ASM222 Leaving Behind Brokenness with Ruthie Lindsey

[transcript automatically generated - please help edit to make it better]

this week i'm talking with my dear friend ruthie lindsey about her new book there i am on ask science mike you got questions he's got answers even though he may not understand [Music] well just before we get to today's interview with my dear friend ruthie lindsey i wanted to talk to you about something exciting in my life and work we are one week away from the launch of my new book called you're a miracle and a pain in the ass it is coming april 28th 2020 this book is about the gap between what we want to do and what we actually do the difference in the feelings we enjoy and the feelings we have the things we wish we would say versus what we actually say and the struggle basically to be a person who is whole and well this is a book i wrote from the perspective of someone whose life was falling apart around them despite their best efforts to grow and change and be a good person and i'm just so excited to finally share this book with you and as we do that there's some really exciting things number one the book is going to be available everywhere books are sold and i book i know right now in a pandemic books are sold fewer places so friends if you'd like to join us in reading this book on time i'd encourage you to pre-order it this week that'll give you the best chance at having the book in your hands during release day or nearby there's several ways to do that first of all if you go to mikemcarg.com new book or if like most people you can't spell my name you can go to ask sciencemike.com new book there's several things there one you can find a place uh where you can order the book from resellers who are in a position to fill orders two you can join me on my in-home virtual tour that kicks off a week from today uh it'll kick off on april 27th i'll be going to cities all across the country virtually in an amazing in-home experience that includes either a postcard or personalized book plate as well as in-person virtual interaction with me you'll get to ask me your questions face-to-face via live video and then finally we've got some pre-order bonuses this is your last week to get the pre-order bonuses which include being able to start reading right now the first three chapters of the book as well as joining the official you're a miracle book club led by me uh there's so there's quite a few people in there now i'm looking forward to kicking that off uh the week of may 5th following launch week of the book uh so to learn about all these amazing things just head over to ask sciencemike.com new book where you can get all the details and a big thank you to everyone who has bought a ticket for the tour i can't wait to send you a book and make all these postcards and without further ado here's my conversation with my friend ruthie lindsey [Music] well friends i am just so excited about this interview today and uh excited and sad you know i had a wonderful series of uh interviews and conversations planned for ask science mike where i brought on some of my my dear friends and the plan was to have them over at my house and sit at a table and record a podcast and then have dinner and drink wine and do all those wonderful things and uh ruthie lindsey was one of those people that was gonna come over and do an interview with me i even bought microphones for the occasion and then we had a global pandemic and it had to cancel uh so we're doing this interview online but we're still doing it because i'm so excited to tell you about ruthie if you're not familiar with ruthie uh she is a speaker and a teacher and a co-host of the unspoken podcast one of my favorites i've been a guest over there and she's like mega mega mega mega mega social media famous like unbelievably so uh she lives in nashville she's just a great friend she's um just one of the most sincere and open-hearted people uh who i have ever met and it is my pleasure to welcome to the program ruthie lindsey is it weird that i've already cried it's not i suspect we will cry many times in our conversation thank you so much it is such an honor to have this time with you and um i know it's not how we had foreseen it but it's still um it really feels like a gift to get to share this space with you so thank you so much for having me on and being so kind and encouraging to me it means so much well speaking of gifts um you know it's always such an interesting experience to me to read a book written by a friend um because you think you know people and then you read a memoir gosh you really get to know someone yeah um the first thing i want to say uh this is your first book right do i understand that this is your first this is this is my first and i would actually be really okay if it's my last it was so hard oh my god it's so freaking hard but yes this is my first isn't that true i have noticed the same thing every time i finish a book i'm like i will never do another one of those my life is such a nightmare and also like the most important thing for like this journey that i've done so far so it's like a both end but yeah it's so freaking hard well the the effort shows um the first thing i have to say you know i'm a writer i love the written word and this book is beautifully written it is so evocative your prose is so well composed and descriptive and clear a lot of times when people are descriptive writers they uh are also maybe a little overly verbose and it takes very very long to get to whatever they're trying to say but you have this great balance of beautiful imagery and like emotionally focused writing but also clarity and punch so um i just wanted to tell you that uh as i read this i was just so moved by the quality of the writing that's probably my favorite thing about reading is when people are just good at prose and i know that has nothing to do with the content of the book or how will impact people um but gosh i was just so impressed and so moved and a little jealous at times of your writing voice oh thank you i will make sure my editor hears that because good gosh she had a lot of work to do so give her a lot of