Anne Lamott

Summary

WILD CARD with Rachel Martin
Episode: Anne Lamott
NPR | May 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Wild Card, bestselling author Anne Lamott joins Rachel Martin for a candid, laughter- and wisdom-filled conversation. Using the show’s signature question cards, Anne reflects on childhood memories, the role of fear, the nitty-gritty of living as a writer, spirituality, mortality, and the profound messiness and beauty of being human. The discussion also spotlights Anne’s latest book, Good: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, co-written with her husband, Neal Allen.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Letting Go of Others’ Opinions

• “What other people thought of me was who I was or had anything to do with who I was. And I had to learn that I was this precious, hilarious girl. And then woman… kind and generous and kind of a mess like we all are.” – Anne Lamott (00:19, 27:13)
  • Anne speaks to the journey of unlearning the belief that external opinions define her worth, embracing her quirks and flaws as essential parts of her identity.

Daydreams & Enduring Friendships

• Anne fondly remembers her carefree childhood at ages 9–10, unburdened by self-consciousness or peer pressure, “jumping from rock to rock on the beach,” and playing with her best friend Shelly Adams—whom she still walks with regularly.
  • “You are still playing unicorn. You are still playing. You don't worry about what you look like. That's like 11 and 12. And then the nightmare starts.” (02:20)
• The transition into adolescence brought body image struggles and feelings of being “different,” which lingered until she found her creative tribe.

Finding Her People & The Writer’s Life

• Anne credits a small, progressive high school and literary friends (“my carasse, like Vonnegut calls it”) with nurturing her identity as a writer.
  • “I started being defined, at least in my own mind, as a literary person… That was the best I can say. It was like a calling. And it was calling me.” (07:29)
• Her father, also a writer, exposed her to literary culture early on, emphasizing reading as intrinsic to writing.

Childhood Routines & Their Afterlife

• Many routines—walking, reading, the company of close girlfriends—have carried over from childhood into the present.
  • “I still walk every day. I still play. And I still have a little circle of girlfriends who are the reason that I'm stable most of the time.” (09:35)
• Anne and Rachel share the bittersweet nostalgia of routines tied to loved ones—like being sung to by a parent, or the memories evoked by music.

On Writing Good—The New Book

• The book Good: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences is Anne’s first collaboration, co-authored with her husband Neal Allen.
  • They structured the book as a dialogue: Neal’s practical writing advice is followed by Anne’s candid, humorous commentary.
  • “I get to be cranky and I get to also have the last word. And also he's so brilliant… but I'm a dropout… I'm like the mother who brings cupcakes for everybody's birthday.” (14:01)
• The essence: focus on finding your own voice and writing the “hard stuff”—the real, vulnerable stories of loss, survival, and transformation.
  • Favorite rules:
    • “Write the hard stuff.”
    • “Take out the boring stuff.”
  • “That’s what readers are starved for. And we’ll pay extra if you can make it sort of funny.” (17:58)

Accolades, Criticism & The Real Rewards

• Anne dispels the myth that external validation—like glowing reviews or bestseller lists—brings lasting fulfillment.
  • “What you’re looking for is not out there… The self-respect you want is not going to come from being published.” (16:00)
  • Shares Paul Williams’ anecdote: Winning an Oscar’s thrill lasted only 24 hours. (17:35)
  • Writing, reading, and authentic connection form the true reward.

Fear: Companion and Catalyst

• Fear is a constant, Anne asserts, not mutually exclusive from faith.
  • “Fear comes with the territory of deciding to be fully human. You know, of asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be each day? Well… you can do it afraid.” (03:03, 19:08)
  • She uses acronyms from recovery communities, notably:
    • F.E.A.R.: False Evidence Appearing Real
    • Frantic Effort to Appear Recovered
• Practical antidotes: small, loving actions—donating, fundraising, helping neighbors—abate fear and restore happiness. (21:51–23:11)
  • Memorable Story: The war horse and the sparrow: “One does what one can.” (21:36)

The Inner Critic

• Anne explores the origins of her inner critic—parents’ unhappiness, shaming for sensitivity, and the coping strategy of believing she was the problem to gain control.
  • “It’s my inner critic. It kept me alive. It’s not the truth. It’s not the reality of who I am as a woman or a writer… It’s a very misguided effort to keep me from embarrassing myself.” (25:50)

Identity, Acceptance, & Vulnerability

• Reiterates the importance of unlearning childhood messages about conformity and appearance.

