The Nuanced Life: You Are More Than Your Roles

On this new episode of The Nuanced Life, we dig into the idea of identity diversification and how to thoughtfully shape your personal identity around more than one aspect of your life.

*This episode is explicit.

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:09] You're listening to The Nuanced Life, a Pantsuit Politics Production.  

[00:00:12] Music Interlude 

Beth [00:00:29] Thank you for joining us for a new episode. This Summer on Fridays, we're hosting a series called The Nuanced Life, which will be based on questions and outreach from listeners and which goes beyond politics and other aspects of life. Today, we're getting a little meta in this series because we got so many messages when we decided to relaunch The Nuanced Life, that include the phrase "As a". As a mom to a newborn, as a person with 30 years experience in a particular industry, you get it. "As a" is a way of saying, I need you to understand my identity in connection with what I'm going to share. And it's always helpful, but it's also always limiting. So today, we want to take a step back and talk about what Ben Meer of System Sunday calls identity diversification. Sarah, you sent me this email and I was like, this is really good. It had a graphic that you really liked, and we started talking about how helpful it is to have a term for I'm more than one thing.  

Sarah [00:01:23] Yes. But before we get to that, we wanted to talk about what's going to be happening on our premium community. We believe in rest here at Pantsuit Politics, so we will be taking the month of July off. This is actually a great time to check out our premium community with free trials of both Patreon and Apple Podcast subscription, because you will not be drinking from the firehose of our regular content. Because we make each individually four premium shows a week, that's eight shows total. That's a lot. But during the month of July, we will just be featuring some of our best More to Says, some of the best Good News Briefs that we've made all year. And there will be lots of white space in our premium community so that if you're already a member, you can catch up. If you want to check it out, you can see, like we said, our regular shows. You can go back and check out our book club episodes on Democracy in America, our slow book club read, or our summer book club picks. You can check out some Spicy Lives that we've recorded over the last year, so it's a good time to go mosey around a little bit in July and catch up. We're calling it Catch Up Summer.  

Beth [00:02:30] I feel like our premium spaces in some ways are like a giant Pantsuit Politics Wikipedia, because you can really see where we've been on a lot of issues over time. It's very searchable. Alise has organized many collections of content, and I just think it's a-- I love Catchup July because there is a lot there and there's a lot there that holds up well and that contributes to your thinking about current issues. So please join us there.  

[00:02:57] Music Interlude.  

[00:03:07] Okay, Sarah, I want to talk about identity diversification. This is how Ben Meer started the newsletter that you sent me that we liked so much. I identified as an athlete for the first 20 years of my life. Then I suffered a career ending sports injury in college and I was gutted. Many people wrap up their entire identity in one dimension, like sports or work, but this can make us fragile to external events. Instead, you can diversify your identity to become more resilient. How did that land with you? I've never been an athlete, but it still landed pretty hard with me.  

Sarah [00:03:40] Definitely never been an athlete, but this is something I've always thought a lot about since probably becoming a parent, because that identity consumed me and in such big and heavy ways. And it sort of helped me look back and see the ways I had done that as a young person. I think the most obvious ways, if you were picking, particularly in school, that people identify is either grades or sports. You're either the good student or the good athlete. Now, some people are both. Godspeed to those people. I'm not one of them. But I definitely identified as the good girl. I'm an only child, but I definitely identify with all that eldest daughter content on Instagram. That I was the one who did the assignments, pleased the teacher. I got biggest apple-polisher in eighth grade and was valedictorian of my high school class, and just really saw myself as the person who did it all right. The person who was getting the right answers, who was getting the good test scores, who was getting the good grades, the person that teachers liked. That was who I was definitely for most of elementary, middle and high school.  

