of the pandemic, I was laid off. And that was devastating because that was the only family I had ever known and I had been there so long, but it was even more devastating because you know, and I'm sure you'll relate to this, I had been sold the creative hustle for so long that your job had to give you meaning, your job had to be your passion. And didn't it just make sense that you should be optimizing for like, you're the best friend to everybody you know, and you're spending your hard earned money to keep up with everyone else's awesome social media lives, all while you have this like perfectly ombre hair, just like flapping in the wind. You know, there was this vision I have that I had of myself with the perfect piece of millennial pink luggage, and the message was, you've got to be doing, even if the doing is your undoing, that's how you matter. And so when I lost this job, suddenly the darker traumas from my childhood, you know, I'm alone in my apartment in a global pandemic. I don't have a job, which means I don't have an identity and, and I don't have meaning.
All of a sudden these things I didn't wanna deal with were like, okay, we're gonna deal with you now. And I decided, okay, I'm gonna do a wise thing. I'm gonna pause. Just kidding. I was like cool. I'm gonna hustle my way out of this. I just immediately, immediately was like Googling, like, what can I do? How can I help? And it happened to be the 2020 election. So first Google results, you can help in Arizona, you know, like registering voters and that kind of thing. Just like that. I packed up my Prius of doom, headed out to Arizona in a state that I can only describe as the unwanted love child of a panic attack and a dissociative episode, out of my mind speeding down the highway. And that was actually when I realized: I can't keep going. I actually don't have any hustle. I don't have any of this left. I have to pull over. And, you know where the glow in Glow in the Fucking Dark comes from is I happen to pull over as it was becoming nighttime and on the road from Los Angeles to Arizona. As I did, so the stars came out and you know, from LA we don't really see the stars, like maybe once in a while, but we don't. So for me this was like, whoa, like starfield. What? This is amazing.
And what I know about stars is, you know, and what we all know about stars is how they come together. It's, you know, dust and particles getting pressure and gravity and pull, and it's all this tumult that makes it smaller and smaller and smaller until it is a star that glows with clarity, that glows with brilliance. And we are made of stars, you know. It's not some like fun little thing I'm trying to make everyone feel happy with. It's the carbon in your muscles, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, born in stars. And so I just sat there on the road and the question was, okay, if I've got that in me, if those stars can shine despite everything they've been through. Can I have some glow? Can I have something that lights the way even when things are really grim? Because at that moment I felt so lost. I felt like, how is it possible that I wrote this whole book about self-care? I had this whole career. I've done all this work. How is it possible that I'm still reeling from things that happened to me when I was a kid? And that’s journey you go on with me on this book is, you know, kind of recognizing we all suffer. I mean, you know, I feel like trauma is almost a taboo word. Like the people like that's being used too much. It's like, no it's suffering. Right? Like every major religion refers to this as suffering. There's pain and rather than ignore it, what I have found is my life is much easier. It's just a better way to live.
ELISE:
Well, and again, nobody wants or wishes for trauma or suffering, but I think it's hard to, for that those are the moments, and particularly I think it's better, obviously when this happens, when we're more formed or have a clearer sense of our own identity. But, these moments of change that are pushed on us that we would never have asked for, they're not on the menu that you want to order from. But they ultimately, if you can persevere through it, end up being the greatest, most valuable moments and opportunities for change and growth. It’s just hard, right? When you're reeling in the dark on the side of the road, having a dissociative panic attack.
TARA:
It wasn't the most fun.
ELISE:
It’s not the most fun. And what's interesting, and I wanna talk to you about spirituality, because it seems to me like that's emerging. I don't know. It wasn't, it's not a through line of the book, but it seems to be emerging. And I have this theory, rightly or wrongly that we do all of this internal self-work and not that we're broken, although I think that that's one of the constructions right, that we're offered is that we are broken, but that parts of us are stuck in shadow. Like we don't know where they are. We're looking for them, they exist, they're there, ready to be burnished and reintegrated. And again, you mentioned IFS. This is a lot of, this is internal family systems work, very powerful system. But that once we've done that hard deep work of reclaiming, reintegrating those parts of ourselves, then I think we can really turn outward and offer things to the world that are needed and are helpful. And your books certainly seem like that. And I think it's like when spirituality starts, what I'm interested in, I call it applied spirituality, but this idea of like, how do you bring that through? How do you tap into that vertical and spill it into your life in a way that I think that you seem to be doing at least maybe not as much in the pages of this book, but it's there. Can you talk a little bit about where you think you are in that self retrieval work and where you think you're going?
