How to Treat Your Spirituality Like a Fitness Regime

We recognize the importance of making time to keep our bodies and minds in shape, so why not our spiritual side? Here’s how and why a spiritual regimen can enrich your life — no matter what you believe in.

“Self-care” is the motivating buzzword that keeps on buzzing, used to market everything from face masks to the latest fitness craze. Under its influence, we’re relentlessly poked and prodded with reminders of ways to get better, stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, ad infinitum.

But what about our inner selves? We might look great on the outside, but all the planks in the world can’t give us the inner strength we need to give us hope and get us through tough times. Enter spiritual health and practice.

What is a spiritual practice?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “spirit” has many definitions, with the most relevant to this article being the “animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.” As such, a spiritual practice is something you do on a regular basis to access your own personal concept of spirit — or a sense of connection to yourself or the world — whether you find it on an altar of your own making, in nature, at a nightclub, in a mosque, in a synagogue, or in a church, etc.

But given all that we’ve got going on, is it actually beneficial to make space in our chaotic lives to develop a relationship with our intuition, higher power, God, the Goddess, Allah, G-d, Buddha, or whomever or whatever we might feel compelled to call upon to work on our spiritual lives? Does having a spiritual life even make sense? And if the answer is yes, then why does this aspect of our lives so often go neglected in favor of shallower pursuits of self-improvement?

Why you may not have a spiritual practice — yet

The Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Zen priest and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, says one common reason people find spiritual enrichment so easy to blow off is that the benefits of a spiritual practice aren’t tangible and may take time to be revealed. “It goes deeper, and there’s not like an instant payoff,” she says. “There’s not somebody that’s just going to say, ‘Now you have a great butt! Now you have a six-pack!’ It’s intangible, so it requires what some people may call faith, patience, curiosity, and an openness to allow something that is far more intangible than most forms of self-care we have evidence of.”

Another possible reason some may balk at the idea of spiritual development is its association with organized religion, but spirituality and religion are, in fact, two different concepts. “Spirituality tends to be more of an individual pursuit. In organized religion, there are rules to follow, and it tends to be much more rigid,” explains Tamara Goldsby, Ph.D., a research psychologist with the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at UC San Diego who studies the impact of meditation on well-being. “If one had a negative experience with organized religion in the past, one may generalize all spiritual experiences to this when, in reality, spirituality is quite different from organized religion. If one believes that the mind, body, and spirit are all connected, then it makes sense for us to integrate a regular spiritual practice, in whatever form suits us, into our lives. One does not need to follow an ideology per se to be spiritual. Connecting to a source greater than ourselves can be a powerful experience, and it reminds us that we are all part of a bigger picture.”

Why people monitor their spiritual health

As many as 30 percent of people identify as spiritual but not religious, says williams. A spiritual practice can give us a sense of agency over our own lives. “No matter what the practice, there is a very deep agreement that we make with ourselves when we have a spiritual practice,” says williams. “We take a sense of navigating our lives into our own hands rather than leaving it to chance, whether that’s by way of our relationship with a higher power through a regular, consistent practice. This agreement with ourselves is one of the most powerful things that we can do to have a sense of agency in our lives.”

How has spirituality fallen so far off our collective radar? “I think because 40 years ago, in the positive efforts and the good attempt to be inclusive, we as a society took religion out of the public square, and with it went the spiritual baby with the bathwater,” says Lisa Jane Miller, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and education and the founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City, and the author of The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. “We need to basically have a spiritual renaissance. We need to see each other as sacred, with ultimate dignity as souls on Earth, and we need to know each other as spiritual beings, to love and care for ourselves so that we awaken our spiritual brain and use what I call our awakened awareness.”

We need to know each other as spiritual beings, to love and care for ourselves so that we awaken our spiritual brain.

DianaHirsch//Getty Images

The benefits of spiritual health

Miller and a group of researchers have scientifically examined the benefits of cultivating one’s spiritual side, referencing a 25-year-long rigorously peer-reviewed study with findings that show how spirituality is “foundational” to recovery, moving through depression, moving through trauma with post-traumatic spiritual growth, and even potentially girding against subsequent depression. One MRI study her team conducted, published in JAMA Psychiatry and referenced in her book, revealed that individuals at higher risk for depressive illness who prioritized their spiritual lives actually had a thicker cortex in certain parts of the brain, and might be more resilient to the development of a major depressive illness.

In another study, her team examined the brains of those who told stories of feeling a deep connection to the universe, or “spirit.” Regardless of their religious or spiritual affiliation, each subject’s brain activated the same four neural correlates, or brain activity that produces a specific experience. She equates the first “loop” as something she calls “mindfulness plus,” or a spiritually driven awareness of being connected to love, guidance, and not being alone, adding that it activates the “bonding network,” or the same feeling as being held by someone caring for you.

The second neural loop shifts your perception of the world from a narrow one to the big picture. “Instead of being obsessed through a very narrow bowling-alley perception — I’ve got to get this thing I wanted, I’ve got to get that job, I’ve got to get that promotion, I’ve got to get into that graduate school — we shift, and we see a far broader range of life, an abundant life. That’s synchronicity,” Miller explains.

The third lends the recognition that we are all “whitecaps coming from one ocean,” Miller says. “We are magnificently synced and beautifully diverse, and all over different GPS coordinates.”

Miller describes the fourth neural loop as a greater sense of interconnectedness. “I could be walled-off lonely for months in my Covid apartment, and that isolation and depression is real, and still I sense, whether it’s through meditation, or prayer, or nature, I am part of the oneness.”

Interested in exploring your own spirituality? Here’s how to begin

Walk in nature

Something as simple and easy as a short walk in nature for 20 minutes can reboot the spiritual capacity of the brain, says Miller. “The very same wavelength of the awakened brain is a wavelength shared by nature; it’s alpha,” she explains. “Alpha is the wavelength from the Earth’s crust. We awaken the brain when we walk through nature.” But, Miller explains, it’s not enough to just mindlessly saunter by some trees — try to be present and engage with what you experience to feel the benefits. “Don’t just notice how pretty it is,” she says. “Think about the human life cycle. Listen when birds or animals are trying to show you something, and try to give them something back. Try to be in relationship with them.”

It’s not enough to just mindlessly saunter by some trees — try to be present and engage with what you experience to feel the benefits.

Julia Davila-Lampe//Getty Images

Research what resonates for you

When exploring spirituality, williams says she encourages people to “start dating” rather than feeling like they have to commit to one type of practice. Of her own experience, she says: “Be flexible and open. I represent one of the sort of anomalies. I didn’t follow the path of what might have ordinarily been expected out of a Black woman in America. It would be Christianity first, Islam second, maybe Judaism.”

Figuring out what type of spiritual practice works for you will be a process of trial and error. Just be willing to listen to your inner self, which in and of itself is its own kind of practice, and to explore what it is that you feel called to, williams says. “We’re very unique in terms of the structure of our internal life, and what responds to it is in many ways like love,” she explains. “We will respond to things that are beyond logic. People will explain it logically, but at the end of the day, what fulfills us and gives us gratification by way of our spiritual practice is completely ineffable. It’s beyond tangible. It’s not something that is quickly situated in a set of rules and instructions, which is why we are seeing an [upwelling] in the number of people that consider themselves spiritual but not religious. We actually want to have a connection; we don’t want to just slip on the spiritual hand-me-downs of our families and in our lineage. Which is why we should go ‘date.’ When something feels like it calls you, we can both respond, and we can say maybe this isn’t it, giving ourselves a little bit of room for questions not answers.”

Work your spiritual practice into your day

For your spiritual practice to build, consistency is key, says williams. “We have so many distractions, and it is easy for it to evade us,” she says. “Getting our attention to turn to something that has some intangible gratification for us, having a practice and being able to apply our own will to show up for it and to give it some time is one of those ways we can build it and start to actually feel the experience.” She recommends taking your contemplation or spiritual practice time in “small bites,” even if it’s just five or 10 minutes a day. Anchoring your practice to another routine part of your day (right when you get up, after you brush your teeth or work out) can help it stick. “The truth is we are habituated unconsciously to all sorts of other things; we’re habituated to watching Netflix, being on our computers, touching our phones all the time. If we want to have some kind of a balance to the other things that draw our attention and distract us in our lives, and we want to give room for the new lover that is our spiritual practice, we have to actually commit some time to it,” she says.

Change the conversation

Miller says, in exploring your spirituality, it helps to “change your conversation with life” by paying attention to signs and signals that present themselves to you. She explains: “Don’t ask what do I want and how do I get it, but rather ask what is life showing me, what can I learn and give back?” says Miller. “Be open to the dharma that we’re all on this journey. You know how people say to look for signs? People show up, books show up, and we are given gifts — oftentimes through multiple cultures, multiple faith traditions, spiritual and religious practices. Who comes to you? Why did this person speak with me now, just as I started wondering about this and that? Be open to synchronicity and the symbols in life that shift your way forward. Life is not a drop-down menu from which to order what we want. Life is an exquisite journey through which we discover a deeper nature and become more loving and become far more aware of one another.”

Goldsby says spirituality is definitely a journey, and it may take quite a while for someone to find a belief system that resonates for them — but the benefits make it worthwhile. “Think of this as a long-distance run instead of a sprint,” she says. “Important self-discovery takes time, so readers need to be patient with themselves and the process.”

How to Stop ‘Shoulding’ Yourself

Experts give some pointers on how to cultivate more grace and self-compassion so you can truly thrive in life.

A dear friend — a friend I admire for her ability to guide others — recently admitted to suffering from a bout of the “shoulds.” She pointed out that every time she told herself she “should” have done something or “should” be doing something, she was essentially flagellating and shaming herself.

Barbara Barna Abel, a media coach and the host of the Camera Ready & Abel podcast, is the friend I’m speaking of. “We get stuck into this idea of an endless list of things we should do in terms of life, career, how we live our lives, or what we believe in,” she told me. “My feeling is we get stuck in what we should feel and what we should do versus what we want to do, what makes us happy, what we’re good at, and where our passions lie.”

“Shoulds” are an inevitable part of everyone’s self-speak vocabulary, but this can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Barna Abel says the “shoulds” often feel burdensome to her because they imply obligation. “When [we’re] doing something because we feel we ‘should’ and it’s out of obligation, we also start to build resentment toward ourselves, other people, and situations that can lead to depression, a victim mentality, and all sorts of other [negative] things. When we’re doing things because we ‘should,’ we gloss over the idea of choice,” she says.

Kristin Neff, PhD, an associate professor at the department of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Fierce Self-Compassion, says though the “shoulds” can spur you into action temporarily, over-“shoulding” can carry negative side effects, like reinforcing fears of being unacceptable and a fear of failure. “This actually creates performance anxiety and [feelings of] failure, which undermines your ability to achieve in the long run,” she says, adding that procrastination and performance anxiety can make it harder for you to do your best, have grit, and stay focused on your goals.

A propensity toward a “should” mindset can come from early neural imprinting within fear-driven cultures, says neuroscientist Tara Swart, author of The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain. “Cultures can mean family, society, school, or religion. Even in adulthood, the ‘shoulds’ are about the things you had to do to survive without punishment, which can be literal or be shame, guilt, or humiliation.” Telling ourselves we “should” be doing this or “should” be doing that subconsciously brings up the shame or guilt that would have been the punishment for not behaving as expected during childhood, says Swart.

Though the word “should” in self-talk can seem — and sometimes is — innocuous, it can also signal that we’re being hard on ourselves, and that’s something to be aware of. Negative self-talk can lead us to perceive the world as an “unsafe and punitive place with scarce resources,” says Swart, which can feed into a victim mentality rather than a sense of agency over our lives, and keep us from taking healthful risks.

Positive self-talk can help change your perception of "shoulds."

Ponomariova_Maria

Science recognizes the harsh impact negative self-talk can have on our psyches, outlook, and health. In 2018, Neff, who has conducted tons of research about the power of self-compassion, examined how self-compassion affected academic performance for college students. It was associated with “reduced self-presentation concerns and increased student communication behavior,” implying greater class participation. “Self-compassion allows students to see themselves clearly, accept their mistakes and imperfections, and take action to correct mistakes,” reads the conclusion of the study.

Another randomized field experiment conducted by different researchers found that children with negative competence beliefs would often achieve below their potential in school. They also looked at whether engaging in positive self-talk would benefit the students’ mathematics performance. The researchers found that kids who weren’t all that confident but engaged in encouraging self-talk performed better and effectively “severed the association between negative competence beliefs and poor performance.” It seems they gave themselves permission to succeed by learning positive ways to self-reassure.

Negative self-talk can even take a physical toll on us if we aren’t careful. Swart says it reduces the DOSE hormones: dopamine for reward, oxytocin for bonding, serotonin for mood, and endorphins for the feel-good factor. “It leads to increases in the stress hormone cortisol, which puts our brain in survival mode and doesn’t free up resources for higher brain functions like regulating emotions or overturning biases, including those we have against ourselves,” she explains.

Neff says negative self-talk is often linked to depression and anxiety. “Self-criticism activates the sympathetic nervous reaction, which is your fear response (or your fight-or-flight response), and self-compassion activates the sympathetic response and calms it down,” explains Neff. “If you find a depressed person, they’re almost guaranteed to be very self-critical. A lot of anxiety is caused by constant self-criticism, and anxiety undermines our ability to perform if you’re totally activated.” An activated fight-or-flight response isn’t great for you physically and can contribute to health issues like high blood pressure.

So how can we best coach ourselves through a case of the “shoulds” like Barna Abel did?