  • “If there isn’t something wrong with you, I’m not interested… That’s what it means to be human: to be real, vulnerable, who you actually are instead of who you agreed to be.” (27:13)

  • A Quote Shared:

    • “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” —

Transcript

[Whole Foods Market Announcer]

This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Make Mother's Day special with quality cheese and charcuterie, sustainable, wild, caught or responsibly farmed seafood and seasonal bakery treats. Celebrate mom with Whole Foods Market.

[Rachel Martin]

What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?

[Anne Lamott]

What I had to unlearn was that what other people thought of me was who I was or had anything to do with who I was. And I had to learn that I was this precious, hilarious, hilarious girl. And then woman who was kind and generous and kind of a mess like we all are. Like, if there's not, if there isn't something wrong with you, I'm not interested, you know?

[Rachel Martin]

I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Anne Lamott.

[Anne Lamott]

I'm afraid all the time. I mean, fear comes with the territory of deciding to be fully human. You know, asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be each day?

[Rachel Martin]

Anne Lamott's books are the kind that people dog ear underlining passages and writing this exclamation point in the margins. And we, her readers, feel like we've got to pass on those books to friends. They are gifts to be given and received. Before this taping, I went looking for the copy of Anne Lamott's best selling book, Bird by Bird that I've been carrying around for decades. And inside it I found an inscription from my sister. Of course, it had been a gift. Anne Lamott's insights on life are like little treasures that transform us and we can't help but share them. Her newest book is a collaboration with her husband, the writer Neal Allen. It's about a subject they both know well. It's called Good 36 Ways to Improve your sentences. And I am so very happy to welcome Anne Lamott to Wildcard. Hi.

[Anne Lamott]

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

[Rachel Martin]

Round one is memories. Here we go. And lamotte. One, two or three?

[Anne Lamott]

Two.

[Rachel Martin]

Two. What period of your life do you often daydream about?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, I love that question. I loved being a 9 and 10 year old girl because things were still working at that point. It wasn't boy girl stuff. You didn't know that you were not OK. And that a 10 year old girl is just such a work of art. You know, you are still playing unicorn. You are still playing. You're still jumping from rock to Rock on the beach. You don't worry about what you look like. That's like 11 and 12. And then the nightmare starts. A long national nightmare of prepubescence and adolescence and teenage years. But I had a very best friend who I still walk with. She was my best friend when I was six, Shelly Adams. And that was 56 years ago, you know, and we still walk three times a week, but we were just bold and wild and unfettered. And this was in the Bay Area.

[Rachel Martin]

This is in.

[Anne Lamott]

This is in Marin County. Yeah. And I daydream about that. I daydream about jumping around on the rocks.

[Rachel Martin]

It's interesting to me that you really. There was a dividing line, like somewhere around 11, like closely thereafter, self consciousness

[Anne Lamott]

setting, 11 starts being boy girl 11. Some of the girls are really maturing now. At 11, I weighed something like 60 pounds and I'd also skipped a grade. So I was like even a slower developer. And I was just like emotionally not up there with the. And the 11 year old girls are starting to do boy girl stuff. And it's starting to occur to me that this is not gonna be my realm, you know, anytime soon.

[Rachel Martin]

Wait, why? Why was that not your realm?

[Anne Lamott]

Because I looked so different. I. This crazy hair and I was so tiny and I didn't have. I wasn't developing and I was a year behind. I was only 10 when the other girls were 11 and dances were starting and the girls had all that hormonal energy and I didn't. I wanted to be back on the rocks, you know, jumping around and collecting sand crabs and stuff. We had this fab, this sort of radical silliness still at 10. And we played and we were much, much more carefree and by less so.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, I am so pleased for you that you still maintain that relationship. That is amazing, you know, to have a long, long friendship like that of someone who has been near your side that whole time. Okay, next question. One, two or three?

[Anne Lamott]

Two. I think I'm on a roll.

[Rachel Martin]

When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you?

[Anne Lamott]

You know, I always had great girlfriends. Not just this one Shelly Adams, but I think I knew by a very early age that girls were gonna be my salvation. Girls and women. Ninth grade, I went to this huge local public high school and I was just overwhelmed. There were 2,000 kids and I was always a bit odd and different and eccentric. And I ended up at this hippie high school in San Francisco called Drew for three years. And that was really the most incred, incredible education. And I became a really literary person there. And there I met my friend Pammy that I've written so much about that you might remember from bird by bird or operating instructions. And we became best friends and her sister and I became best friends and I had another friend. And we were friends with the teachers because it was this tiny hippie private school. And then I just had like Vonnegut called a Carasse. You know, I had this little group that were the people that I couldn't wait to see again every day. I couldn't wait to get to school together to see them all again. And I started being defined, at least in my own mind, as a literary person. And going to plays and stuff and studying the playwrights to see how they did it.

