19: Finale — TLOAS is a culmination, not a contradiction (with Kelley Erickson)

For our last episode, I sit down with functional mental health practitioner Kelley Erickson to explore The Life of a Showgirl through the lens of emotional integration, identity, and resistance.

We unpack why this album feels so different, the emotional arc of Taylor’s discography, and why this album is a culmination, not a contradiction.

We talk about performance, power, and what it looks like refuse to play by patriarchy’s rules while remaining within the system—and we go DEEP. 

I learned so much from this conversation, and it unlocked a whole new level of appreciation for both the album and the brilliant artist behind it.

You don’t want to miss it!

Find Kelley on Instagram here.

And here’s a direct link to her original post about The Life of a Showgirl.

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Get all the LIT112 writing prompts in one place: www.maraeller.com/prompts.

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Transcript

1:18

Welcome to Lit one 12, the Life of a Showgirl where we treat Taylor Swift's latest album like a novel I'm your host, Mara Eller, a literature and writing teacher with 16 years of experience at the high school and college level. I just retired to focus on editing and book coaching, but when I started getting requests for this series on social media, I couldn't resist. Whether you're a veteran swifty or just an AP lit nerd like me who happens to like her music, all are welcome here. So grab your metaphorical notebook and let's unpack this record together, chapter by chapter, song by song. today for our finale episode, we have a very special interview with Kelly Erickson. A functional mental health practitioner whose work focuses on emotional regulation, identity development, and the physiological roots of the human experience. She helps women understand the internal narratives that shape their sense of self, their boundaries, and their emotional landscape. I found her through an Instagram post back in early October, shortly after the life of a showgirl was released where she argued that taylor's catalog mirrors the emotional arc She sees in her patients every day, offering women language resonance and self-recognition outside a therapeutic setting. I have the link to her post in my show notes, and I encourage you to check it out and follow her there on Instagram, but I wanna share a little bit more about it because our conversation went deep. We discuss what it means to metabolize emotions, the emotional tenor of each of Taylor's albums, the difference between anger and rage. What healthy integrated anger looks like, which is certainly not what I thought it was, and why this album has widespread resonance for women who have struggled to make space for themselves within systems designed to keep them small, but also why it has been a hard pill to swallow for many. Kelly's argument is that with the life of a showgirl, we see Taylor reclaiming her edges and embracing the role of a performer. After the raw vulnerability we got in the previous four albums, in this one, she's boundaried and intentional. Here's what she says on the post. She writes, when you have a particular kind of purpose and you're bred into systems of falsehoods, you don't shatter glass ceilings by throwing rocks from outside the system, you shatter the ceiling by standing upright inside them. On this album, Taylor has reclaimed her anger. But it's clean and full of clarity. And this is what society has a hard time wrapping their minds around. When women are angry, she writes, they're called juvenile. They're demeaned, dismissed, and often disowned if they don't fall in line. But Taylor fell in line consciously, performatively. She's performing appeasement. She's given you the keys to the kingdom with her juvenile fantasy of football king and homecoming queen finally getting their fairytale ending. But Taylor knows just like every other woman that fantasies are for children. So she's pulled you in with the love story, but she's waiting for you to figure it out on your own. She's a genius, and she gives the average woman the framework to shatter glass ceilings in the systems that insist on containment. I'm so excited to get to share this interview with you today. I personally learned a ton and I know that you will too. And I particularly love that this conversation places the life of a showgirl within a larger narrative arc that encompasses Taylor's entire career to date as a culmination of everything that she's been working so hard. for both professionally and personally and I also love that it gives us yet another layer of brilliance to learn from and apply to our own lives. So put on your headphones, strap in, and get ready for 80 minutes of life-changing conversation about emotional healing. societal pressures on women, and of course, Taylor Swift. Welcome to the show today, Kelly We are really excited to have you here and get your unique perspective on Taylor Swift's latest album and her work as a whole. tell us a little bit about yourself. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I am a functional mental health practitioner. I work with women, to recover all aspects after having, uh, difficult childhood, so childhood trauma, because I work in the functional space, I address trauma from both a biological lens but also from an emotional lens. And, it's really interesting because there is an emotional arc that we kind of experience that I've learned. so a pattern to our emotions, and especially when we're talking about, Recovery of emotions and how they present themselves and kind of walk us through a specific pattern, so to speak. And, Taylor Swift seems to, replicate this pattern or this arc So I find that very fascinating. So I found you through an Instagram post shortly after the album came out, and was just fascinated by your unique perspective, using that lens as a mental health practitioner and that emotional arc to place this album in a context, that you'll tell us more about soon. But, I came into this Taylor Swift stuff because there was so much backlash against this album, calling it shallow and all kinds of things. Yeah. And so anytime in those early days where I saw someone engaging with it seriously and finding something interesting in it, that really stood out. And I'm so glad that I found that post and found you. I've been enjoying your content since then as a fellow introvert, empath, and, just really excited to have you on today So, maybe start by telling us, do you consider yourself a swifty? What is your history with Taylor Swift and her music? I don't know if I'd go as far, as labeling myself a swifty, though I have been a fan for quite some time. I think it was probably around the time that reputation was released that I really started to navigate towards, or kind of be drawn towards her music. I mean, that's a really potent album. There's a lot of open, expression of rage and, and what it means to like, explore identity through, Her unique, perspective. And so I have followed her work over the years. There have been a few albums that, eh, you know, I wasn't so in love with. and when the, which ones, which ones you wanna know? folklore and Evermore, when they came out, it wasn't really the space I was in, and so it was just kind of meh to me. Yeah. Not that I hated them, but it, they just didn't feel as potent as like they didn't resonate at that time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but then when Life of a Showgirl came out, you know, I was, I was excited for its release and I stayed up that night just to hear, you know, hear the first recording. and my first pass through, I was like, oh, this feels so ju juvenile. And now, like, looking back, I, I have language to describe it, but I just felt like, oh, this is really juvenile and it doesn't feel like what I expect from Taylor Swift. so I went to bed and then the next day I put it on again and I was just like, man, I, the, the music part of it itself was catchy and I could feel myself getting pulled into it, but the musical notes didn't seem to align with the words or the lyrics. Again, I just kept landing on this word juvenile and I was like, I am so confused. Yeah. I didn't get the word juvenile, but I can definitely see that because everything else you just described is also how I felt, especially that dissonance between the music and the lyrics, and it was just confusing. It was like uncomfortable in places and I didn't know what to do with it. Yeah. But I'm the kind of person who says, well, I'm gonna figure this out then. What is going on? Like this is very intriguing. Yeah. And I don't know if I'm gonna end up liking it, but I am definitely gonna figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I felt the same way. I have kind of a. Scientific background, I guess, obviously'cause I'm in the functional mental health space. But, that desire to figure it out, like what is this tension between the music and the lyrics? And online, there's a lot of speculation that it was written by ai. So then I tried to listen through that lens and I'm like, no, that's not it for me. I actually have not heard that. And that just strikes me as really bizarre. Or maybe I saw that, oh, the music itself was written by ai. they were saying the The lyrics. The lyrics, yeah. Yeah. They're way too weird to be ai. Right? Like, okay, that's just bizarre. But carry on. Yeah. so that added another layer of complexity to it. So I, I listened through that lens with that ear trying to see if I could hear the pattern of AI built into it. And that didn't really make a lot of sense. And then I can't remember what the next narratives were around it, but I was definitely intrigued by that point, enough to keep listening. And I don't think it took very long for me to figure it out, So, listening through. That lens of like understanding emotions and that our emotional patterns have a rhythm or a pace or a pattern that we typically experience them in. So I was feeling the emotion of the album and a lot of, a lot of the lyrics kind of make it pretty obvious, you know, the song, the Life of the Showgirl really talks about. What it means to enter into the entertainment industry. She opens up the, the song with talking about, being backstage and lots of people speculate that it was Britney Spears she was talking to, but you know, that you, you don't know what the life of a showgirl is, and you're sweeter than a peach and you don't wanna know, like this kind of warning sign of like, you don't really want this. Right. And then at the end she closes that with like, now I know what the life of a showgirl is and the leave us for dead. But I can't remember the exact words, but basically you can't kill me. You know? Yeah. I'm immortal now. Yes. so that really kind of solidified what this final album meant to me, and it was all about anger, but it's integrated anger. And a lot of people, when they think about anger, they think about dirty anger, unconscious anger, and that's kind of where we're messy and mean, and we're kind of looking for blame. or maybe would you say that is more the tone of reputation? Mm. I would say reputation is rage, which is different from anger. Yeah. Okay. I love this stuff, like emotions and psychology are one of my favorite topics. So I wanna get as granular as you're willing to go with this. Give us an emotional education. Okay. Connected to Taylor Swift. I'm so excited. Sure. so the life of a showgirl is like anger integrated. And like I