Get to why you’re shoulding

Barna Abel says, situation permitting, her first step in quelling the inner “shoulds” is to check in with herself and ask what would it look like to let go of what she thinks she should do and actually start to do what she wants to do. “It’s just stopping and being honest with yourself about your resistance. A lot of times, what gets stuck in the ‘shoulds’ are things that we’re not good at. There are things you may have been putting off because they aren’t things you really want to do, or are things that you may find difficult,” Barna Abel says. Then, actually plot out your options. “Ask yourself: If I knew I couldn’t fail, success was assured, and money was no object, what would happen? This gets you to open up in terms of possibility and alternate solutions,” she adds.

Neff also recommends taking a beat to examine your motives. “A self-compassion break is like hitting the reset button on a computer,” she says. Acknowledge that you’re struggling in some way and validate your own feelings. “Whatever you’re feeling — be it shame or disappointment — voice the negativity and acknowledge the pain with mindfulness,” she says.

Give yourself compassion and grace.’,

Olga Zakharova

Remember our common humanity — and that humans make mistakes

“Compassion, in Latin, means to suffer with this inherently connected compassion,” says Neff. “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is imperfect. Tell yourself there’s nothing wrong with me for having this issue. Tell yourself you’re not the only one.”

Give your words a positive spin

Swart suggests getting to the root of what drives your “shoulds” — and making the opposite thought your mantra. For example, swap “I should be famous/employed/rich by now!” for “I am exactly where I’m supposed to be in my life and will continue to work toward my goals.” For another way to redirect negative self-speak, Neff recommends asking yourself if you’d use the same language you use to chastise yourself and direct it at someone you really care about. If the two don’t match, write down what you’d say to your loved one and try saying it to yourself.

Show affection toward yourself

“Physical touch is one of the ways to change the nervous system — it actually helps you calm down and reduces cortisol,” says Neff, who adds that a simple self-soothing gesture, like putting your hands on your heart, is a surprisingly simple and effective way to help you calm down and feel kindness toward yourself.

In closing, Barna Abel says that redirecting her “should” self-talk freed her up to be even more productive. “Letting go of resentment is very personally empowering,” she says. “It really starts to switch the energy from ‘should’ to choice.” And who wouldn’t enjoy more choice?

Courtney Maum’s New Memoir Reminds Us It’s Never Too Late to Find Our Passion

“The Year of the Horses” details Maum’s journey through depression and describes how reconnecting with her childhood love of horses helped her reconnect with herself.

The early pages of Courtney Maum’s new memoir, The Year of the Horses, deftly describes her experience with depression as “an abandoned case shuddering around the black wrap of a baggage belt.” Like tons of women attempting to juggle the demands of a career, a husband, and a young child, she simply didn’t have the time or energy to reckon with her sadness until a wellness-visit questionnaire brought its potential severity to her attention. What unfolds in the following pages of her memoir is an artfully written and deeply relatable account of slogging through what Maum refers to as the “Swamps of Sadness” until reclaiming a long-suppressed passion from childhood — horses, in her case — sparked an unbridled joy we can so easily forget to feel.

Maum is an oft-published essayist and author, and her work includes four novels — Notes From Mexico, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch (a New York Times editor’s choice and NPR Best Book of the Year selection), and Costalegre — as well as Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book, which helps scribes do just that. The Year of the Horses is Maum’s first turn at a full-length confessional, and now that the book is out in the world, Maum hopped on a call with Shondaland to discuss her inspiration, her process, and what it means to get personal so publicly.

VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: You’ve published six books now — a few novels and a book to guide aspiring authors toward publication. What made you decide now was the time to write about your own life?

COURTNEY MAUM: It was a fractured moment because I started it in the wrong genre. I’m not above writing an entire novel and realizing it just needs to be an op-ed. That’s sort of what happened. I started this as a novel, and then I thought, oh, my gosh, I think this is actually just a personal essay. So, I wrote an essay for The New York Times about the experience of learning to play polo, joining a team of mostly teenagers, and being part of a sport that really scared me as a 40-year-old. It was actually the correspondence that I got, mostly from women around my age or older women in their 40s to 60s who said the essay inspired them to go back to ballet or try synchronized swimming — something to prioritize themselves and put their own joy first. So, it was the kindness of strangers, really, that made me think, gosh, maybe I’m on to something. That’s when the seed of the memoir was planted. I was still struggling at that point with my mental health, so I kind of had to get out of the darkness before I could really sit down to write it.

VMS: It can be really hard to articulate what it is that you’re in until you can step away from it, or at least step out of it for a couple of (metaphorical) minutes. What were some of the challenges that you faced in turning the lens toward your own experience? Did you find it intuitive? Or challenging?

...I’ve always felt that if I’m not taking a risk on the page, the writing is not really worth it.

CM: I assumed it would be so different from writing a novel, but that hurt me a little bit in the beginning. I was writing things chronologically and ended up with the driest first draft. It was actually my wonderful editor Masie Cochran who said, in some sense, you have to fictionalize this. What she meant was to get the secret sauce in there, to describe settings the way you would in a novel and meet your reader on the page. For example, there’s this sort of Goldilocks section where I’m trying to find the right barn for me — not just for my personality but mostly for my pocketbook. In reality, I think I went to nine different barns. I thought, because this is a memoir, I need to be totally factual. Instead, my editor said we need to do the Goldilocks thing and narrow it to three. These conversations with my editor gave me the confidence to use the same story skills I always used when writing novels. You’re turning the lens on yourself, but it helps to think of yourself as the narrator. So then, I started doing things like changing my husband’s and my daughter’s names to give them more privacy, but also because I could not write about them with their real names. I started thinking I really need to revisit my childhood, so I’m going to try a double-timeline approach with timeline A in the narrative present, and timeline B is my childhood, and kind of put a quest in, which is a very standard structure for novels. The writing, and revision, and excavation, all of that seems really similar. Where it really became different was in the prepublication stage, having to share the material with people who are in the book, legal considerations — all of that is a totally different animal than novels.

VMS: There’s the whole experience of sharing deeply personal aspects of your own life too.

CM: It’s easy for me because I’ve always felt that if I’m not taking a risk on the page, the writing is not really worth it. I try to do that with fiction also. I have this funny way of writing where I put a word in parentheses if I know that it’s not true enough. On a different day when I have a different kind of energy, I’ll go back to all my parenthesis words and excavate until I can find the truest word or impression. Once I kind of really saw the shape of the memoir and understood what I was trying to communicate, it became a joy, and it was very fluid. But then I had to start sharing it with readers.

There were certainly some things that I shared that my husband was none too pleased to have gone into print. That began a couple of months of conversations, not just with him but with some other people in my family, where things got really interesting. My husband’s recollection of certain events did not match mine. I wanted to honor his perspective but also mine, so ultimately what I ended up doing in the book was including everybody’s perspective. You’ll see, especially in the beginning of the book, I decided to leave all my childhood memories and interpretations and assumptions as they were when I was a child, because even if I got some things factually wrong, they were true to me when I was kid. Toward the middle and end of the book, you’ll see me just flat-out saying I had a discussion with my mom about this, and I got it wrong, or this is how my husband remembers this. I put everyone’s perspectives in without that final touch of I know I’m right. Everyone’s right, even if I don’t agree with my husband or my mom — their memory is their memory. It took a lot of courage to share this with people, but ultimately it resulted in a much more honest book.

VMS: In the book, you interview an author, who said: “I don’t write for catharsis. I don’t write from or through a place of anxiety. I write when I am calm.” You then said you write to keep moving through the “Swamps of Sadness” (the swamps that claimed the horse in The Neverending Story). Did you find the process of writing something so personal cathartic? How has it healed you?

CM: That’s an interesting question. I definitely have agendas with my books, especially with fiction. My first novel was really an attempt to understand infidelity, and the inability to forgive people after an infidelity, because my whole family tree had been kind of broken apart by infidelity. I often wondered what it would look like if they tried to forgive each other. My second book was standing on a soapbox screaming about what on-demand culture has done to our humanity. On a psychosomatic level, when I’m writing, it feels [like] catharsis, but to me it’s really a battle to understand my relationship to the world, and the effect of whatever is going on in the world on myself, and also on women. For me, The Year of the Horses is kind of a call to arms for women to stop telling people they’re fine. We’re asked to bear too much right now. It’s not OK. It’s not fair. Not only should we be angry, but let’s let the ball drop a little bit. Let’s start being selfish instead of always being applauded for being selfless. This is not about self-care — it’s not about Korean face masks at night. It’s about setting aside real time for something, whether you actually want time to try to write a memoir yourself, or maybe you really want to start roller skating — whatever the hell it is — and just prioritize yourself before other people. So yeah, in a certain sense there is something cathartic about this book that is healing some of the anger — obviously not all of it because we keep having reasons to be mad — but the anger of being a woman through the Trump regime and everything that came after it.

VMS: I feel like your book was a story of the radical act of joy in reconnecting with and reclaiming a formative passion that was stunted, and being able to see it through as an adult. How does reconnecting to that joy help you?

CM: I love this question! I know that this happens for so many working women. At some point in our lives, our passion starts to become the thing that we’re probably going to make a profession out of. It starts off as a passion, and you approach it with love and curiosity, but if you have success in that realm, it turns into a profession, and it becomes monetized. In my case, ever since I was 7 years old, writing and reading have been my absolute safest place. Paradoxically, when I started having success and actually realizing my deepest dreams of being published, my little safe house became a glass box. It was no longer a private place. This was a fortunate problem to have, but all of a sudden, I’m working under book contracts, I have editors and deadlines and people expecting things for me, and sales targets to meet. What the horses gave me back was an innocent place free of competition or expectations of success because I’m not going to, you know, be a professional rider. With my writing, I’m in a much healthier place where I have been able, partly from working with independent presses and getting off the commercial train for a little bit, to recapture that magic. It is my job. It is how I earn a living, and I intend it to stay that way, right? But where’s my pure childhood joy? Partly it’s in writing, but now I have the barn. No one’s expecting anything from me. It’s an innocent relationship, just pure.

VMS: Once you became a writer, you described interviewing a horsewoman and weeping immediately thereafter. Was that a visceral reaction to rediscovering the thing that would bring you back to yourself?

CM: Well, it should’ve been, you would think, because I had such a visceral reaction to that, but no, it was years later. It took me a long time. I was just completely convinced that I wouldn’t be able to afford it. I was a freelance writer — I’m still a freelance writer — and I just had it in my head that this was something from my past, when Courtney had a daddy on Wall Street who paid for everything. It felt like a value thing too. I was an artist and certainly didn’t have any examples of people in my tax bracket riding. Once I committed to going back to it, you find your way in. They call us barn rats, people who work off their lessons. I’ve traded press releases and web copy for ring-time riding lessons. You have to understand and know that kind of underground access is available, but I didn’t know that at that time. The flip for me — there’s this scene in the book — was at a 2-year-old’s birthday party. I was really in my head, and this handsome man came in and said, I can’t hug you or anything; I just came from the barn. I got the name of his barn and the number of his trainer, and I think I called her from the party, and that was it. There was no going back. I have not stopped since then.

VMS: It’s like a switch that flips that just changes everything. You weave horse mythology, science, and other really artfully thought out references into the text to draw important connections to horses. Was that something that you set out to do?

CM: It was a learning process. My first draft was mostly chronological diary stuff, so that was a decision after reading my first draft and asking myself how to make it less boring. I know from reading memoir that I really appreciate when we swivel to things happening in the larger world, when the narrator gives us a little breathing room and also when we learn something that both draws deeply into someone’s personal narrative while also educating us about larger things happening in the world around them. It was pretty early on that needed to happen. I think it’s a very meaningful way to write a memoir because it’s inclusive.

VMS: Your book is a celebration of “horse girls.” How are horse girls unique?

CM: I don’t have the adjectives! They are so amazing. They’re so fierce. They’re so determined and passionate and very often feminists — even if they don’t think that they identify as feminists. These are truly women who know that women can do anything. Once you’ve gotten a 1,400-pound beast to leg yield, you can take on the world. Also, the thing that I love about horse girls of a certain age is that these women are 100 percent prioritizing themselves. They’re usually using their own resources to carve out a lot of time to dedicate to something that probably only makes sense for them.

VMS: What’s the most valuable nugget of advice you impart to your students that you wish you had known before writing books?

CM: I guess what I say most often to people is don’t trick yourself into thinking success only looks like one thing. We’re taught to believe, in the literary realm, that success looks like a literary agent, editor, book deal, traditionally published book. Things are so wild and competitive right now, and we had so many incredible tools at our disposal, success might look like taking the reins yourself, self-publishing a book, and controlling the narrative and the way the book is presented to the world. Traditional publishing is incredibly fortunate and an exciting thing, but it is not for the faint of heart. We are, for very little money, expected to be social-media managers, our own PR representatives, our own brand ambassadors, event planners, copywriters, and the authors of these books while also working on whatever the heck is supposed to come next. A lot of people can’t do that without losing the love of craft. So rarely is there actual money, so what the hell is the point? If it’s going to break your joy for writing to try to do it the commercial way, start a new podcast, and prove them wrong. The gatekeepers are not always right. Follow your gut and your joy.

How Leigh Newman Redefines the Wild, Wild West

With her collection of fantastically gritty stories, “Nobody Gets Out Alive,” Newman reveals the many faces of Alaska. She talks craft, process, and inspiration with Shondaland.

Writer and editor Leigh Newman’s deft, intelligent storytelling vividly illustrates how life can at once shape and maul a person, and how the tales that express these experiences can nevertheless be told with humor. Her home state of Alaska is more than a backdrop for the gang of complex characters she’s created in her writing — it’s a character in and of itself, confronting each human being on their journey to or within it with its wily, willful nature.

