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I met Stacey about a decade ago when I was working at goop, and had the good fortune of hiring her and getting to work with her for a few years. She’s now a freelance journalist and writer, and the author of a new book called, Being 40. Stacey is the kind of person that it’s easy to be incredibly proud of.

Today, we talk about this decade of our lives but more broadly about the scripts and checklists that women are often handed throughout our lives—and how we go about setting these down, centering ourselves, and self-authoring our lives.

Stacey has a pretty incredible personal story herself, which I actually did not know much about until reading her book and having this conversation today.

Being 40: The Decade of Letting Go—and Embracing Who We Are

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Stacey’s Website

ELISE:

Stacey, I’m so proud of you. I’ve known you for a minute. When did we first meet? How old were you since this is a book about aging?

STACEY:

I was in my mid 30s, so I think I was technically 34.

ELISE:

Or 35. You were that mature?

STACEY:

I was. And what’s funny about that too, is I was not telling everybody my age, which is wild to think. I mean, that is so young, but at the time I was already starting to kind of feel it and I think subconsciously I was starting to get interested in this general topic. But yeah, I wasn’t telling people in that context. Oh, I’m 31.

ELISE:

I don’t remember. I mean, I don’t think I would’ve asked you, but I’m sure you felt extremely pressured. I have really good friends who are still on TV and are shocked that they’re still on TV because they are my age, right? Which is closer to 50 than 40. And I know they’ve felt scrutinized and sort of under the gun. But yeah, I still remember it was in our old offices and you came in and you had just left. You were done, right, with James?

STACEY:

It was done for a long time. So I worked for James Caan years prior and then-

ELISE:

Okay. But he was still very close because you came in through him, right? Is that how you’d came to us and then Montana, and I just remember hanging with you on the couch in that office. Then and now.

STACEY:

Thank you. You too. Thank you. We had a lot of fun. You and I had a conversation when you came out with the last book with Phil Stutz,

Who is, I know, incredibly meaningful to you, has been for so long, and he’s meaningful to me. He doesn’t have such an immediate presence in my life as he does for you, but we were in conversation and I had mentioned, I remember that moment meeting you. I remember the first time you walking toward me. And I get goosebumps thinking about this because I think about it the first time I met my best friend. I think about it when I first met my husband. And you don’t know it’s happening at the time, but when you go back and realize this is a person who’s had an impact on me, this is a person who changed the course of my life, not even knowing that was going to happen. And that was the case for you. I remember you walking, you’re like, “Hi, sorry, I’m late. Come on back.

You were super cool and chill.” It was great. And

ELISE:

We’ve been having this- I’m

STACEY:

Sorry I was late. No, you’re two minutes late. I was just excited to meet you. But the fun part is you and I have been having this stretched out conversation ever since, even though months will go by sometimes, but it’s really fun.

ELISE:

Yeah. And yeah, similar patterning. I think we’re obviously interested in many of the same people and the same things and these big questions about what is a meaningful life and how do we get to it and how do we move past the barriers? And reading almost 42, it made me sad because there’s so much I don’t know about you. I didn’t know about your mom leaving. I had no idea. To me, you always seemed, I would always hear about when you going to visit your mom in Montana. So that broke my heart. I didn’t know that.

STACEY:

It’s such a defining, almost qualifier in how I view the world, how I’ve lived my life, the work that I’ve done around our relationship too. And I’m going to start crying now at the beginning because when I talk about this, it’s hard not to get emotional and just the empathy I have for her leaving. And at the time I was so young, I was a teenager, so my brain wasn’t even fully formed. I was just surviving. I had a boyfriend. I had high school. I was riding my horse. I was working. But then as life went on and I realized, wow, I have a lot of anger. I have a lot of confusion. This changed my days, let alone my years and structure of what I thought my life was. But then at the same time, I had this whole bucket of empathy that I just was starting to kind of slowly fill for her.

And that’s taken a lot of work, but it’s been one of the most defining and meaningful lessons of my life, witnessing her and reclaiming a love between us too. The love was always there, but building a new love, I think.

ELISE:

Yeah. Yeah. You sort of drop the story like a hot potato and then you move off of it as quickly as you can into sort of an expert, which I was like, “I see what you’re doing here.” And you use her incessant apologizing as a way of explaining how bad she clearly feels. But yeah, I mean, that’s a big deal to come home and find an half empty living room and a despairing alcoholic father telling you that your mom has left.

STACEY:

Yeah. And I wanted to talk about both of them too. And that of course can be a whole book in and of itself. But what’s so important about that story and that part of my life is because so many people can identify with that, with having people they love, maybe disappoint them or leave them and not understanding it at the time. And what is this thing called forgiveness? What is that when you’re in pain and when you’re depending on somebody? But what’s interesting about this too is that these structures and societal structures and expectations and kind of these legacy stories of trying to do the right things that really impact women, they also impact men too. I look at my father and I look at, he was trying to do quote unquote all the right things. He was working hard, he was raising his kids, he was trying to be a good husband and he was falling short in a million ways.