credit too but thank you that means so much especially coming from you that really truly does uh my er my editor derek reed over at convergent i often say needs hazard pay for touching my books seriously no [ \_\_ ] oh my god that is so real yeah it's so real oh my gosh god bless her bless her thank you so you've written this book there i am and as i told you right before i started recording i've gotten some feedback from listeners and from the team behind our science mike that sometimes uh i go right into the deep parts of a of the subject matter expert and skip over little things like what is the book about or why did she write it uh so before i i start referencing like specific page and paragraphs let's start with the basics of like what is this book about yeah well it's really um i mean and it started in one place and ended somewhere completely differently than where i prepared for it to go um with a totally different title ending everything but it's basically a story of just my journey of you know growing up um to having some pretty um a lot of really traumatic experiences and um you know doing the best i could but handling a lot of them um in a very shut down disassociated state i lived in my bed for about seven years um from really intensive chronic pain from breaking my neck in a car accident and complications around that surgery and just you know had a lot of loss lost my partner lost um a parent um lost a life for a long time you know everything shut down completely um which it's interesting in the midst of this pandemic it's been triggering in a lot of ways because it's you know kind of my sweet little nervous system is definitely um i'm having to be really gentle with myself because it's it's very uh it's real close to home i know a lot about being shut in your house you know alone um so yeah it's it's a lot about that but then the thing that excites me i mean i you know the pain story is very real the chronic pain the trauma but the part that feels really beautiful is it's also i feel like more than anything it says story about healing um and the healing that i really believe with every part of me that is for us all emotionally spiritually um for many of us physically uh so you know actually the book proposal that like what i pitched to all the different publishers was a book called salvaged building a beautiful life with broken parts um because i thought i was broken and i believed that i believed that with every part of me i believe that i mean i essentially was calling myself trash like what the [ \_\_ ] and i you know i my story for so long was like yes there's like beauty and suffering and there's um you can make this pain purposeful which there it i believe that there is truth in making your pain purposeful and using it for good but i i didn't believe that i could heal i definitely didn't believe that um and i didn't believe that that was for me and i definitely jumped straight from you know living my bed to just trying to help as many people as i could and skipped the part where i came home to myself and writing the book essentially i had to re-traumatize myself to go back into these situations so deeply it's not like speaking where you speak for an hour and then it's done or writing an instagram post because that's let's be honest the only writing i've ever done um this was like a two and a half year process and it kicked my ass on a level that's hard to even put into words um and it knocked me on my ass and it re-traumatized me and i found myself back in my bed not being able to function and so depressed and my pain just through the roof and that ended up taking me on the most important um healing journey and doing more beautiful healing work that i think i would have ever done um and i'm so grateful and it shifted everything i mean literally the way i see it all now feels so very different every i mean so many aspects of the beginning in the middle of the book change the end is a completely different book um than what i had prepared so yeah i'm so grateful for the journey even though i'm like holy [ \_\_ ] what a nightmare and also thank you you know it's just it's the both and it was the most important thing that i could have done for my sweet little spirit and body and soul and um but it was incredibly painful i almost feel like um well my friend uh allison fallon you know she teaches people to write and she um also encourages people who don't necessarily want to become published authors or mega bestsellers to still write a book because of that process you're describing it seems like um some of the most beautiful books i've read they do exactly what you just described they start in one place and then they curve and they steer another way in the process of being written and i've noticed that books have the potential to transform the reader it almost always starts with the process of writing the book transforming the author which um does not surprise me that that happened when someone is kind of thoughtful and and considered as you are um you write a lot about pain and suffering and experiencing those things in the book and um you know i always got the impression somehow knowing you that uh your life had involved some degree of suffering and difficulty as seems to be common with sensitive people yeah i think um there is something so the beautiful thing about all the pain um and the loss and the different aspects of you know really traumatic events i think um there's several different ways we can all go with it and i think for a long time i stayed pretty parked in the lane of like victimhood and feeling really really sorry for myself and only not being able to see outside of my pain and not being able to show up for a partner or you know family friends or any of those things um and it was miserable and by the end of it i wanted to die and my life felt so um so hopeless and so despair like i just felt utter despair um and wanted to numb in every way i was on every narcotic under the sun because of this um spinal cord injury and they would have given me all that until the day i mean i was on the highest level of fentanyl patch that they give which they give dying