If we’re lucky, we’re constantly growing, learning and telling new stories about ourselves. Writer Anna Holmes is here talking about starting new things in your 40s and 50s and finding community. What do we say no to? What can we demand now that we are grown? How much magnesium should we take to sleep?

An Edited Transcript of Our Convo:

Rebecca Lehrer:

You are listening to the Mashup Americans. Hi, I’m Rebecca Lehrer.

Amy S. Choi:

And I’m Amy Choi, and we are the Mash-Up Americans. Rebecca, you know what I realized sometime in the past year or so,

Rebecca Lehrer:

Menopause.

Amy S. Choi:

Ooh, the big MI was going to go with the other Big M, which was midlife. Midlife. Midlife. We are in the pm, the perimenopause, the afternoon. Not quite the sunset.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Sunset. I feel like I’m just being born.

Amy S. Choi:

I know. Well, I think that’s the misnomer about midlife, about the Big M is that right now all of the incredible, ambitious, brilliant creative women that we know, they are both so completely hitting their stride in so many ways, and I would also say that about us and also there’s a great deal of what the fuck is happening. Absolutely. That I would say everybody’s asking that question is What the fuck is happening? What the fuck?

Rebecca Lehrer:

I would say also the summer and spring of 2024 in our cohort was a lot of people reading Miranda July’s, all fours, including us, and literally throwing the book and being like, it’s too close, it’s too real. And then getting it back up and being like, I think to quote the great Amy Choi, I have to get this tattooed on my eyeballs. It’s this idea of us telling the stories in the moments we’re in them and exploring these places where our bildung ramons or whatever, there’s an erasure of midlife or even of aging in this world, of how we tell the stories while we’re in them as we’re kind of wrestling with this complicated ideas. And today we wanted to have a friend who is telling these stories in the New Yorker and in a book, and as the official work friend of the New York Times, you can write to her advice column. She’s really writing about and exploring how dating in midlife and how online in your late forties and early fifties, how it’s different and what it feels like and having a hysterectomy, for example. All of these ways that we are changing and evolving and how midlife essence is that, how it would be the becoming of yourself in midlife,

What it looks like and what it means to have community and friendship without models before you. And so we are so excited to have the great Anna Holmes.

Amy S. Choi:

We love Anna. And I just want to add to that incredible introduction is that she, as a lifelong storyteller, I think we are learning from her what it means to heal and repair through the stories that we tell the world and the stories that we tell ourselves. And we’re just so lucky that Anna’s in our lives. Here she is. Anna, the last time that you were on the Mash of Americans, I believe the episode title was What side would You Pick in the Race War? Oh my God, we’ve all grown. We’ve all developed, we have changed somewhat. You swapped Amy for Rebecca, you went from New York, which is how we got to know each other as writers in New York, and then you moved to LA after 20 years of living and working 30, 30 years of living and working and dating in New York City and building a life that and then coming

Anna Holmes:

Here. Yes. Any idea that I had about how my life might go in LA was exploded because there was a pandemic that blew up the week that I moved, and so I spent all of my time at home or at Rebecca’s house. We were a

Rebecca Lehrer:

Pod.

Anna Holmes:

We

Rebecca Lehrer:

Became a pod. And I think one of my great joys, in addition to just our friendship is that Anna, you’ve introduced me to this text thread WhatsApp group with this all women five to 10 or 15 years older. And so for me, I’m like, wait, hold on. And then I have to go in sometimes I’m like, wait, what was the magnesium supplement everybody’s taking for menopause. I have a friend who needs, it’s just an absolute resource. Anytime you’re just marginal to a group, but you’re invited in, it feels so privileged to me because I’m like, oh, I can learn from this and I won’t center myself in it, but there’s so much to learn. So anyways, just thinking about midlife and thinking about God willing, God willing, healthy midlife. Okay, we got a good

Anna Holmes:

Knock on wood.

Rebecca Lehrer:

50 more to go. What do you see emerging as in this life stage that was different, say in your twenties and thirties in New York City? What feels different in your body, in your sense of self, in your sense of friends? You don’t know? Not like you said in my body. I was like, well, things have fallen. Oh, gravity is so real. It’s

Amy S. Choi:

Such a fucking asshole.