Beth [00:05:04] Yeah, I think achievement and leadership were the identity markers that I wrapped around myself. And I absolutely think the statement that can make us fragile to external events has been true for me. Because I have really struggled in my life with moments of failure, and have identified things as failure that aren't failure. Just things I didn't like felt like failure because I didn't like them and I felt like I should like them; they should be in my suite of achievement and leadership. I really connected with the idea that when you decide this is who I am, or this is what I am, or this is how I present myself, you're just setting yourself up for a big fall apart because something will come along to disrupt that narrative about you.  

Sarah [00:05:52] Yeah. And I think I got some of that feedback immediately because I wasn't like Mrs. Heath High School. I did not get most likely to succeed. I'm still upset about that. Should I let that go at 42?  

Beth [00:06:04] Perhaps.  

Sarah [00:06:05] Perhaps. I did get most talkative. So, I think my classmates probably knew something I did not. But I wasn't quite all the way there. I didn't have all of those identity markers that I really wanted, particularly a boyfriend. That's what consumed my identity for most of middle school and high school. Because unlike now, all my friends were dating in sixth grade. They had boyfriends and I wanted a boyfriend so bad. I wanted to be a girlfriend. That's really honest. If I'm being honest about what identity was driving me. Yeah, I was a good girl. Yes, I wanted to get the good grades, but I was more probably consumed-- internally, I wanted to be a girlfriend so badly. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted that life so badly. And I finally got my first boyfriend in my junior year of high school. And I dated him throughout my junior year and senior year, who was my first true love, and part of college. And I remember it was all consuming, not just because I was in love, but I think it's because this is who I wanted to be. I wanted to be in a relationship. That was the identity I was looking for.  

Beth [00:07:09] This is how you know how committed I was to my achievement and leadership identities. I didn't know how to have a relationship on top of that. I barely knew how to have friendships with it because everything felt like a distraction from getting stuff done, accomplishing more, taking on more responsibility. And that really continued for me well into college and beyond. I really, really struggled with prioritizing relationships because I was just always focused on what else do I need to do.  

Sarah [00:07:41] That's so interesting to me. And I don't know if it was because of the shooting I experienced in high school, if that really sort of disrupted my achievement narrative. I don't know, I wasn't consumed with going to, like, a really good school. My mother was furious I didn't apply to GSP, the Governor Scholars Program, because I wanted to spend time on my boyfriend. And there was always sort of a collaboration with me. I wanted life. I don't just want achievement. I wanted the boyfriend. I wanted to have experiences. I definitely prioritized friendship and relationships. And it's really funny because my resume is not lacking. I achieved some pretty I think what objectively would be impressive things like going to law school, working in Congress, working for a presidential. But I was not all consumed with checking those off.  

[00:08:33] I was more consumed with the-- not like the success sequence, I guess, but a little bit wanting to have the life I want and not just the career I wanted was really, really important to me. And I wasn't trying to get married immediately. I was kind of shocked when I met Nicholas and thought, oh crap, I think I'm going to marry this dude. This was sooner than I expected. But it was always a little more-- I had a vision in my head for what I wanted it to look like. And it wasn't just career. It was always bigger and wider than that. I don't know if I could have articulated it clearly. I guess I could have because I was very clear, like, I want kids, I want to get married, I want more than just this sort of high-flying career. So much so that I left it all. I didn't want to stay in DC and kind of continue on that path.  

Beth [00:09:22] I think this is sort of proving the thesis because it was more brittle for me than that. I was so committed to achievement that having the career I wanted felt like it would give me the life I wanted. And then when I got those things and didn't enjoy them, it's like, holy shit, what now? And I've trapped myself in terms of the investments that I've made to get here and the expectations that I've set with people in my life. And it was the fact that I finally found a relationship that I could dig into as a relationship, not just as another component of, like, I'm doing things and those things are important. I had great friends before this, but I also didn't hang on to friends the way that you have because I think I was just moving forward, you know what I mean? And I didn't ever say like, well, what of this chapter of my life do I want to keep? It was like I was just propelled to the next chapter. And it really wasn't until I got so connected to Chad, who I ended up marrying, that I was able to say, okay, while, there is still in me, even though this has not worked out the way that I thought it was going to.  