So there’s these pressures that come and impact all of us no matter how we identify, what our sex is, what our gender is, what our lifestyles are. It can be crushing and we can’t change. I mean, we can work toward changing systems, but I think we can really though, in the immediate sense, work toward how am I going to maybe break this cycle in my own life? How am I going to start to really interrogate some of the things that have caused pain for people that I love, but then continue to cause pain for myself

ELISE:

Fascinating. How old was your mom when she left? She

STACEY:

Was in her late 40s. So isn’t that fascinating?

ELISE:

Yeah. No, I mean, it’s interesting. And even now I’m like, I can tell you don’t want to stay in this, which I completely understand. No, let’s- No, it’s okay. But I relate to you, right? The glancing contact with your own life, this is very painful. I don’t have anything like this, but also how the mother, even though she’s not perceptibly sort of the center of this book, right? And I found this when On Our Best Behavior came out, everyone wanted to talk to me about my mom who is a figure in the book, but it really is that relationship is so central, right? Because beyond getting what we hope we’re going to get or what we need from our parents, this is the model for what it is to be a woman, right? This is our most present example. So it’s interesting that quiet repetition of the pattern of, I need to write a book now as I cross into this liminal phase about maybe ripping up this script in a less disruptive, painful way, right?

STACEY:

Right, right. I mean, so much of this too is about the lives that are inside of us that are unlived and the pain that that can cause too. And seeing that, of course, I mean, mother to daughter, daughter to mother. I mean, when you see your mother with this angst, with these unlived desires and dreams, and it was interesting because I just interviewed Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. They just came out with a new book- Designing your life. Oh, yes. They have a booboo. That’d be great to have a conversation with for you. And they were talking about this theory that they believe in is basically we only live, I forget what the percentage is, but we only live 14% of our life or something. We have so many unlived lives, right? They pull from the Walt Whitman quote, “We contain multitudes,” which we’ve heard, but it’s so deeply, deeply true.

And on one hand, I find a lot of hope in that, which is exciting because none of us are boring. There’s so much going on inside of us. And then on the other hand though, it can be really overwhelming and again, painful. And I saw that in my mother and in my father too, of she had these desires in these passions and so much of which they were not expressed. Her interiority was not matching what was going on in her day to day. That is so loud for people to see. And again, you don’t realize it when you’re young, but then as you start to mature and you get older, and in the case for me as a woman, I started to think she was in a beautiful sense, but a cautionary tale. And the beautiful thing too I want to say about my mother is she has since blossomed too.

She has found this deep sense of joy and it’s amazing to see, but I think a lot of that is a cautionary tale for us.

ELISE:

Yeah. How in that moment did she justify to herself sort of leaving you guys where you were versus let me have a conversation and even understand what they would want as I take myself to a different state and always, right? How did she justify that to herself? I’m just curious, not judging.

STACEY:

I don’t know if she ever fully did. I think that she was always steeped in pain, which is part of her incessant apologizing. And still to this day, when she reads about this, when we talk about it, she bursts into tears. But she was existing on an adrenaline rush at the time. I don’t know. She got the courage somehow to do this really drastic thing, which was quite literally, I was gone out of the house, we all were, and she packed up most of the things, including a lot of the furniture and left and went to live someplace else. So there was this just swell of adrenaline, I think, that was pushing her forward. And I don’t know if she was justifying it. I will say though, one of the reasons why I don’t know is I didn’t talk to her for a while after that.

I had some contact with her, but about a good, almost a year went by before I started picking up those pieces and actually having a conversation with her again, because I was in survival mode too. And I had to go, I stayed living with my father for about six months after that, and his drinking got so, so bad, and I didn’t include this in the book, but so bad, I had to go live with someone else. And so it’s a beautiful part of the story that at the time I had a boyfriend all through high school, all through college, huge, very meaningful person in my life still. I went and lived with his parents and they put me through high school and then they put me through college. They sponsored my life, my boyfriend’s parents. I mean, how we kind of pick up the pieces and mother each other in different ways and how life can look differently. So I think the work of my mother’s life is she’s still trying to maybe justify and understand herself too. And isn’t that one of the human questions too of why do we do what we do sometimes? And to try to have compassion and to think, “Okay, I really am trying the best that I can with what I have within my capacity.” And that’s a hard thing to swallow sometimes, but I wish we said that to ourselves a little bit more though. I am trying, this is what I have. These are the tools I have and I’m trying my hardest.

