Living With A Secret-

           In our season finale, Liz dives into the topic of living with a secret, where shame, and  judgment sit front and center.  

 Liz  shares candidly and more deeply  than ever before about her own expereince's of holding and then revealing her own secret, one she kept  for 38 years, and  finally revealed in her memoir, LOOK AT YOU NOW published by Random House.

For anyone living with a secret, and for those who have loved ones who might be living with something they feel they cannot share, this is an eye opening discussion  that will enlighten, and hopefully inspire to live more truthfully and to be more  accepting  to the truth inside the people we love.   

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Original music for the podcast written and performed by Liz Pryor and Augie Cal
Engineered, mixed and mastered by Augie Cal of OES

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi guys. I just wanted to jump in before the episode starts to let you know that we are at episode number eight, which is our season finale. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for all the guests, Laura Sullivan and my son Augie, for producing the show and handling all of the audio through his A B company OES. This has been incredible. I mean it. I very much appreciate all of it. I'll be taking a short break and coming back with season two soon. Thanks again. I want to talk to people who have had an experience that has come to define a part of who they are, yet they cannot tell anyone. That is what makes it a secret. What we try and do here is help people navigate the difficulties and challenges we face in our everyday lives. It just so often seems that our biggest stressors, some of the hardest times we face, typically come with the people that we care about the most. So that is usually our focus here. And of course, here with me, Laura Sullivan. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I am well. How are you? I am very well. The sun is shining in New England today. And the snow is a little bit more. Alert the media. Please. And the snow is melting. That's really the headline. Yes. Oh, is that the headline? That's the headline.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Snow is melting. Yes. There's hope. I come from Chicago. There isn't a moment that I say to myself, I miss the freezing cold. However, I do miss the seasons.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I always have. I've always wondered that about living in California or Florida. Like the leaves, you know, that brisk fall air.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Laura, I lived here for 20 years before I didn't wake up in the morning every morning and think I was on spring break.

unknown 2:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

You're on perpetual vacation. It's ridiculous. You live on a cruise line.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

You do. And now I'm in Santa Monica, so it's even worse or better. Oh God, I can't. I have to come visit. I have to visit. You do have to come visit. Yeah. Um I'm totally excited about the topic today. As am I. As am I. Yeah, I'm into it. Uh Living with a Secret. Living with a secret. It is a biggie. And honestly, a little bit close to my heart. Um maybe I should say that what I mean by living with a secret is I want to talk to people who have had an experience that has come to define a part of who they are, yet they cannot tell anyone. That is what makes it a secret. And you know what, guys, there is really, I don't think, a measure for how big or small a secret is. I bottom line think if you are living with something that you feel has changed you as a human and you cannot talk about it. That is what we're talking about today. Does that make sense, Laura?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

It does.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Who doesn't have a secret? I don't know. That's I'm really excited about delving into this one.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yeah. I'm not sure. I think everybody lives with a massive secret. Like something here, here, here's kind of where I want to go today. Um, and I'm just gonna full disclosure here. I lived with a secret for 38 years. An experience that I went through when I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. And I kept the experience a secret for almost four decades until I decided to tell it. And when I say tell it, I don't really mean I told it, I wrote it. So I wrote an entire book on the experience of a secret that I lived as a teenager. Um, one of the reasons I wanted to do this topic is because I can speak so authentically to the experience of a living with a secret and b telling it. Okay. Now, the book I wrote was published by Random House, and it is called Look at You Now. And it documents through the eyes of the 17-year-old a five to six month period of time when I was in high school and hidden away from my family. I'm actually going to be giving away copies of the audiobook on social media. I'll get into that later. But I don't want to make this about me. I definitely want to talk to anybody out there who is living with some sort of something about themselves that they cannot talk about. Does that does that ring, Laura?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, yeah. So it's any kind of level of a secret. Yeah. A deep, deep secret like yours or a a smaller secret? Sure. About one's about oneself.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah, I don't think there is a measure for this. I I really don't. I feel like what I wonder in people is when they hold a secret, do they realize maybe how much this can impact the way that we live our lives, how we sit in our lives, the impact we have on the people around us and they around us if we can't talk about a certain part of who we are. One of the, in retrospect, one of the bigger things I wanted to talk about was the two sides of this experience. There is the side of us that the world sees, that the people we care about see, that the people we meet see. And then there's the other side that no one ever sees, which is where these secrets tend to live. I know it wholeheartedly. Sometimes we don't realize how much you have to navigate when you're holding a secret, where certain topics come up and you start, your heart starts to pound, and you think, I hope we're not going to be talking about this because that puts me in the area of that inside of who I am. And after a period of time, holding a secret can become like an appendage. It's just who you are, it's just what you don't talk about. But what I want to hit today is how do you feel inside of who you are when you're holding a secret? Is it deceptive? Do you feel fraudulent? Do you feel perfectly fine and it's nobody's business? Because here's what I really think many, many people will hold a secret till the end of time. They go to the grave with it.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