Sarah [00:10:33] Yeah. When people describe these sorts of identity crisis, particularly around careers, I identify with that. But I most strongly identify that surrounding the loss pregnancy I experienced between Amos and Felix. That was the moment where I thought, no, no, no, I was doing what I was supposed to do, and I'm not getting what I was promised. And it rocked me. And I think about running for office soon after I had Felix. Because if I was to identify one career thing that I really identified, like this is what I want to achieve, it would have been running for office. And that was overall. Running for office was fun and exciting, but being in office was very difficult and painful. It was painful to be attacked and have my motives questioned. And I think if I had done that, if I had pursued that single handedly without any of these other identities to provide that resilience, it would have rocked me.  

[00:11:36] When I lost my campaign, first of all, I had three kids. I had a husband. And I remember telling myself vividly-- vividly remember because I knew I was probably going to lose. I had a hunch. I had not been able to knock doors. I knew people were mad at me. People hated me. I remember telling myself, in two weeks, you're going to be recording your audiobook for your first published book with Beth. Just keep that in your sights. You have something else here. You have a lot of other things holding you up. And it really provided that resilience. And I think the reason that the lost pregnancy hit me so hard is I didn't have a foundation career wise. I didn't feel like there was anything else to me except for really acing this motherhood thing, which is a very, very dangerous place to put yourself in, as I discovered.  

Beth [00:12:26] Yeah, I think that it was probably good for me to realize that I had sort of blown it with my career-- I mean, not blown it. I made a lot of responsible choices and had a lot of luck and a ton of support that enabled me to navigate realizing that I had put a lot of effort into something that I really was going to be unhappy doing. But that sort of crisis. Okay, I worked really hard and I was pursuing singularly something that is not providing me any joy at all, and in fact, is kind of sucking the life out of me. I think it was good that that happened before I had kids, because then when I became a mother, it was in this space that Brad Stulberg talks about as being a more textured identity.  

[00:13:17] I think I started to understand I cannot do this with motherhood the way that I did it with my career. I have got to just embrace all these different facets of my life, because there will be external events around all of them. There will be internal events that I didn't anticipate. There will be a different me who looks at this differently than I thought I would. And so, I think I have held being a mom somehow without bringing all of that achievement orientation to it. And that somehow is probably wrapped up into the loss of that single minded career pursuit that I was on.  

Sarah [00:13:53] Well, that just tells you, y'all, you can do one or the other. So, you can perfectly pursue two identities at once to keep yourself in balance. You almost have to take this path where you put too many chips in one space, so then you're like, oh, no. I always think about Richard Walker saying, like, you cannot skip to the third part. You have to build up your ego, tear it down, and then build something sturdier. You don't get to skip those steps. That's what young adulthood is about. And that's why I always get pushback when I say college students aren't adults, or teenagers aren't adults. And I'm saying that from a place of grace. I'm not saying it like you're a kid, you can't be trusted. First of all, children make adult decisions all the time. They have to because of lots of life experiences. Young adult certainly do. People join the army. People get careers. People have kids. People get married. Y'all, I got married at 21 years old and I was not an adult.  

[00:14:46] Because I just think adult can't hold everything from 18 to 65. We need to have some grace and some description around this period in your 20s and even sometimes in your early 30s where you're doing big things. And I just wish people could feel the sense of you're going to screw it up. That if you're screwing it up, you're on the right path. Like you're going to put too many chips in one place. You're going to make a wrong call. You're going to realize that's not who you are. You're going to realize that's not what makes you happy. That's the whole entire point. You cannot skip that step. You cannot learn enough or find a religion or a guru or a self-help book that will enable you to skip this part of the process. It is inevitable. It is important. You can't intellectualize your way past the embodied experience of looking around your life and going, no.  