[Rachel Martin]

You felt an optimism about the future?

[Anne Lamott]

Well, I'm not sure if I felt an optimism. It usually depended on who the president was. But I felt like that this education was giving me this portal that I could enter in which I was becoming a real writer. And I knew that becoming a writer meant becoming a really serious reader. Like, that's really one of the big gifts that writing can give you is it teaches you to be a much better reader. And then also my dad was a writer, so he was steering me to the Paris Review interview, the interviews called Writers at Work. And I just, you know, by 15, 16, 17, I'm reading all the great writers to see how they do it and to see how they live as writers, how they live with neglect or rejection or even success, you know, which can be its own thing you need to master. And it was like I had found my portal is how I would say it.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, you were building in your imagination what a life could look like as a creative person, as a writer. Yeah.

[Anne Lamott]

What I wanted to be and how I wanted to live. And I knew that my dad had been a writer and he had never. We'd never had enough money. But he had his life and his days and his freedom and his. He had a part time job eventually. Cause my other brother was also in this private school called Drew. But I saw the writing life was. It was like a calling to be a monk, you know, it was like a spiritual calling to spend your life talking to other writers and giving them your work and offering to read their work and mark it up for them. And that it was like. That's the best I can say. It was like a calling. And it was calling me.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay, three more cards. One, two or three?

[Anne Lamott]

Two.

[Rachel Martin]

Hmm. What's a routine from your childhood that you miss?

[Anne Lamott]

You know, it's Funny, I do all the same things that I did as a child. I don't play tennis because the court is so big, but I play pickleball and I walk almost every day. My dad was a walker. He was an atheist, and he taught us that the outdoors was the spiritual realm. It's like the acronym is great outdoors or good orderly direction. But so I still walk every day. It's how I get. And I have a religious life, but I get centered. I get hit the reset button and I get awakened every day by getting outside. It's like getting spritzed by a plant. Mr. Yeah. What about you? Like, what do you still do from childhood? But that doesn't count as my question that I'm flipping on you genuinely curious.

[Rachel Martin]

I'm curious and no one's ever asked me this one actually, what routine from my childhood do I miss?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, I didn't say one that I miss. I just said the ones that have carried over.

[Rachel Martin]

Which ones do you miss?

[Anne Lamott]

God, I don't know. I know.

[Rachel Martin]

It's a different question, isn't it?

[Anne Lamott]

I mean, When I was 4, I was an early reader and I started reading chapter books like, you know, Beezus and Ramona and then Stuart Little. Then you graduate to Evie White and stuff. And I still live and have found salvation in chapter books. Still walk every day. I still play. And I still have a little circle of girlfriends who are the reason that I'm stable most of the time. You know, I could probably write this if I sat down and thought about it. But yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah. Memories or routines that you miss. I find mine settling on people, too. Like, I really, my mom had a beautiful voice. And so I miss her singing to me before I went to bed. Like, that's a very particular routine. Which you routinely did. Was part of our every, every single night.

[Anne Lamott]

I wonder if you have the experience of hearing music your mother loved. My mother loved Judy Collins and Mozart and she loved like Thelonious Funk. And I'll hear them and I'll stop.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, yeah.

[Anne Lamott]

And I'll go, mom, listen. And I'll stop and really listen with her. And she's been dead for 20 plus years.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, yeah, for sure. That happens to me all the time.

[Anne Lamott]

Don't you do that.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, yeah. She and my dad, their first date was to the movie Dr. Zhivago. And so she would sing that song to me at night, that somewhere, my love. And so I, that's where my mind settles when I think about routines I miss. And my imaginary friend Nancy. I had an imaginary friend Nancy who lived in the fire hydrant down the block. And I used to visit her quite often. And she was cool.

[Anne Lamott]

So that's cool.

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[Rachel Martin]

Okay, so we're gonna pull out from this game and we're gonna talk about your book. Congratulations.

[Anne Lamott]

Thank you.

[Rachel Martin]

I mean, it never gets old, I imagine. Or does it? You're like, another book, another book tour.

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, no. Well, this one's with this writing book, is with my husband. So it was my first collaboration. It's really special.