ELISE:

Yeah. That’s beautiful. And you are as always an incredibly generous and kind person and knowing you forever, I don’t think that this is a put on either. This is really who you are. You’re so sweet and tender. And it was interesting reading the book. I’m going to give you some feedback that I feel like people would give me, which is that the most compelling parts of the book are you and yet you’re so loath to hold attention on your story and so quick to continue to sort of outsource authority to other people. It takes one to know one, Stacy. I

STACEY:

Know you know this, right? Yeah. You know

ELISE:

This well. Yes. So assuming this is only one of many books, your charge is to center yourself. And I think that I recognize how hard that is, but there’s some part of you I think that is so ... I mean, not a small part, but a big part of you that is deeply wise and has a lot to teach us and it doesn’t always have to be triangulated through other people.

STACEY:

It’s hard. It’s hard. I think this is- I

ELISE:

Understand.

STACEY:

This is the work of my life, right? It is. And I always think it’s so funny when you read or listen to interviews about actors and they think, “Oh, I just want to be ... It’s easier to pretend to be somebody else too.” And sometimes I believe that and sometimes I think you just love the attention,

ELISE:

But-

STACEY:

Yeah, I get it. It’s fascinating why our culture is so fascinated by actors in general. But in a way, I can understand that because I think sometimes maybe that’s why I chose journalism too. I want to tell stories I do, like you, have this endless well of curiosity, endless. And it goes toward suffering. It goes toward this weird thing called meaning and what is it? It goes toward how do people quite literally pick up the pieces and move from day to day to day when they face such adversity? I love that. I want to know all about that. I have a voracious appetite for that, but it’s easier for me to interview. And I generally want to know about it from other people. People are fascinating to me. Kindness is fascinating to me. I wish we had more of that, but it’s easier for me to put the mic and point it towards somebody else too, rather than myself.

ELISE:

No, I found with On Our Best Behavior, and my next book, I’ve cured some of this, though not all of this, but I would be like, “Who can I attribute this thought that I have to? “

And I think some of that is protective and some of that is I just feel much more comfortable refracting light, right? I don’t ... And there’s certainly a patterning. I mean, we both worked at a company for a long time that had no bylines, and I’ve done that many times throughout my career. And I kind of don’t mind it, but it’s interesting in this time now that we’re coming to, and you and I are both in very similar professions, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot too, I’m sure you have deeply, which is the promulgation of AI and how much content there is now. And is it even being handwritten or is it being generated by notion or whatever it is and where’s the hand in this? Does the hand matter? And I don’t know, it’s a really existential question, I think, for people like us who are writers in both personal and commercial ways, right?

And how are you thinking about that?

STACEY:

And I don’t think that any of us expected it to move at this pace. We knew this was when we started to sort of get whispers of this and we knew human beings are so incredibly intelligent too. So look at how fast the computer has advanced and all these other things too. And when there is a will, there’s a way. I didn’t see this coming so quickly though. I feel like just even two months ago it was different than it is now in terms of how information is aggregated and how things are created and ultimately the impact it has on critical thinking, that’s the thing that is really concerning me the most, but actually also still gives me the most hope when it comes to our work and these conversations. Critical thinking is just, it’s atrophied a little bit. And I’m not blaming anyone. I see it in myself sometimes too, but just in terms of you go on social media and it tells you exactly what kind of jeans that you should be wearing.

And I’ve had this is a weird example, but it’s one that’s meaningful to me too. Everybody, you should be wearing barrel jeans, let’s say right now. I don’t like those, right? But it doesn’t matter. That’s what you wear right now. That’s what you should be wearing. Or you’re supposed to contour, do some contour thing with your cheeks too. And we can maybe talk about this too. That’s why I think beauty is such an interesting lens through which we can kind of look at the world and how we’re functioning in it. But the critical thinking part of it, at least right now and in the foreseeable future, that’s still ours. I don’t think that it can take that away from us, but we have to be really careful not to let that totally atrophy and just kind of let our decisions just be on autopilot thinking, okay, this is what is a good piece of content or this is what is a good fashion choice or the right genes or whatever it might be. So I’m really doubling down on my critical thinking and just trying to take a pause too before I take anything as, not even as gospel, but just as truth or whatnot or as right. It’s just-

ELISE:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting too, when you think about what AI is built on, which is on everything that’s been, right? So it’s so good at analyzing patterns or data or eating up a bunch of stuff and synthesizing it. And you and I are both synthesizers in some ways, but it can’t necessarily foretell the future except on pattern matching. And I think your book, my book, it’s all about, okay, this is the script. So how do we actually self-author if in many ways as women, we’re living in an AI world and we have been through this is what it means to be a good woman or this is what it means to be governed by fear, all the variations on that. So what’s possible when we actually self-create? So 40s, let’s talk about the premise of the book, which is, do you think one, I think 40s maybe is the new 30, right?

But 40’s always been a bit of a specter in people’s minds. It

STACEY:

Has. It has.

ELISE:

Yeah. Yeah. Just because it’s halfway?