[00:15:45] And I want people to feel empowered to do that sooner because it is, I think, exponentially harder when it comes later in life. I had a friend whose ex-husband just straight up stopped everything. And I see this a lot. And I think I see this a lot particularly with men. They do the success sequence. They get to a point, they look around and go, nope. And they blow it all up. They're like, I did not get what I wanted. They told me to do this. I did it in order. I don't like it. And they just blow it up. They quit. They leave. They cheat, whatever. And men are not the only ones that do this, but I feel like I see it more often with men in my social circle than I see it with women. But you can see. You can just see this self-destructive, forget it. I did what I was supposed to do, and I'm still miserable, and this is not what I wanted. And so, I'm out.  

[00:16:38] Music Interlude.  

Beth [00:16:48] We haven't talked about the success sequence in a while, so can you take a second and just say more about what you mean when you use that phrase?  

Sarah [00:16:55] Yeah, I'm really scared too, because the last time we talked about it, people heard us saying like, this is what you're supposed to do. But it's really a descriptor, not a scripter. Which is this sort of generic American dream narrative. You graduate high school, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you buy the house, you have kids, and then you've done it all. You've checked the boxes. Congratulations. And it's a lie. It's not that I don't think individually those things are valuable, but is not some magic puzzle piece that once you plug them all in, you are guaranteed happiness, success, and fulfillment.  

Beth [00:17:32] I think that's why so many of us have moments when we feel like, well, maybe I'll just blow up my life because there is that prescription that is offered and reinforced through so many mechanisms that this is what you should do. And if you haven't had any creativity on your journey and you get to that place where you've gotten the degrees, you've had the kids, you have the job, you've started the 401 K, whatever, if there's been no sort of freedom of movement in your life to that point, what are you supposed to do with the rest of your decades? I understand better now that I am in my 40s why the midlife crisis is a thing. And why people say, you know what? Yeah, I do want a sports car now. Or I want a really stupid haircut. Or I will never wear those kind of jeans again or whatever.  

[00:18:24] Because if you have felt constrained by this set of expectations, and then you've made those investments in checking off the expectations, and life is still hard and things still change, and it feels often like other people aren't living up to their ends of the bargain with you in a huge variety of ways, I get why we go off track. And that's why I think you're right. Like, how do we provide-- it's not even freedom, but just more of that space for creativity in deciding who you want to be and how you want to be early on, or even asking more realistic questions. This is an example I give all the time. People say to me what kind of lawyer should I be? And they're usually asking about like subject matter. Should I be an intellectual property lawyer or a litigator or whatever? And I try to ask them what kind of day do you want to have. Not intellectually what is most stimulating for you, but what kind of clients do you want to work with? Do you want to work during normal business hours, or do you want to be pulling all-nighters?  

Sarah [00:19:30] Do you even want to have clients?  

Beth [00:19:31] Do you want to have clients? Do you want to see people? Do you want to be in an office? Do you want to feel like you work in a library? Some of us do. And some people will lose their minds if they work in that environment. And all those questions are relevant, but those aren't the kind of questions that you academically are trained to ask yourself about what you're going to do as your next step. And I think that's a microcosm of what people experience in all different kinds of fields, and also just about what kind of place do you want to live in, and who do you want to marry, and do you want to have kids or not?  

Sarah [00:20:01] Yeah. And it's so hard. This is the anxiety we used to have about conversations on the nuanced life. Because in some ways, the both of us just having this conversation reinforces the success sequence because we have both followed it and we have very similar sort of life trajectories. Even though if you sat with us and you talked with us for hours, you would realize that a lot of very different things happened and choices were made and that there are some differences. But overall, we did. We went to college. We went to law school. We got married. We built careers. We had kids. There is an aspect of that that I kind of do want for my kids. I do want my kids to get married. I do want my kids to have kids.  