Rebecca Lehrer:

That is actually, you have not read all fours yet, but there’s a very funny description where she’s like, I haven’t looked at my butt in the mirror in a while. And she looks at her butt and she’s like, no. Then she starts to exercise for the first time she goes to do squats at the gym because she’s like, does it help? I mean, yeah, my

Anna Holmes:

Butt’s a lost cause I wrote about this actually. I wrote about my butt. Anyway, go back to your question. Well, okay, first of all, what you didn’t say, Rebecca, is that the WhatsApp group we’re on is related to a trip that all of the women on the WhatsApp group took in celebration of my 50th birthday where we all went to Sicily. And so the reason I’m bringing that up is because that was a milestone and I had a lot of conflicting feelings about it, and I still do, which was weird because I did not feel that way about turning 20, 30 or 40, but 50 felt like shit just got real, and I’m not upset that I turned 50, by the way, I’m now 51, so I’m in my fifties. But I was ambivalent about it and a little taken aback and to think of myself as firmly in middle age, most things about it are positive. I feel more positive about being 51 than I did being 21.

Rebecca Lehrer:

What feels positive about it?

Anna Holmes:

Well, I know myself better. I’m unwilling to put up with certain things that I used to be willing to put up with or did put up with bad behavior on the part of friends, men, coworkers, family members. To a certain degree. That’s the hardest. I think

Amy S. Choi:

Always

Anna Holmes:

I feel more settled. I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. That is an enormous difference because money was always and still is an incredible stressor in my life and was in my childhood. There was never enough of it. So not living paycheck to paycheck or being able to do things like go to Sicily for my 50th birthday

Feels meaningful. Not just because I can take care of myself taking care of myself as an adult. I would usually define it as I can pay my rent, I can eat, I can pay my health insurance, but to do more than just take care of myself, but to honor myself and to luxuriate in things feels different than it did when I was younger. There are certain ways in which I don’t feel that I’ve advanced that much since I was in my twenties. A lot of that has to do with the opposite sex. I’m not sure I advanced that much, but I’ll put it this way. When I was younger, in my twenties, in my thirties and in my forties, but especially when I was younger, the women I admired most tended to be older than me. I didn’t have a big community of older women in my life, but the ones that I did know or the ones that I observed, even if I didn’t know them, I felt that they had a certain confidence in themselves and a certain fuck it attitude that I admired, in addition to the idea that I thought that the older women got, the more beautiful they got.

That was before my butt fell,

Amy S. Choi:

But

Anna Holmes:

Your face

Amy S. Choi:

Looks great.

Anna Holmes:

Well, I don’t know about that, but thank you.

Amy S. Choi:

I am. But also, what a good lesson in being like, oh, all those women’s butts were probably not what they were in their twenties either. And it’s only you that carries that story about your ass or like, oh, this is what I had when I was 18. Shit’s never going to look like that ever again.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Well, that’s part of why I love the Korean spa, because I love to look at looking around. I’m like, oh wow. Women really come in different shapes, shapes and sizes, and it all feels beautiful when you’re all naked. There’s a way in which it’s incredibly healing. It doesn’t always feel that way when you’re in the world about myself or about other people. I have a critical eye, certainly mostly about myself, but about other people and judgmental. But in there you’re like, that falling butt looks great on that lady. Those boobs are incredible.

Amy S. Choi:

I actually had this whole discussion, and this is when I’m like, oh, I now feel like the annoying white man with dreads when I’m like the Japanese pottery ksu. But that idea of, oh, something is more beautiful for the scars that it has and how we fix it or how we put it back together, whether it’s metaphorical or literal. For me, a big thing is my belly and my C-section scars my scar. It’s not painful anymore, but for years after giving birth, my youngest kid is now eight. Your nerve are coming back together. So it would be itchy or I’d get a tingle or a weird thing and I’d be like, ah, here’s this crazy thing

Amy S. Choi:

And I was looking at my scar the other day and trying not to be judgmental about how also my stomach is in a different place than it used to be. My kid was in the room and I was like, does this ever look funny to you? He was like, no. And I was like, well, sometimes it looks funny to me because until you were born, I didn’t have this huge scar. And he was like, yeah, but now you have a baby. And I was like, oh, you’re so fucking right. And it’s so simple and basic, but it was this thing of we all have scars and it’s just about how you look at them. And it’s easier to do that somehow on this end

Anna Holmes:

Of it. Yeah, I mean the past couple of years have been, I guess, pretty profound in some ways, not just because of the move to LA and a pandemic that happened. It changed all of us and my taking a new job and my parents declining, particularly my mother, but I had a hysterectomy so that all of a sudden, well, it was planned, but that a certain part of my identity that I had never acknowledged was gone. It then cut off any option of me ever bearing a child, which I didn’t want kids, but still, apparently I was more attached to the idea that I could.

Amy S. Choi:

No, it’s that closing of possibility.

Anna Holmes:

Yeah, closing of possibility. It’s like maybe, and I’m not trying to be a downer, but maybe for me the past couple of years have been openings of possibilities, but also loss of possibility or loss, just loss. Loss of an ex-husband, loss of my uterus, loss of my mother who is still alive but has dementia and is not anything close to who she was before. The anticipated loss of my dad who is knock on wood, fine, but our parents age and things tend to go downhill as you age. The loss of, I don’t know that the pandemic, I don’t think I lost my innocence certainly, but there was a collective trauma and grief around that I don’t think I’ll fully appreciate until more time has passed. And then the loss of what I would define as being youth

In middle aged. Now, one thing I’ve had to remind myself lately is especially after I turned 50, was I didn’t appreciate my twenties when they were happening. I didn’t appreciate my thirties when they were happening. All of the ways in which I didn’t appreciate my youth, the whole idea that youth is wasted on the young. I think youth was wasted on the young in my case. So because I’ll probably feel that way when I’m 70 about being in my fifties. I’m trying to enjoy being in my fifties as opposed to being blind to it and enjoying the fact that I am relatively healthy and have the use of my limbs and have people that I’m close to who are alive and also thriving because all of those things are going to change. I’m not trying to make this a downer conversation, but I’m trying to be more present and cultivate gratitude, as my therapist would say,

Rebecca Lehrer:

Well, that’s a lot of wisdom too. It seems to me what that is, wisdom of age. I mean, a question I have around this, I think it’s sort of part of what you’re bringing up are milestones. And I think as a person who didn’t want children and didn’t have them, even if the lack of possibility related to your uterus, that feels more primal than it does feel like. That’s my read, an intellectual and primal thing, but not based on what you really wanted for your specific

Anna Holmes:

Life.

Rebecca Lehrer:

I am curious about milestones and time. We have young kids who you are, my children only call you Anna Holmes, and also they’re very invested in you as a part of their lives, and I know that they’re not the only children. You are the great auntie for us right now. It’s okay. This kid just started kindergarten or so many of our milestones, I would say bound children are bound to our

Anna Holmes:

Children

Rebecca Lehrer:

At least for the next 20 years. I don’t know how that changes, but certainly that I watch you and I see, oh, this looks really different. And also that openness is possibility. There’s different versions of milestones and life

Anna Holmes:

Shape,

Rebecca Lehrer:

And I feel like there’s not that many women before who openly could live beautiful, rich, independent lives before our ages in the way that you are.

Anna Holmes:

That’s

Rebecca Lehrer:

True. We’re actually conventional. We’re straight women, married to straight men, and we’re not conventional and bossy and how we have,

Amy S. Choi:

I don’t know what you’re talking

Rebecca Lehrer:

About and in lots of other things and in the way that we work and have businesses, but I do think we are generationally different than even our parents’ generation. And I’m curious about when you’re leading, and you’re a few years ahead of us, but leading in shaping a life in a community, and this next stage, this next early middle life, I don’t know what we call it. Do you see other models or people in the world that you’re like, oh, they’re doing it in a way that I would like to, or are you just inventing it so that we can follow you?