cancer patients and morphine and hydrocodone and you know just the list goes on and on and because i didn't think i could handle it i didn't think i could see outside of my own situation and i think coming off of all of the narcotics and starting the process which has been the last seven years of learning how to live again um i think what by numbing all of my pain i also numbed all the beauty and goodness in the humans around me and the you know in the world in experiences in community all of that was numbed out by trying to numb the pain and by letting myself actually feel it all of a sudden i also had these new eyes i feel like it truly i feel like gave me eyes and this new lens to you know i can walk with someone who is going through a divorce or has um experienced the death of a loved one because i know it i know it viscerally on a soul you know level i can walk with someone that has dealt with massive massive physical trauma that's happened to their body physical pain i can walk with someone that's experienced severe depression wanting to not be alive that's because i know it and i think that's one of the many there's so many gifts not to pollyanna-ish it but it in the sense that you have this new level of awareness and empathy and um an ability to see other people like i i i like you honestly now when i see really truly joyful not the like toxic positivity i'm not talking about that but like true grounded joyful humans i just assume that they have lived through so much [ \_\_ ] and have done such hard work um to claim that joy and to live and lean into that because life's so [ \_\_ ] hard earth school's so hard and like when you are living at that depth of grounded joy most people have been through some really really hard hard [ \_\_ ] and have done really beautiful deserving self-loving work you know and um yeah i think it does give you a whole new level of awareness of those around you um because you you know too much right which is like it's hard and it's also it's a gift you use that phrase toxic positivity which gosh that is a that is a targeted and well-formed phrase and i haven't done that before like i i know it because i've also been that person for sure and it's it yeah it can be really hurtful and not really of service so like in response to uh toxic positivity you seem to posit or position this like the work of moving towards real optimism instead um yeah what does that work look like how does one go from a dissociative toxic positivity uh to a real optimism because i found like i can certainly dispel toxic positivity but often what i find behind it instead is an unchecked despair or very dark places um so what does that journey look like for you 100 i mean i think it's different for everyone but i know for myself my you know especially in a time right now which i think it's for always but this is just highlighting so many of our you know hidden pains and traumas and all the things that are just coming to the surface because we're so triggered right now and i think what i've been trying to do um is holding space for the both end because nothing is black and white right and like i um at first i found myself feeling um you know there's been a lot of disappointment and a lot of loss that's come you know both you and i have books coming out and been working for this for like three years and you know everything's being canceled and just you know it's all it's all relative right but i was feeling really disappointed and sad and around that and then feeling the next feeling was shame for feeling that because i was like there's people dying and there's which is that's not helpful at all and that that only just it does nothing um to serve my sweet little spirit at all because it's a dismissal right and so now what i'm trying to hold in both hands is yes there's a lot of disappointment there is fear i'm scared i i don't have a spleen i'm very high risk that's what helps fight your immune system i i live alone um and it's lonely as hell and it's hard you know um and then in the same you know at the same time in the other hand i have this um precious little home that is a safe haven that's so dear to me i am healthy my family is healthy i have food i have the money to pay for my bills um i have this community i have support you know so i had it's both one does not have to overshadow they can both be true at the exact same time and i you know i i just don't think it's fair to try to dismiss people that are in panic mode and just fear and being like you know just choose gratitude just choose joy you're not helping the situation like that doesn't help anyone you know instead it's like i see you i am you i love you this is so hard but you are not alone and we are so loved you are so loved and i'm literally i can say that to anyone else because i'm having to say that to my freaking self every day right now like every day right now because i'm scared and that's okay and i need to let myself feel scared by trying to just push it down and push it away it doesn't freaking go away that's what i know that i know that i know and it doesn't help so by honoring it and loving those feelings those you know feelings that might feel shadowy or dark or scary or too big or whatever it is um by covering it with empathy and compassion and love i i really feel like that's the only way to get anywhere to move forward or to even you know at some point hopefully dispel those feelings on some level but i'm not trying to rush myself through it either because we all have so much um this is just a really really hard scary dark unknown you know and we all love having the tangible which literally everything's unknown let's be real but this is like unprecedented we have no um we have no idea that we've never experienced anything like that no one in our world has ever experienced in our lifetime anything close to this and so of course of course you're scared shitless of course you are i see you i am you i feel you and you are loved and i am loved and and i think just yeah that balance of both like i i've been hesitant to i don't know i'm trying to stay as grounded and as balanced as i can you know and when