And not tell anyone. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Not share.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Right. And why is that?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Well, I mean, I g I suppose we'd have to talk about why it is we keep a secret. Now, the psychological data shows that most secrets live at the intersection of three different forces shame, protection, and fear. Which I think in layperson terms means we worry that people will judge us, that people won't love us, that people will see us differently, that people won't respect us. This is why we hold them. Now the question of the day could possibly be when is it a good idea to tell? And when is it I'm never telling? And I'm gonna go to the end of time with it. We all have heard sort of generational secrets, you know, things that the next generation found out about the other generation. Right. So I'd love to sort of get to a place with people who live with this. If, and I really do feel this, not from a psychological perspective, but from a human perspective. If you have experienced something and you never want to tell it, and you're gonna take it to your grave and you're good with it, great, no judgment. However, I got a lot of questions in. And Laura, people who are writing me and saying, I'm living with this, thinking about telling it, or living with it and thinking about it. See, if you're writing me, you're thinking maybe you want to get it out. So I want to be able to help people navigate inside of themselves because no one can tell someone if they should tell a secret or not. That is all dependent on who we are and how it lives inside of us. But I will say this maybe people don't think very carefully about how much a secret is impacting. And I really do feel this and how they feel about themselves.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Right. So here I I'm sitting here and I'm swirling with here, here in hearing you, here's my first gut reaction to this whole thing, especially holding a secret in your case for as long as you did. That is so much work. That is like a full-time job of navigating that part of your life. So when you say in a conversation, you know, like uh avoiding that subject, I mean, to me that sounds like not that I would know, but like people who have affairs. How do they how do they hold, you know, they're walking around in their marriage like all is well, and it feels to me like that's work. Yeah, that is work. So do you think one of the reasons, I mean, there's uh I know various reasons, but I mean it it's it's it comes down to I can't take this anymore. The work, it's it's burdening me so much. Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