Amy S. Choi:

Well, before she answers, I’ll give you 30 seconds to formulate your response. I see it wheels turning in your head.

Amy S. Choi:

Wheels are turning. Is that one of my dearest memories of Anna when she was still in my city of New York that she has apparently grown completely tired of

Is we were at dinner and I was like, I feel fucking insane what is happening to me? And Anna was like, you need to get this supplement. And it was called something like Femin Essence, and it was like a perimenopausal thing. I think I just turned 40. It was, I don’t know if it worked. It was 30. I don’t know if it worked either, but I immediately bought a six month supply. God took it faithfully. But I think that that’s what is, that we all look at models, whether it’s one year or two years, and when loss does create possibility, it’s a very, very challenging way for possibility to be opened up. But there’s fertile ground

Rebecca Lehrer:

In it. It’s not something you wish for on anyone.

Anna Holmes:

And I mean loss.

Rebecca Lehrer:

But once it’s there,

Anna Holmes:

Loss creates possibility and also creates, well, again, it creates possibility for new relationships and community. So in my case, the loss of New York, which I didn’t really grieve, created the opportunity for new friendships in LA and the loss of the ex-husband jumpstarted me dating again, as Rebecca knows sometimes in quite a manic way. And I’ve written about that too, so I’m not telling any secrets, but it’s all in the New Yorker, a

Amy S. Choi:

Publication you may have heard of. Yes,

Rebecca Lehrer:

All about my obsession with younger men. I learned a lot. I’m always like, well, my friend, she says that they’re all just watching too much

Anna Holmes:

Porn. They are shit on their minds. They’re watching too much porn and they don’t have an idea about what women look like. But that’s a whole other podcast episode, millennials and Gen Zs and their ideas about women. It’s interesting, Rebecca, that you bring up your children or children because I’ve seen them grow up, and I’ve said at least a number of times over the past half a year or more, how taken aback I am sometimes about how your youngest child has grown. And I realize that that’s for at least two reasons. One, because he’s grown, it’s,

Rebecca Lehrer:

It’s also like the most profound. You came here, he was six months

Anna Holmes:

Old and now he’s five. And then on top of that, Rebecca’s children are some of the youngest, if not the youngest children that a friend of mine has. So everyone else, they’re 10, 15. My goddaughter is 20 years old. They’re kind of the last generation of young kids. Someone I know well is going to have. But in terms of other women who provide models for me as not how to live, but ways to live, some of them are my age.

Anna Holmes:

They’re not always older. To go back to that WhatsApp group that Rebecca mentioned that we’re on, well, first of all, it goes both ways. I don’t think that Rebecca, that you’re the younger person who’s witnessing or watching the older women. I think that older women also learn from you, but also one person in particular, my friend Andrea, is very wise about things in a way that I aspire to be, and I think she’s maybe one year older than I am. All this is to say that our people who we can feel are good examples or mentors or what have you, can be our age.

Rebecca Lehrer:

You wrote about Margaret Wise Brown, the author who wrote more than a hundred books, goodnight, moon, runaway Bunny, and many more. And it seems to me that story feels like one, it’s so meaningful. She’s so interesting, but there does feel like there’s a seeking of wisdom in that she also died at

Amy S. Choi:

42

Rebecca Lehrer:

And she also died young. She kind of did it the way she wanted to do. Can you tell us a little bit about that? She lived a wildlife

Anna Holmes:

From Yeah, she was privileged enough to be able to do that because she came from money and she had her publishing success at a relatively young age. And I’m not trying to discount her persona, her personality in this, but a lot of us could live free or more wild lives if we had the money to do so. But she was a young woman who at the time in the early 20th century only had a few avenues open to her in terms of being a career girl, if you want to call it that, which would be in a domestic sphere like nursing or teaching. And she went to a teacher’s college to learn how to be a teacher. And she was a horrible teacher of nursery schoolers, but she bonded with them in terms of how they saw the world. She saw in them like a wisdom and a curiosity and a sense of wonder that she, I think shared with them, but also needed to be reminded of.