Though Newman is now based in Brooklyn and Connecticut, Alaska is ultimately where she calls home. It’s where she flew in float planes to remote cabins to fish for salmon, where she learned how to shoot a bear if she needed to, and where she learned about what it means to survive and thrive in the wilderness. Her 2013 book, Still Points North, a memoir that mined Newman’s life in Alaska, earned the finalist honor for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and today she balances book writing with several day jobs: She teaches at New York University and works as an editor at large at Catapult Books and as the editor in chief of a new imprint, Zibby Books.

But Newman still found time to translate her Alaskan existence into a new collection of short stories, Nobody Gets Out Alive, which has been named a most anticipated book of 2022 by Vogue, Lit Hub, The Millions, and Oprah Daily. “I will say I have never worked harder on anything in my life — bar none,” Newman tells Shondaland. “I put it all out on the line.”

Newman recently hopped on a call with Shondaland to discuss the inspiration behind Nobody Gets Out Alive, her process as a writer, and the true nature of Alaskans.

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VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: How did this book begin for you? You published a few short stories first.

LEIGH NEWMAN: The first story I wrote was “Nobody Gets Out Alive.” I had written a memoir and was sitting there trying to write a novel, real hard. I would get up to somewhere around 70 pages and would just go, “I can’t do it. I don’t believe these people or the scenario.” I realized I had published a bunch of stories right after grad school — we’re talking like 2004 or 2006 before I switched to almost exclusively nonfiction writing — but I did not know how to find my way to an end. I would always sort of panic. One problem was I was not writing about Alaska. When I first got out of college, I wrote Alaskan short stories, like in 1994, and then I don’t know what happened. I dropped it. I was trying to figure out who I was and trying to find somebody who loved me. I mean, I do not come from writerly folk. My grandmother was a Native American woman who lived on a reservation and was literally illiterate. I was just trying to make money, and then I would write in the evenings in the ’90s, in my 20s.

I guess I’m very impressionable. I looked around me, and people were writing about the suburbs and stuff — I never lived in the suburbs! When I wrote my memoir about Alaska, that was a real breakthrough for me. I knew this next project or the stories would be about Alaska, but I’d never really figured out how to write a story, and that always made me frustrated. So, I just set my sights on writing a good story. Writing a story felt doable. You know what I mean? It was 20 pages, not 500 pages. It seems achievable when you’ve got two kids and are single parenting.

VMS: The scope of a novel is a huge thing to chew off.

LN: It’s also easier. When you write stories, you’ve got to start over, and over, and over again each time, developing all these characters. I didn’t know that, or I would have stuck with a novel. I read every book of stories I could get my hands on and forbid myself to read anything else. I read them, I guess, the way screenwriters approach screenwriting: How do they organize time? What are the different models? It’s all pattern recognition like music, right? I know I had sentences, but I didn’t have form. I knew I had place. I was looking at everybody who’s written a short story in the past 30 to 50 years. I wrote one story called “Nobody Gets Out Alive,” which was later published in Harper’s. There was this one moment when I was in this remote cabin, and I realized I had to pick up all the stuff that was at the end and move it to the first third of the book. It’s like cracking a puzzle; you just start tinkering and see all these possibilities. With “Howl Palace,” I always wanted to have a story where the ending did something totally different, like you were building up to something, and you divert. I always knew I’d wanted to do a flashback, but at that point I’d already written six stories. So, I just tried it, and it worked. A lot of what writing is is being vaguely aware of opportunities and putting them in your mind for when the opportunity is right.

VMS: Do you outline? Or do you just sit down and channel these stories?

LN: I don’t outline anything. I don’t have any idea what’s going on. I’m an extremely instinctual writer. I don’t believe in being erudite. That doesn’t mean I’m not a craftsman or an artist, but I’m not a philosopher, and I probably wouldn’t be very good at chess, because I’m not strategizing, necessarily. I’m just in a moment. The stories are kind of happening to me. The only way I’m able to start a story is with some really interesting line. I can’t even start until I have the voice. When I have the voice, I have the person. When I have the person, I have the situation.

VMS: You just go where the story wants to take you.

LN: That’s right. I don’t want to plan it. There’s something that’s got to be alive in a creative process as you’re writing; otherwise, you get bored and drop out, or at least I do. If I already know what’s going to happen, what’s the point of writing it?

VMS: I think it’s also fascinating with the way you weave characters in and out of one another’s narratives in the periphery. As you’re reading, you’re like, “Katrina? Is that the Katrina from before?” It’s just so gently revealed in the narrative; it’s never announced. Was that a conscious choice?

LN: I wrote the first story, “Nobody Gets Out Alive,” and was really fascinated by Janice, so I wrote a story for Janice. She popped up in a story called “Slide and Glide” at a dinner party, and so did her husband. I would think about the characters, and by that point I was so in love with them that I would want to give them another story that was all their own. A lot of it had to do with me wanting to create this fictional lake where everybody lived in suburban Anchorage. I grew up on a lake just like this with float planes in the backyard, helicopters in the backyard, and everybody flying in and out of what we would call “town,” Anchorage. It’s only a city because it’s Alaska and we have no other big city. When you have a small town and a lake where everybody lives, that creates a little world, right? A world where people have these big houses, and there’s a certain kind of bravado by outdoorsmen and their going in and out of the wilderness and suburbia. They go to Target to buy all their supplies so they can go on a big, huge sheep hunt on a mountain. It’s a very specific world, and when you live in it, everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s in each other’s business — this person has an affair, and it affects this marriage, right? Or this person gets in a fight with that other person, and that affects everybody’s business on the lake and what happens to their kids and how they grow up. There were a lot of, like, crazy parties and shenanigans! I was too young when the pipeline was being built, but all the parents used to talk about doing piles of cocaine, and all this money, and hot tubs. These were people that had never had money before. They came to Alaska, and it was like a gold rush of oil money, and they built these big houses. The kids were running wild and getting the ducks drunk. Obviously, that’s very cruel, but at the time in the ’70s, it wasn’t. These big, strong, macho dads who were pilots and dentists were flying us out to the wilderness where there was no cell phone. If something went down, which it frequently did, you were on your own.

VMS: Some of your characters get stuck on a remote site. Did you ever get stuck for a long spell?

LN: Way more than once. These stories are [true]! If your refrigerator is full of experiences that you’ve had, you can just sort of pick the feeling. One time, my dad flew me and my grandmother out — she was a really, really good outdoorswoman and really good fisherwoman. My nana and I used to fish in our underwear! We were hundreds of miles from any kind of civilization or help, and my dad decided that something was wrong with the plane. He decided to risk it and fly back to Anchorage to get it fixed. I must’ve been 6 or 7. He did not come back! He left us with a cooler of pop, two fishing rods, and two shotguns in case we got attacked by a bear, which was a very real possibility. We just kept fishing, and fishing, and fishing, but it got later, and then after a certain point, you know, in a float plane, you can’t fly after the sun goes down. I think we ended up out there for 12 hours. Luckily, the sun doesn’t go down until 1:00 in the morning. He eventually came and got us in the middle of the night.

VMS: Alaska is such a powerful backdrop for your narrative — obviously, it’s your home, and you love it. Your book is like a love letter to it.

LN: I’m so glad you said that because it is exactly the language I had in my own mind. I was writing a love letter to my childhood, to the real Alaska. When I’ve seen TV shows, these people are not Alaskans. Alaskans go to the dentist. They’re not buying a tug and the tug doesn’t work. They’re very aware of, like, surviving and being careful. They tend to be very, very smart — so smart, they can’t get along with people in the Lower 48. And a lot of them are self-made, very entrepreneurial, and the women dress beautifully. I’m always embarrassed when I go home to Alaska, because I look like I fell out of a garbage can. The ladies come out with a cashmere outfit and beautiful lipstick because they love to go out to a beautiful dinner. I wanted to show men and women that were real and complicated, not just the frontier narrative. I wanted to write about the women, mostly. That was a very conscious thing because it always ends up being just men’s frontier stories. I wanted to have some parts of native culture too, but not speak for that culture.

VMS: In “Valley of the Moon,” you write, “Like most people in Alaska, we come from dirt and sorry circumstance,” and I thought that was such a powerful line.

LN: Our family was a little different. My mother actually came from sorry circumstance but sort of raised herself up into a fancy lady. By the time she had made it to Anchorage, everybody thought she was the classiest lady in town. She was impeccable. I posted a picture of us when we were living in a camper van. My dad was a little bit of what he called “a goddamn independent.” He had gone to Berkeley and to Johns Hopkins. He believed in education and got himself a good one. But a lot of the families around us were self-made. I was always hanging around my dad and all his friends, listening to everybody tell stories. The dads would always be over there with cigars, and some Roman candles and some whiskey, and they’d be shooting the shit, and I loved to listen to it. It’s always imprinted on my brain, and that’s a lot of the voice I write in.

VMS: You write from a child’s POV also.

LN: I wanted to write in every voice. I wanted it to be a world with every kind of person in it. I was focusing on the stories of the women of Alaska because it’s hard there. It’s literally a man’s world. That has not changed, the kind of sexism, the struggle for identity, work, and respect, and those things are a very real thing. At the same time, women in Alaska are hardcore. I remember my stepmother pointing a gun and shooting a hedgehog. They’re there for the adventure too. But domestic violence is very real thing, and sexual assault, and rape just plain out. I’ve seen so many strong and exciting women go out for a glass of wine, and we’ll end up in some situation where some drunk guy comes over and berates us or won’t walk away. Mountaineers or state senators or totally famous lawyers will literally shrink because the consequences will be severe. I forget because I don’t live there full-time, and I’ll be like, “Get away from us, you idiot!” and my friends are like, “Shut up and sit down; the guy’s drunk. He probably has a firearm on him, he’ll meet us in the parking lot, and something not good is going to happen.” That’s a real thing. Like what do you do when you’re queer in a world full of men? A lot of our lives are negotiating these things, pulling it together, and getting over them. It’s not exceptional to go through all this s--t — this is what life is. How you rebound will define the quality of your life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s (About) Time for Alexandra Billings

The formidable talent chats with Shondaland about her new memoir, “This Time for Me,” and exploring what it means to put it all out there on the stage and on the page.

An accomplished stage and screen actor, singer, AIDS and LGBTQ+ activist, and renowned acting teacher, Alexandra Billings has kicked down countless doors to get where she is. The first trans actor to conquer roles like Mama Rose in Gypsy and Mrs. Linde in A Doll’s House, Billings, in conversation, exudes a familiar warmth through a megawatt smile and a maternal mentor vibe. It’s the feeling she’s inspired time and time again with pivotal characters like Davina on the Golden Globe, SAG, and Emmy award-winning series Transparent, and as a real-life teacher — Billings is an assistant professor of acting at USC — who nurtures young talent.

With a penchant for musical theater from a very young age (her father was a music teacher and the musical director of the L.A. Civic Light Opera), Billings transitioned from the Chicago drag scene to the Chicago theater scene before taking to the big and small screen in both transgender and non-transgender female roles on How to Get Away With Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, and the feature film Valley of Bones. She was also the subject of a 2009 Emmy Award-nominated PBS documentary, Schoolboy to Showgirl: The Alexandra Billings Story.

Fresh off a turn as Madame Morrible in Wicked on Broadway, Billings Zoomed with Shondaland a while back from her home in Los Angeles to chat about her page-turner of a memoir, This Time for Me, which takes you along on her journey of self-discovery with sensitivity, raw openness, and honesty. You understand how it feels to be misgendered as a child; what it means to suffer abuse; what it means to survive addiction; what it means to be diagnosed with AIDS when it was basically a death sentence; what it means to survive; what it means to recognize the love of your life at 14; and, above all, what it means to choose life and live it to the fullest.

VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: I sank right into your book! I can see how your story will help so many. How did you decide now was the time to write your memoir?

ALEXANDRA BILLINGS: During the pandemic, my spouse said I should write my life down. I talked to my friend Joanne Gordon [who is credited as a collaborator on Billings’ memoir], who was my teacher and is now part of my family, and said, “You and I work so well together; I’m just going to write stuff.” She said, “You write on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all the time — just write like you do, and we’ll put it together.” So, that’s basically what I did; I just wrote stories, and she put it all together, because it was a mess. She made it linear, cohesive, and she corrected stuff. Otherwise, it would be a jigsaw puzzle. She was instrumental in the shape of this book.

VMS: In terms of the narrative, did you plan on it being sequential? Did you mess around with the approach?

AB: It’s meant to be read from beginning to end, but it’s so big. I wrote it so you could go to any essay and just read the essay, put it down, and pick it up a couple of weeks later, and read it again. That’s the way my brain works, in the abstract. That’s the way I read. I married someone who reads a book from beginning to end. I just don’t do that. If it’s not I Love Lucy, I’m just bored.

VMS: You’ve dealt with a lot in your life — physical and emotional abuse as a child, and violence during sex work and in the throes of addiction. Was the process of parsing through all those painful moments healing or cathartic for you in any way?

AB: No [laughs], it was a terrible experience! I used to talk to Larry [Kramer, the playwright and AIDS activist who wrote The Normal Heart; Billings played Nancy Reagan in Kramer’s political sendup Just Say No] all the time about this. Larry was a prolific writer. Even though the writing process was painful for him, there was a sense of catharsis. That didn’t happen for me, to be honest. It was very difficult to do. Then I had to do the Audible and had to say it all over again! I am happy I did it. Do you know what’s interesting? I think what’s happening — I think; I don’t know — is that the catharsis is happening now. Piece by piece. It’s bizarre that I’m able to physically look at my life in this thing.

VMS: It’s in print and out of your body now.

AB: And you can hold it. It’s very metaphorical that I can hold my own life in my own hands. When people ask me about it and I talk about things that happened, I’m not weeping or falling apart or shattering into a million pieces. So, I think the catharsis is maybe coming now.