was saying, when people think of anger, they often think of this like unconscious relationship where with anger, where it's dirty and it's messy and it kind of, is harmful in many ways. But when we have completed our emotional arc and we have integrated every aspect of the process when we end at anger, what it looks like is boundaries. It looks like having healthy boundaries that protect what we value most. And that's what this album felt like to me. It felt like performance. There was a lot of language that kind of described if she's talking to the audience, she would be saying, this is what you've asked for from me. Mm-hmm. So I'm going to give you the homecoming king, homecoming queen, marriage that everyone, has begged for, et cetera. I'm gonna put on this performance, but it's boundaried and you're only going to see and know what I allow you to see and know. I felt like that was the message of the entire album. Of course, you could get very granular and pick apart, a lot more details and try to. Assume that she's giving away details of her personal life and taking digs at certain people. I try not to listen to it through that lens. but that's what I hear out of the life of a showgirl is that it's this integrated anger. It's all about boundaries. It shows she knows who she is, but she also knows what people expect from her, what they want from her, and what's made her Taylor Swift. So it's almost like her saying, I'm going to give you the performance you ask for, but there's a part of me you don't get access to. Okay. So very interesting. Define for us a little bit more what integrated means in this context. Sure. So another way to describe it would be conscious versus unconscious anger. And again, unconscious anger is when we're just kind of dirty, we're messy. We leak our emotions all over other people. we, we might have, it's coming out when we're not intending it to, and in ways that we're not. I mean, is it related to kind of like repressing repressing? Suppressing, yes. also just a lack of language, a lack of understanding. many people, not most, but many people kind of walk around navigating the world without language for emotions. I mean, they may be able to say the word anger, but when we're talking especially about women, There's this idea or concept that to be a good girl, you shouldn't be angry. Right. Um, it, it's not flattering to be angry. nobody likes a mad woman Right? Yeah. And so lots of women that I work with come in and one of the first questions I'll ask them is, what do you do with your anger? And, oh, I don't. I'm not angry. I don't have any anger. It's like, well, it's part of the human emotional experience, so everybody experiences anger, but that's why I like to ask, what do you do with it? Because it kind of gives me insight without, you know, them really understanding what I'm asking. when we don't have a direct relationship with anger, so when it's unconscious, so to speak, it looks more like what people might call resentment or agitation, irritation. Lots of women might say they're touched out from their children. it can be a lack of motivation because anger is action oriented. It's forward momentum. It's all about boundaries and asking for your needs to be met. So if you have an unconscious relationship with anger, there's also a really good chance that you don't really understand boundaries or you don't know how to, state boundaries, and you probably don't know how to ask for your needs to be met. So it's just this silent kind of festering under, you know, the surface until someone pokes the bear and then it, you know, then it's dirty and messy. And, and then women often feel really bad after that kind of anger, which perpetuates this cycle of trying to stuff it down and be disconnected from it. Oh yeah. I wish I could say that. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know what I do with my anger either. I mean, sometimes I articulate it, I guess, but. I'm probably somewhat in that category. It's not my go-to emotion, that's for sure. Yeah. okay, so, so many questions, but I'm really interested to hear like, can you tell us anything like I hear anger maybe in canceled on the album, and maybe you'll say, tell me that that's actually not anger. but where are you hearing it? Like how did that emotion communicate itself to you Yeah, so again, it goes back to the idea of how we associate with anger and in canceled, that might seem a little, more obvious to find. I like my friends, canceled, you know, all of that stuff. but I think it shows up metaphorically in a lot of ways. knock on wood or like the mahogany table. I pay the check. I, you know, I pay the bills, I keep the lights on for, you know, this company. It's a recognition. It's almost like maybe this will help. Make it land a little bit more. So shame as an emotion is very collapsing. We know from research on shame that when someone experiences a significant amount of shame or when it's triggered, we tend to collapse. So our shoulders will turn in, our face will turn red. We avoid eye contact. Right. Is that the calls to hide? Right. Yeah, so freeze or maybe even a little bit of fun, but yes, freeze or collapse. but when we're talking about anger, and you could see this even when someone's got dirty anger or unconscious anger, it's upright, it's, it's defensive, it's protective. I'm going to defend what I believe in or what I value. and when we have it properly integrated and have this really conscious working relationship with it, the minute you start to feel even a soft form of anger, just like this hint of agitation or irritation, that is a signal to you to point you back to your values. So there's a lot of softer, more, Defensive language in there that doesn't immediately trigger the idea of anger, but there's a