And that was part of her attraction to young kids. And so she started writing children’s books, picture books I should say, for children, was very successful at it very quickly. And over the course of her, I think she was probably actively writing, but for, I don’t know, 15 years, 17 years before she died, she was self-sufficient and she lived a very wildlife and that she had money and she traveled widely, and she had affairs with married men, then had a very long affair with a woman who was 10 years older than her. Now, that was not necessarily a happy relationship from what I understand. She was often miserable and it was dysfunctional and perhaps even emotionally abusive. But women in the 1940s were not openly dating other women. I don’t think they were in the decades after that. But

Rebecca Lehrer:

I do think I’m going to tell your story to you. Go for it. I think in observing the stories you choose to tell, and then we’ll bring it to asking you a little bit about the book you’re writing. But I think the ideas and stories that you as a writer choose to focus on, become kind of guideposts for particularly women. But I think for a lot of people that are showing somebody wrestling with questions that may not have been publicly acceptable or a challenge to an idea of the way things had to be, and you happen to be a really magnificent writer, but also the Margaret Wise Brown to your hysterectomy to dating and putting on, what do we call that? Latex? Latex. I was like pleather and online dating. I mean, these are all themes that are at the

Amy S. Choi:

Borderline taboo.

Rebecca Lehrer:

And I think by putting your writing, which is so clear and thorough in the context of something that is the opposite of Taboo, the New Yorker, and then having these things in there is actually, it’s a mission. Do you know what I mean? It sets these stories up to become things that, and obviously we could talk about Jezebel and that too, creating an online place for commenting and feminist conversations. There’s a through line is at taboo, at edges of taboo and telling stories. They’re never prescriptive, but they are exploring in very big ways, very female centric ways of being and living and thinking that are at the edge.

Anna Holmes:

What’s funny is that, well, I’m going to think about what you just said because I haven’t thought about the stories that I’ve told in that particular way, but also, should I

Rebecca Lehrer:

Be your publicist

Anna Holmes:

Maybe? Yeah, or my therapist or something, or my, what’s the word for someone who tells you who you are, but am I right? Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, yeah, let’s not tell her she’s not enough. But you know what the thing is is that one big difference between now and let’s say five years ago and 10 years ago, and even more than that, is that I’m telling stories of myself more than helping other people tell stories. I, for a long time was very reluctant to tell stories about myself for a variety of reasons. So it was much easier for me to be a guider of writers in the guise of being an editor like me editing or creating places where other people could have those conversations. But I wasn’t necessarily directing them in a public way, in an overt way. It was more covert. And now I’m telling my stories much more. I have more of a devil may care attitude. You’re

Amy S. Choi:

Wild and free.

Anna Holmes:

Well, I’m free. I dunno if I’m wild yet. I’m trying to be wild. I’m trying to be more wild.

Amy S. Choi:

But I think that’s the thing about why we’ve had this obsession with all fours in Miranda July this particular summer, is that what it feels like? And I don’t know, because we live in the world that we live in and we all just survived a pandemic, and my cohort of women is all in their forties and early fifties is that that is what everybody seems to be seeking right now is a way to be wild and free or figuring shit out in a new way. And I’m like, is this just a midlife crisis or is it also that we are at a moment where women can, that we can do this? And there are almost, not that there’s no consequences, but I was joking the other day and I was telling Gabe, and we were talking, talked about another podcast conversation, just like I’ve done all this work to heal my inner child. I was like, oh, now I’m healing my inner teenager. And she’s a different beast. She’s a whole different person that wanted to do so much that she just never ever did. And suddenly now at 45, I’m like, I can just fucking do it. I can do it. Who’s going to tell me no?

Who’s going to, we run our own business. I’m not going to knock, get a job because I get whatever, or wear whatever or do or say, you’re not going to work with us and fuck you. But there is something about uprooted, but not in a lost way, but in an old possibility way that seems to come with midlife.

Anna Holmes:

That

Amy S. Choi:

Feels really exciting too. That’s what

Rebecca Lehrer:

Oprah says too.