VMS: You buried so many of your friends and loved ones when AIDS first hit in the mid-to-late ’80s, before receiving your own diagnosis in the mid-’90s. What do you wish younger people understood about what it was like to survive that time?

AB: Fascinatingly, I think we have an entire generation right now that really understands global trauma. We have people behaving very badly, and then we also have people shutting themselves up in their own houses, still afraid to go out. Just show someone a mask, and they have a visceral reaction to it, whatever it is. Whereas it used to be very difficult for me to go, “We kept a lot of bodies in trucks,” I can now say, “Remember when we saw that news item when we put bodies of the dead in ice trucks? Multiply that by 10, and that’s what we were going through.” So now, I don’t have to explain as much as I used to, strangely, because we all have a mutual dialogue of trauma.

VMS: The parallels now present themselves in a way the world at large understands.

AB: What’s really important to understand is when Covid happened and the white, cis, heteronormative patriarchy got sick, we had a vaccine in a year. When the queer and the trans people got sick almost 35 years ago, we still don’t have any of that. That needs to be said loud and clear.

VMS: You’ve suffered a lot of trauma, which led to addiction. Being on the other side of that now, how does sobriety serve your art?

AB: When anything happens to me in my professional life, no matter if I say yes or no to it, there is a sense of gratefulness that I’m even being asked. It’s only when people behave badly that I get very shocked. I’m 60 years old, and I’m still shocked when people behave badly! But I always try and go in very grateful with my feet on the ground. Sobriety has given me the sense of balance to practice that.

Alexandra Billings at the Equality California Los Angeles Equality Awards 20th Anniversary event.

Amanda Edwards//Getty Images

VMS: The way you fell into acting was amazing. One of your friends, Chili, encouraged you to audition for Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which led you toward an acting career. If you could go back in time and meet yourself while you were working in drag at Club Victoria, or even as a young actor in Chicago theater, what advice would you give yourself?

AB: I think I’d say, “You’re right. Keep going. Don’t listen to those people. They don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re fine.” The big thing for me, and it’s still true to this day, is we don’t have any representation. Trans people don’t have anyone that we can point to and say, “There I am.” When you don’t see yourself represented in the artistic world, you don’t see yourself represented in any other world. Art is the reflection of the human experience, so if we don’t see ourselves, or hear our stories, or hear our voices, other people don’t, which is why there are over 100 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in our country right now, and at least half of them are targeted toward trans people. The reason that’s true is because they don’t know who we are. Some trans people say they hate us — I don’t think they hate us — I think they don’t know us. You can’t hate what you don’t know. They may not understand us, see us, or get us, but that’s why we have to create more opportunities. My whole life as a young actor, I took anything. I learned that when I was a kid. My dad was important in my young life. I cleaned the stage, helped people put on their makeup, made posters — I did everything in the theater. I’ll do anything — I don’t care what it is. Because what matters is we create more dialogue for everyone so that all of us can have a conversation.

VMS: In the book, you describe your relationships with people like Larry Kramer and some pivotal conversations you’ve had encouraging you to push forward and advocate for more visibility. As you now have your own production company, what are you working on that reflects all that you’ve learned?

AB: The book for me begins and ends in very specific moments in my life. It begins with my professional career at what I thought at that point was the pinnacle, which is receiving this award (the Golden Globes’ Best Television Series — Comedy or Musical, for Transparent), and it ends with my students. The journey for me was becoming what I thought fame and fortune would bring me, to becoming a student of the human experience. The whole book is about me gathering these teachers in my life, just like Dorothy does as she gathers teachers as she goes down the yellow brick road. In the end, Glinda tells her she had the power to go home all along, and Dorothy’s like, “What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?” Glinda says, “If I did, you wouldn’t have believed me.” In my opinion, I had to experience all of these hurts so freedom would make more sense to me. For me, it’s all about how best can I gather all of the lessons, including Larry’s, and repeat them in my head. It’s not just about the famous people I’ve met in my life; it’s people you’ve never heard of who have also been my guides.

VMS: I think your book is ultimately also a love story about Chrisanne, your wife! (They met in high school, at 14.)

AB: When you’re like 10 or 15 years in, we realized we weren’t paying attention to each other. We knew we had to figure it out. We had to see each other more clearly. As young married people, it’s a very different marriage than when you’re older married people. I’m trans, she’s cis, there’s a gender thing between the two of us anyway, we have conversations about it all the time, so our lives in that way don’t follow the normal marriage path. As you know from reading the book, I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life, but the smartest thing I’ve ever done is marry that human being.

VMS: Tell me how teaching has changed your life. You went back and got a master’s!

AB: It was horrible! The program that I went through was very specific. It was a pedagogical program where master teachers taught other teachers how to teach. It was fabulous! It changed my teaching exponentially. It brought me technique, it brought me a foundation, it gave me a language I never thought I would ever need or have. It allowed me to explain this thing that I do in a very cohesive way. When I went in, I’d already been teaching for 30-plus years.

VMS: What nourishes you the most about teaching?

AB: My favorite thing about teaching is when I get in the room, a student comes up to me, asks me a question, and I have absolutely no idea what the answer is! [Laughs.] Not a clue! Every part of me goes, “You’re a phony; you’re going to be found out; run, Alex!” I have to stay with them, and I have to see them, not teach the room, but I have to teach the person in front of me and see them in a way I was never seen in any classroom. I then begin to learn how to be kinder, more compassionate, and quick. I have to be able to say to myself, even if I don’t know the answer, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” It’s okay to say, “Let’s find out together.” It’s okay to say, “Let’s keep exploring.” It’s okay to live in the question. You don’t have to have all of the answers. Nobody’s got all of the answers. Those are my favorite moments — when they teach me.

VMS: Do you have a dream role that you want to play?

AB: Oh, yes! I’ve been saying it for a year now, so I’m just going to keep saying it: the first transgender Mame on Broadway. Somebody needs to make that happen. I love that score, I love the story, and I also believe that Mame is certainly a character that could be transgender. Her brother, her whole family alienates her from a young age; she has all of these eclectic, beautiful, fabulous friends from all over the world; she dresses impeccably, and she’s constantly in drag, constantly switching her wigs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and she innately understands the sense of chosen family. This is what cis women always have a problem with: When that little boy walks into Mame’s life, she has this big life — why all of the sudden is she the mother? Any marginalized human understands immediately why that’s true. Chosen family is the heart of that show. When that little boy walks into Mame’s life, Mame sees herself and goes, “That’s it. I see you. Let’s hang out.”

VMS: You wrote: “The rules erased me. I had no place in art or education or history or casual conversation.” Hollywood has come a long way but still has so far to go in terms of trans visibility and representation. What change would you like to see?

AB: I would love to see transgender stories where their transness is secondary to the plot. I’d love to see younger trans people star in shows. I’d love to see more shows that are educational, or with trans, nonbinary kids. I’d love to be able to walk into Hollywood and have this white patriarchy say, “We really need to work. Do you know where we can get some work?” It would be great if all the white men were sort of banging on our door going, “Please, we need to be leads in shows.” That would be great. When marginalized people, Black women, Latinx humans, people who are living in wheelchairs, people who can’t hear or see — when all of those marginalized humans are running Hollywood, I’ll be happy.

VMS: After people read your book, what do you hope they come away with?

AB: I hope they understand that this journey is filled with gifts that are surprises. That gifts don’t always come in the most neatly wrapped packages. It’s not about the end result, that it’s about the journey. The joy for me was the real surprise even through the tragedies, because I lost people. An end-of-life care nurse wrote a beautiful book I once read from cover to cover with stories about all of these people she helped pass through this world into the next. One of the things she said at the end was just know that at no time did anyone she helped transition ever say, “Gee, I wish I’d stayed more at the office,” or “Boy, I wish I had worked longer hours, away from my family.” Nobody ever said that. The thing that most people said was “I wish I had called my son” or “I wish my wife and I had talked more.” Or “I wish I had gone on that trip around the world.” Do the thing that brings you the most joy. You don’t need to be frivolous or irresponsible, but do the thing that brings you the most joy because, in the end, all of us are going to leave the planet through the same portal, whatever it is that you believe. So, why not leave with a joyful noise?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Poly Styrene Still Deserves to Be Heard

With the punk rock pioneer now immortalized in her daughter Celeste Bell’s biopic, “I Am a Cliché,” here’s why you should get to know Poly’s music and her story.

“Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I think, ‘Oh, bondage, up yours!’
One-two-three-four!”
— X-Ray Spex, “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”

Though her late-’70s punk band, X-Ray Spex, released but a handful of infectious singles and two albums, including the seminal Germfree Adolescents, lyricist, singer, songwriter, and feminist Poly Styrene’s influence springs eternal through the countless artists she’s inspired, both during her life and after her passing. An impassioned dervish in braces and Day-Glo, Poly — who designed all of her clothing and the band’s logos and album covers — understood full well what branding yourself meant before there was such a thing as branding yourself. And she did it all with no regard for the male gaze.

Like many prophetic artists, Poly’s tumultuous life was driven by her sensitivity, creativity, and the complex, heartbreaking, and triumphant experiences she endured to make her mark on the world. The first woman of color to front a successful rock band in the U.K., Poly was born Marianne Elliott-Said in the late ’50s to a Scottish-Irish mother and a Somali father. She was raised in the gritty Brixton section of London and, because she was biracial, was cruelly and consistently made to feel like an outsider from a very young age. At around 19, she assumed the identity of Poly Styrene, formed X-Ray Spex, and busted into the British punk scene, her unique voice amplifying cerebral poetry that tackled postmodernism, sexism, and consumerism.

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Tragically, it wasn’t long before the frenetic punk life triggered and worsened her symptoms of bipolar disorder, leading to a series of nervous breakdowns and hospitalizations that led Poly to opt out of the music business in her mid-20s, soon after her daughter, Celeste Bell, was born.

Poly Styrene died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 53, but Bell has become the gatekeeper of her legacy with Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, a powerful, award-winning documentary she co-wrote, co-directed, narrates, and appears in.

Using ample archive footage of Poly, Bell retraces her mother’s footsteps to tell her story, while punk and post-punk luminaries like singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry, journalist Vivien Goldman, designer Vivienne Westwood, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and Bikini Kill/Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna lend their voices to connect the dots of Poly’s influence and experience.

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Ruth Negga almost eerily assumes the voice of Poly, reading excerpts from the singer’s journals and lyrics. The actress joined the project after literally running into Bell in the street. “We ended up chatting and had some drinks. It was really great because it turned up that she was a fan of my mum,” Bell explains. “She found my mum to be an inspirational character. We needed a voice different from mine to include all my mum’s diary entries and represent her voice, and the first person that came to my mind was Ruth.”

The film was the natural evolution after Dayglo: The Poly Styrene Story, a book Bell published in 2019 with fellow writer Zoë Howe. While rifling through her mother’s archives and ephemera, Bell realized there were many people who might relate to various aspects of her story. “Being biracial at a time when there were very few biracial children and it was really frowned upon, my mother experienced a lot of direct racial abuse and violence, and it was very, very difficult,” Bell tells Shondaland on a call from London. “She had this feeling of being an outsider and kind of an outcast in society. When you feel like that, obviously it can be traumatic, and it was — but it can also fuel some anger. My mom was able to channel her anger, but she also had this wonderful, unique perspective of society because she was kind of on the outside. Her writing with social themes really set her apart from the other punks of that generation. She was kind of on another level in terms of her lyrical output.”

Talk about being ahead of her time and on another level — songs like “I Am a Poseur” could be construed as a psychic prediction of today’s obsession with social media:

“I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
Exhibition is the name, voyeurism is the game
Stereoscopic is the show, viewing time makes it grow
Grow, grow, grow, grooow
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
My facade is just a fake, shock horror no escape
Sensationalism for the feed, caricatures are what you breed
Breed, breed, breed, breeeed”

Remember, this song was written in the late ’70s. “There were these really important themes relevant to today,” Bell says, aptly describing her mother’s lyrics as “dystopian fiction in 2-to-3-minute punk rock songs.” She continues, “My mother was creating a whole world, and Poly Styrene was a character. She was able to make predictions about where things would end up, and of course her predictions were really accurate. She was one of those people who could pick up on trends and see where they were going. Maybe in another life, she would’ve been a trend forecaster, whether they were trivial things like fashion or when it was geopolitics and scientific advances.”

Though Poly was a punk pioneer, Bell says her mother was more of a hippie at heart. “A lot of her ideas about natural living, going back to the land, those are the things that really informed her to a large extent. A lot of her critique of consumerism came from those early experiences where she was in communities rejecting the norms. She was not ‘anti’ anything. She was just observing what was happening and remarking on it. But she didn’t have any solutions. She really disliked preachy lyrics.”

Poly Styrene

Falcon Stuart

As seen in the film, the brittle punk scene and music press could be cruel, dismissive, and abrasive to Poly, and a series of difficult events prompted her to step out of that world almost as quickly as she’d entered it. “When my mum was a little girl, she dreamed of being famous, but the dream is always different than the reality,” Bell explains. “Being in the limelight and having all that attention just wasn’t for her. She wasn’t suited in terms of her personality. Ultimately, my mum was a very genuine, real person, and she found herself in a very superficial, unreal world. She was so sensitive and had a tendency toward anxiety, and early bipolar disorder was manifesting in her teenage years. People started to deal with her as this character she created rather than the person that she was. That created a deep disconnect for her mentally.”