TARA:
There is backlash to saying we’re damaged, and I’d like to to have a backlash to that backlash. Of course we are damaged. Look at the world we live in. How could it be otherwise? The thing is we don't realize that that's all external and that the thing that really can never be damaged is, you know, what internal family systems would refer to as self, what I would refer to as soul, as what I would refer to as stardust because there is something in all of us that is innately good, innately connected, and the fact that you are made of stardust and so am I means we just are connected scientifically, there's no getting around that. And when I think that way, I really am open to a more spiritual way because it's really hard to be a jerk to you if I understand that you are me, you know, and you hear these like mystics and religious leaders talk about this stuff and it feels so like too big of a concept. But if you really break it down to you and I have the same science, you and I have the same stardust, I immediately feel tethered back to the real reality, which is not my millennial pink suitcase, but is I have this one life, I'm so lucky to get to meet you. Oh my God, I've got to live now.
And, so that's how I toggle between this. It's, you know, yes, individually, I think my life is important and self-care just for the sake of me is important and I don't know, I'm just one more body like soul in a body. One more stardust in a body. I kind of don't matter. And so it's like the toggling between individual and the community, which is why I always say self-care, when done right, when we're not talking about a luxury vacation to Hawaii, which is lovely, but is just in no way, shape or form, self-care, self soothing. Relaxing. Great, but when we do real self-care, which means to tend to those places within us that have been hurt, we're automatically helping the community cause we are members of the community.
ELISE:
Yeah.
TARA:
You know, each one of us, we are what makes it up. So if you are hurting and grieving, we all know what’s happened. You don't treat people the best that you could. You don't show up for people the way you could. And so I also have a backlash to people who have a backlash to like, oh, self-care is so selfish. Really, because it's kind of the only thing you can control and that you can model for others that it's safe to do so. So I'm just throwing backlashes left and right over here.
ELISE:
No, but it's true. I know you are in a Lewellyn Vaughn Lee love relationship as well. If people miss that episode, go back. But, you know, one of the things he talks about, and Dan Siegel interestingly was the episode before him talking about this concept of self and community, and as you mentioned, it's like it gets so heady, so fast and it's like, oh, we're all one. And Lewellyn talks about it, and I think this is a useful metaphor as like, just think about it as an orchestra and, you know, there is a cohesive sound created by the collective and that doesn't deny your participation as a violinist or a basist.
And I think to your point about self-care, it's like tune that. You gotta tune it, you gotta take care of it. Not that you need to be the soloist, not that you need to be the loudest, but that there it's incumbent on all of us to do our sheet music and to play our part and contribute what we're here to contribute in that way of you're all special, no one's special, but you have to show up.
TARA:
what I'm sensing is an increasing feeling of helplessness that the problems are too big. The world is too chaotic. What does it matter if I recycle this piece of plastic? Everything's doomed anyway, but the more we think we're helpless, the more helpless we become because we forget that we even have these muscles in the first place and that we have some amount of agency. And so for me, self-care is of the utmost importance because we need all of us on deck. These are not amazing times, right? And if we're just so convinced that we can never heal and it's not even worth it, and isn't that selfish, we don't get any better. There's no light at the end of that tunnel. So then you just stay stuck, stay helpless. And what I hope this book is, is a call to your own agency that you have more freedom available to you than you think, and you're gonna have to do the hard work. You know, this is not a sheet mask that solves it all. This is wow. I want you to go to the bottom of your soul, see where you're hurt, and help yourself.
That’s not fun. You're not going to Disneyland to do that. Although I go to Disneyland quite frequently, different story. It's also way better. On the other side, I can feel joy. I had never felt self-compassion to me. Self-compassion was just something written on the wall of a yoga studio. Cool idea immediately ignored. And until I did this work of really getting in touch with how much I actually did suffer and never felt compassion for myself, which meant I actually never felt compassion for anyone else.
ELISE:
Yeah. Yeah. Basic Buddhist tenant. Like you have to learn on yourself before you can extend it to the world.