[Rachel Martin]

It's so wonderful. So he's a writer. He' a former journalist and he's taught writing for many years. And he's developed this list of 36 tips to make your sentences better. And the book is lovely because Neil is giving you the tips and the advice, which I have to say, as I write a lot for my job, they're very useful. But then you turn the page and it's like Annie's take. And so then you kind of weigh in on said rule. And most of the time you agree and you talk about what a smart rule it is. And here's how you apply it to your own writing. But every once in A while. I don't know, Neil, like you're big, pedantic, or like you're using fancy words and trying to sound smarter than you are. Was he cool with you, like nudging

[Anne Lamott]

him a little bit? No, he loved it. No, because I get to be cranky and I get to also have the last word. And also he's so brilliant. I mean, I think his material is really brilliant, but it's also very welcoming. It's like you can really do this. You can start to notice when you do, when you use a cliche or how often you use the word very, or act. Take them out. Take out the tiny words, you know, and the stuff about the most important, I think is about finding your own voice and believing both in your writing and in the world that your voice is strong enough and good enough. And we really only want to hear your stories and your voice. And so. But you know, he's really over educated. There is no getting around that. And I'm a dropout, you know, and so I would come in sometimes and he's really like a gentle professor. And then I'm like the third grade, the mother who brings cupcakes for everybody's birthday, you know, and tells all the kids, you can do it. Why don't you tell me your story and I'll write it down? Because I can write faster than you. And so I'm in that role throughout the book. And he's more in the role of helping you have the confidence to write harder stuff. You know, you don't need to write flippant or ironic stuff that you think the New York critics are gonna love. They're not. They're not gonna love your work. Mostly they love the work of about six people. And so you get to over caring about that.

[Rachel Martin]

It's funny though, you say to aspiring writers or new writers, any writer really, you have to let go of all the accolades because all the literary people, they only like six writers, so you gotta get over it. But you and Lamont are like one of the six.

[Anne Lamott]

No, I'm not.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, come on.

[Anne Lamott]

No, I'm not. I got the worst review of my life for Somehow, which was a number one New York Times bestseller. From the New York Times. A scathing and stupid review.

[Rachel Martin]

Well, see, that's why it's a stupid review.

[Anne Lamott]

3000 miles away from Neil and Sam and everybody. So no, I am not in the New York literati pre approval sales list at all by a long shot. But it doesn't matter. The thing I teach most of the Writing people, the students I work with at a writing room. Is that what you're looking for is not out there. It's not out there. You can't get the reviewed in the New York Times or the New Yorker. You can't get to a certain place on the New York Times list and get what you think is out there. You're not gonna get the self respect, believe me, from being published. I always say you're gonna be more mentally ill than you are right now because you're gonna get into that desperation. You're gonna get into trying to get people to like you that are never gonna like you.

[Rachel Martin]

It's so brutal.

[Anne Lamott]

It's brutal. And so I want to teach people that the writing is where the action is. The writing, the collaborating the writer life of reading, of studying, of sitting at the feet of the masters of. You know, it's wonderful to get published too. I mean that you could send something off to a quarterly and get published and it will be thrilling and it's going to be wonderful. But it's not what you're looking for. It's an inside job. Let me just tell you a quick story. I have a friend in recovery named Paul Williams, a great songwriter, right? And he told me about winning the Academy Award 100 years ago. It might have been for the way we were. I can't remember right the second because I have jet lag. But he said, you know, I stood up at the podium receiving the statue, the highest accolade that you can achieve in the music business. It was incredible. And he said, it lasted me 24 hours.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, it all fades away.

[Anne Lamott]

And then you need another hits away. Yeah, it all fades away. You need another hit.

[Rachel Martin]

Tell me about your favorite rule in the book. I've got a couple of mine, but tell me yours.

[Anne Lamott]

Well, Neil, I want to say you said he had these 36 rules, which he gave to me on our second date. And I started immediately passing them out to the students at a writing room because they're brilliant and they reflected well on me to know him. But I added two. Mine was right. Write the hard stuff. Write about loss. Write about death. Write about coming through on survivable loss. Write about childhood. Write about how we come through dark, cold times with our faculties intact. As Esme says in the great Salinger short story, write the hard stuff. That's what readers are starved for. And, you know, we'll pay extra if you can make it sort of funny. And my other rule was take out the boring stuff.

[Rachel Martin]

Well, congratulations again. I whipped through that thing and have already found myself applying several of the rules. Round two. Ann Insights. One, two or three?

[Anne Lamott]

Two, two.