I think um, I mean, i in a situation where there's an affair, you're impacting so many people, the person you're seeing, their family, your family, your children, their children. Um I think that's a little bit of a unique and on its own category. But imagine you experience something earlier in your life and you would rather just forget about it and not have people know that that is something that you went through. I think the first thing to do is ask yourself, why am I thinking that? Why do I actually think that people won't respect me or love me if I tell them the truth about me? Now, in my case, Laura, um, you know, Laura, you guys really want me to tell a quick brief of what my secret was. And since it is public knowledge now, I will do a quickie that I, the first time I had sex, I got pregnant. Grew up in a super affluent community, and people don't get pregnant in those communities. Long story short. They don't have sex, they don't have children. Right. Um, yeah, I was just a senior in high school, and I ended up um being sort of hidden away in what I thought was going to be a Catholic home for unwed mothers, but it was a government-run facility for Wayward Street and foster pregnant teenagers. And I lived there for five months, had a baby, and gave it up for adoption. But the part of this story that pretty much, you know, consumed me and became an appendage to me was that I couldn't tell anybody. So I went through this radically difficult and amazing experience that really fundamentally changed who I am as a human. Like I really would say it was slightly soul-changing, opened my eyes to so many things I didn't know. And I was so super young, I walked out and basically promised my parents that I would never tell anybody. And that promise was made because my mother specifically was just completely convinced that if people knew this about me, I would not have a shot for good life, that I would be, you know, the scarlet letter girl, that I would always be the girl who had a baby in high school.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So I want to say though, you couldn't even tell your siblings.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, correct. Nor any of my friends, nor anybody.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Now, for those of people out there who are carrying a secret for a long time, even 40 years is a long time, but everybody knows that it sort of ends up just sort of living inside of you like an organ. It's just part of who you are. And there's a million different reasons why one might become restless to tell their secret. And I say, I mean, I promote that if it's beginning to burden you, if you are beginning to feel fraudulent or um just unsettled, you have to kind of ask yourself, okay, well, everybody has the freedom to do whatever they want. Are you willing to face what it is that you weren't willing to face, obviously, for a long period of time? That's kind of what I want to get to today, Laura. Is how do you dig inside and find the courage? And what propels a person to try and find the courage and change it. Now, uh, this is like talking, I mean, unless we know each of these experiences specifically, for me, um, this was my journey, my road, my birth, my giving up a baby for adoption. And it doesn't really matter what propelled me, but I will lightly give you guys the idea that I later got married and had children. And raising my kids, it's like I could lie to the world, but I couldn't lie to my kids. You know, I was raising them to be good people. And I realized when they got to the age of sex and love that it would just be, I couldn't live with myself without coming clean. And I did get the permission from my three, you know, they were high school and gray and uh junior high. I needed permission from them because I was nervous that they thought people would judge them if I came out with a book about myself about this. So it was this massive, like personal epiphany of, and I really do think this, you guys. I don't just say this. You are not what happens to you. Did it take a certain kind of courage to finally come out after 40 years and my parents telling me I would be completely shun and saying this is what happened, and I'm gonna stand behind it and I'm gonna tell it how it happened, and can I still respect myself and imagine that the people who love me and know me will still respect me? Um, I just knew that I needed my children to know this. And I much later, by the way, guys, talked to some therapist about why I would go so public. Why didn't I just like write a covenant letter to my siblings and my closest friends and my children? And she said it was really common that when you've held such a large secret for so many years, that it it might have instinctively, sort of naturally, felt right to write it in a book so that I would write it once and truthfully, and there would never be any question about. And I I thought about that, you guys, and I thought, well, she's right. Because if I told you, Laura Sullivan what happened to me at 17, you might go tell someone else with a little divided uh of a different version. You know, it was sort of my way of protecting that story. No one can change it. It is in black and white in a book, right? Right. Now, obviously, folks, I am not suggesting that people write books about their secret. I am just saying that along the way, what I have learned is if you are feeling unsettled about something that you have not spoken about, it is highly advised to pick one person, whether it's a friend or a therapist, a counselor, clergy. It's really important if you think you're feeling ready to do it, to be able to hear it out of your own mouth, you know, right. To say the story, say the experience. Now, you know, I think it's critical to get into what people imagine it's like once you finally do share and stand behind something that's happened to you in your life.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