TARA:
yeah.
ELISE:
Critical. I know, and we have the same editor, same publisher, et cetera, same family. It's just a great family to be in, and the word about you and your readers is that you often are introducing people to books, people who don't think that they read, are reading your books. Which is, I think, an incredible badge of honor. And you have a really deep relationship with your reader. Over the years, what are you hearing? I mean, you're slightly younger than I am. Like you're a true millennial, right?
TARA:
Yeah.
ELISE:
Yeah. What's happening besides these feelings of helplessness?
TARA:
Two things I hear the most often from my community, which by the way, this community gives me so much hope because they care. They really care and they really want to heal. And I think they just don't have the tools like they do it if they could, but they just need a little help with the tools, which is what I see my role as. But I hear the most often, I am not enough. I'm not good enough, and I don't trust myself even if myself even exists. Like I can't hear my own voice. I can't trust my own voice, and I completely relate. That's how I walked through this world for 25 ish years. I couldn't make any decisions if I was trying to decide like what apartment to rent. It was like, let me pull the universe and everybody else will have a better opinion than me and I should follow somebody else's advice.
And it was because I had tuned out so much of what these real feelings were. The more you tune out of how you actually feel and these things that need healing you, of course you're not gonna trust yourself because you don't, because you don't give the things within you the dignity to exist. And so I'm not perfect. I'm still on the road to this. There are still plenty of times where I second guess myself, but it is like night and day difference how I walk in the world now, knowing I am worthy, I'm valuable, I'm stardust. A decision isn't gonna kill me. This is not going to, you know, I'm not gonna catastrophize this into my untimely demise, which was what I always did.
ELISE:
You represent a lot of things in the culture, including feeling broken from birth or like unclear of yourself that fractured that idea of a fractured self, but I think what you're also speaking to throughout your books is a lot of the cultural wounding that I think women in particular are susceptible to this outsourcing of our knowing, this idea of our performed goodness and perfection. I mean, my book is entirely about this idea performed goodness, and external validation and seeking safety and security outside of ourselves. And we've all, this whole culture has been trained for that over time. God is out there, authorities are out there, and I think what we're being called to do is to clear that clutter, clear all of that programming.
It's really hard work, but it’s so valuable and remunerative. Clear the programming, find ourselves, recover ourselves, put the lantern on ourselves. And then from there, think about reclaiming and re finding ourselves in the light, and then figuring out how to move forward with that internal authority, that internal knowing and reinstating that, and recognizing that your internal authority is very different than mine. I think, we’ve been lost and desperate to be recovered. And I think we're moving. I do think we're moving in that direction. And you've probably heard this, this is a quote, in Maggie Smith's memoir, which isn't out yet, but is so beautiful, you'll love it, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. She leads with this quote from Emily Dickinson: “I am out with lanterns looking for myself” and isn't that beautiful?
TARA:
That is absolutely beautiful. Yeah. What an image. It lands immediately.
ELISE:
Yeah. And I feel like this is you. This is all of us in many ways. Right? And I think for so long we were told or fed this idea that there's nothing to find out there. Right. You'll be told who you are.
TARA:
And I think part of it is the obsession with external validation, which I was really tethered to, you know, just a quick story to kind of talk about it, when I worked at Comedy Central I looked at a lot of the comedian’s videos on YouTube and stuff like that, and I'd look at them with them and there'd be: You’re a genius. I love you. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen. And then like randomman321 is like, you suck. And these comedians, who were genius level, A-caliber people were like, that's not true. Like what's up with that? They're so angry about this, what this one troll had to say. And so I knew from watching all that, that external validation was never gonna get me anywhere. Like I knew it in my bones, and that's why in Hollywood, I really hated things like the Emmys. I was just like, Ugh. Needless self-congratulation. Everybody's in like an adult prom dress if everyone's got Botox, so they're all frozen in time. Like, I hate the Emmys. Until, of course I was nominated for an Emmy. And then yes, oh my God, the Emmys are so amazing. Wow. Maybe I should get Botox. What should I be doing? You know? And I like abandonment of all previous knowledge. And people are texting me like, oh my God, like people from my past. I finally feel impressive, oh my God, you nominate for Emmy. Good luck, feeling so good about myself. And then, you know, a couple months past because there's um, there's a time delay between nominations and when the actual ceremony is. And one night I'm at dinner with a bunch of colleagues and my boss's boss's boss calls me like on my cell. I'm like, well, this isn't good. Like, why is he calling me at night?