[Rachel Martin]

How big of a role does fear have in your life?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, God. You know, there's one school, spiritual school, that says you can't have faith and fear at the same time. And I find that just infuriating and so wrong because I'm a very. I'm a Sunday school teacher, I'm a believer, and I'm afraid all the time. I mean, I have an angel coin in my pocket now so that I wouldn't be afraid doing this with you. And yet at the same time, I mean, fear comes with the territory of deciding to be fully human. You know, of asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be each day? Well, I want to be really alive. I want to be awake. I want to stop hitting the snooze button. But I'm kind of afraid. Well, that's okay. You can do it. Afraid, you know. And so in recovery, they use the acronyms of false Evidence appearing real, which is about making up stories that you think are probably catastrophic. If you grow up around alcoholism or mental illness within the marriage, you prepare yourself for catastrophe. Because then you. Which you do. Yeah. Then it's not shocking when it happens. It's like, well, whatever. And to some degree. But when you're still drinking or using the false evidence, appearing real might mean that you're imagining that ice or the drug and alcohol people are out on your lawn at four in the morning when the cocaine has run out and you can see them, and that's a false evidence appearing real. But then you get sober and the false evidence is that you are not an okay person without drinking. I mean, drinking really. I got sober when I was 32. Drinking really helped me feel that I was okay. It made me the life of the party. It made me way prettier instantly. Like, one drink in and so. But it was fall. That's all just bs. You probably can't say that, but there are so many acronyms for fear, though. And the one I love most is the frantic effort to appear recovered. And that's where my main fear comes, is this. That's a good one. Yeah, right. It's the desperation to appear, to be just fine. And I don't think you can be paying attention in the modern era and not be really terrified. There's a story I love, love, love, we always told my Sunday school kids of a great war horse coming upon a sparrow who's lying in the middle of the street with its Legs straight up in the air. And the war horse just laughs, what are you doing on your back? And the sparrow says, I'm trying to help hold back the darkness. And the horse just laughs and laughs and says, what do you weigh, like, 3 ounces? And there's a pause. And the sparrow says, one does what one can. And so with anything that comes up, we can't do great things. We don't have magic wands, but we can do what we can. We show up, we don't run screaming for our cute little lives just because the climate situation is literally catastrophic. We donate to people who are doing the work of climate justice. We donate. We have garage sales to raise money to send to Greenpeace or to the other activist organizations who are doing the work. I'm a dropout. I can't contribute my best thinking, but I am a great fundraiser. I have this weird gift of getting people to give me money. I'm not making this up. And so I get people to give me money and then I send it off to the people who can do the work of protecting our immigrants, of getting children fed, of just the very basic, basic causes. So.

[Rachel Martin]

And that helps abate the fear.

[Anne Lamott]

And that helps abate the fear. When I don't know what to do in the face of it all, I go around my neighborhood, I wave to all my neighbors. If you wanna have loving feelings, you do a bunch of loving things and you pick up Litt. And then I feel, like, totally happy again.

[Rachel Martin]

That sounds about right. Next set of three. One, two or three.

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, I don't know. I might just go crazy this time. 1.

[Rachel Martin]

What emotion do you understand better than all the others?

[Anne Lamott]

Fear. I think I understand fear. I really understand a lot about where it sprang from as a teenager and grown up was from having had parents who weren't doing very well with each other. My dad drank, my mother was very heavy and had an eating disorder. And when you're a child, you really need to think if your parents are unhappy, that you're the problem, because otherwise you have no control. Right? If you're the problem because I was hypersensitive, or you say hypersensitive, I was just sensitive. I'd see the COVID of the National Geographic and the little kids on it with flies on their faces, and I'd cry. And my mom, who was from England, from Liverpool, go, oh, Annie, for God's sake, now what? You know, the appropriate response was to do what I was doing. But I was shamed into having feelings. And so I took it. I Took all my parents problems so that I could have a sense of. All I had to do then was to be better, needless, and not have the feelings I was feeling. And then I would. And that would fix them. They'd be Reaganomic, trickle down, you know. My husband's last book was called oh, my God, Better Days because he has all these clients and he teaches them about the inner critic, which Freud called the superego. And it's that little voice you start hearing at 5 and 6 and 7 that says, don't try that. Don't do that. You'll get in trouble. Now, the thing is that your inner critic kept you alive, right? It kept you from running out into the street. It kept you from swimming out too far. And Neil's clients end every session with thanking their inner critic for keeping them alive. But I happen to have excellent traffic safety protocols built in at this point. And I will still hear the inner critic say, don't write that. That's not gonna go over well. Or it'll say, oh, Annie, talk about beating a dead horse. Or, boy, has the well run dry. And what he does with his clients and his wife is to identify it and to say, oh, it's you. It's my inner critic. It kept me alive. It's not the truth. It's not the reality of who I am as a woman or a writer. It's my inner critic. It's a very misguided effort to keep me from embarrassing myself publicly and therefore embarrassing the family. And so I learned to start saying, oh, it's you. And the fear comes up because I'm really safe in the world, you know, I'm loved and I'm. I grew up to be a woman who is very, very. Who has a very strong core, a very strong, strong sense a lot of the time of my own value, a lot of the time of my own beingness and that I'm, you know, I'm good to go. And it's just one day at a time. And then I'll hear this voice, you know, when I leave here, I'm going to think, oh, oh, you meant to say this or that, and why did you say that other thing? And then I'll say, oh, it's you. It's my inner critic. It's not our reality. Like, you and I could talk for several hours, right? And it would just be really natural and I would turn the cards on you and stuff like that, and you would. I realistically mean we could talk for a couple hours and it would be fine. But when I leave here, the inner critic is going to have a want to talk about how it went.