You know, I would think one of the first things, and I don't know if you've experienced this, is um terror. I mean, I you know, it's so scary. In a way, I think holding a secret is like your little gift, like it's only yours, not a gift per se, but it's yours, right? You're not giving it to anyone else. And in some ways, and I don't know if this makes sense, but I'd love to hear what you think about this. Is there some sort of comfort in it? And then I don't know. You know, it's an intimate thing. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Well, obviously, there's safety. Right. Um, I don't think I was ever comforted by something that I felt was so profoundly lived in my life that I could not share. I mean, for me, um, there's a part of me, this is the part I couldn't live with. It wasn't just my kids. It was that I didn't feel like the people who knew me and cared about me and respected me. I didn't feel true because there was such a huge part of me that they didn't know. So I do think over time I began to feel that I needed to expose all of who I am. And maybe I needed to grow all the way up to be able to be brave enough to face that, right? Yeah. But what I kind of wanted to get to is what happens, what do we imagine happens when you finally share or tell your secret and you lift the burden from inside of you and let it out. Because I was interviewed by many, many, many people, and there's a lot of assumptions here that um there would be no more shame. There, there's just a lot of things that people would ask me, and I quite frankly didn't know how to process how I should answer because the truth is the secret, the experience of the secret doesn't go away, right? It still lives in me. I am still fighting with the shame. I did a TED talk on it, I am still wondering about the judgment. I stand behind who I am and I have forgiven myself, but all the things that people imagine can come are not exactly that way. One thing came that I had not thought about and that I would very much promote for anybody thinking about finding the courage to share is free, freedom. I feel free.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I was thinking of freedom, yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Um I am free to be me. So, you know, Laura, I wonder sometimes if part of why I wanted to do this show is to possibly um entice or provoke people to reach inside because again, I'm gonna say it a thousand times. I have no feelings about people who carry secrets. This is your own thing, it's your own personal private thing. However, if I could be some sort of help in people understanding what it takes and what to expect. When Laura Sullivan says the first thing she imagines when someone tells a secret is terror, those are the people that are not going to tell the secret and maybe they shouldn't. It's the people who imagine the freedom. The people who imagine what it would feel like inside of myself to be able to be true and real and honest about who I am. It doesn't matter that I was a kid and I was guided into not telling the truth about this because I grew up and had the freedom to do anything. I wanted to do, and I chose not to tell it for years and years and years. Now, do you think that anybody listening here? We know that the people who wrote me are grappling with something that's happened in their lives that they feel like they need to tell. Do we all imagine that people feel guilty about lying by omission to the people in their lives? Because a person who lives with a secret could say, Well, I'm not lying. I'm just not telling. In my case, there was an alternate story that I was told to tell. So in my case, I was downright lying and saying I was sick and I was at the Mayo clinic. So this was, you know, but you guys, you know, you don't know what you're made of until you're faced with it. Right? It's true.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah, it's true. You know, they, you know, it doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. I mean, I'm sorry. I I do think there's a lot of truth to that. You know, I also think as I'm hearing you talk, it has so much to do with how you see yourself and how you value how you're seen by others. Yes. So when I said terror, I'm a people pleaser, you know, and so I do want people to like me. And I'm wondering, you know, all of that is wrapped in there too.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Like, I still want them to like me. So, you know, I don't want to rock that cradle.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

No, I think maybe that that's that's I appreciate the candor, and you know, your honesty always blows me away. Unapologetically, you I appreciate it. Um listen, I lived for so long imagining that everybody thought this story was true. So if you think it's difficult to come out and say it's true, let me tell you what's difficult is to create a you know 50-ton thick coat of armor to be able to handle the whispers, the stares. Like I am as far I am, I've uh unless I jumped into the Pacific Ocean, I couldn't be further from where I grew up. It's true. No coincidence there. And uh, you know, I I feel like you guys, things that happen to us that we can't talk about, it it weighs on our mental health and our sense of self in ways that I think people just aren't giving much thought to. So I kind of speak to that because Laura, I bet there are a lot of people who relate to what you just said. I think I was really, really forced to have to go deeply within myself because I played the game. I was successful despite all the rumors, I carried on despite all the rumors. And then it was um a bit of a come to Jesus with myself to imagine what this was gonna feel like to come out with this story, the truth. And I had all sorts of, you know, I had all sorts of notions that people would learn this and have such compassion and empathy. And uh that wasn't all the way true, but that's okay because I'm built now and have an operating system to handle it, which is probably why I'm a little more fearless than the rest.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