And so I walked out of the restaurant, I sat on the curb outside of it, called him and he said, so this Emmy nomination, you know, now that you've switched departments. And to explain, I had been a producer before I worked in development, which is finding TV shows and putting them on the air. I had worked as a producer making stuff, so I had just moved from the person making stuff to the person overseeing, making stuff. And he said, well, now that you're, you know, not a producer, you're in development, it's a pretty bad look to be on an Emmy nomination. And I'm like, but I did make it, this title changes from now, which actually means I'm just doing both jobs. So it's like, you know, I know it's not fair, but it's a really bad look, so I just want you to think about it and call me and tell me your decision. And what I realized was he is asking me to un-nominate myself for some reasons of how things look, and the way we talked about it was like it was such a character defect if I didn't un-nominate myself, if I didn't give that up. And so, you know, I called him back and said the only thing I could, which is please Emmy un-nominate myself. It was such a crushing blow to feel that high on wow, I’ve finally have achieved, wow. I've outrun my childhood to the extent that now I'm Emmy nominated to have to give it back, was just so terrible that then and there I was like, I knew the truth from the beginning. I knew that these external things, they just never are the thing that makes you happy.
And every human knows this, the compliments that you're so great. You did such a great job. Do those things stick with you? No, the things that stick with you are the process. How you got there? You know, the thing that really mattered to me about this whole Emmy nomination was that the project was the thing I had worked the hardest on in my life. And I savored every moment of it. And I savored that the comedians involved respected me and my notes, and I felt so proud of the work. And what I realized is, you know, when we don't trust ourselves, it's because we've gotten kind of lost on what matters, what doesn't matter, somebody else’s getting something later is more important than how I feel now. And if you really wanna trust yourself, you kind of have to start trusting how you're living. Like it's not an, all of a sudden I trust myself. It's a trusting of, oh, this feels right. I'm doing the right thing. And it really doesn't matter. If somebody else sees it like that, great if they do, that's besides the point. And if you tether yourself to that, you have now tethered your self-esteem to someone who is not you, which is very dangerous. And so, I do think that's one of the most of all the toxic ingredients we have, it's that we need somebody else to tell us who we are or what we're worth or that we did a good job. Like that phrase in particular: Good job. I need to know that I did a good job cause that's the only thing that's ever gonna stick with me, is like that knowing. I do think people are waking up more, well, a lot more people are awake now, including myself, to what any of this is, you know?
ELISE:
Yeah and it's interesting, even thinking about our chat before we started recording, but thinking about your book and I'll be going through this process a few months after you, but I think with books, there's this idea that the way that it's received is what will dictate its value. And that's again, another example of sort of the fallacy of the way that we think about these things. Because, as you know, writing books is hard, like the amount of self-work, honestly, that's required, even if it's not a book about yourself is intense and it's lonely and difficult and you encounter so much resistance in yourself. And I'm sure you cried under blankets too.
TARA:
All of the blankets and not just with blankets too, just openly crying. Just an open weep. Yeah, for sure.
ELISE:
And the value, the process of writing a book, if that in of itself is not nourishing, then nobody should embark on it because hoping that people will read it is the book, book business can be anemic, right? Like, it's not like, Launching a hit TV show and being like, oh, 10 million people read that book. I mean, maybe 10 million people will read Prince Harry's book.
TARA:
Right? But all the rest, it’s not like that.
ELISE:
But one thing I think about your first book that's so remarkable is its ability to endure for people over time and just it's a big hit. And yet you didn't, it didn't launch as like a momentous
top of the New York Times bestseller list event. Like it just found its feet, and found its people. And, I think, such an incredible testament. I think that's really what any author wants, but we're also trained to seek that validation, those stamp, those awards.