[Rachel Martin]

But it's such a. It's so. It's a beautiful thing to be able to say. I see you and I recognize that you're here and your purpose in my life. And now I will just send you on your way. Right, last one in this round. 1. 2 or 3?

[Anne Lamott]

3.

[Rachel Martin]

What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?

[Anne Lamott]

I had to unlearn. I mean, my parents taught me great values. They were civil rights activists. We were marching against Vietn early on and marching for just all the great good causes. And they taught me to read. I was reading very early. They gave me the value of literature and libraries, the greatest American institution besides the Constitution. But I had to learn almost everything they taught me because it was the 50s and they taught me that girls look a certain way. Well, I was never going to look like the other girls. I had this really crazy wiry hair and it grew up and sideways, it didn't grow down. And I got bullied and the bullying gave me my sense of humor because I discovered that if a boy with other boys had a drive by insult on a bike and I thought of something to throw at him, the other boys would laugh at him and I would be a little bit better. But so what I had to unlearn was that what other people thought of me was who I was or had anything to do with who I was. And I had to learn just from the bottom up that I was not what men thought of me or east coast literary men and. Or I was not with the really cool teenage boys or girls thought of me, that I was this precious, hilarious, wise girl and then woman who was kind and generous and kind of a mess like we all are. Like, if there isn't something wrong with you, I'm not interested. You know, if there isn't something wrong with you, we're seriously gonna have almost nothing to talk about at dinner. So maybe sit somewhere else. And I had to learn that that was what it meant to be human was to be real and to be vulnerable and to be who you actually were instead of who you always agreed to be because you got good grades for sure. I love that old Aeneas Nin quote, and I'll probably get it wrong, but something about how one day the grief of staying in Bud was just too big and she just took the chance of what it would be like to bloom.

[Rachel Martin]

Oh, my gosh. Oh, God. Sorry. Now I need to Find it, because I want to read it out loud. Okay, let's read it.

[Anne Lamott]

It's like there came a day. I don't know.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay, I found it.

[Anne Lamott]

Okay, good.

[Rachel Martin]

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Yeah, that's lovely. Yeah.

[Anne Lamott]

Yeah. I mean, there's a point at which, you know, in recovery, we always say the willingness comes from the pain. The willingness to do it, to stop drinking, obviously, or using or shopping or whatever, comes from the pain that you're creating, the mental pain. And you get to that point where you this has just got to stop. I don't know what my future will look like. I don't know who I will be without this, but this has got to stop. And at some point, you realize you're about to step into a shape that has been waiting for you all along. And it's kind of scary because you don't have an owner's manual that goes with it. You know, you got the owner's manual as a child that when you do this, it really pleases the adults and the teachers and your classmates and the whole world. And you going, wow, that was me then. But this is gonna be now. This is gonna be me now, and it's gonna be a little different. But it's still me.

[Rachel Martin]

Yes.

[Anne Lamott]

Still me. It's finally me.

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[Rachel Martin]

Last round beliefs 12 or 3? 3.

[Anne Lamott]

3.