So was there was I mean, in terms of relief, you know, in terms of the watershed, just you know, yes, is it's that, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

It's that.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

That's definitely that.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

However, the the feelings of having made such a grave mistake as a kid and putting my family through what my parents particularly what I put them through, um that doesn't go away so much. Shame is is a difficult nugget. I'm working on it. I'm working on it as hard as I can um and giving myself a break and taking the openness of the people who hear my story and other people who are living with a secret. Um, what I what I hope for everybody listening right now is if you aren't living with a secret, good for you. Um, but maybe open yourself up a little bit more to the possibility of the people you love. Because at the end of the day, this was a Rorschach test, Laura.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

The people in my life who learned about this and how they reacted was a fascinating psychological test. And I didn't anticipate that, I had no idea of that. But typical of life, the people you imagined would be one way were the other. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. People you thought would be the other way were one way. Right. It was um so, so interesting and so freeing for me to be able to say, well, however you take this story, it's the truth. It's my truth. And it was my journey. And I want to remind everybody this is like what we tell our children, you know, people don't go to bed at night losing sleep over your situation. Feels like they do. Right. But, you know, most people, they're focusing on themselves. So if we can just kind of get ourselves to a place where maybe, maybe I wasn't proud of what happened, clearly, but it happened and I made it through it. And um, you know, I didn't, I didn't hurt anybody along the way. I just played out a mistake that I made. That's what I had to tell myself to find the courage to step up and say, okay, this is what happened to me. And maybe it was the strength and support and unadulterated love of my children that helped give me the courage. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Well, it was very brave. Uh, you know, a question I have is when you decide to tell a secret and you pick the person, like you had said, whether it be clergy or friend, or um I guess the question in my heart is how do you know you can trust them? Like that you've got to pick these people very carefully who you're going to tell.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Oh, sure. And and I yeah, and yeah, I think, well, obviously let's let's assume you can trust your clergy and your therapist. Um I suppose when you feel like you really, really know someone, nothing in life is a guarantee. I mean, you can trust someone, and trust is something which is built and solidified over time. And the older we get, the better we get at being able to gauge and intuitively know if we can trust someone. Um but guess what? You never really know. So there is a risk on some level that if you tell somebody that they are going to be compelled to tell one person they trust, and then that person is gonna be compelled to tell one person they trust, and then your secret is out, and it becomes gossip. Possibly. And so here's the thing my advice to sit down and tell one person is not so that person will keep your secret. Okay, you can trust them, and if you don't want them to carry it out, you can ask that. But what it really is is a test of how you are hearing yourself say it and reacting. You guys, this is really big. People's reaction and response to something that you have held on to for so long is enormous. Like it's very disappointing to get a response um that minimizes your experience. It's terrifying to get one that dramatizes, you know what I mean? So you you have to be well prepared for anything. Rejection. I mean, well, rejection and no, just just judgment. Oh yeah. Right. Um now this is just an example, but part of prepping yourself for I want to tell this is to go over the why. If it is for me, so I can only use this as a frame of reference. It it didn't become too much and too big. I could have carried it to the grave. It became a challenge to to be the most open and honest version of Liz, which I thought I would feel better about myself. I knew the risk involved. But frankly, I gotten through 38 years of lying about it, knowing people somewhat new about it, dealing with the scrutiny and the judgment, how hard could it be to come clean? That was that was the take I took. And that's the take I would advise if someone's been holding something for a super long time. But listen, in answer to your question, I think all of us have at least one person with whom we could feel our heart is safe. And there's never a 100% guarantee. If you want to tell your secret and you want to tell your person not to share it until you're more ready to share it with more people, you can do that. And then do the test. How do you feel when it came out of your mouth? Sometimes, you know, you might be surprised that you feel, you know, free and good and open and positive, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:20