After a mental-health crisis (when Bell was little), Poly opted to hearken back to her hippie roots by releasing a folk album, Translucence, and moving with Bell to a Hare Krishna sanctuary in England called Bhaktivedanta Manor. “I think she was just overloaded and saturated and fed up with punk,” Bell remarks. “I think she felt like she lost herself during that period. The only way she could piece things back together was to leave the spotlight. At that point, she decided to make an acoustic album because she wouldn’t have to tour or perform live. She wanted to do a studio album that she didn’t really promote. Obviously, it didn’t do well, but my mum was quite happy to retire at a very young age.” Sadly, mental breakdowns and bipolar disorder continued to derail the artist for many years, making it difficult, and at times impossible, for her to raise Bell. Toward the end of her life, Poly found a regimen that seemed to work and regained some equilibrium, even releasing another album (Generation Indigo) and performing her songs with Bell (who once fronted a ska-punk band in Madrid) at one point before cancer took her life.

For X-Ray Spex fans and other human beings alike, I Am a Cliché has much to say about what it means to move through the world as a sensitive artist who wears her soul on her sleeve. It also has much to say about what it means to move through the world when moving through the world is challenging. Bell gave a lot of careful thought to what she would share about her experience as the daughter of someone with, at times, severe mental illness.

Poly Styrene and Celeste Bell

Tony Barratt

“I was as open as I could be. I think it’s really important because often we feel great sympathy in society for those who suffer from mental illness, but the children of the people who suffer, their stories are often neglected,” Bell says. “It’s very difficult for them to speak out about their experiences because it can be really unbelievably challenging for children to have to deal with parents that may not be able to look after them properly. It’s something that we should be talking about, but it’s a really tricky subject. So, I think it was important to be honest about those challenges.”

Now that the film is out in the world, Bell says she’s been getting warm and appreciative feedback from both new fans of her mother’s music and the children of parents who suffer from mental illness. Though we’ve come a long way, she wishes there was a greater societal understanding of the realities of bipolar disorder. “From my perspective, just purely in my case, I think there is probably not that much understanding about how severe and disabling bipolar disorder can be. We need to see all mental illness as a disability. My mother could never hold down any kind of regular job — that would be completely unfeasible for her. We’ve gotten very good at talking about mental illness, but there’s a lot of practical work that needs to be done to make sure we aren’t neglecting these people and letting them fall through the cracks of society.”

As emotionally challenging as it was, Bell found the process of making the film cathartic. “It’s been five years of my life — a long time!” she says. “If I spent that long in therapy, I would’ve resolved a lot of things. On a practical level, one of the things I had to do was collect my thoughts and write about my experiences. If you’ve had challenges in your life and you can’t speak to a therapist for whatever reason, writing everything down is a great practice.”

The Many Voices of Sarah Jones

The Tony winner chats with Shondaland about the SXSW premiere of her film “Sell/Buy/Date,” the importance of discussing sex work, and what it means to “do the work.”

With a Tony and an Obie already under her belt, multitalented multi-hyphenate Sarah Jones is now making her SXSW debut with the premiere of her new film, Sell/Buy/Date, which she stars in, co-wrote, produced, and directed and is based on her 2016 pre-pandemic, sold-out off-Broadway show of the same name. Referred to by Jones as an “unorthodoc,” Sell/Buy/Date uses interviews and monologues as it follows her and the handful of multicultural characters she so deftly brings to life (among them an 85-year-old Jewish bubbe, a white sex-work-studies major, a “dude” driver called Rashid, and a half-Puerto Rican, half-Dominican women’s rights advocate) on a journey to better understand how sex work is impacted by stigma, race, power, criminal justice, sexism, and class.

The film is quite an undertaking considering these are tremendously layered and complex topics. As such, the approach Jones takes in making Sell/Buy/Date — which boasts Meryl Streep as a producer — as depicted in the film itself, is also layered and complex. For context, in real life and in the movie, Jones experienced some very real social-media backlash when, after word got out she’d be bringing Sell/Buy/Date to the big screen, sex workers began expressing concern that their voices wouldn’t be considered in the making of the film.

In the end, though, Jones sought to ensure that Sell/Buy/Date does make these crucial voices heard. After earnestly processing her almost-cancellation in the film, Jones, her crew of characters, and a few familiar faces along the way (like Broad City’s Ilana Glazer) embark on a mission to talk to sex workers of various cultural backgrounds and life experiences. The finished product is, indeed, an enlightening “unorthodoc” that takes a sensitive, meta approach to both sex work and cancel culture.

Just before boarding a flight to premiere the film, Jones spoke with Shondaland about the ins and outs of bringing her vision to the big screen.

VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: When did you first understand that you wanted to be a writer and performer?

SARAH JONES: I was probably preverbal! It’s always been like knowing my own name. I have a sense of wanting to tell stories and a sense of almost urgency about it. I have one very specific perspective that only I have, just like writers who have inspired me since I was little. This is probably taken from a really butchered Rilke quote, but you write because you must. You write because if you don’t, you feel like you’re not even alive. I think I’ve always felt that way.

VMS: It’s just how you came into the world. Some people are tall. Some people are short. Some people are writers.

SJ: Some people are tall writers!

VMS: Some are short! I watched a performance online that you did years ago at The Moth. In it, you said all the characters that you channel were inspired by people you know. When did you realize you could mimic accents so impeccably?

SJ: Again, I have to credit childhood. Basically, I have no training except my wonderfully eccentric, multi-character, multiracial — I should have said multicultural, but multi-character is probably more accurate — family. Growing up was like living in the theater with a larger-than-life tableau of these figures who were forces of nature. That’s the best way I can put it. I heard someone say recently, “I’m a strong flavor.” My family is nothing but strong flavors, and it happens that those flavors are like Pickapeppa Sauce, which is Jamaican, or like gefilte fish [a Jewish delicacy]. They’re strong! I just couldn’t help but marinate in all of those flavors, and they all came alive within me.

VMS: In that performance at The Moth, you tell a story about how a couple of cops saw you and a friend out walking on the street in Los Angeles and assumed you were sex workers. Then a British accent comes out of your mouth and derails them. Do you use accents in your work to influence the food for thought you’re serving?

SJ: I feel like you’re picking up on the Pickapeppa in here! And the horseradish! That’s it! When you think about the world we live in, there’s a musicality to how we all sound in the different languages that we’ve all picked up, whatever our backgrounds. When I was growing up in New York, there was even more of a sense of distinct accents and people who are descended from them. I think it’s akin to kids who grow up in a home where they hear music played all the time, and it just starts to become a part of how they hear. For me, everything is a multilayered story, and the accent is sort of a portal into so much more about who we are, migration, and where we’re going. So, yeah, I can’t tell a story without thinking about that layer of music. Human music!

Jones as three different characters in Buy/Sell/Date.

Sarah Jones

VMS: With Sell/Buy/Date, you and your array of characters dig deep into the varied perspectives women have about sex-work legalization or “decrim” (decriminalization of sex work) and its potential impact on white women versus Black and Indigenous women and women of color. What inspired you to tackle this important issue?

SJ: There are so many reasons. That Moth story that I told about being pulled over walking while Black, as they say, with a friend who is a Latinx Mexican American woman from L.A., who lived out here all her life. She was like, “Yeah, girl. This is what we go through!” You can’t set foot out of your car because there’s this implicit idea that we are sexualized, probably differently and more so than other women. You’ll hear the language: Latin women are sexy, or spicy. Black women are oversexed, or whatever.

For me, growing up with a mom who has white privilege [Jones is biracial] was sort of confusing because she would have a different experience walking down the very same street than I would. I had to start to process from really early on what this meant for me, for my white friends and relatives, and for my Black and brown friends and relatives. In a larger conversation that we’ve all been having for the last couple of years since the death of George Floyd and the uprisings and all of it, I think everybody’s more primed than ever to tell the truth about how white supremacy is a real thing. We have to look at it. We have to look at how all of these factors come together so that women of all backgrounds have continued to have to fight for their most basic dignities. Has anyone heard about Roe v. Wade? Here we are, and if you add the layers of racism and class, and what I think of as the violence of class oppression, it’s really awful in a society where there is so much to have people who have so little, especially if they’re girls and women, femmes, and nonbinary folks. When you kind of put all of that into a combining force of our society, it’s not just gender. It’s not just race. It’s not just class. It’s not just the sexual orientation or identity. When you mash this all up, we really have to account for that. If we’re going to be out there protesting in the streets and demanding rights for everyone, we have to get more nuanced and more clear about how that impacts the conversation around the sex industry.

VMS: In the film, you point out the myriad ways we’re culturally conditioned as women to accept and contribute to the exploitation of women, with some surprising tidbits. I never knew that Barbie was inspired by a sex worker!

SJ: Right? Crazy! The Lilli doll — that’s what she was called at first — was based on a woman who was a sex worker. The truth is, I want to live in a world where girls, when it’s age-appropriate and we’ve got enough love, support, nurturing, and self-esteem before we leave our homes, truly have the freedom to choose whatever we want without feeling coerced or without finding ourselves in a situation where there’s a power dynamic and we can’t get out. I want to see everybody free and able to make choices. I think the challenge is, if we’re honest, I don’t know anybody who has true freedom of choice. In the film, my hope is that if we pull back and realize, wait a minute, it’s not about the sex industry being exploitive or empowering or whatever. The question is, is this world too exploitive and empowering for them?

Jones while filming.

Danielle DeBruno

VMS: Your film also took a meta approach in considering cancel culture and how artists have to tell stories responsibly by doing the work. How did that affect you after having already done this as an off-Broadway play?

SJ: Totally! I mean, first of all, how many variants deep are we at this point into the pandemic? I remember at the start of the pandemic, going on Instagram and using that as my platform to literally sort of greenlight myself to be able to talk about the challenges of being born into a particular context. I had the experience of being challenged. What are you allowed to talk about, and what are you not? We’re in a moment in which I worry that because I’m not as West Indian as somebody else, I don’t have a right to tell that story. I’m not as Jewish as somebody else. I’m Dominican adjacent, I have cousins, but I’m not this enough, or I’m not that enough. Do I need to trot out my 23andMe in order to verify all of these people who’ve been part of my life for so long? Am I allowed to share from my perspective on those experiences anymore?

Sex work is a topic that can be really painful for women to talk about. Women who agree on everything else, when it comes to this topic, there can be this disconnect and confusion. Who’s the arbiter of who’s allowed to tell what, where, and how, and why? I just wanted to tell the truth about my own fears, about how some of those fears came true, and about how ultimately, for me, this is a movie that’s about a human experience we’re trying to really unpack. Where is there harm? Where do women need more freedom, more choices in life, to not be criminalized, to not have people moralizing and slut-shaming us?

The film is very much about my love for all of my sisters. Whoever identifies as a woman, that’s who I care about. When there’s this other debate about who is allowed to say what, I think we can sometimes really get lost. I’m not saying there isn’t room for a culture that demands accountability of people, especially after so many decades and centuries of only a couple of people having the bullhorn and getting to dominate all the narratives. But I would say, for me, I just thought to tell the truth. As much as I didn’t want to share some things that are extremely personal to me, some things that I’ve never shared before, I realized that this is a larger conversation around women and our power and our sexual freedom, and how can we make sure that we’re not just letting cis, straight, white, male voices tell the story?

VMS: Could cancel culture potentially impact creativity because people will be afraid to tell stories if they’re not only, strictly their own?

SJ: We’re in a moment in which you can be tried by public opinion on a platform owned by people who are doing far worse! But there is this kind of public square where it does feel — I think I even say this in the film at one point — like one false move, and you’re dead. But cancel culture exists for a reason. There’s a whole majority of our society that is not rich, powerful, cis, straight, white men with all the mouthpieces. If you think about it, we’ve always had a cancel culture — it’s just the rest of us were always automatically canceled.

I see this as a correction, maybe it’s an over-correction at times, but you will never hear me say that cancel culture is destroying everything. I would make the argument that everything has been destroyed for a long time because only certain people had access. Now there’s this very messy, extremely uncomfortable, and I think at times, yes — deeply unjust I would call it — sort of an overcorrection that says we haven’t had any kind of voice in this larger screaming match for so long. Now we get to call out every single chance we get, and I get that; I really do.

VMS: Meryl Streep executive produced your film. How did you first connect with her?

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SJ: Meryl and I connected through human rights work. I was part of a women’s rights organization that came into existence, in part because Amnesty International was doing amazing human rights work, but it kind of was forgetting women. So, I connected with Meryl through her humanitarian side, which is kind of like saying the wet part of the ocean — she is a humanitarian at her core. In my heart, I believe the reason she’s so brilliant at everything she does and we all love her characters so much is that she sees and understands what it means to be a human being. It was like a weird miracle. I remember getting a call in my office — I think we had landlines; that’s how long ago it was. My assistant at the time was like, “Meryl Streep is calling.” I was like, “It’s spam! What kind of New Yorker are you?” Anyway, it really was Meryl! The next thing I knew, she offered to amplify my voice with hers, which is one of the best uses of allyship that I can think of, and she really helped me find my way into my own work back then.

VMS: The dream! What’s your process as a writer? Do you write every day, or do you just go nuts and vomit on the page when it moves you?

SJ: I would say that writing this film is exactly what my work has always been. We jokingly call it an “unorthodoc” because it’s stuff that’s been percolating in my mind since I was a little kid — the characters, knowing that I wanted to tell multiple facets of a story that felt really powerful and important and involved my family. It’s not at all fiction, but also there’s a little element of heightened reality or getting to write some of it based on real events. It basically wrote itself through me. I feel like every morning I would wake up, and the script would grab me, get me out of bed, get me dressed, and plop me down in front of my computer. I have a wonderful writing partner who, you know, co-wrote the story with me, David Goldblum. It’s important for me to say, in the most feminist way I can, this is not a “chick movie.” The whole point of this movie is I want everyone of all backgrounds, all genders, to watch it and feel connected to it as a human being, and to learn something that they don’t know about other people and themselves. That’s my dream for it. In a way, getting to write part of it with a cis, straight, white male dude who I really trust, and is also on his own journey about all this stuff. It was like an incredible writing process. I think my process is always evolving, and this was mostly me getting out of the way.