lot of things in there that she's like, yeah, I don't, I don't think so. Hmm. Okay. I wanna try to think of some of them and then you can tell me if I'm on the right track. Okay. So what you, you just alluded to father figure, which that one definitely makes sense to me. at the end where she's saying, no, I am the bigger one. You know, that, like, I think of anger being related to aggression. not that they're like exactly the same, but like, when you're talking about it being a outward emotion, that that becomes expressed sort of out at the world. so I can see that in father figure. I'm thinking maybe of even eldest daughter, which is like very soft in certain ways, but then she's saying I'm not a bad bitch, which is like her use of curse words. in the album was really interesting to me because it wasn't on the songs where you would think it would be. Right. It was like, it's not in canceled, for example, it's in Honey. Yeah. Which is like the most lovey-dovey on Yeah. On a certain way. And eldest daughter. And I'm forgetting if it's in another song too, but, but eldest daughter, like when you were talking about that, that protective aspect of anger, I feel like you can, you can hear that an eldest daughter with, I'm never gonna leave you. Now you're home Okay, so you're, you're agreeing that eldest daughter, you, you hear that there? okay. So ru and the friendship, there could be some anger involved in like, almost anger with herself or with the system, the pressures that led her to try to be such a good girl that she didn't take this risk and tell this guy how she really felt and, you know, kiss him. Uh, yeah. And even maybe in the life of a showgirl as well, again, when, she says, I don't remember exactly how she puts it, but like, I took her pearls of wisdom and, put it into action. And then I paid my dues with every bruise. Yeah, like, and you just, you can't kill me. I'm not going to be dead. Oh. Well that's where she uses the word Bitches again, is in that song. she says all the bitches in the dance halls, with her portraits on the wall, wish me dead. Yeah. Okay, so actually romantic is another interesting take here because correct me if I'm wrong, but with the understanding that I'm just developing here through this conversation, I would almost see that song as maybe an example of where it's a little less integrated, where she's kind of lashing out and thinking that it's gonna be cute, or at least this is my interpretation of the song. She's like, I'm gonna prove how unbothered I am by writing a whole song about this and being kind of nasty. Like, that doesn't seem like clear, calm boundaries to me. But how do you about that? I can't, I'm trying to think of all of the lyrics to that song Well, she's saying like, it's so cute that, You called me tacky. Stop talking dirty to me. Like it makes me turned on that you're so obsessed with me and so obsessed about being mean to me. It's just so cute. You're like a toy chihuahua in a tiny purse. Yeah. Doesn't hurt me at all. So remember, anger is about boundaries, and she's like, she's kind of rejecting this concept of like, you're talking bad about me, to make me feel bad about myself. And she's like, I think it's romantic. It's like a boundary. Like I'm not, I'm not gonna absorb that. The way that you are throwing it out there, you call me boring Barbie when the Cokes got you high or whatever. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like edgy. It's like they're, I'm not going to absorb those words you say about me. I can't remember if that's the same song where she talks about I'm in the bathroom and the skirt they call me. Lovely. That is honey. Okay. And again, this concept of like, she can hear when people are trying to demean her through niceness or you know, this concept of like, inauthenticity and she's like, oh, this is the game you wanna play fine.'cause a lot of times when people are behaving in this way, and especially when we're talking about people in positions of power, there's a very clear understanding of the diminishing aspect of particular language. you know, calling me honey or cute or, telling me my skirt doesn't fit right. There's intention behind that. I don't know about you, but if you're relate to being an empathic person, I can't imagine being in a public bathroom with my friend or even a stranger or a competitor in telling them that, you know, they don't look good or. Their outfit, you know, because it's already on, right? There's no point whether it looks good or not to say those words. So I think again, it's a display of boundaries, not so much in the, the context of anger as again, what we think of as anger is kind of being that messy energy, more like, I'm boundaried, I, I see through all of the tricks of the trade. I see what your intentions were, and I'm just not going to swallow that pill. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I'm, I'm listening to all this thinking, oh yeah, I'm terrible at boundaries, so they're not something that I would naturally pick up on. So this is really interesting, this gives me an interesting thought about honey. Which is where she's talking about the girls in the bathroom using these words and, whatever the other example was that I'm forgetting. And the, the boyfriend that called her honey and then he was too high to remember in the morning, and you know, just people using it to manipulate or demean or, belittle. okay. So what's interesting to me additionally there is that the song is about how she's telling her guy, you know, if we're talking about Taylor Swift, telling Travis, you can call me honey though, like, I have this boundary with other people. I don't let people call me this anymore because it's been used as a weapon, but. I'm gonna let you in past this boundary that I