And maybe just telling that one person is all. Sure. You know, you don't have to go around telling the world or whatever, or write a book, but you know, no, but I mean and make sure it gets published in all the countries published and well received. Um yeah, you know, maybe that one person is the solace if you choose the right one.

unknown 32:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

And listen, guys, nothing in life is a guarantee. So you can just do your best. Do your best to choose someone that you think you really, really trust. And you know, I like to imagine that the people who care about us the most, they will surprise you, especially because honesty, earnestness, and vulnerability rarely fail you. It's just true. Even if someone thinks you shouldn't have done this or I didn't know this, a lot of the betrayal comes from I didn't know this. How did I not know this? Right? Um, but I'm telling you, if you stick with your most authentic self and not your defensive self, the truth of your heart rarely screws you. There, you can quote me on that. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

It's written down on the gravestone. In the end, it's all about being true to yourself. I feel like we have these conversations and different subjects, but I, you know, we always go to always my my sort of takeaway is be true to yourself, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

I love it that you say that because it it is true. Take the time and the effort. It's it's so little to check in with yourself. If it is rising in you and you're feeling you're ready, think about what you've already pulled off. It is really energy sucking and takes astute behavior to keep a secret. So you have to weigh one against the other, and then honestly, and I don't mean this selfishly, but I kind of do, you have to choose what will be best for your life so that you can be your most authentic self to the people that you care about the most. It's like a domino effect. Right. You're not you're not giving incomplete to the people you care about the most, including yourself, if you don't 100% look at at least. At least you can say to me, you know, I do have a secret, and I have, I've I've weighed it out. I'm not willing. The ramifications, the consequences of this secret, the reason I am keeping it, are not consequences that I am willing to face now. Boom. There's your answer.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Don't tell you.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Now I have a question. What about the secrets that affect other people? As in, you know, families hold secrets, right? And then there might be secrets within siblings, uh, parents, or stories that they've heard as, you know, part of their family. I'm just throwing this out there. What if secrets are held because they know this person, that person, and that person will forever be changed and affected? Those are ones that I find intriguing.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

I the thing is, I tried it because it can become so complicated and sophisticated. Today I wanted to make sure that we all understood. I wanted to mostly talk about people who have had an experience that impacted them that they can't talk about. Now, sometimes someone can have an experience that impacts them that also impacts somebody else. We're gonna have to use me again as the guinea pig and the example. I thought about this, the impact of what I lived. I Liz. No one in my family lived this with me. I did. So I had to weigh what I went through against my family's feelings about what I went through. And sorry, I won. I mean, in other words, it was more important, a more important move in my life to be true to me. I had been true to my parents, to my mother till she died, and my father almost until he died. I kept that secret. She never knew I told it. But that is one of those who are you to you moments. Every secret is going to impact somebody in your life, okay? And so you're really asking me, do you choose you or do you choose the people around you that might be impacted by the telling? And I really did think carefully about this. And I might add that I I could have been wrong because there was a lot of reaction to the book. But at the at the base of this question was, I need to do this for me, and it is my time. I have carried my secret, I have done what people told me to do, and now I'm choosing this. And I think because I was um so true to that, most people saw that and were able to respect and honor that. And people who weren't ultimately came around to that. But as the secret teller, you have to be willing. You do, you have to be willing to take it. Right. And I will say this it is worth it. It was worth it for me. Yeah. Yeah. When we originally talked about this this topic, Laura asked me about um gossip. It's and it's interesting because how topical gossip sounds in comparison to the radical keeping of a secret for a long period of time. It's funny how often gossip falls into the category of secrets, because pretty much 80% of the shame that I lived throughout the entire course of my life until five years ago was gossip. It was spawn from the secret, but it was gossip that really um hurt my heart and really hurt my heart for my family. Um, because you see, if if there were aspurging like gossip remarks about what really happened to me in high school, it wasn't just me. My siblings were hearing that as well, which was another um selling point to telling the truth. Right, right. Right. It's a whole other layer. So, what were your questions about gossip?