TARA:
I mean, the only fortunate thing for me was that there were so little expectations on my first book that I was like, well, what about the New York Times bestseller list? And they were like, Haha, don't even think about it. We're not even gonna talk about it. Don't even think about it. So I had very little expectations of what, you know, my first launch week would be. And you know, as you said, what was really validating was that people shared the book. That's why the book did well, because people gifted it to their friends, or they told somebody about it, that it was helpful. And actually, I think that's why the book did so well, it was helpful. You know, it wasn't a bunch of BS, googly-gawk, let me use some big words now, kind of self-help. It was a different kind of thing. And so my hope for this next book is that I can, you know, something like the soul or this self or like how do you trust yourself? How do you know yourself? Those sound crazy. Those sound like, yeah, sure, eye roll that anybody can help me. and I think I really can, you know, not because I'm any special person, I'm definitely not, you know, and I write in the book like I'm the kind of person who is so afraid of my mail, that when I do open it, I find out that like I'm in debt collections for a $25 bill from my doctor.
You know, I'm not like super on top of my life and I did a lot of this, which means, anyone can, and I really do underscore anyone because there are some really dire circumstances. I actually just got a letter from one of my readers in Ukraine describing how terrible the situation is and these moves she's had to make and she is working on herself and it is a priority to her that she find a little joy, find what love there is in that horrible situation. And I think if we can reclaim our agency and remember, you know, we are allowed to enjoy our lives, even when it's really dark outside, we are allowed to be ourselves even when the world's like, no. I think we can all light the way for each other and find more freedom.
ELISE:
Yeah, and one of the things that I think is powerful about what you offer and is something that I try to do, and you know, this is very Martha Beck. She talks a lot about like you find a teacher and then you need to fire that teacher. Like the teacher is not the thing. Right. And the way that you talk and move throughout your life through different practices, whether it's journaling or talking about things like meditation. There are teachers for a season and a time, and I think your book is a great example of that, of you might do IFS for a season and then you might do something else, but it's this not anti-guru reification that also happens, but it goes again to that idea of like, there's no external source. There's no person who's gonna do all of this for you or fix this for you or have all the answers for you to do. To do this is perpetual curiosity of going out and finding the things that are resonant for you.
TARA:
Yes. And practicing. Cause that's the other. You can find a tool that you're like, yes, this works. But if you abandon it, day two. Obviously it's not gonna work for you. I always am thinking find baby, baby, baby steps. The bare minimum that you could make a slight change and practice. Practice building those muscles. And I'm always looking for teachers, the people I reference in this book are completely different than the ones I referenced in Lilly's. You know, you learn enough to then learn more, and the more you learn, the more curious you become about, wow, this is a whole other world I didn't even know about. And so I think you're so right to use that word, curiosity, because it's also often curiosity about ourselves that sparks any of this. Any of this self-awareness comes from a curiosity of, huh, why am I feeling the way I'm feeling? Why am I walking in the world this way? It doesn't feel quite right, and so there's so much self-hate people now beat themselves up for not, you know, maintaining their self-care routines, which is, I'm just like holding my head in my hands. Like, no, this wasn't the point. You know, like, you mess up your journaling practice, that's totally fine, does not matter. But for people could be just a little more curious about why is this happening as opposed to like, I blame myself and this is wrong, as opposed to judgment. Like curiosity is the word I circle, highlight, underline.
ELISE:
Yeah. And moving back to self-compassion, which is kind a hard thing to learn.
TARA:
Oh yeah.
ELISE:
Well, you're the best. I'm so excited for you.
TARA:
Thank you.
ELISE:
I’m watching, cheering you on and also hoping that there's no franticness and it's full of rest and ease too.
At the end of her book, Tara writes: “We often think that if we don’t admit the truth maybe it doesn’t exist. We believe if we put ourselves first, we’re put others last. That if we draw boundary, it will hurt someone even if we know it could save ourselves. These lies keep us captive to the past, running the same tired limited patterns over and over again until they are the faded, uninspired, blueprint of our lives. They are deadening for you and the person you are supposedly protecting. I love you very much, but if you are not setting a boundary, you’re impeding others from their own growth. If you never speak up for yourself, if you accept what is unacceptable to placate others, you deny them opportunity to show up for you and change.” Anyway, she is a wonderful guide, and I really think for people who are lost or don’t know where to start, she in this exercise, to go to that beautiful quote, has been “with a lantern looking for herself for a long time.” She is an astute, sometimes hilarious, teacher who will lead you to other teachers. That’s my favorite magic making: That introduction to someone that might just save your life. See you next week.