Nicole Lapin's No-Nonsense Advice on How to Make Your Money Work for You

The money expert talks to Shondaland about her new book, “Miss Independent,” and breaks down everything from investing to inflation to crypto.

Nicole Lapin didn’t come from money, nor did she always handle it like the consummate pro she is today. Like so many of us, the best-selling author and seasoned money correspondent, who has been seen on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, and Entertainment Tonight, had her share of financial challenges and wrestled with credit-card debt. That’s precisely why she set out to empower readers of her recently released fourth book, Miss Independent: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Start Investing and Grow Your Own Wealth, which is chock-full of easily employable money hacks and strategies that can help us break down the mental blocks that can drain our resources. She got on the horn with Shondaland to talk about her new book and share some practical, actionable tips we all can use to hang on to more of what we make.

VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: What’s your favorite thing about helping others with their finances?

NICOLE LAPIN: I’m the least likely person to do it! I didn’t come from money. I figured out how to make my own money and make it grow while attending the School of Hard Knocks. It became my mission to take the jargon out of this world because it has so often been an impediment for women in particular to get our financial lives together. Money is a language, just like anything else. I figured it out the hard way, and I wanted to give out the cheat code for everything I wish I knew before I started. So often, women stay in crappy, toxic jobs or unfortunately abusive relationships, or they’re too scared of being able to support themselves. Ultimately, financial independence means the freedom to have your own back and live the life you love on your terms, so that’s what motivates me to do what I do.

VMS: What inspired you to write Miss Independent?

NL: It’s Rich Bitch part two, essentially. The goal with that, my first book, was to help women get their basic personal financial life together. Miss Independent is about how to grow wealth and start investing because, unfortunately, you can’t budget or save your way into wealth. As high as your base salary gets, it’s never going to grow long-term wealth. The only thing that will is investing, and I think the macroeconomic forces of the pandemic definitely inspired me to focus on this topic more and dig into it. There wasn’t a book at this level that speaks in real English without jargon. So, I felt motivated and called to do that because the only thing that has mattered for the last few years at the forefront is health and wealth.

VMS: What are some of the biggest misconceptions involved in building wealth?

NL: I think one of the main misconceptions is that getting finances together, especially within a family unit, is a guy thing. I talk in the book about how there have been studies with young boys and girls where girls associate “scarcity” and “anxiety”-type words with money, and boys associate words like “ambitious” and “knowledgeable” with money. The truth is, there’s nothing that a guy knows that we don’t; they just talk about it more and are more confident about it. A fifth grader can do the math that is required to grow wealth. I started as a poetry major and grew up in an immigrant family, so if I can do this, anyone can do it.

Another [misconception] is that you need a lot of money to grow a lot of money. The truth is you don’t, but you do need the most time possible to take advantage of this idea of compound interest that has so often been used against us in the financial system with credit cards and mortgages. We’ve seen interest rates grow out of control and be used against us, but we can actually use that very same force in our favor. The earlier you start, the less money you need to take advantage of interest that grows on top of itself, where your money is working for you. We work so hard for our money, and I think it’s time we return the favor.

VMS: You mentioned the idea of scarcity — there’s so much talk about the “scarcity mindset.” Do you believe that there’s such a thing and that it can be disabling?

NL: The greatest enemy is between our ears. It’s a journey for all of us to tell the mean girl or mean guy inside our heads to take several seats. There’s not a point where she ever goes away. I still have her! I think it’s about reframing that and also realizing that — not to get too philosophical — this idea of stoicism plays in a lot to how we approach finances. The basis that we suffer more in imagination than in reality. I see that a lot, especially with women approaching their finances. They think it’s so much worse than it is. I suffered from that too. I would let my credit reports sit on my counter and not open them up. If you don’t step on the scale, it’s not real, right?

VMS: How can people get to the root of that fear? Just by facing the music and looking at what it is?

NL: My philosophy around this is a combination of forgiveness for your former self and tough love for your future self. We didn’t learn this in school, and a lot of us didn’t learn it in our family upbringing. We could cry about that, but it’s not going to pay the bills moving forward. I forgave my former self for what she didn’t know — she did the best she could with the information she had. But moving forward, I’m a grown-ass woman. I can put my big-girl pants on and not bury my head in the sand. There’s plenty of information out there — a gazillion books and podcasts and articles. I don’t think knowledge is power; I think action is power. It’s up to each individual when that day is going to be, and as far as I’m concerned, today is as good a day as any.

VMS: How can people get to the root of that fear? Just by facing the music and looking at what it is?

NL: My philosophy around this is a combination of forgiveness for your former self and tough love for your future self. We didn’t learn this in school, and a lot of us didn’t learn it in our family upbringing. We could cry about that, but it’s not going to pay the bills moving forward. I forgave my former self for what she didn’t know — she did the best she could with the information she had. But moving forward, I’m a grown-ass woman. I can put my big-girl pants on and not bury my head in the sand. There’s plenty of information out there — a gazillion books and podcasts and articles. I don’t think knowledge is power; I think action is power. It’s up to each individual when that day is going to be, and as far as I’m concerned, today is as good a day as any.

VMS: What are some of the biggest misconceptions you encounter when people talk about and consider investing?

NL: That you have to look at stock charts all day long, which is not true. I don’t look at stocks all day long — I set up a system once, and I set it and forget it. Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of our time, has said the greatest investment Americans can make is low-cost S&P 500 index funds, which is basically a vehicle that tracks the entire growth of the market and is diversified in and of itself, versus picking individual stocks because if one goes in the pooper, the whole thing goes in the pooper. He even put that in his will for his own wife to put a majority of his money in there. When people think there is a way to make even more than that, it’s very hard to do that. My suggestion is to not check all the time. Put your blinders on, set up a system that’s not fun and sexy, and it might not be investing in the coolest new crypto or Zoom or Peloton stocks. I say index funds and chill, especially when people are going crazy. Typically, you do the opposite of what groupthink is, especially when people are selling. You can buy more because it’s on sale, and in the history of the world, we’ve not recovered from a single recession or depression. Those are some of the big misconceptions, that you have to put in a lot of work to start investing. You don’t.

VMS: In your book, you refer to something called “lifestyle creep.” How can it sabotage our ability to save money?

NL: It often happens when we make more money, and our nice-to-have things become our need-to-have things, and then we actually don’t end up saving more money. We just increase our spending. At the end of the day, it’s not what we make, but what we keep that matters most. I know this isn’t what you necessarily want to do when you get a raise; it’s probably best to stick to the lifestyle you had before and then put the majority of it into assets, versus more liabilities, that will grow for you over time. And so I’m not saying deny yourself a morning latte. I’m drinking my morning latte right now!

“The truth is, there’s nothing that a guy knows that we don’t; they just talk about it more and are more confident about it.”

VMS: My next question was the latte-factor question! Do you think there’s anything to that?

NL: You know, the whole “skip the latte” thing doesn’t work because a financial diet is a lot like a regular diet — if you don’t allow yourself small indulgences, you’ll binge later on. Planning for those extras is really important, but keep it in the plan.

VMS: During these volatile times, should people reconsider their investments?

NL: Volatile times are when people can actually make the most wealth. “Buy low, sell high” is true, but it’s hard to do — you don’t know where the low is, and you don’t know where the high is. So, it’s really important to not try to time the market and volatility. There’s always going to be volatility. That’s how markets work — you don’t get off the roller coaster in the middle of the roller coaster. I’m about long-term investing not trading. There’s really no quick fix here, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I really like to keep it basic. If you want fun, exciting things, watch a Shondaland show! Over time, historically, the market has yielded 7 percent, inflation adjusted. The way to do that, by not trying to time it, is dollar-cost averaging. If [you have] $12,000 to invest, you don’t put it in today. You put in $1,000 every month so you’re getting the average of what the levels are going to be. Nobody has a crystal ball, and trying to time it is just going to create a lot of anxiety. Try to take the emotion out of it, and create a system and a process for it.

VMS: What do you wish more people knew about saving for retirement?

NL: I wish that more people knew that 401(k) is not going to save the day in retirement. It’s really scary that somehow it’s been billed as almost like a pension — your 401(k) is not a pension. It’s great to invest in a 401(k), and if you have an employer match, please do that, but it’s actually not enough, and you pay taxes on it when you take it out. Whoever did the marketing for 401(k), I would like to hire them for my book because they’ve made it look like it’s the only option, and it’s going to replace your income in retirement, and that’s just not how it works. It’s a profit-sharing program. Pensions have gone the way of the Blackberry, but they were safe and intended to replace your income when you retired. This is not the same thing. We’re seeing the first generation of folks retire only with a 401(k), and it’s not enough.

VMS: Do you have thoughts about the real estate market? Is it a good investment? Do you think it’s still a good time to buy?

NL: I love this question! Oftentimes, people let the interest rate or the tax tail wag the financial dog. You should not do anything because of interest rates or a tax write-off. They are interesting perks potentially, but that should never be the driving force of it. I think that if it’s right for you and your circumstances, buy right now. If you have no debt, you have your emergency fund in order, and you’re going to stay in a place for a long time, maybe. People have a misconception that a house is a good investment. A primary house is not a good investment — end of story. The largest studies that have been done over time show that housing adjusted for inflation, it’s basically flat. If you have emotional issues around owning a home like you were housing compromised, that’s as good a reason as any, but don’t lie to yourself about it. When you buy a house, there are a lot of things that you don’t get back, like moving costs. You’re on the hook for everything. I’m not a housing expert in the construction sense, but you could use your money to make more money by putting it to work in the market. People get house poor. If you lose your job, you can’t go to the grocery store with your mortgage.

VMS: Thoughts on inflation?

NL: There have been a lot of headlines about inflation going bananas. Historically, inflation has been growing at 3 percent, and what you make in a bank account is 1 percent or less than 1 percent. You’re losing your purchasing power by leaving your money in a checking account — a lot of women, particularly, leave their money in a basic checking account. In Miss Independent, I list from lowest to highest risk where you can put your money. The lower the risk, the lower the reward, but a lot of these vehicles are liquid. Bonds that are issued by the government — if the government of the United States doesn’t give you your money back, we have bigger problems!

VMS: Everybody’s talking about crypto. What are your thoughts?

NL: I don’t believe you should put more than 1 percent of your net worth in crypto. It’s not my favorite investment, to be honest with you. That’s a whole other conversation!

VMS: What three money tips can you share with our readers that they may not already know?

NL: All of your bills are negotiable, so try to negotiate your credit-card APR, cell phone, cable, and medical bills twice a year. The worst they can say is no, but most vendors would rather take something than nothing. Two, take a look around the web for any unclaimed money you might have. Most states have a website dedicated to unclaimed funds from child bank accounts or whatever. Or check unclaimed.org. Free money! Finally, if you own a home, when paying the same amount of your mortgage as you normally would, divide it in half and pay it twice a month instead of once. You’ll shave off thousands of dollars over time because you’re sneaking in an extra payment.

Pamela Adlon Makes It All Better

In wrapping up “Better Things,” Adlon gets candid with Shondaland about her journey creating the FX series and the value in talking to strangers.

Pamela Adlon feels familiar. Granted, legions of creative sandwich-generation Gen X women see so much of their lives depicted in Better Things, the oft-Emmy nominated and Peabody Award-winning FX series about a single mother and working actor raising her three teenage daughters, which Adlon co-created, show-runs, writes, directs, and stars in. It could also be because Adlon’s been on TV since she was 11, appearing in shows like The Facts of Life, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Californication, and Louie. Then again, it could likewise be because you’ve heard her voice on a list of animated shows that runs longer than any CVS receipt, among them King of the Hill, for which Adlon won an Emmy for her voice work.

Most likely, though, Adlon feels familiar because, just like her character-cum-alias Sam Fox on Better Things, she’s gifted with the “bartender vibe,” or the ability to forge emotional intimacy with perfect strangers in an instant. “That’s just the way I’ve always been,” she tells me during a speed date-style Zoom interview. “I’ll see somebody, and I’ll just talk to them. I have a friend, Robin, who, when I’d go into her building, would say, ‘Don’t talk to anybody as you walk through the lobby; just keep f--king moving toward my apartment!’”

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It’s this reverence for human connection — however random — that permeates every episode of Better Things. “It’s so profound when you speak to somebody, and you see them as a person, and acknowledge them, and you have a connection,” Adlon says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a valet person taking your ticket or a crying guy at the Mattachine Steps [in Los Angeles, the site of a random encounter Sam has this season]. It becomes a bigger, more profound thing for everybody. So, that was always going to be part of [the show] because it’s a part of my madness.”

Adlon is grateful her “madness” resonates with so many. It’s no wonder: For the past five seasons, Better Things has taken us on a very realistic journey of what it means to be a mother, what it means to have lived and seen some s--t, what it means to be divorced, what it means to be a working actor, and what it means to be a human being trying to hang on to some semblance of yourself while spread wire-thin amongst the needs of kids, an eccentric mom, a career, a chosen family, and a one-legged dog or two. Gorgeously shot in and around Los Angeles, the show is also something of a love letter to the city.

Pamela Adlon (right) and Hannah Alligood (left) in Better Things.