Anna Holmes:

Does she just loved her fifties and sixties? You know what I mean? What’s, okay, I haven’t thought deeply about this, so I’m going to throw it out there as a possibility and maybe you guys can respond to it. No pressure. Maybe listeners can respond to it. No pressure. But I do feel like you were talking about adolescence, Amy. I feel like what happened to me when I became a teenager is what happened to a lot of young women, which is that I cratered into myself. The spunkier girl of, I dunno, ages two through 11 disappeared or was tamped down somewhat, and I became insecure and I became cautious, and I collapsed into myself in some ways. I’m not saying I was in the corner not talking to anybody, but I was not as vivacious or vibrant or as confident as I had been. And I feel like the entirety of my life since then has been trying to claw back that little girl in a way, and that the women that I know who were older to me, from what I observe, and maybe even a feeling myself, I feel that starting to come back a little bit,

Amy S. Choi:

And

Anna Holmes:

I don’t know if that’s because of experience. It might be in part because the older you get as a woman, the less there may be a silver lining to the idea that women as they get older are less valued. I was talking to an editor about this, about the idea that at a certain age you become invisible, but when you’re invisible can do whatever the fuck you want, you can do lots of things. And this is maybe separate. The idea is about women who are older and whether or not they are invisible or invisible, that’s its own thing, but the idea that maybe there’s a second coming into your own,

Anna Holmes:

Also aligns with not to be woowoo about it when you start to become fertile, when you get your period and when that part of your life is over.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Yeah. Well, I say that a lot, that feeling, I don’t even know if I was still fertile. It was hard enough. It was hard enough to make babies when I was in my absolute prime. But even that idea of stopping to be, I was like, I will not bear more children. When I knew that I was done having children and blessed and after all many years of treatments to make those children, but I was like, oh, I feel different about myself and my body knowing that it’s a long game now to come back to myself. Truly, I was very aware that, oh, I can exercise in a way for me, I can think about that stuff for me.

Anna Holmes:

Yeah. So I do feel like, again, a lot of my adulthood was trying to get back that little girl and that, yeah, I’m closer to her in terms of my belief in myself and feeling comfortable in my own skin than I was 10 years ago or than I was 20 years ago. That feels exciting. That’s kind of exciting. And maybe that’s part of the reason why I bond with younger kids, particularly younger girls, is because they still exhibit something that I miss or want to return to, which is not the age of eight, but a certain freedom that they have.

Rebecca Lehrer:

So you’re writing a book

Anna Holmes:

About

Rebecca Lehrer:

Women and the idea of no and saying no, and I know you’ve been studying the research on this period actually, when girls, how would you describe it, go into themselves in a different way?

Anna Holmes:

It’s been well-documented that girls go through a period when they turn around 10 or 11, where they start to become racked with self-doubt. And when society starts putting expectations on them that they be accommodating and that they not say no to things and that they not assert themselves and that they not create firm boundaries. No one says that to them. You’re not allowed to say no, or you can’t create firm boundaries, but this is the message that they get. And from what I have read and what I now believe, you start to see evidence of this kind of cleaving between boys and girls and what’s expected of them, from what I can tell, start to see it around age seven. There are sociologists and psychologists and researchers who have already made the point that pre-adolescence is a very difficult time and leads into a very difficult time for girls. I totally identify with that. I think that in part the book that I’m doing, which is about the ways in which women are socialized to be accommodating and not say no is an outgrowth of my frustration and perhaps grief about collapsing into myself when I was

Younger. It’s not a way to rewrite the story, but it’s maybe a way to try and understand, understand it little more,

Rebecca Lehrer:

Some repair and some healing,

Anna Holmes:

Some repair and some healing, and hopefully in terms of the theme of this show, create community around talking about those things. But it’s difficult to talk about, not because it’s not true, but because it feels like vapor in a way. It’s hard for me, for example, Rebecca, to say, yes, at the age of this, then this happens. It feels much more insidious, and

Amy S. Choi:

It’s the water we swim in. It’s the air we

Anna Holmes:

Breathe.

Amy S. Choi:

In your research and in the work that you’re doing on this book, how do we go from being a 10-year-old girl that is learning that the world expects us to be accommodating and not to be able to say no, to emerge out of our chrysalis and midlife and be like, oh, no is a wonderful word or no, a complete sentence. What’s the bell curve? How do we come back out?