i am feeling out of balance and really fearful i'm bringing that to my closest friends in my community because i i want to be um of service to the people that follow along and i don't know that that's necessarily when i'm in that like really freaked out stage right that's not gonna be of service um so but it's important to have a place to let that out and to share and to feel what you're feeling and and so i'm just trying to give myself space to do that and i think it's really really loving for us all to have space um to do that and hold that space for each other to do that if it weren't for my friends at kiwi co this episode of ask science mic would have never happened kiwi co is an amazing california-based company that makes a learning products believe it or not and i say believe it or not because i just can't believe how much fun kiwico products are if you're not familiar with kiwico they make things called crates which are you know art and education products that you get mailed every month and they are for children they you know they have crates for uh panda crates for children there's zero to 24 months koala crates ages two to four the atlas crate which is around geography and culture for ages six to eleven the classic kiwi crate ages five to eight for science art and more moving up they have the tinker crate which is science and engineering focused for ages 9 to 16 the doodle crate which is arts and crafts for ages 9 to 16 and then they have the new eureka crate for ages 14 to 104 for engineering and design and the maker crate ages 14 to 104 for art and design and we get four crates every month at my house we get a doodle a tinker a maker and a eureka and then we set them on the kitchen table and my family all barters for who gets which um crate that month so uh i just absolutely love it it is a great way for people of any age to go deeper in their understanding of science technology engineering art and math and you can get started today by going to kiwico.com ask sciencemic where you can get 60 off your first month of any of all of kiwico's lines of crates you're going to love them i get so many pictures sent to me of families enjoying their kiwi crates after hearing about them on the show and by the way i love those pictures keep sending them when you tag me on instagram i do see it so once again get started today kiwico.com ask sciencemike [Music] i'm so thankful to betterhelp for sponsoring ask sciencemike and i'm also so thankful to better help for connecting me with a counselor that i love you know i've been working through a lot of emotional challenges these last few years in my life and better help has played a major role in my growth and my recovery you know i've been experiencing and learning about the codependent tendencies i have and meeting with my better help counselor online in the comfort of my own home has been instrumental in me not only feeling better but getting concrete strategies to make my life improve each day and each week here's how the process works if you go to betterhelp.com slash science mike you'll not only get 10 percent off of your order but you'll go through a questionnaire that will help better help connect you with one of their 6 000 licensed therapists that can get you the support that you deserve over 800 000 people have done it and because their service is secure and online and completely private you can change therapists at any time for any reason it's affordable it's private it's anytime it's anywhere so why not get started today by visiting betterhelp.com sciencemike [Music] so as you do this work of like addressing and really meaningfully accepting and coping with suffering you've been with and uh learning to move away from patterns of dissociation and into patterns of awareness and integration and as you move away from like a toxic positivity into real optimism yeah um have you noticed or have you experienced people in your life or in the public um responding to that optimism from a place of cynicism with like skepticism about your motives or uh or doubting your sincerity um absolutely and it's funny because i usually won't i mean usually i hear about it later which is always just fun and i'm always like you are so valid and feeling whatever you feel because i mean let's be real any of us like we're always seeing everything through our own lens so if someone thinks i'm the absolute best that's actually none of my business and if they think i'm the [ \_\_ ] worst that's also none of my business so i'm always like what you know and it's not to say i'm not human and i have an ego and i'm gonna feel things but like that's their right to feel whatever they feel but i usually it's funny because i'll hear about it later where people be like you know i just like that can't that can't be real like she can't really and then you know they'll if they get to know me they're like oh that's so interesting because like i actually just had this opportunity to be in um morocco uh for a week before everything got insane or it's actually there for almost two weeks and we did this retreat and after like on the last night i had everyone go around and just basically tell each other all the things that we just loved that we got to experience about them that week and probably like three or four different people they had seen that i was coming in like just got on my instagram and they didn't know anything about me or follow me or anything before and so they just made you know we all do that we all make assumptions which i thought that's just the human part of us and so it was really fun hearing them and funny i mean i was just cracking up just to hear what they thought before and then what they actually got to um experience and i always you know that's just that's just a part of it and i'm i'm honestly really okay with that i i don't um yeah again it's just and that takes work i'd listen for the first and i talk about it a lot in my book i part of my unlearning and i'm still it's a daily practice i've always cared so much about what other people think about me like i grew up um you know my mom was a child of alcoholics and i grew up in the south and in the