STACEY:

Why? For some reason, I don’t know. I call it the sticky qualifier. I think I use that terminology in the book because society has always had something to say about turning 40, being in your 40s. That is kind of the point. You’re either in front of this age or on the other side of it. And you could argue that nowadays, I mean, society again is so harsh on women no matter our age. So you could say 31 year olds are feeling like they have to fix themselves or they’re feeling old or whatnot. I mean, age is a weird thing, but 40 is particularly fascinating though. It is that kind of sticky point for society and you hear it in the headlines too. “So-and-so I’m getting married after 40 or she looks great at 45, or I’ve heard it in my own life too. Stacy, you’re 40 or you’re 42.

You look great. I don’t get it. What does that mean? “But from my story, I didn’t have a lot of angst leading up to 40. I was just in a stressed out time anyways. I was working my butt off. I just didn’t really have angst leading up to it. And I want to acknowledge that a lot of people maybe do. I mean, it’s a big birthday. I guess any birthday with the zero behind it. If you’re lucky to get there, it’s a big deal. But I started noticing something after when I was quote on the other side of 40 and I genuinely started feeling this was different. There was something about this where, like I already said, society has something to say about it. Okay, whoa, I’m in my 40s. This is massive. And at the same time, I still feel for good, for better, for worse, I still feel 22, I still feel 31.

I still feel so much younger. How did this happen so quickly?

Another thing that I was really finding myself up against was I just felt like I hadn’t checked any of the boxes that society told me I should have had checked by this big age. And a lot of these things I wasn’t necessarily aiming for. I turned 40. I wasn’t married. I didn’t have children. I still don’t have children. I didn’t have owned property or a lot of money saved or even big career things that I thought I was going to have accomplished. And again, some of those things I wasn’t necessarily yearning for, but I did feel like I had to explain why I didn’t have them in my life. And I felt like I had to justify why. And the other part of why I think the 40s are so fascinating is it’s undeniable. Something does start shifting in our bodies. It’s different for every woman, but you can argue that at some point for every woman in your 40s, you are going to experience hormonal shifts, changes, things are different, all of that.

And that’s cool too, but that’s also scary and that’s a big thing. And there is just this really interesting, I call the 40s an intersection and all of these things kind of coming together and life gets tough. Life’s always tough, but things sort of ascend a little bit when it comes to pressures. If you have children, changing relationships, aging parents, again, societal expectations. So I wanted to really look at this because it was, again, I’m biased. I’m in it. I think it’s fascinating, but I want to look at it through a really critical lens to start interrogating some of these things and then also a hopeful lens because the other fun part of this is I was starting to feel this very primal desire to finally let some of this shit go.

And I know you know that and thank the world for your book for helping us do that. So yeah, I think I can obviously, I mean, I wrote about it, but I think it’s such an interesting time. And then the cool thing too though is if you argue this book, I use the 40, I anchor this book in the 40s, but it’s really just about being a woman alive today and everything we’re up against.

ELISE:

I have loved my 40s. I’m sure I’ll love my 50s. I really enjoyed my 30s. I kind of hated my 20s. I know obviously you talk about Satya and Quarterlife in the book and the way ... I mean, that book was really thing to me in the sense that

And obviously she’s a childhood friend and co-conspirator with me, so I love all of her work, but I think naming the cultural deception that so many of us labor under, which is that your twenties are so fun, like you’re never going to look better, you’re never going to have more fun. It’s like, what are you smoking? I have no money. I don’t know what my career is. I don’t have a partner. That checklist that I think so many, the vision that so many women in particular have of I need to get these things done on a really intense timeline that’s out of my own control really saps joy out of 20s. And I know some people have a really fun time, but I look when I’m on Instagram, I’m like, oh, you couldn’t pay me to repeat that decade.

STACEY:

Never. You couldn’t pay me anything to go back to that.

ELISE:

Oh,

STACEY:

God. And I have such a deep reverence for her. And I know you and her are so close and I discovered her work through your work and you and Kiki putting her first essay up on Goop. And I remember reading that and thinking, “This is fresh. This actually offered me some vocabulary for this weird angst I’m feeling inside.” And I didn’t even realize it at the time too. I mean, I was identifying with it because I was technically still in quarter life when I first read it in that phase that she talks about. But it’s funny, so she’s so lovely and so brilliant. And I interviewed her for this book and I’m wondering if she remembers this, but I remember she said, basically I just asked her, it was a leading question too. Tell me this doesn’t end, right? We still kind of have these existential questions.

I asked her something of the likes of that. I remember her saying, “This is the easiest interview ever,” because no, this doesn’t end after 40. We still have all these questions and this yearning and all of this search for meaning. And of course her Jungian approach is, I mean, the world would be better if we heard more from her and of her. But yeah, her work was very clarifying for me because again, while this is a different timeframe, there’s major overlap I think in just this, “Okay, I think that I’m supposed to be or I’m told that I’m supposed to feel and act and live this way, but inside of me, this is really what’s going on.