FX

To say Sam Fox was made in Adlon’s image is something of an understatement. It seems as if Adlon’s own life has provided her with a treasure trove of fodder for Sam’s great adventures: Both are single, working actor mothers of three daughters who live next to their British mothers. It’s been written that Adlon’s own art adorns the set of the Fox home. Like Fox, Adlon is often in the kitchen preparing meals for those she loves, according to her own Instagram stories. The actual details about Adlon’s British-Jewish ancestry, which Adlon discovered on a recent episode of Finding Your Roots, made it onto this season of Better Things almost verbatim.

Many of my friends lost their s--t when I mentioned I’d be chatting with Adlon, so I thank her for making so many Gen X women feel seen. Though she’d likely heard this praise many times before, she thanked me and was genuinely, deeply appreciative. “The whole thing has been shocking to me, that people were able to see [Better Things] and feel seen by it,” Adlon says. “That was my goal because I needed a show like this when I was growing up, and I needed a show like this when I was a young mom.”

Yet if you told Adlon seven years ago that she’d be sitting on a couch chatting with journalist after journalist about her very own series, she might not have believed you. “I never thought it would go this far. It got out of control. I certainly never thought that people would really see it,” she says of how Better Things began. “I started the show seven years ago. My kids were all a lot younger, and they were all living at home. Now I just have the youngest living with me. I set out to make a show that would be good enough; I just didn’t want to make a terrible show. I set out to make a pilot. After one full season, I never imagined we’d be able to tell more stories.”

Getting Better Things off the ground required Adlon to take a big leap of faith in herself. “I didn’t have a picture in my head of what it was going to look like, but I did have to make sacrifices at the beginning in order to make my show,” she explains. “There were some very real opportunities that were being offered up to me, and I had to literally say no, keep my head down, and keep my focus because that was the time for me to create and make my show. When Sam in the show goes, ‘This is a shanda [Yiddish for a disgrace]! You don’t turn down work! What am I doing?’ she needed to do that in order to move forward. Even if she was making less money, and it meant less workdays, that was going to be the change for her. She had to make a sacrifice. That’s what happened to me with my entire show.”

Seven years later, Adlon’s leap of faith in herself and her show paid off. “Now I have this beautiful present for everybody,” Adlon says. “They [viewers] can take one [episode] out, and put one in if they want to feel a certain way,” she says. “It takes you on a ride emotionally, and makes you realize things, and it teaches you things — all this kind of stuff that I would’ve loved when I was coming up.”

Wrapping Better Things was a conscious decision for Adlon — not that it was an easy call, considering how grateful she is to FX for giving her the opportunity to do her show her way. “They built me and supported me as a filmmaker and a creator. That’s the greatest gift ever because I was able to really do my show the way I wanted to do my show. They gave me that freedom,” she says.

Without giving too much away, the final season of Better Things does what it does best — taking a magnifying glass to those poignant, uncomfortable, transformative moments of our lives that we rarely speak of, and wringing the humor and inexplicable humanity out of them. “I feel like it’s really important not to be too sanctimonious, but you want to have feelings,” Adlon explains. “Those feelings happen, and you see them.” When I ask her how she’s feeling with it all coming to an end, she doesn’t miss a beat: “I’m doing, like, victory laps!” she says. “I’m just running around and going, ‘I’m great! I’m fine!’ And then somebody asks how I feel, quotes the show to me, and I burst into tears.”

Robert Kerbeck’s American Dream

From Hollywood actor to corporate spy to author: Kerbeck’s new memoir speaks volumes about dedication to art and what we can do to support ourselves in pursuit of it.

It’s not everyone who can parlay their skills as an Actors Studio-caliber actor into a career of corporate espionage — and then turn around and realize their dream of becoming a published writer. But when reading the memoir RU$E: Lying the American Dream From Hollywood to Wall Street, you’ll be glad Robert Kerbeck felt compelled to put pen to paper.

Kerbeck’s story begins in suburban Philly, where Kerbeck dreamed of life as an actor. After an Ivy League education and a quick move to New York, he began a long career as a working actor, appearing alongside the likes of George Clooney and Calista Flockhart. But even working actors need side gigs, and soon Kerbeck found himself going from a mentorship in becoming a corporate spy to convincing Wall Street banks to give up some of their deepest-held secrets — which led to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of dollars in paydays for Kerbeck.

It’s a story almost too good to be true, and Kerbeck winds every detail into an engaging, entertaining memoir. Kerbeck recently spoke with Shondaland about what it took to risk spilling his truth on the page, and the circular rhetoric that can come with chasing your passion.

VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: You’ve written a tell-all about your life, leaving no stone unturned. What made you decide now is the time to come out with it all?

ROBERT KERBECK: I read an early chapter at a writers’ conference that focused more on my father and his passing, but some of the spying was in there. That was always a bone of contention in our relationship. I wanted to be an actor. He was a car dealer, and when I worked for him, I was uncomfortable with the dishonesty of car sales, so I followed my passion. I left that job to pursue acting and got a job as a corporate spy, which was far more dishonest. There was obviously some irony there! People were saying a lot of nice things about the stuff with my father, but they were fascinated by the corporate spying. They had no idea this world existed, told me it was incredible and that I should write it. I hesitated because I was worried I could get in trouble. Fortunately, there’s a statute of limitations for the things that I did in the past, and it has now passed, so I was able to tell the story freely because I don’t have that kind of [sword of] Damocles hanging over my head.

VMS: Did you consult with a lawyer first?

RK: I actually consulted with someone that worked for one of the very agencies that theoretically would prosecute me, and they very kindly advised me.

VMS: Between the “rusing” and acting, you have no shortage of wild stories. It’s all so vividly told! Did you keep a journal that whole time, or is your memory just that good?

RK: I didn’t keep a journal. I didn’t ever think I would write about my quasi-illegal activities because I didn’t want anybody to know. I stumbled into that rusing job because actors need to survive, right? Most of my stories were kind of easy to track because I could go on IMDb. I did Sisters with George Clooney in 1994, so I look it up and remember it was hot that day. One of the wonderful things about memoir is it’s all how you remember it. One of the challenging things about memoir is it’s just my recollection.

VMS: You were an English major at UPenn. How did the rigors of putting yourself through school shape your life?

RK: It had a profound and lasting impact because I was broke for so long. During my first two years of college, I never went out. I didn’t even have enough money to survive in school housing, so I had to live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with three guys because it was far cheaper than the housing. I couldn’t afford a meal plan, so I lived on Kraft mac and cheese. I worked 32 hours a week while I was going to school. Frankly, those first two years were quite miserable, and that did leave a mark. As time went on, there was a part of me sometimes that said I’m never going back to that.

VMS: You started rusing as a way of supporting yourself as an actor without starving, writing that it required “ethical elasticity.” Looking back on it all, would you do it all over again?

RK: That’s a great question! I guess I don’t know the answer. You can’t drive through life while staring in the rearview mirror. There are plenty of things that I would have done differently and that I regret. Back then, $8 an hour is probably equivalent to maybe $16 an hour today, which is what most entry-level jobs pay. To answer your question, I wouldn’t do it today, nor would I recommend it to anyone else, but that’s the journey I went on. If I changed any part of that journey, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have formed the Malibu Writers Circle. I wouldn’t be a good husband, knock on wood, or a good father most days of the week. I think there’s part of me that appreciates the journey because you learn so much along the way.

VMS: Did you struggle with rusing while you were in the midst of it, especially as you started to make real money?

RK: There was a part of me that justified what I did. Since the Great Recession, we’ve had this great wave of digital transparency, and what was private is now public. I got people to tell me secrets about their corporations: who the top people were, who their top clients were. At the end of the day, the vast majority of information I got was being used to offer people better job opportunities. Before the crash of 2008, there were very few ways for major corporations and for major executive recruiting firms to find out who was at a firm and who the top people were at a competitor. The actual, factual data that showed who the traders were at the top 15 investment banks on Wall Street was incredibly valuable information. At one point, there was an eight-person team at Morgan Stanley that did a trade that made a billion dollars. Shortly thereafter, one of my clients wanted to know the eight people on that team to try and steal them away so they could do the same. Today, you would think that couldn’t be difficult to find out, but back then it was impossible. While I did some rusing with assistants and receptionists, I tried to go after executives to tell me the information because they generally were far easier marks. Wall Street guys — because back in the day, it was definitely more male than female — were extremely arrogant and were often quite willing not only to talk but to brag about the deal. I’m like, this guy’s making 10 million dollars, so that was the excuse I gave myself to rationalize what I was doing.

VMS: For many, many years while you were rusing, you were also a successful working actor. What’s so interesting about your story is that it tells the truth about the ups and downs of show business. It was between you and Brad Pitt for Thelma & Louise. You always hear stories about the person who makes it big, but you rarely hear about the person who came close.

RK: You’re right! There are plenty of tell-all memoirs from successful, famous actors, singers, or even writers, but you don’t see too many stories about the person who was striving and giving everything they had to almost make it. I took an acting class every Saturday for a decade. I didn’t go out on Friday nights for 10 years because I had the class Saturday morning, and I was going to be fresh and sharp. So, if you called me and said you had tickets to the theater on a Friday night or told me about a party, I wasn’t going because I wanted to prepare for my acting class, and that’s how seriously I took it. There are so many stories of people who got so close and didn’t have it happen. For the vast majority of people, their life story is one of many disappointments — sometimes great disappointments. It was a great disappointment to me to not have a bigger career, but what I hope people get out of my story, besides the fun parts, is to recognize when you pursue these really difficult careers, things don’t always go the way you would hope. The good news is, I don’t regret that I [tried].

VMS: What was your process in writing this book? How did you approach it?

RK: I run this writers’ group in Malibu. Members have published books, screenplays, plays, short stories, and essays. Notes from the group helped so much. So many of their stories deserve to be heard. One of the reasons I wrote this book is I wanted to tell the story of somebody who tried but didn’t get quite where they wanted to be, and that’s okay because it’s really about the journey.

VMS: When did you realize you wanted to write?

RK: When the crash of 2008 came, everything stopped on a proverbial dime, and business disappeared overnight. There was no income, and obviously there was no income for quite some time. I had bills, and so I began to worry about what I would do. I got hired to be an executive recruiter and took my first job in corporate America. The biggest irony for me is that those people were more dishonest than I ever was on the phone, except they’d lie to your face. Sometimes they would be lying to you when you knew they were lying, and they knew you knew they were lying. When that job eventually blew up, it enabled me to kick the mortgage can down the road for 18 months. I had opened this business because I thought this company was going to make it part of theirs, but instead I was stuck with this lease, all this equipment, and brand-new computers. I was so depressed. One day, I basically wrote a suicide note, but I was writing the suicide note as this character who decided to jump off a cruise ship. I wrote a book in the Notes program on my iPad. There was a lot wrong with it; other writers gave me positive feedback. I started the Malibu Writers Circle and going to writers’ conferences, like Bread Loaf and Tin House, and those conferences helped me immensely. I made a lot of friends with writers I keep in touch with and work with to this day. I started getting essays published, and then we had this terrible, terrible fire in my neighborhood of Malibu, where my house almost burned down — the Woolsey Fire, the worst wildfire in L.A. — so I wrote a book about it (Malibu Burning: The Real Story Behind LA’s Most Devastating Wildfire). It all made sense: from car sales to acting, to rusing, to storytelling.

VMS: There are a few lines at the end of your book that explain how going after your dreams can be the ultimate ruse: “The opportunity to pursue one’s passion is its own privilege, and yet nearly everyone who tries is chasing a mirage. The promise of ultimately reaching a destination that’s a place of professional fulfillment is, well, a lie.” It read like a eulogy for your acting career.

RK: I love that! When I started writing, one writer told me you just have to decide what kind of career you want. Writing for money and writing for fun are both completely acceptable. You just have to make the decision about what works for you and what you’re going to be happy with. The whole idea about striving is to create something that’s important to you, whatever that is.

VMS: If you could offer advice to anyone who wanted to attempt a memoir or write about their life, what would it be?

RK: Think of it as a greatest-hits album. I read a lot of memoirs. Everyone has some interesting stuff in their lives, but sometimes you need other people to read your personal stories to see what the most interesting parts of your life are. It’s not about every chronological detail. Braiding stories can make a memoir more fun and break up the chronological feeling. Just give us the most interesting things in the most interesting way you can imagine.

Fake It Till You Make It: Good Advice or a Setup for Failure?

Imitating confidence, competency, and drive may work for some, but what are the long-term professional implications?

“Fake it till you make it” — we’ve all likely heard the phrase muttered a time or two when it comes to getting through a tough personal or professional moment. We’ve maybe even used it with ourselves as a form of reassurance when we aren’t feeling confident in our abilities. In any case, the phrase is often used to convey acting as if you have more to offer than you do.

When used literally, the term can obviously become problematic, especially if you’re biting off way more than you can chew professionally, but doubly so if someone is a total impostor trying to lie or cheat their way to success, like, say, Anna Delvey, who defrauded countless victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to pose as a German heiress infiltrating the New York City elite. Perhaps that’s why Alan Ibbotson, a leadership coach, founder of the Trampoline Group, and host of the YouTube video series “Wisdom You Didn’t Ask For,” would love nothing more than to bury the phrase completely. “It literally means you can’t do it or be it, and you are pretending,” he puts it plainly. “For some, they are signing up to be a fake and a phony, a liar and a cheat, someone who isn’t concerned with what others think or even with being authentic in their success — they just want to get away with it, operating on the hope that eventually they’ll make it.”

But not everyone is out there trying to get ahead by nefarious means. Many of us have found ourselves in new roles and lacking certain experience that can only come with doing the job, like launching a new business or suddenly becoming the manager of 25 people. Sure, some expertise is required, but in such instances, there will always be a learning curve that can only come with throwing oneself into the deep end, figuring some of it out along the way, and going through the necessary motions to build confidence in a new position.