[00:20:41] But the older I get, the more I realize you have to pair this conversation with what I call the chaos lottery. That sometimes your ticket just gets pulled and you can't control any of it. And that was the piece I was missing when I was sort of marching through this and really felt like I was making the good calls and had my hands on the reins of this whole situation. And then the universe was like, oh, sorry, chaos lottery. Your ticket gets pulled three times. Because I lost a pregnancy, Felix got diagnosed with hemiplegia, and then Felix got diagnosed with diabetes. So, it was just a lot of what my husband says. This is just happening. It's not happening to you.  

[00:21:21] Because I think there's this thing we do in our brain that, well, I'm doing what I'm supposed to, and I'm controlling the "good things" coming into my life. I'm making the right calls, and I'm doing what I'm supposed to, bringing the good things in. And so, I think at least my brain on the other end said, well, that means I'm preventing the bad things. And that's when people I think you feel the rage like, no, no, no, I did what I was supposed to do. And I thought that the inherent promise was that bad things weren't going to happen to me, that I could control it all by following the sequence you told me was the path to happiness.  

Beth [00:21:56] I'm stuck a little bit on the two of us as examples of the success sequence, because in some ways that's true, and in other ways it totally depends on your perspective. If you're listening to this podcast right now, I think that probably sounds very solidly true. If you knew either of us before the podcast. I'm thinking especially about the people who knew me before the podcast, my decision making looks impaired. Leaving the job that I had to do a full-time podcast seemed absolutely absurd, and I think it still seems absurd to some people who I worked with. There are some people who get it and are happy for me, and are happy that I'm doing something that I love. But I bet if you took a poll, the people who still think about me to any degree are, like, she was kind of a wingman. She could not stick to one thing; you know what I mean? She practiced law. She did a couple of different practice groups, and she tried HR, and then she left to do this, whatever, blog. You know what I'm saying? It depends on where you're standing, what you see.  

[00:23:02] And so, I do feel in my 30s like I've had a freedom to get off the escalator and think a little bit more about what do I want to do and who do I want to be. And I found that even more in my 40s, as I've said, you know what, I'm coming off that board of directors. I believe in the cause. I think that organization is great, but I just don't feel useful in it. So, I'm going to put my volunteer time in places where I feel useful. And I feel more and more as I get older the freedom to ask what is enriching at this phase of my life? That's another thing in this newsletter from Ben Meer that we're kind of using as a guide post. He talks about how the goal in every stage of your life is to find enrichment, not exhaustion. And that's kind of revolutionary because I really came up in that success sequence space believing that the busier and more exhausted I was, the more I was leaving it all on the court every day. That's exactly what you're supposed to be doing.  

Sarah [00:24:02] Well, the other component that we wanted to talk about is this great quote from Sally Field on Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast, Wiser Than Me. We're going we're going to play a section of it really quickly instead of describing it to you.  

Sally Field (clip) [00:24:14] Well, the brain is incredibly creative, the brain. And the brain figures ways to help the child survive. And that was a way my brain taught me how to do this, to help me survive. But, you know, the task is a grown-up person is to realize what garment you have knit for yourself to survive as a child, the winter of your childhood. But when you're in the summer, so to speak, of your adulthood, you're boiling hot and you can't figure out why am I so fucking hot all the time? And it's because you can't take off this garment that you knitted for yourself as a child, and you no longer need. You can't realize, you don't realize that this way of behaving, this functional way that your brain taught you to behave to survive, it gets in your way now. It keeps you from really being able to move forward, and you have to be able to-- in most cases, it takes a really, really good therapist to help you see how a pattern of behavior from childhood is no longer serving you. It's in your way and it's making you suffer.  

Sarah [00:25:26] Because I think this is what Ben Meer is missing. The first time somebody kind of described this to me, they said, don't let your roles consume your identity. You are who you are. The roles are in addition to that. And I think the system he sets up is a little bit missing that underlying. Who are you? Because I think to extend Sally Field's metaphor, you just keep putting on-- like you knit the one at childhood, and then you put on another, and then you make another sweater, and then you make another sweater and you're like, okay, well, now I'm a wife and I'm a mother, and I'm a good student, but also I'm a good employee, and you just keep putting them on and putting them on, thinking they provide some sort of protection until, like she said, then you're just so fucking hot! That's what as I get older, that's what I see is.  