ELISE:

Yeah. Well, and it’s these dual pedals of meaning and then stability and that some of us seek the former and some of us seek the latter. And obviously the work of being human is finding a way to bring them together, right? That creates a sound grounded, meaningful life, but that’s very, very hard. And maybe you and I have done it somewhat effectively, but you never ... I’m still, of course, always looking for structure and stability, always, right? You don’t escape it. And before we started recording, we were talking about the way that at least our current culture positions this for so many women. It’s sort of this walled garden or secret garden with everyone else looking in at what it takes to have a really meaningful life and like your functional doctor and all your things and this life of G purpose, excavating great questions.

And then in reality, the stability, at least in the United States that’s required in order to pursue that is a very intense hurdle. And I say this as someone who’s doing this with my life and trying to hold these two things together, one, it’s hard, but it’s financially a very privileged position to be able to generate enough work to be able to even think about these things,

STACEY:

Much less embrace that. You can have the time to consider this. Of course. Absolutely. That’s not lost on me. I know that’s not lost on you. To even think about this is an incredible privilege to have the time and absolutely, I know.

ELISE:

But it’s also, I would argue and push back on that and say that there’s a version of it that’s commoditized and commercialized and sold back to us, and there are other access points that are entirely free, right? It’s like going on a hike, finding a piece of grass to sit on and reading something from a wisdom tradition.

STACEY:

Yes. And going outside and looking up at the sky, and this is very stutsian, that having the reminder that there’s something bigger than us too,

And pulling the beauty from that and finding the faith in that, that there is something bigger than us. And that might sound out of the world, that might sound woo-woo, whatever, however that sounds, but I find a lot of solace and grounding in just in doing that. When I am spinning sometimes in my own little life, right? Deadlines, mortgage, rent, whatever it is, worried about my mother, concerned if my husband is happy and fulfilled, worried about my friends and their children, worried about the wars that are happening, the administration, all of it. It’s too much sometimes. And when I literally just step outside and look up at the sky, it actually will reset my nervous system. And that is one of the many things that’s accessible. One thing I know that I have been deeply, deeply craving, and I made an attempt. I do not know if I was able to do this with the book, but I took a big swing as I tried to get to some specifics for women in language a little bit, and then also in free tools, because you and I have been talking about this too.

The first part of that in the language, even in the context of talking about our forties, there’s a beautiful conversation going on that has been going on for several years about midlife, and it’s great, and it doesn’t land for me. It’s the same thing as kind of saying, “You need more purpose.” Well, what does that mean? I am literally day-to-day trying to put food on the table and trying to take care of myself and the people I love. And again, I’m coming from a privileged place where I’m able-bodied and I have a strong community and all of these things that other people don’t have, but still, what does that mean? I want particulars. I want specifics. I want something I can grab onto. And in regard to the book, I really wanted to talk about the 40s specifically because midlife in general was just, it was glazing over this topic.

It just was not meeting me where I was and where I am now. And then on the other side, when it comes to specifics too, just these macro terms and these suggestions, they can be really overwhelming and hard. How do I ... Okay, one thing too, watch my stress levels. Well, that’s really important. How do I do that? How do I do that too if I don’t have a doctor on speed dial too? Or how do I get these fill in the blanks? And so I love the conversation about what are some things that we can tap into day in and day out that will give us some hope, some solace, some momentum to keep moving forward. And I think of Francis Weller for one person, I know you’ve had a beautiful conversation with him and I’ve been lucky to have interviewed him too and him just talking about ... I asked him, I said, “For people who are completely overwhelmed and don’t even know, he’s all about community and really paying attention to the we in community and getting more in that mindset of you and I are connected.

It’s not about individualism. It’s about being together.” But I asked him, I said, “If this is just the whole concept of community is overwhelming.” I forget exactly how I phrased the question, but I said, “If we are just even facing loneliness in our life, we don’t even know where to go and find a friend, what do we do? “ And he said, “Go outside and touch a tree and talk to a tree.” I started crying inside. I think I held my tears back after the interview, but again, just those beautiful, accessible things that we can do to make ourselves feel better and also to make each other feel better. And there’s endless other ways I think we can start to employ this in our lives.

ELISE:

Yeah. I think this is maybe a totally weird thing to share, but I grew up in Montana, as you know, as we’ve established throughout this conversation, I grew up in not only in Montana, but mostly outside. And we lived like 20 minutes from town and I just spent a lot of time, some time with my brother who was mostly reading, but I just spent most of my time by myself outside, flipping over rocks, climbing trees, whatever, just making weird witchy brews in the woods, that won’t surprise anyone. And I was at a retreat and I was in a deep meditation and I heard a voice. I want to say it was sort of the mother, Mother Mary or whomever. And it was like, I had this feeling that ... And she was like, “I was always there.” I don’t know. It was a deeply, I’m not telling it very well, but it was a deeply held all those moments when I thought I was by myself, but this deep communion, you can call it nature, Gaia, of just being held by something larger and in a constant and enduring relationship with something, I guess I would say non-human.

But yeah, I mean, my horse was my best friend too. Let’s be real, Ebony. Anyway, okay.