hold with other people, and that seems to me like a very strong indication of her sense of safety and trust and deep intimacy. I'm wondering, would you agree, is that healthy to have boundaries with some people? But then, I mean, I'm assuming yes. Like we all have boundaries with strangers that we don't have with our family. does that resonate at all for you as far as your interpretation of that song or what it's revealing? Yeah, I mean, I've got funny feelings about the relationship with Travis and, uh, whether or not it's part of the performance. Uhhuh but that's my own you know, I don't claim to know her or. See through her eyes more just that I can feel the emotional presence and what it represents. but yes to your answer around boundaries. Uh, boundaries are needed at, every stage of a relationship. And when you have multiple kinds of relationships throughout your life, the boundaries will vary from relationship to relationship. Like, your relationship with your boss is gonna look different than your marriage partner, your spouse and your children. but in this day and age, a lot of what passes for boundaries is this concept of like, I'm going to modify your behavior. like I'm gonna set a boundary to make you stop doing whatever you're doing. Yeah. Like my boundary is that you won't do instead of Right. The boundary is something that I do in response. Right. Okay. Yeah. Right. which I think plays very, closely to, uh, this whole Taylor Swift conversation. because. You know, when we look at the bigger picture, she talks about, I mean, she uses the word patriarchy. You can infer that she's talking a lot about power dynamics and hierarchies and even just the situation of getting her masters sold out from underneath her, and then the effort she went to to get them back. but it's like she's understood that boundaries are meant to protect what you value. And so she's learned how to, she didn't leave the music industry when she realized there were shady characters, bad practices or even when her masters got sold to someone else. Right. And to someone that had mistreated her. Yeah. and she didn't collapse under the weight of that, which takes an enormous amount of, fortitude and integrity to combat it. But it's like she's talking to people and showing them how to stand up inside of these systems. So in the trauma communities, even in the spiritual communities, there's a lot of talk about like, protecting my peace and I'm gonna walk away and maybe even move to, the rainforest and, and, you know, just do these kind of drastic measures to like stay peaceful and, and enjoy and love. But what she's actually showing us is that, she stayed in integrity and she learned how to stand upright inside of these systems. Not by, I mean, I shouldn't say not by fighting dirty because I don't know how she plays behind the scenes. but it gives the appearance that she played by the rules and fought really hard to be number one. I mean, she broke massive records with the release of this album and the amount of plays on Spotify and downloads and all of these things, I mean. She's shattering glass ceilings left and right. So she didn't exit the music industry. She didn't leave and go start her own label or even collapse and just abandon her career at all. She stayed and she broke these systems down, and I think that that's what she gives to the average listener is the courage and the emotional fortitude to keep going and stand up inside of these systems that are designed to kind of crack you, so to speak. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So I think one of the things you're saying is that even though most of us are not ourselves, pop superstars in the, or in the music industry or in the performance world necessarily at all, that we all. Have ways that we face similar like antagonism, and maybe particularly women that we find ourselves in situations, systems that are designed to keep us small or, you know,'cause one of the criticisms about this album is that, it's unrelatable because, you know, she's just a billionaire and woe is me. Life is so hard as a billionaire mega star. and, and I've resonated with the fact that she said it's about having a public life. And we all have public lives now if we're on social media at all. But I like what you're saying here too, that there's this other way that it can resonate with anyone perhaps at least. Maybe particularly any female. so I don't know. I'd love to hear just a little bit more about maybe an example of how we might be able to apply this or how, how her experience might mirror ours in some way. Like a more ordinary woman's experience. Yeah. so that kind of goes back to the theme of the emotional arc that she kind of either intentionally or unintentionally kind of laid out for people. Starting really with the album reputation where, it's a comeback after humiliation. And I mean this real big public scrutiny, This album is just full of rage. and you put it on and it kind of transports you into what she must have been feeling. And I think most women can resonate with that whole awakening of a side of ourselves that maybe thought we could survive by, go along to get along behavior. Like, I'm gonna play nice. I'm gonna do this, and you know, I'm gonna stay quiet instead of voicing my complaints. Or. Yeah. And be the good girl, right? I mean, we're kind of fed that narrative from many different angles in society of what it means to be feminine. And feminine isn't loud and it's not aggressive, and, it doesn't do man things. And you know, obviously that has started to change over the last few decades. maybe even longer. But, this idea of like, stay quiet and be nice, and she had had that experience with Kanye West where they're on the stage and he takes the Grammy from her, and then the