[00:26:13] There is something underneath that; there is the essence of who I am absent of being a mother, absent of being a wife. Even if you take away all these identities that are so essential and instrumental to who I am and how I got here, there is still me that I don't have to be in a role to show you who I am, or to be who I am absent any type of achievement, absent any type of success, absent any type of even relationship with the most important people in my life. There is a Sarah still there. We had this book club in my church about this book called More Than a Mom, and it was sort of cross-generational. And the women who are in my congregation who are in their 60s and 70s, they just talked about knowing yourself. Knowing yourself outside of all these roles and identity. Understanding your story. And not that those sweaters aren't important, that you knit, but you have to understand what's underneath all that. Who are you if you put all that aside? 

Beth [00:27:29] A both complicating factor and somewhat helpful one is that at the same time you start to go, why am I so fucking hot all the time? You are physically so fucking hot a lot too hot. Those things tend to collide where your body occupies more of your consciousness. And I think the greatest teacher that I have had on this was my dog Lucy, who I miss terribly. Because when I started to think like, okay, I have to be someone in addition to these roles; I have to be something deeper; there is something deeper; I need to know myself in that way; I looked at her often sitting next to me and thought, like, she isn't worried about who she is. She just is. She's just here on the couch, and her presence makes a difference in my life every single day- a huge one. And so, that's what I've really tried to lean into in my parenting and even in my relationships.  

[00:28:32] I don't need to worry about who is under all those layers. I just need to trust that there is a person under all those layers. And sometimes what I really need is to shut up and just be that person in there, you know? Because I love words, I talk too much to my kids, to my husband, to my friends. I think that everything can be worked out verbally. But the real essence of everything is past what I can achieve and work on and refine and evolve to some place where I'm really proud of myself. It's just this body that I have that is really hot sometimes, and that does consist of all these different layers, but that also means something to the people who are most important to me. And I just have to trust that.  

[00:29:25] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:29:35] I just have a real forward momentum. I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with the future. I'm a pretty present oriented person. But it's always mixed with how do I make this present better for the next time... I'm not consumed with five, 10, 15 years down the road-- I think I was for a long time. I really wanted to get to that. I wanted the success sequence- I did. I wanted it badly, and there was this sense of like just getting, getting, getting. And it's so weird to now be passing into this point of my life where the past is becoming more alive. It didn't feel that way. I'm a memory keeper. I love photos. I love scrapbooks. I love souvenirs, but I keep all that because otherwise I would not think about it again. You get those friends that are like, "Oh, do you remember when this happened in third grade?" I'm like, "No, I don't." I'm so moving forward, moving forward, capturing information. Just always kind of in that mindset that I'm really trying hard now to think back, to think what got me here, to really take off the garments and examine them closely, because that's just not a skill or a default that I have.  

[00:31:00] I know some people are very concerned with the past, that's not my orientation. But I am becoming more consumed with the past. And I think some of it is because this identity that really made me, this identity of becoming a mother, for so long it felt like one phase and I was still in it, that I had littles. But my oldest child is larger than me. He is an adult-sized person now. And it blows up my mind. And now all of a sudden, this past that was so formative to me really consumes me. I think about it all the time. I think about how little time I have left with all three of these people who I was consumed by having this house full of kids. I don't know if it's because I was an only child. I don't know if it's because I grew up around big families. Both of my parents and my stepfather are one of four, and those families were really important in our family life. They just consumed a lot of the space. I don't know if it's because I married a man from a big family.  