STACEY:

Can we stay on that for one more second?

ELISE:

Sure.

STACEY:

Because I love that. I know I’m not alone in saying that. I want to hear about your upbringing, Montana more and more and more. I think it’s so fascinating. And of course, Montana’s very big for both of us in our lives. And what you just talked about though to me is one of the rare experiences of the divine in this life.

There are few things, but they are real that really allow us to tap into this, what I think is the divine, something bigger, something spiritual, something beyond this realm that we know of, this tangible realm and animal, our relationships with animals, they’re nonverbal, but it’s so immediate. It’s so profound. I mean, I could talk about my relationship with my horse for days. My horse passed a long time ago. I can talk about my relationship with my dog right now for days. I mean, she’s cute, but still it’s something so much deeper and it’s that connection with the divine. I experience it with young children too. I experience it through music and I also experience it when I feel deeply close to myself. And so what you were just explaining, I get emotional thinking about that because you felt held in the company of something that was always there with you.

And what I heard was, yes, you were and you are in the company of this spiritual being, this person, whatever it may be, but then also really connected to yourself.

ELISE:

No, totally. And yeah, it was like a reconnection to something that I’d always understood, but would never have been articulated, which was like I wasn’t alone. And I didn’t really feel alone as a kid out there in the woods. It’s wild to think about now because my mom’s anxiety over the years has only climbed. She professes so much anxiety for my kids. I’m like, “Well, you unleashed me in the woods where there were mountain lions.” A neighbor girl, literally a mountain lion figureated around her. Her parents managed to pick her up and throw her in the back of a pickup. But yeah, my brother and I would saddle up our horses and ride up the creek into, it was some sort of wilderness, protected wilderness just up the road. We lived on this dirt road, but we would just go by ourselves, go into this fat cave.

I mean, I just ... It’s a different time, different time. I wish I’m deeply sad having kids that ... And I give them a little bit of this when we go to Montana and they’re off in the woods on bikes, but it’s hard in today’s times to imagine the context of parenting where your kids are like, “We’re off. See you in a few hours.” But what are you going to

STACEY:

Do? You go every summer, right? You go and spend time there

ELISE:

Every single year. Yeah, multiple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and it’s home in a deeply felt way. So you think about your mom sort of blowing up her life and your life in her 40s in order to give birth to this version of herself, that flood of hormones or whatever it is, that labor where she was like, “I’m going. It’s happening and I’m out of here. I can’t even think about this.” Feels like that sort of force, right?

And obviously you’re in a much gentler way and you come into your 40s without operating by the checklist, whether that was your choice or not, but when you think about this book and how do you think about the version of yourself that you’re trying to give birth to now? What is that? Who is that? Tell me about that, Stacy, your autumn queen.

STACEY:

My autumn queen. Oh, I love her. I mean, that really spoke to me. And I know you have had conversations about this too, but when Steph Jagger, I leaned in when she said autumn queen. What? That is amazing. I mean, I stand by everything that I write about the autumn queen in the book too, because I bring her with me everywhere. And some days she’s a loud voice and I really listen to her counsel and other days not so much. So I want to be, she’s the coolest and the autumn queen is this archetype that very loosely but really honors the 40s in terms of this power and this rawness and this creativity and this knowing ourselves. And she precedes Krone, which is beautiful, but often storytelling will kind of push us into Krone a little too early. And so who am I becoming now?

ELISE:

Yeah. Who is she and who do you want to become? Who do you hope

STACEY:

She

ELISE:

Is?

STACEY:

Yeah. I hope she’s

ELISE:

Really rich and really powerful.

STACEY:

I mean, I keep thinking of feeling when I think about this, right? Because part of me, I’ll envision her and I’ll think of somebody who is the tangible things that we use to express ourselves with. She wears Levi’s jeans. That’s how I genuinely feel most comfortable. And they’re not tight. I don’t want to wear anything tight anymore.

ELISE:

I get it.

STACEY:

Think about all the tight things we used to wear.

ELISE:

No, I can’t even.

STACEY:

Just the things that make me feel the adornments that genuinely make me feel good, air dried hair and Levi’s jeans and my grandmother’s jewelry and the Montana Sapphire actually that my husband bought me, just simple things that remind me that I’m loved and helped me hearken back to a time when these people that I loved were still alive. But mostly I’m thinking about a feeling. I’m thinking about, I want to feel very in my body. I want to feel that I operate with genuine compassion for myself and for the people around me. I want to feel like I let kindness and understanding lead the way. And there’s no way that I can totally understand everyone or everything, obviously, but just a proclivity to understand. I’m going through something right now that I feel deeply, deeply wronged by somebody and I’m trying to let understanding lead the way in the terms of this person is functioning in their own orbit of maybe hell right now.