[Rachel Martin]

What's an answer you've stopped searching for?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, what does it all mean? What's it all about, Alfie? You know it's about. I know what it. It's all about, you know, it's somehow all about the present moment. The address of the meaning is in the present moment. The address of the meaning is in the heart. And you know, the heart cave and not in my head. I've learned to figure it out is not a good slogan, you know, I mean, I'm a five year old child with a slide ruler, you know, and I got a lot of attention for that. And that was not what the meaning of life was. The meaning of life was hiking with my dad. The meaning of life was my dad's love. And my brothers and my mom and our uncles and aunts and we all lived in the same county. And the meaning of life is each breath, you know, each precious breath that we wake up and we're still alive. I mean, it's actually kind of a miracle. And the meaning of life is love. I mean, I wrote a whole book about it. It's about being people with warm hearts and vulnerable hearts and gentle hearts. You know that when you go from being clenched and clutching and. And clinging and scared to death about what is gonna happen next and the plates of the earth shift somehow, maybe somebody does something really sweet for you or the checker at the marketplace calls you sweetie pie or something like that, and you start to laugh. Oh, my God. I really. I've said this so many times, but laughter really is carbonated holiness. And you get that little spritz and your heart opens and you start smiling on the street again and you end up really. I don't know what the meta meaning of life is, but I know the meaning of life is tied up with love and it's tied up with breath. It's tied up with the present moment and it's tied up with you. And it's tied up with me.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah, the end.

[Anne Lamott]

The end.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay, this one I just noticed I wrote upside down, so that's on me.

[Anne Lamott]

Maybe we should. Maybe that's a sign.

[Rachel Martin]

Maybe it's. It's a sign.

[Anne Lamott]

Okay.

[Rachel Martin]

One, two or three.

[Anne Lamott]

I want the one that was upside down. Come on, you knew that.

[Rachel Martin]

Okay, good. I'm secretly glad because I don't think this has ever come up with anyone. Is there? Okay, I'm gonna do. No, that's silly. I'm just gonna read it upside down. Is there a religious practice or ritual that you're envious of.

[Anne Lamott]

You know, I used to be so envious of Ro. I'm a nice Protestant girl, but I used to be so jealous because Rose Kennedy went to Mass every single morning of her life. And no matter what had gone on, no matter whatever tragedy she and her family were facing, she went to Mass and she grieved and wept with people and she rejoiced with people. She resurrected with people, and she loved people. She brought all of her best self and her best love to other people that were suffering. And so she made her individual suffering and their individual suffering so much bigger. You know, just hooking onto this huge, big oceanic energy of love and creation that surrounds us and indwells us and is beneath our feet. And I was always really jealous of that. You know, I mean, when anybody has a really devout spiritual program, you know, there's one mountain of awakening and of becoming a person of love. And there are many, many paths. And when I know somebody who's really on a path, the Buddhists, my Buddhist friends who practice, who wake up and do 30 minutes of meditation before coffee.

[Rachel Martin]

You like the discipline?

[Anne Lamott]

I love that. I get up and I have coffee and eventually I do 15 minutes of meditation. That's pretty good. So, yeah, I mean, all spiritual. So many spiritual. Anything that isn't fundamentalism appeals to me. Fundamentalism is the reason that we are in this situation. We are both in this country and in the world right now. But don't you just love people that have a practice? Yeah, I do. And they don't try to voice it on you. They don't try to get you. I do too.

[Rachel Martin]

Last 1. 1, 2 or 3?

[Anne Lamott]

2.

[Rachel Martin]

Have you made peace with mortality?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