Anna Holmes:

I don’t know. I think that there are ways in which we can come back out, which is wisdom, not an unwillingness to put up with shit.

The example of other women that do that and seeing that the world doesn’t end when you enforce boundaries or say, no, I think it’s practice, but I want to make clear that I’m not writing a book that purports to have answers or that is written in such a way where I’m giving advice. It’s not prescriptive, I hope. Just kind of more thoughtful, and I hope that it’s asking more questions than it’s answering, or at least that’s what makes me feel most comfortable is the idea of doing the book in that way. So I think that we have to lead by example, and the idea of saying no and the importance of saying no for women is something that is not original to me. I’ve seen it mentioned a number of times in the media over the past couple of years, the impetus for the book for me was that I gave a commencement address to an all girls high school, and I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I knew I wanted to say something that felt counterintuitive to them as opposed to what they probably expected to hear, which was that the world is your oyster carpet, die seize the day. You can be whoever you want to be, which those are things are not untrue. But one thing that we’re not taught as young girls and adolescent girls is you know what? You can put your foot down and say no to things. You don’t have to say yes to everybody and everything.

Amy S. Choi:

It’s also counterintuitive to a lot of pop culture right now, which is the year of yes or all roads are open to you when you just say yes to new things.

Anna Holmes:

Yes, yes, yes. So that’s how my kind of fascination with the idea or the power of no originated. That was back in 2015, but it’s not something that’s original to me. I just don’t think it’s talked about as widely as I would like, and I’m figuring it out as I go. I’m figuring it out as I go, and I get very insecure about writing books. So if I’m now being more hesitant in the way that I speak, that’s because I feel more hesitant about, and we’re waiting

Rebecca Lehrer:

For the editor’s notes

Anna Holmes:

And we’re waiting for the editor’s notes.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Yes. Okay. So we want to get into concrete things that we can do related to making a change in our sense of self. What is one thing people can do

Anna Holmes:

Well, and I should do this myself, is trying to write the story of yourself, and maybe you give yourself some guardrails like, I’m going to write the story of myself in four sentences, or I’m going to write it over the course of one page. But you might surprised what comes up. And again, this is not prescriptive advice because I haven’t done it, but it’s something that I feel intrigued about doing, and I think prompted by some of your comments earlier, Rebecca, these are all kind of writing exercises, like writing down who your ideal you is, not how you look or whether your butt fell or not, but the person you most aspire to be. And then asking yourself in what ways you’ve kind of a quote achieved that and in what ways you still have work to do. And I understand that life is a constant work in progress, but that might be a kind of way to think about how to change your sense of self, I guess. Lastly, cultivating more curiosity and courage around being open to things and not allowing or falling victim to the idea that the story that you told about yourself when you were younger or the story that other people told about you when you were younger, whether that was your family or your teachers or your friends is not predestined.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Yeah. Yes.

Anna Holmes:

That’s hard to take on sometimes. It really is. For me at least, that’s what therapy’s for. That’s what expensive therapy’s for. Yes.

Amy S. Choi:

What related to being a woman in midlife and trying to get back to that little girl? What is one thing people can do, or what is one thing you

Anna Holmes:

Do? I engage in my relationships with kids. I make them important. They’re important to me because they are reminders of who I was and who I still am inside and who I can be. I know that’s not necessarily great advice because not everyone has access to or has relationships with children because for whatever reason, but that’s one thing when thinking about it right now has been very meaningful to me. I mean, sometimes I go back and I don’t think I’m the only one. I go back and read the books I read as a kid, put myself

Anna Holmes:

That headspace again, and it’s not just the chapter books I reread because I have a lot of the picture books that I read in my possession. I mean, they’re not in my main bookshelf. They’re in the office bookshelf. So if someone comes over, they’re not going to see Goodnight Moon in the living room. Oh,

Amy S. Choi:

No. The ones that are on display are for other people to know that you have read.