They’re going through what they’re going through. And so I’m kind of experiencing this maybe because of the things they’re experiencing, but they’re still a human. They’re still trying their best. And I think that is ultimately how I want to lead. Now, I’m not going to have that for everyone, obviously. I’m not going to have that for our current president, and I’m not going to have that for some other big figures in our lives. But she wants to do the best she can within the reach of her own arm. I’m talking about she, me. I get overwhelmed. I’m a highly sensitive person. I’m an empath. And I think in some ways those are superpowers and in other ways, those things have held me back a lot too, because I can get physically overwhelmed with feeling people’s sadness. I have a particular weakness when it comes to men suffering.

And I think that links directly to my father and everything my father went through and physically holding my father as he died. So when I see men around my father’s age, I have a weakness for them and I’ll feel myself carry their pain sometimes. That’s a fascinating another conversation too. But then I think, okay, I can’t change the world, but I can change things within the reach of my arm, even if it means, again, smiling, being a little bit kinder, smiling at somebody when I walk by them, doing my part, calling local politicians, showing up for city council meetings, doing the best I can with the work that I believe in, not taking the things that I have for granted. And that’s so easy to do and continuing to follow my curiosity too. I don’t want to arrest myself of the things that I really, really want to do.

And you touched on this and you’re so damn good at this, Elise, but you touched on this earlier of saying part of the book, there are the most interesting parts of the book are my story. And I’ve muzzled myself for so long and I continue to because I think maybe it’s the right thing or it’s a safe thing or I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. And so the woman that I’m becoming and want to continue to become is to not muzzle myself anymore. I don’t want to because it’s not doing anyone a service. It’s a disservice, not even to myself, but to the world, to other women.

ELISE:

As I’m listening to you, some things I want to reflect back are, and you’re like, “F you, Elise, you’re not my mother or my therapist.” No, but I can hear that instinct and I think that we both have it, particularly in the lane of work to manage ourselves and hire mind everything, right? And is it cognitized? I don’t know, that might be making up a word, but that mental acuity of, it sounds like you’re suffering or you’re experiencing a betrayal and the higher minding your anger, I don’t know. Do you even feel your feelings? This is something I worry about a little bit with you is where is it? Yeah. Are you processing it? Do you feel like you have an intimate relationship with your anger and your fear and maybe a little bit of hate? I know we don’t like that vibration, but I don’t know.

STACEY:

But it’s real. It’s real. Yes. And we know what happens when we avoid these things too. They just manifest and they get bigger and bigger and bigger. So I appreciate you asking that because you’ve touched on it. I mean, it’s so true that I still am working on facing a lot of these things and feeling these things and-

ELISE:

You go very quickly to this person is human and this person is suffering and this person is going through their own process and it’s negatively affecting me, but you do it with your mom and you do it. It’s just a pattern. I’m just going to point out. It is.

STACEY:

It is a pattern. It’s

ELISE:

Concerned for them and compassion. And can you own that you didn’t get what you needed and maybe you didn’t get what you deserved or maybe you’ve been betrayed?

STACEY:

Absolutely. I’m working on it and that’s part of who I’m becoming is owning this because there is a lot of anger and rage in my body. And I thank this time of my life, the 40s, this awakening in a way, this declaration, whatever you may call it, to allowing me to finally start to look toward that and to realize that and to express it too and to be talking about it in conversation with people I trust with you. No one’s listening to this, right?

ELISE:

Do you know

STACEY:

Your

ELISE:

Enneagram number? Are you a nine? What are you? Six?

STACEY:

Oh my gosh. It’s so funny. I have kind of a fair weather relationship with the Enneagram, even though I think it’s probably so fascinating and would help me, but I think I’m a

ELISE:

Two. Two. Yeah, you might be a two.

STACEY:

Does that make

ELISE:

Sense? Yeah.

STACEY:

But then I think I have a four. Is there a shadow part of it or there’s a

ELISE:

Four different move to different levels under stress? Anyway, it’s interesting talking to you because there are fours who everyone wants to be a four. I think it would be very difficult to be a four. Fours are like, how are you not feeling this? And this is so intense and this is so deep. They’re considered to be the creative angsty artist, but fours often cannot move past their own suffering and get sort of swallowed by it in a way that is difficult. And I have a lot of compassion for fours and it’s also hard to be around. I think maybe for ... I’m a six, I don’t know, you might be a two, but the two would be the helper or the fixer. And you manage your fear and your bad feelings by sort of taking care of other people. And I think this conversation might be evidence of that, Stacy.

STACEY:

Absolutely. Well, I will say I am doing internal family systems work right now and that has had some profound ... I’ve had some profound revelations, but I’ve found some deep catharsis from it. And I glaze over this story in the book too, but I include it where before, so I am in a relationship with a loving man and I know you’re married to a very loving man too, and we’re very fortunate for that. And I got into my relationship with him when I was at 40. We’re married now. We’ve been together for about four years. Prior to this relationship, I was with somebody when you and I met actually, who was intensely abusive and abusive in multitudinous ways. And I’m even getting hot talking about it because I’m still just now starting to process this. But in Internal Family Systems Works, I’m doing all that mattered in that relationship with him was I worried about him.