You're on good terms?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's so much of what I write about is like, when Neil and I met 10 years ago, he said, oh, you're a death doula. Because I always have someone in my life who's dying. And it's like, I don't go looking for him, but somebody will know that I've gotten so comfortable with death. Cause my dad was dying and I took care of him for so long. And then my best friend Pammy died. I got sick when I was 36 and died when we were both 37. And I just learned how to be with people that are dying. Her doctor said to me, annie, watch how she's living right now, because she's teaching you how to. She's teaching you how to live. And watch her while she's dying because she's Teaching you how to live. And I told this story before, but she. We went shopping two weeks before she died. She had this wig on and she was in a wheelchair. And I had this boyfriend at the time who had this tight. Who liked girls in tight dresses. And I basically dressed like John Goodman. But so I was buying a dress to go out and see, go to a concert that night. I wanted him to like me more. And I came out of the dressing room in a tight dress and Pammy was in her wheelchair. And I said, does this make my thighs look good, look big? And she looked at me and she said, annie, you don't have that kind of time. And that was when mortality moved in very close and said, make peace with this. You know, it's true. We're all on borrowed time. And it's good to be reminded of that every so often. And after Pammy died, just. I was naturally there for people. My mom was alive, my mom, our parents, friends were still alive. And growing up, I was really close to my parents, friends. They were all aunts and uncles and I saw them through death. And my husband at the time, my new hostage that I'd found at. Which is matched for older people, he was a volunteer for hospice. So that was something in our Venn diagram that we both knew that if you could spend time with people who were dying, it was this incredible gift because you saw that there was going to be so much grace and beauty in the process. It was not going to be hard that you were only called to sit there and deal with your own fear and give whatever the person needed, which was usually a listening and people 100% of the time, the people I've been with, which is many, many people who are dying, they're not thinking about their achievements. They're not thinking about their sales rank at Amazon. They're thinking about the love memories. They're thinking about questions that would be on your cards, you know, on your wild cards. They're thinking about all the beauty that they saw both in Switzerland and down the street at the little memorial park for the founder of the town or whatever. They're thinking about how much. How deeply they're loved. And I can tell you how that they feel safe because of that love. And so I just assume Neil's different. He's, you know, he says when I. When I'm at. Towards the end or when I'm terminal, I want to experience it every step of the way. I want to experience the pain. I want to. And I said, oh, no, no, you don't want that. I want the morphine at the first bad headache. And I do. I'm not even kidding. But I also know that if I got a bad diagnosis, I know that it will be scary. It'll be two mints in one. I don't want it. I really love my life. I love my family. I love the cat. I'm practically more than anything. I love Jesus and the cat. About the same.

[Rachel Martin]

But again, love and fear. Love and fear.

[Anne Lamott]

Love and fear. But I know I'll be safe. I know it will be gentle. And I know that it was always part of the deal. You know, Shakespeare said, every man owes death, owes God a death. And so. No. Are you very afraid of your own mortality? You're so much younger.

[Rachel Martin]

I have young kids, so it's less

[Anne Lamott]

that I. Oh, they ruin everything.

[Rachel Martin]

Don't they, though?

[Anne Lamott]

Oh, God. Before you have kids, you kind of think, oh, hit me with your best shot. You know, I've lived fully, whatever. Then you have a kid and you're like, please, please, please help, please, just this one thing.

[Rachel Martin]

I know. And they're young and I was older when I had them. And so they always do, like, mom math, which is always depressing. They're like, okay, if mom's gonna have a grandchild, then I need to procreate by the time I'm whatever, 32. And that bums me out when they do that. And so, you know, but it is just the way it is. It is the way it is. So. So, yeah, I get preemptively sad thinking about them being sad.

[Anne Lamott]

But that's back to the acronym for fear of false evidence appearing real. Like you're imagining. Like the evidence is, oh, my God, if I die, my kids lives will be ruined. They'll never get over if I die. When they're in 20, they aren't fully formed. Their prefrontal cortex. It's all false evidence appearing real. What's true and real is how you love them right now, how desperately they love you.

[Rachel Martin]

And they'll be fine. And I know they'll be fine because my mom died and I was very sad. And then I was okay and Right. It goes on.

[Anne Lamott]

Yeah, it goes on. It goes on. It's a song that never ends.

[Rachel Martin]

Yeah.

[Anne Lamott]

Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

And Lamont, we end our show the same way every time with a trip in our memory. Time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose?

[Anne Lamott]

Well, the moment I delivered my child, Sam, almost 37 years ago with a very difficult delivery and the umbilical cord wrapped around his head and much too old to be having a baby. And I saw his face. It was like seeing. It was like seeing my outside heart. And I understood that my life had just begun and I understood that I was doomed. And I wrote about it a lot in operating instructions, but it was really literally like seeing the moon for the first time, you know, it was beyond words. And I had given all up on it as maybe you did, too. I was getting up there. I didn't have a partner. I didn't have any money in the world. And I got to have this baby. And then this baby grew up and had another baby. Had a baby when he was 19. And when I first laid eyes on my grandson Jax, I thought I would faint. And I thought I would faint. Yeah.

[Rachel Martin]

Anne Lamott, her latest book is a collaboration with her husband, the writer Neil Allen. It is called Good Writing. I can't tell you what a pleasure this was. Thank you so much for doing it.

[Anne Lamott]

Same for me. Thank you so much.

[Rachel Martin]

If you like this episode, go back and check out my conversation with the actor and author Rob Dylan Delaney. Anne Lamott and Rob both have this quality that is heartbreakingly honest and hilarious at the very same time. Check it out. This episode was produced by Alicia Zhang and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown. Wild Card's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni and our theme music is by Ramtin Arablouei. You can reach out to [e-mail] we are going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.

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