SPEAKER_01 39:23

You know, I um I can't tell you how many times, you know, you you you're with friends, or I you hear women and they're like, I know I can trust you. Did you know? Blah de blah de blah. And so you're presented with it's a secret. Right. They wouldn't be saying, I know I can trust you. And then for me, I think to myself, do I need to know this? Because it's not about you, it's about another person. And for me, I don't know if that's if that's what gossip is, is that it's not about you. But I find the secrets of the secret of gossip, meaning I only told you, but you don't tell anybody else, and you, you know, there's a connection there.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Well, it's interesting because well, I do. The minute you said that, you know, with women and you sit down with somebody and they say, I know I can trust you. You see, for me, because I am the poster child of gossip, I mean, there's been more gossip about me than anybody in the world. I think when someone says, I know I can trust you, I have to wonder how many different people they are saying that to.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Right. So, I mean, the people that I hold in what I call the vault, it's just code. I have a few people in my life, and I say this is in the vault. And that means I'm reminding you, don't freaking tell anybody. I try not to use the vault too often. But in terms of the gossip, that is interesting because if someone says to you, I know I can trust you, and I don't know if you knew this, but blah, blah, blah, what are we supposed to say? Hey, you know what? Please don't tell me. Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Right. You know, it's true. I read somewhere it's like, if you have anything bad to say about anybody, come sit by me.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

You know. I mean, perhaps, perhaps if you were in that situation again and you felt a little bit uncomfortable, you're not talking about when a woman sits down and says, I know I can trust you. I blah, blah, blah. That's different when she's telling you something about her. But when she says, I know I can trust you, did you know? I I don't ever like to say things that I couldn't do. And I'm just 100% positive that I couldn't say, Hey, whatever you're about to say, don't tell me. I can't do that. So I'm not gonna tell you to do that. Yeah. But how about this? Could you challenge yourself the next time that happens to listening, not asking another single question about it? Because you know, your role or your part in that could be to just listen and ask no more questions and have a pact with yourself that you are not gonna tell anybody else. I do think you could cut it in half by not saying, You're kidding me. How do you know that?

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Right. You don't give it life, you don't give it life. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Well, I will work on that.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

I wanted today to be a little bit of a wake-up call if you're living with something that you don't talk about. So I'm a huge encourager of courage. Courage is what leads to resilience. The minute you challenge yourself with something that you are terrified by, the closer you are to being a person who can face challenges more easily later. So if you're thinking of sharing a secret and worried about the consequences, this is the time, hopefully, that you're going to give it some thought. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Very helpful. Very helpful. I really have liked this subject.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Me too. It's um I didn't always I wasn't always this person, but what I've learned from from caring and now sharing a secret is that there is such strength in your own honesty. It it makes you move inside of the world differently when you can 100% be yourself. So the question of should I tell or should I not tell, that is up to the person. Hopefully, we've encouraged a couple of people to look inside and decide for themselves what would work for their life, right?

unknown 44:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Awesome. So, real quickly, if you want to hear more of my story of living with a secret, I am giving away several copies of my memoir, Look at You Now, through Libro.fm. They're an audiobook platform, much like Audible, but they support local bookstores, which I love. And they have given us a bunch of copies to give you. I also narrated this book. So if you just mention the podcast just saying with Liz Pryor, anywhere on your social media and tag us, then we'll know you want one, and we're going to give out as many as we can. I am very close to saying that's it. Look how long we went, Laura. I know. I know a lot to talk about. I want to remind people that whatever you're struggling with in life, whatever messiness has come your way, whatever conflict you're facing with the people you love, that is what this show is about. So definitely email me at just saying S-A-Y-I-N with Liz at Gmail. DM me on Instagram, message me on Facebook. And um, I think that's it, Laura. Thank you so much for your kind heart. As always, this is just saying, saying goodbye for now.