church and everything was about show up be sweet smile you know be kind never show any sort of rough painful hard you know you can never show rage or anger or fear or any of those things it was just smile and smile bigger and that's how you showed up and look cute and be pretty and you know just all the things and and so that's that's been a real journey of i'm unlearning because that's in me that's what was like from the get-go when i was born that's what was taught to me um and so you know my journey has been learning to like remember i think and i talked about this in the book like the unlearning of just i you know even the church i was a part of i was told i was this broken depraved wretch and all these things and i believed it and so this work of coming back home to myself and remembering my just inherent worth and value and that i'm so good and so valuable no matter what anyone says or thinks like when i remember as a child if the clock was like 11 11 or 12 34 or whatever i would go meet me be good make me love jesus and sometimes i'd add in like other things but that was the first two words were always maybe good make me love jesus make me be good make me love jesus because something in me didn't think that i was already good i thought something outside of me had to make me be quote unquote good and that was i mean that's followed me you know and so remembering it's a constant coming home and remembering i am so valuable and so worthy and so loved and so good no matter what any other human ever thinks sees about me or in me and so is every other human i ever encounter so are they and the more i do that work the more i'm actually able you know to see that in others their inherent worth and their value and um and again this is like this is daily work like there i can know that and then two seconds later i'm saying the shittiest things about myself and the next person and wanting to flip them off and punt them to the goddamn moon so like it's a journey right and we're all on it but what i also know is the more i do this work the quicker i am to have to come back to that center place and have so much more grace um and i think just like gentleness um for myself but yeah i have 100 and it's not like all the time but people that just are like what is that real and and in it again it always comes out after they they've gotten to know me but you know that's that's what they think and i'm that's great like whatever i think about that all the time you know um i i tend to be um i don't know i guess what i call like a catastrophizing optimist so what i tend to do with my kind of ptsd background is in any situation my cognitive brain quickly calculates what the worst possible outcome could be and then i like grieve that outcome yeah and then i make a plan to avoid that outcome at which point i i go from kind of like the darkest despair possible to like oh we can do this yeah and people who know me well are pretty used to like living in that cycle right um but when i'm catastrophizing i don't have the emotional or cognitive resources to get on a microphone and talk or make a social media post or do any of the things that i do in public right and so what the public gets from me is the outcome of my thinking and my emotional processing work and me applying insights from the therapeutic process and sometimes i do get feedback that people um they're like this guy can't be real and i think it's so interesting um in kind of the world we live in i am not a person who does like the social media curation i'm i am pretty intentional about doing at least half of my social media videos without a shower uh i don't you know what i mean like i try to like present a more real i had an instagram series for a while while all i did was take pictures of my bald spot on the back of my head i loved that series i tried to like push back against the curation and yet there's something about the times that we have the emotional resources to create media that it automatically creates a limited or curated perspective that's right and there's i try to in my work speak from those places they say to never speak from a wound only speak from a scar and i think that's wise and sometimes i think it's necessary to share our fear and our pain yes uh so that people understand that we're real people too yes and that any um any sincere optimism or sincere hope that you hear from someone in person or in media was hard won that's exactly and there's nothing uh frivolous or insincere about it um i you know i i uh i never had the the is is ruthie real experience because i have this like really uncanny experience where so often you say things i'm like is ruthie psychic and reading my thoughts um i i don't know just maybe there's there's some common threads there and we've had different types of suffering mine yeah uh was less physical and more psychological but still debilitating and then trying to recover and be like a functioning person uh from from extended periods of intense pain and suffering it shapes one's personality and one's approach to living in just particular ways um but one thing i noticed and the reason i asked the question in the first place uh you know reading the book and reading about how you experience people and how they experience you is uh when i went on the unspoken podcast which i i just think what you and miles are doing over there so wonderful um i went and go went to go give you a five star review on amazon and leave a little review because i'm a data nerd and then people like why does mike go and leave amazon reviews and because those little tiny bits of data are how machines decide what to promote and i want to help so i was going to itunes to promote it and i saw all these people posting like i can't believe ruthie i can't believe my house i can't believe these are real people and at first i was so angry um because i was defensive an easy way for me to find anger is to feel defensive of people i care about but then i was sad because i realized that what was actually happening was um people had cynicism as a defense mechanism and your sincerity and your kindness were a threat to their defense mechanism