I cared for him and he was doing these egregiously abusive things, financially abusive, sexually abusive, emotionally abusive, and went on and on and on for years. And I do talk about it in the book where one day I had a girlfriend come pick me up. I quietly packed a bag, I hit it outside, I grabbed my little puppy that I had. She was brand new at the time, and my girlfriend, Kat, came and picked me up early in the morning and drove away and I never saw him again. And it took me so much courage to do that. And there’s this caretaker though that is so alive that just, again, wondered when this person was doing these horrible things, you can’t justify that too, but I kept seeing, “Oh, he’s in pain. His family abused him. He’s not getting what he needs out of this world, so therefore I need to step up and make sure that he does.” But I saw the absolute damage that caused me in my life for so long and also how that was just an echo of things that I was still dealing with.

And I’ve been approaching a lot of the rage and anger I have toward that in therapy, in this work. And it has helped me express it, but it’s also helped me to have compassion for that part of myself that has kept me safe, that has done all this caretaking for so long, just to protect me, to keep me safe and to bring it back to this moment in the conversation we’re having, there’s something beautiful about this age, this time that actually did propel me to want to really start looking at this and really, really start doing the work because this is heavy stuff to carry. And I know that if I’m experiencing this, I’m one of countless people who are experiencing their own version of this and of countless women who are.

ELISE:

Oh, a hundred percent. I think the, I’m sorry, I had no idea and this is a testament to how you hold yourself, which is as this kind, polished person in the world. Yeah. I mean, you’re really ... I can only imagine what you were holding. You do not unleash it. We’ve all been around hurt people who hurt people. So I can only ... I’m glad that you’re working on it because you’re clearly holding it. You haven’t been giving it to other people to hold for you.

STACEY:

Trying not to. Trying not to. Not

ELISE:

Trying not to.

STACEY:

I mean- Do you want to go do some mushrooms?

ELISE:

That’s so Funny. People think, of course, now post goop, that’s people’s association with me. Obviously it’s pulling the thread. No, but I encounter people all the time who are like, I watch you do mushrooms on Netflix. And I’m like, yes, I was the Brentwood mom doing psychedelics before psychedelics is this industry that it is now. It’s funny, that was it for me. I did the three part MDMA maps protocol, but I don’t really ... I’m sure I would get a lot out of it, and yet I also just don’t want to actually open my energy that big. And I also feel like I’m not someone who needs to be put into contact with the universe or source or God. I feel like I’m already really out there and anything. I’m with you. Yeah. I need to be in my body. Yeah. Yep. That’s the hard part, right?

STACEY:

Yeah. It is the hard part. It really is. I know, but I’m with you. In mushrooms in particular, I’ve done them only a handful of times and woo. Yeah, I’m sure I will again, but wow.

ELISE:

Well, I can imagine an MDMA mushroom being very healing for you as you’re grappling, being with yourself. MDMA is very powerful. Not so much in content, but in this being with your younger self and being at a remove and really being able to hold yourself as a child. I found that very powerful. Oh, Stacey, congratulations. I’m so proud of you. And I can’t

STACEY:

Wait. I love kicking it with you. You’re so brilliant.

ELISE:

Such a good hang. This is fun. And I can’t wait to see what you do next. So Stacey’s book is called Being 40: The Decade of Letting Go and Embracing Who We Are. And she is a wise guide through this decade and belong and such a lovely person. And it’s interesting because you can know someone well or stand shoulder to shoulder with them every day and yet not know these big drumbeats in their life. And maybe that’s more indicative of me being someone who, even though I love asking people questions, tries not to pry, but just like the brave face that people put on as they go about their days, even when they’re contending with really painful things. Anyway, she’s great and I hope she focuses ever more on herself and her story and the way that everything she’s learned over the past 40 odd years converges in her as an example for other people who are similarly wired and similarly curious.

And I, in our post group time, been lucky to be interviewed by Stacey many times. She’s just a fantastic interviewer and really thoughtful and prepared and grounded in love. So support her and support her book, particularly if you’re coming to this age. I think it’s a really honest assessment of all the programming that converges in our lives and it’s structured around otherhood, motherhood, beauty and bodies, work, and all those questions about are we there and is this all there is? And what am I supposed to be doing with my time? These are probing and insistent questions that I think we will grapple with until the grave, though I want to believe that that’s not true. I want to believe that we can put on our loose Levi’s. For me, it’s Levi’s and a flannel shirt, guys, and be with our autumn queens. I’m happy to be a crone too.

So be crones. I’m going to crone out. All right, friends. I will see you next time. If you got something out of today’s episode, I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. Please rate and review the episode, follow pulling the thread on your preferred podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend who would also enjoy it. That’s how we grow this thing. It’s so helpful. Thank you.