Anna Holmes:

Sure, sure. Yes, exactly. But I give kids books. The kids in my life, I give them books that I loved when I was a kid. Anyway, those are some things that I do to try and get back in touch with or look at old pictures. It’s a nostalgia thing I don’t look at or try to re-experience things because I think they’re over. I see them as possibilities for me of who I could be, again,

Amy S. Choi:

Rediscovery.

Anna Holmes:

Yeah.

Amy S. Choi:

Yeah. What related to breaking taboos or being able to talk about things that are hard and scary, not just personally, but that are taboo in our culture? What is one thing people can do?

Anna Holmes:

Well, I guess the times that I’ve taken the biggest risks personally or professionally or the intersection of those things are the times when I gave less of a fuck what people thought, and also believed that I was not the only one who found a certain topic of interest or had had an experience in a particular way. And those were suspicions I had, and then they were suspicions that were born out after I put myself out there, whether it was a personal essay I wrote or the creation of a website,

Anna Holmes:

Had no proof that certain topics or ways of thinking or ways of talking would resonate with other people, but I had to believe, I had to believe that there was an audience for that. And then each time that I’ve done that and I’ve gotten positive feedback and proved to myself that there’s an audience, it gets easier to do, to trust yourself, becomes easier to do for me as I get older, because I get, and I’m lucky, I get feedback from audiences in a public way that something I did resonated.

Rebecca Lehrer:

I feel like what I heard was probably if you have a taboo question, so does someone else. So does somebody

Amy S. Choi:

Else,

Rebecca Lehrer:

And

Amy S. Choi:

That’s the community piece.

Rebecca Lehrer:

And that’s actually a beautiful thing actually about technology, which has many other challenges, but actually to be able to seek, especially I think in taboo, and when I say taboo, I mean things that don’t hurt other people just to be very, very clear, unless they want to be hurt, which is that’s also fine

Anna Holmes:

And taboo,

Rebecca Lehrer:

But there is a place to seek it. But I just think that generally, I always joke, I’m a type of person when you realize that there’s probably somebody else and have some faith in that, as you push the door open, if you ask it probably somebody

Anna Holmes:

Else and probably somebody else already pushed the door open, yeah, you can be pretty confident that someone already pushed the door open. The things I’ve written about it that have been on the edge of confronting a taboo are, again, not original to me. Maybe I spoke about them differently or in a more public way, but they didn’t originate with me.

Rebecca Lehrer:

I think, again, themes that are emerging for us are community and repair, and also wisdom of being the wisdom to know yourself and do listening, and don’t assume you were the first person ever to do something. The chances are that there’s something else out that you can connect into or you can help tell the story of,

Anna Holmes:

Yes, you can advance the story.

Amy S. Choi:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anna, advancing the story. Advancing the story. Anna, advance the story. Holmes, thank you,

Anna Holmes:

Anna. Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you, Amy. Thank you.

Rebecca Lehrer:

Finding that little girl and setting her free. This feels like a very good ambition for the year of our Lord 2024 slash 5 7 8 5,

Rebecca Lehrer:

Is a year in which so much is happening. We are saving our democracy. We are trying to have some perspective, and we’re saving ourselves.

Amy S. Choi:

We are tikkun al alarming as much as we possibly can. Okay, we’re just Kooning over here, alarming over there. We’re doing all the repair.

Rebecca Lehrer:

We sure are. We’re doing it. We’re healing where we can. We’re repairing where we can, and we hope that you’re leaving this like we are tender and gentle with yourselves when you need to be in fierce and fighting when the world needs you to be.

Amy S. Choi:

Yep. So this is it. This concludes our mini season on repair. There are some big things happening in the next week, like a presidential election, pivotal to the future of our country. So get out the vote, stay safe, fight for Mash-Up America, and we will see you on the flip flop. We love you fam. Love you. Take care. Squeezing it tight.

CREDITS

This podcast is a production of The Mash-Up Americans. It is executive produced by Amy S. Choi, and Rebecca Lehrer, senior editor and producer is Sara Pellegrini, production manager is Shelby Sandlin. Thanks to DJ Rob Swift for our theme song, Salsa Scratch. Please make sure to follow and share the show with your friends.