And then there’s a third category of faking it till you make it: the dreaded impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is loosely defined as the internal experience some, especially at high levels, have of believing that they are not as competent as others perceive them to be. Ibbotson refers to the “fake it till you make it” narrative as “literally the birthplace of impostor syndrome.” He does, however, offer this distinction: “I think someone suffering from impostor syndrome is someone who ultimately wants to succeed and has anxiety about whether they are good enough. They care about authentic success and will likely be doing what they can to learn and grow into the challenge until they feel comfortable.”

Rheeda Walker, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, researcher, professor at the University of Houston, and the author of The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, says competent people can develop impostor syndrome by internalizing societal messages of “less than,” which only compounds impostor syndrome further. “With women and people who are members of certain racial-ethnic minority groups, we see it more often because society says, ‘We really don’t expect much from you. We don’t even think you have the capacity.’ My parents always said I was going to have to work twice as hard to get half as far — and I wasn’t the only Black girl who was told this. It was just part of the cultural narrative of what we have to do in order to achieve success,” she says.

Ibbotson refers to the “fake it till you make it” narrative as “literally the birthplace of impostor syndrome.”

Planet Flem//Getty Images

No matter how you’re faking it to make it, though, what “make it” actually means is ultimately highly subjective. “Very few of us actually stop to identify exactly how we’ll know when we’ve made it,” says Barbara Barna Abel, the multimedia coach and adviser of Abel Intermedia and the host of the Camera Ready & Abel podcast. “It’s a vague idea in the future, and our brains have no idea where we’re actually going, so we’re on a ‘faking it’ hamster wheel going as fast as we can to avoid being found out.”

Even without swindling others out of hundreds of thousands of dollars like Anna Delvey, many of us, when trapped in the cycle of trying to prove ourselves to ourselves, might start to feel like a fraud for no good reason. In fact, the phrase “fake it till you make it” itself harkens back to the term “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which was coined in 1948 by social psychologist Robert Merton to describe “a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true,” according to The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. In other words, if you say you’re faking it often enough, part of you holds the belief that you are indeed a fake, someone not fit for the opportunity you’re about to step into.

Perhaps, then, faking it till we make it needs a bit of reframing. Here’s how to keep pushing forward — for real — when it feels like faking it may be the only way to win.

Don’t expect too much of yourself from the start

Imagine you’ve just been hired at a new organization in a higher position than you’ve ever held before. Regardless of how prepared you are to step into that boardroom, there’s a first time for everything, and it’s rare for someone to approach their first time at anything exuding total confidence. Give yourself the grace of building up the confidence you need in the role, and allow yourself to sit back and learn from those around you. In this circumstance, though telling yourself you’ll “fake it till you make it” may seem like a means to come out of the gate strong — and indeed there are times when you have to relent to already established processes in order to reach a goal — starting out with the mindset of being fake is still a form of negative self-speak that could potentially be limiting and damaging to confidence and competence in the long run, says Ibbotson.

Shift the narrative

To break the negative self-speak cycle that can hold you hostage, it helps to shift your own narrative, says Walker. “From a psychological perspective, there’s a tremendous amount of empirical support with regard to how people think about things and how that impacts what they do and how they feel,” she explains. “If you’re telling yourself secretly, ‘I don’t deserve to be here. I’m not capable or competent,’ that’s going to affect behaviors. People are going to be anxious and worn out and sometimes depressed because they don’t think the reward that they’re getting matches the behavior and work they’re putting in. We have to interrupt the cycle and replace those maladaptive thoughts with adaptive thoughts and positive messages that make sense for us. Say things like ‘I’m confident. I’m doing the best that I can. I deserve to be here,’ because if you don’t, you’re kind of setting yourself up to miss out on the success that you actually deserve.”

MoMo Productions//Getty Images

Consider why you feel like you’re faking it — then recognize when you’re not

Barna Abel says developing an awareness and consciousness of why you feel like you’re faking it is a great first step. “As soon as you give it a name and acknowledge it, it loses its power,” she says. “Next, knowing that these feelings are universal helps you to understand you’re not alone. Then you set the intention of challenging yourself to move through it, sit with your fear, and do the thing anyway. People will come to me when they’re asked to do something outside of their comfort zone. Confidence is an inside job, right? It comes from within. There are a lot of exercises where you can explore tapping into this. You just have to tell your brain where it’s going.” Once you get there, the next step is recognizing that you’re no longer in the perfunctory learning stage; now you can own the expertise you’ve picked up and lead with it on future goals and projects.

Before you can make it, you have to believe it

When trying to build and maintain the conviction you need to succeed, instead of faking it till you make it, Barna Abel says she prefers social psychologist Amy Cuddy’s concept: “Fake it till you believe it,” which speaks to how our neuropathways adapt to certain concepts over time through repetition. “In my opinion, this outlook is a more positive, productive, and beneficial version of ‘fake it till you make it,’” she explains. “It takes a long time — months or years — for us to believe in ourselves. The message has to become internalized and felt in your subconscious.”

Rather than faking it, try winging it

Ibbotson extols the virtues of winging it over faking it. “There’s only so much preparation that you can do for anything. Winging it is a skill set that refers to the ability to assess your situation and judge it accurately,” he says. “It’s about what it means to be open to learning how instead of pretending to be. It’s about how creatively, on the fly, you’re able to pull your resources together to find a solution to something or improvise. It’s about developing the level of confidence you need to trust the culmination of all you’ve learned over the years, step into the unknown, and trust that it will work out. You’ve got to have faith in yourself.”

There’s only so much preparation that you can do for anything. Winging it is a skill set that refers to the ability to assess your situation and judge it accurately.

10'000 Hours//Getty Images

Separate your thoughts from your feelings

Building faith in oneself can come with an understandable amount of anxiety, so Ibbotson advises his coaching clients to grab a pen and paper, draw a line down the middle, and jot down their thoughts on one side and their feelings on the other. “The idea is to cultivate emotional self-awareness and understand why you’re feeling the way you are and how it affects you so you can better act on the fly,” he advises. “It helps you to get out of the emotional tsunami that is your fear, accept it as a normal part of what’s happening to you at the time, and detach a little from your expectations of the end result. If you’re open-minded about what an end result looks like, you’ll be able to roll with things more nimbly.”

In the end, avoid “compare and despair”

Comparing yourself with others, especially via social media, is another unnecessary distraction from embracing your own capabilities on your way to success, says Walker. “We have to first accept that everyone feels like they don’t belong or they’re a fraud sometimes, and then focus on the fact that we have worked hard, regardless of what people say,” Walker says in regard to establishing your motivations for getting ahead. “It’s the hero’s journey from every popular narrative: They figure out who they are, tap into what makes them special, unique, and capable, then they are able to move on with whatever the mountain of the task is.”

5 Astrological Aspects in 2022 You Need to Know About

Astrological experts weigh in on how a few major celestial events could impact our vibe for the rest of this year.

Given the current state of the world, we could all use a little insight into what's to come, yes? So, to peek into what 2022 has in store for us, we consulted with a handful of esteemed astrologers for the scoop on five celestial events with the biggest potential for an impact on our personal business. These days, knowledge is certainly power.

Jupiter’s dance between Pisces and Aries

The good-fortune planet entered Pisces late last year on December 28, setting off a back-and-forth foray between Pisces and Aries that will last all year. Jupiter will remain in Pisces until May 10 and then take a spin through Aries from May 10 to October 27, only to then return to Pisces from October 28 to December 20. Jupiter then takes one more trip through Aries until May 16, 2023.

Chani Nicholas, the developer of the ever-popular CHANI astrology app and author of You Were Born for This, says Jupiter, the party planet of expansion, should lend some “wet and wild goodness” to all of 2022. “Because Jupiter is bestowed with the label of the fairy godmother of the cosmos, it has returned to Pisces (its home) and therefore is able to bring its overflowing chalices to the party,” she explains. “Here, Jupiter is well resourced to ply us with abundance and some much-needed ease.”

Nicholas says Jupiter’s dip in and out of Pisces throughout the year — it only circles through a sign once every 12 years — is “at its best, about more than accumulation or advancement. It’s about trust. About faith. About refilling our cups and the wisdom that finds you when you limber yourself up to give, receive, and believe.”

When Jupiter moves on to Aries on May 10, it “exchanges its wet suit for biker chaps and a flamethrower,” Nicholas describes. “In Aries, Jupiter is bold, brash, brave, and unapologetic. It barrels helmet-first into every endeavor, reminding us that even the most well-established people on the world stage are making it up as they go along. The spirit of Jupiter in Aries is intrepid, enterprising, and entrepreneurial, bringing a flush of fire to the Aries corner of your chart. Just make sure that you’re taking time to calculate those risks or at least educate yourself on potential consequences. Jupiter in Aries isn’t known for its prudence, but with practice, that’s exactly what you can bring to the equation.”

North Node in Taurus, South Node in Scorpio

January 18, 2022, through July 18, 2023

In astrology, the North Node — a node being the point in the sky where the Sun and Moon cross paths — represents the collective vibe or energy we’re moving toward, and the South Node represents the area of our lives that requires a releasing or letting go. Astrologer Colin Bedell of Queer Cosmos says the last time the North Node shifted to Taurus and the South Node shifted to Scorpio was in 2004 — it only happens once every 18 years. What does this mean? “We’re all looking to get grounded while the ground is moving,” explains Bedell of the Taurean influence. “If we could look back to the last time, it was post 9/11, and a lot of people were on edge, just like we are now. We’re all in this hypervigilant space in prolonged uncertainty.” He says the North Node in Taurus is a great time to clarify your values and determine which behaviors support how you live according to those values.

Taurus is the bull, and thus, like a bull, we should consider basking in the simpler pleasures our five senses bring, says Celeste Brooks of Astrology by Celeste. “It’s a good time to let go of keeping up the Joneses and find new ways of valuing ourselves without acquiring the stuff that causes us to deplete the Earth of its resources.” She adds that, with the concurrent South Node in Scorpio — which rules control, covert ops, and secrets but is also cathartic and insightful — we might see a lot of news about money and wealth, as well as the unearthing of secrets about corruption.

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Venus’ meaningful meetups with Mars

In Capricorn, February 16; In Aquarius, March 6

When a planet goes retrograde, all actions it governs slow down. If you’re wondering why this year started off at a snail’s pace with a strong urge for us to hibernate (hello, omicron), it’s because Venus, the planet of love and human connection, went retrograde from Aquarius to Capricorn on December 28 until January 29. “Venus rules the clarity of values in relationships and our relational intelligence,” explains Bedell. “If anyone wonders why they didn’t gain the usual momentum in the beginning of the year, Capricorn is the sign of dot your i’s [and] cross your t’s, so January wasn’t the month to begin anything.”

Now that Venus is direct, she has a hot date planned (aka a conjunction) with Mars in Capricorn on Feb 16 and in Aquarius on March 6. “Venus is how we draw in things we desire; it rules self-esteem, money, love, and relationships,” explains Brooks. “Mars is focused on how we get what we want. Mars is a lot more primal — it’s the fighting and fornication planet. When you bring them together, it can be quite beautiful. Aquarius is a sign of our hopes and dreams; it’s like the bigger vision, with higher-level, forward-thinking wisdom. People might feel a connection to some of their deeper desires, and some instinctual understanding of how to move forward to get what they want. People have been so focused on others these past two years, they might find some footing with themselves again.”

Jupiter cozies up with Neptune

April 12

While in the spiritual sign of Pisces, Jupiter, the planet of expansion, will have, according to Nicholas, “one doozy” of a meet-cute with Neptune, the watery planet of dreaming and escapism that also rules Pisces. This hasn’t happened since the 1850s. “It’s going to be especially potent for artistic endeavors, forays into fantasy, and anything that inspires a mystic or divine love,” Nicholas explains. However, as Jupiter can overdo anything, and Neptune represents escapism, it’s an influence to be a little wary of. “Beware the delusional pipe dreams that seem too good to be true,” Nicholas says.

Big picture: This meetup might inspire us to feel a little more altruistic. “We’re going to consider the possibility of another way of living that’s more soulful and spiritual,” says Bedell. “Is there a different meaning-making lens that can help us think about ‘who am I? Who am I meant to be with? What is my meaning?’ We’ll investigate identity, relationships, business, and money from a more soulful lens. Not to be corny, but it’s about love. Isn’t it funny that love is considered anti-intellectual?”

Mercury retrogrades

May 10 through June 3; September 9 through October 2; December 29

If you’re into astrology at all, you’re well aware that when Mercury goes backward, your best-laid plans, communications, itineraries, and anything involving forward movement seems to go backward as well. When this happens, Bedell says, it gives us the opportunity to process whatever we’ve learned about our lives while Mercury was direct. He says it’s the perfect time to “re”: rethink, review, renegotiate, recharge, and rest.

When Mercury goes retrograde from Gemini through Taurus in May, Bedell says it might inspire us to rethink how we use words (ruled by Gemini) and consider “embodiment,” or how what we say is what we do (Taurus). When Mercury retrogrades from Libra to Virgo in September, we might find ourselves rethinking about where we fall into the either/or state (the cerebral pro/con cycle of Libra) and reconsider how our habits are serving us (the Virgo influence).

Overall, the astrology of 2022 holds many promising vibes. Between February 4 and April 29, all planets will be direct — a full-steam-ahead vibe, says Brooks. She says one snag that might wrinkle the fabric is a final square-off between Saturn (the planet of restriction) and Uranus (the planet of the unexpected) from late August through mid-November. Though it’s more of a close call than a direct hit astrologically, the three times these two met up in 2021 coincided with the emergence of new Covid variants. “It could reflect on the midterm elections in the U.S.,” Brooks mentions. Indeed, we’ll soon see what’s actually written in the stars.

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