because cynicism really can't survive well in a sustained onslaught of sincerity right like it's it's it requires irony and mutual cynicism to survive and to thrive and that made me think like as i was reading this book just how the process of you trying to live well and trying to love yourself well is a good thing for you but ends up being a good thing for everyone and um i don't know how how personal this may feel and if you want to skip this question we can but i'm wondering ruthie as i've read the pages of there i am um have you ever had to struggle with a need to go through your process and realizing the reason you were going through your process was so you could use your process to help other people first well you know it's actually been uh really interesting i when i first stopped living in my bed i jumped straight to the doing phase of just i'm gonna help as many people like this you know i have to go doo doo doo and i felt like at the time i still had a lot of shame for the seven years of i felt like i would just take him you know and i people had to show up for me in such amazing ways and i had just been a consumer and not given back and so um i just jumped into how can i help as many people as possible and bring you know the message like this is not the end whatever you're going through there's hope for you and and i i would just go go and you know in a lot of ways i learned with it's honestly since writing a book um i was living in the more of the human doing instead of the human being face because i i knew that when i lived in my bed i found so much identity and worth in my pain story because i found so much comfort and like you know because we teach people how to see us when people would see me they'd be like how are you doing are you feeling okay and and i found so much comfort in their sympathy because it for me and my sweet little brain it it justified because i was sick you know it justified laying in my bed and not doing anything and not working and not showing up as a partner not showing up as a friend or an aunt or any of those things but what i realized in the last few years is actually i when i went to on-site you can't tell anyone what you do for a living that's one of the rules you give up your phone and you can't tell anyone in your group you're in these groups of like eight to ten and it's all experiential therapy and you can't tell anyone what you do for a living and i realize there because usually this is how it go people say what do you do for a living oh i'm a speaker what do you speak about i share my story what's your story and i could give this like five minute elevator pitch and all of a sudden i get this like wow you're so strong you're so brave you're so res you know praise essentially for this pain story and through processing and you know therapy i realized all this time i was still finding so much worth and identity in the pain story and and it jumped to you know it came from a i was trying to help other people but i also really needed to be needed to feel okay you know and it and it wasn't necessarily coming from this wholehearted place because i was still completely ignoring healing my own heart because i didn't think i thought my pain was so big that if i went in it will kill me and i believed that i thought it would consume me because it was so great um i thought it would kill me and realizing those things and realizing and again like i was saying earlier through this work and through this you know really um i mean fighting so hard um it's been gritty and painful but doing this really hard healing work of going into these old traumas and a lot of it being i thought it was all um starting at the wreck on but there was so much early childhood stuff that i didn't even realize had even happened because i didn't think i could go in and deal with it you know and by doing that um remembering what was like always so right with me not what was wrong with me um and i think that that journey um has been so beautiful that if i don't do that healing work on myself first i can't really help like we can't fix anyone else right like we need each other in community to rise up together and to be mirrors to each other but we i can't fix anyone and no one can fix me and i went to doctors and partners and you know my audience and all these things to like try to numb and to fix what felt broken inside of me instead of going in and doing that really hard work on myself um and i think now like even with the ending of the book i'm like listen when you finish this and you close the last page and you you know finish that cup of coffee or you turn off your light whatever it is i hope that you forget it completely i hope you forget me i hope you forget my name i hope you forget the story because you don't need me i i want to just be a mirror to you of what healing is inside of you and what love is already yours what divinity lives inside of you um i'm just gonna moonwalk the [ \_\_ ] out here because like you don't need me and that's the most loving thing i can ever do is do that work on myself and then go into the world and be a mirror of that for those around me and love people as well as i possibly can out of an overflow of knowing how loved i am you know instead of needing them to try to help them so that i could feel better about myself because that could be my mo you know that is easily my mo and it comes from a very needy not loving of service place like i even after the wreck you know i mean after getting off the drugs and started living i realized how much i used instagram as the next drug i had not on the narcotics but it became this other thing to like validate me to feel to not feel like so alone and to not feel so isolated and it became another coping mechanism um so it's just you know the more we go about the journey the more you see and listen six months from now i might look at me today and be like bless her sweet soul she thought she knew things you know we're all just doing the work and it's just an ongoing forever we'll never arrive we're just on the journey and i am learning every day and i hope like when i'm 90 years old i have a notebook and i'm so