[00:32:07] But this part, being here with this house full of kids, was so important to me. And I can just it's going so fast and, like, thinking about what comes next? What is it going to mean when they're not in my home anymore? And what does it mean that I spent so much time trying to get here and it's going to be over? I think that's the garment I'm going to have to really figure out. And I'm trying to do that now so it's not so shocking to me when they're all gone. But it really is that looking back, like, why was this such an important part of my identity? What did I tell myself about who I was and what was valuable about me? I'm sure getting to retirement has to be so all consuming. It's so hard for people because these identities become so essential to who we are. And for me, so much of that has to be looking back and thinking through. It seems freeing when I hear Sally Field or Jane Fonda talk about this assessment, talk about looking back as clear-eyed as you possibly can on your life and what you did to survive or the identities you created, it feels miraculous to me. It feels freeing. I don't feel like I'm very good at it yet, but I'm excited to get better.  

Beth [00:33:30] I am really concerned right now with the future because I do think about the fact that May is going to be something different to me in a few years than it is now. That every season is going to represent a time when we used to do all of these things, but what is it going to be? And I think I just never realized as I was busy getting to this point, how much time there is on the other side of it. That there's a lot more time, if you're lucky, on the other side of it than there was getting here. And making sure that our adult friendships are really solid, because those are the people who are going to still be around hopefully when our kids are off doing other things. And who and how do I want to be a parent to kids who are adults, and where do we want to live for different parts of the year maybe?  

[00:34:26] What do we want to own and not own? What do we want to shed as we get into that phase of life? And I'm really looking forward to it. I love this time now. I'm not trying to rush past it or wish it away. But I do realize when I look back that I always loved the present moment more than anything that came before it. And I guess I just want that to continue to feel true. I want to be able to say, like, God, it was wonderful when our kids were little, but also, this is amazing. It's so beautiful to watch them be adults. And it's so beautiful to spend this time really in my marriage and with my friends. And I just want to make sure-- I guess I just want to keep putting on more garments in a way to make sure that there's plenty there when this particular parent of young kids identity is not driving most of the bus for me.  

Sarah [00:35:18] I mean, I do feel better that Nancy Pelosi reached the zenith of power and made history and still is described as a baby fanatic and still is just caught up and drunk on babies like that. I'm like, okay, so there's nothing wrong with me. That I still am like babies, babies. So that makes me feel a little bit better that some of these garments are just who we are. And there's just pieces of life I think that just get their hooks in you. There are just phases of life that get their hooks in you, and they become a piece of you whether you've moved on or not. And in so many ways, our community is such a great teacher on this. You can get so caught up in your own life and where you are, and then we'll get an email from like a college student who's in it, trying to figure it out, or a new mom, or even better people on the other side, the people who are retired and are teaching us and sharing what they're going through and what they're seeing. And it's always just the absolute best.  

[00:36:20] That's my favorite part about reviving The Nuanced Life for this piece of the summer. Just a season. Because seasonality is a definitely a huge part of this. It's just hearing from people of all phases of life because it's really not that one phase is better, you learn or you become who you are and then you're done. It's never done. And this pursuit of reflection and self-awareness and gratitude and just seeing it and feeling it is so precious to me and so important. That's why I love our work, because I feel like it gives me such an opportunity to do that, because that's the best. The best is just whether you're in college or whether you're holding your first baby or you're retiring. When we hear from listeners going, I just love it here, it's the best. Because I do, I love it here. I love it here. That's why I love Wiser Than Me. Because those women that she's interviewing love it here. And it is abundantly clear and a joy and a delight to listen to.  

Beth [00:37:20] So, we appreciate you spending time loving it here with us, and for sharing all the ways in which you're doing that in your lives. And all the moments where you're not loving it here, we appreciate you sharing those struggles because I don't think you get to “I love it here” without a whole lot of “This is very hard.”  

Sarah [00:37:35] Yep.  

Beth [00:37:36] We'll be back with you on Tuesday for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:37:41] Music Interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.  

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.  

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.   Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Emily Helen Olson. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. Genny Francis. Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen. The Munene Family.  

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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