curious and i'm writing down all the things that i'm learning and never think that i have it all figured out you know hmm gosh i resonate with that so much you know this this there's such the work is so hard um because anything we use to grow and to find freedom in uh for if we stay there too long it becomes a new system of confinement yeah you know i i think about um for me i had a period where basically like philosophical nihilism was like my big comfort like a realized realization that all knowledge is just kind of a thing people used to survive but i realized after a while that if i just stuck there and i stayed there that it just became a new form of dissociation right and that there had to be this this battle this battle this balance i guess it is a battle to find balance uh this this balance between not holding your your notions and your ideas and your beliefs too tightly but then also not uh you know drifting off into this kind of dissociative bottle bubble of pseudo enlightenment and this is a really hard pattern in energy to hold um i have a poster on my wall by one of my favorite creators a man named zay frank who was uh who kind of uh invented the vlog i think that's a fair thing to say about about zay and i have this poster on my wall and it's the script of a video he did called an invocation for beginning so he had a show called uh the show by zay frank where he did a video a day uh as a video blog before youtube existed and then he turned around at another show later called a show with zayfrank um and there's this line in there um about kind of holding on to the metaphors you need to make it through each day but then also letting them go when they don't suit you anymore yes and that's work i get the sense that you're doing and that you're doing well and i wonder um if you'd be willing to try something and that is i'd like for you to um if this feels okay and feel safe i'd like you to think of ruthie a few years ago when ruthie was first starting to think about writing a memoir and putting a book on paper and now you've gone through the process and you've made this beautiful thing and i i just wonder if you would be willing to tell the audience what ruthie today would say to ruthie back then um i love that thank you for inviting me to do that oh you know i would just look at her i'm imagining it right now like with the kindest most gentle loving eyes like the way my eye i always when i want to do that i imagine the way my daddy always looked at me and tell her she's exactly where she's supposed to be i'm so proud of her i love her so much um and she has everything within her that she's gonna need to get through this because it's gonna be really hard she is so brave and so strong and i am so in love with her so in love with her and yeah i just and i just really really like her um i really like her a lot yeah her heart's really good thank you ruthie thank you so us as you're listening to us talk out there in radio land i'd imagine that some people uh hear that and it's familiar and beautiful as you've been on a journey to learn to love and accept yourself now i suppose for other people it's shocking and unimaginable to speak of fondness of yourself especially yourself in the past which we so often carry shame about yeah here's what i would like to tell you all listening to me right now is that this book there i am by my friend ruthie lindsey is a personal story of growth and transformation it is about ruthie and it is about ruthie's life and if you like memoirs it's a good memoir and you're going to enjoy it but i also believe that because we are a storytelling animal that the stories we read become a part of who we are and i believe sincerely that if you read this book it represents an opportunity and an invitation to begin a journey of growth and transformation in your own life that could end with you seeing yourself with the same grace and fondness and appreciation that ruthie sees for herself the book is there i am it's going to be available everywhere the books are sold and it will be on bookshelves april 21st 2020 and if i do this right i'm hoping that will be the day following the release of this podcast ruthie for people who want to get to know you more maybe before they buy the book or maybe after where can they find you online yes um well i am on the gram on instagram at ruthie lindsey l-i-n-d-s-e-y and then um i have a website which is just www.ruthielindsey.com and on there you could sign up for my newsletter we're going to be doing a lot because you know all of um all of our tours and things are being canceled so we're coming up with a virtual tour and you can follow along where we'll be doing that and also going to be creating a book club um that i'll be doing each week and i would love to have you all following along with that it's going to be really it's going to be really fun and i think this time it's great it's causing us to be really inventive and creative and do things that i would have never done before but i think you know this is the time like to come together and we have the space to like the universe is giving us a big old timeout and i would be so honored to to get to go on this journey with y'all um so yeah it'll be so fun and you'll be able to find links to everything ruthie just yes mentioned right in the show notes of the episode you're listening to right now so you can just tap on your device and then tap the link and go straight there ruthie this has been a joy and a pleasure as frankly i expected it would be i love talking with you and i'm so thankful that you took the time today to join me in this conversation and uh and spend some time with me and the listeners of ask science mike i am so deeply appreciative and i'm gonna i know we've heard the conversation in the past about my problem with gushing so i'm going to keep it to a minimum but i i love you so dearly and i'm just so honored to get to be your friend and to get to know you and to love you it's truly a dear fear of privilege in my heart so thank you the great thing about good friendship is i know you mean it because i would say the same thing about you thank you thank you bye