backlash of releasing audio and who said what about who, and all of these things. I mean, at that point in her career, she very well could have just disappeared. She could have walked away, and said, I've had enough, because she was, for all intents and purposes, humiliated. We don't know the truth of who said what and all of those things. But, but I mean, for people who aren't familiar with any of that, which I only vaguely am'cause I researched it a little bit at one point in my studies of the album, but I did see the clip where Kanye West interrupts the beginning of her Grammy acceptance speech takes her Grammy and you know, her award and starts talking about how it should have gone to someone else. And then the crowd starts booing. And I read that she thought that they were booing her when apparently they were booing him because they were like, dude, this is not okay. But she internalized that, and thought. They were booing her off the stage and then she had to get on stage and perform like 10 minutes later she was like backstage sobbing. And then this sort of feud went on for years, including, you mentioned something about like audio and he made a song that had this strange music video with naked wax figures, including her body that she hadn't given permission for, but they made it seem like she had, you know, again, we don't know exactly what's true, but she was accused of lying. So just to give a little more context of like, these are like some of the worst possible things that she could probably have imagined happening to her. Yeah. Very, very publicly, at what she probably thought was the height of her career. So, just to support what you're saying, that like, it would've been a very sort of reasonable self-protective response to say. Okay, I'm out like I had my moment. I can't do this. I'm gonna be done. But instead we get reputation. Yeah. And I still need you to clarify though, what is rage if we've been talking about anger? So rage is the awakening experience that we often have, that says, I didn't deserve this. I didn't belong there. it's like a reckoning with yourself. Again, when we look at the prior stage of the kind of go along to get along, be a good girl, get belonging where it's offered, And then we hit this kind of breaking point where we crack and we've awoken to the sense of injustice, whether that's in. Marriage or you know, with your parents or you know, whatever it is. And what comes out is rage and it's destructive. It's like fire. It's there to burn everything to the ground so that you can start over. and so that's what she comes in with with reputation. I mean, I feel like that's the most obvious out of all of her albums where you could look at it as a whole and say, oh yeah, that's rage. And are you saying that everyone or most people or most women go through these very similar steps in a journey towards integration or, or wholeness? Yes. Most women, and it will happen. For a variety of reasons. so we can have a life event that cracks us open, and that can be like the loss of a loved one, the loss of a child, something that really just thrusts us into this new reality. It can be a brush with death, it can be menopause for a lot of women. or it can just be a, you know, you've been doing this healing journey and then like, this is what, what comes along. So I can't say every woman, because there will be many women that listen to this and they're like, well, I've never experienced that. it's not that you couldn't, or it's not part of your journey, it's just maybe that hasn't happened to you yet. and it is, it's this reckoning with like, I shouldn't have experienced that, or that's not the way things should have gone. And it's It often doesn't make a lot of sense. Mm-hmm. That's not the right way to say it. it's still relatively unconscious in its process, so it can still be looking for a lot of blame, or it can still be, fueled by a lot of, like victim hood. There's just this sense of things weren't right and you've outgrown something. You didn't deserve something. And so it is, it's, it's pretty messy. Well now I'm wondering, gee, have I gone through this stage? I don't wanna veer too far into the therapy session category, but like when we're talking about sort of accessing our anger are there things that you recommend people do in order to sort of support themselves to help themselves move in that direction? I mean, it, it, it is kind of a varied, layered process. I think number one is labeling your emotions. we have a tendency to kind of just move throughout our day and just briefly on the side, kind of notice that we're experiencing something. But, you know, if you're raising kids or any number of distractions that we can be bombarded with in a single day, lots of people don't take the time to just label the emotion. And so you start by labeling what you're experiencing instead of getting caught in the story. People wanna tell a lot of stories and like you call your girlfriend on the phone and what's the first thing you do, right? Like, you talk about how your kids did X, Y, Z, or your husband did X, Y, Z, and there's a lot of like, and then he said, and then she said, and then the da, but there's no talk of, well, not no, but very little talk of the actual emotion. I am really angry. I'm afraid this relationship isn't going to survive. I feel ashamed because, et cetera. So labeling your emotions is one way we can decrease the activity in the emotional centers of the brain, which helps to calm down what's happening in the body. Okay? Yeah. Get out that feeling wheel and try to get in touch with your physical experience, right? Yes. Live in the body. This is something I'm working on. I don't, I was gonna say I'm a weird person this way. Maybe it's more common than I think, but I have a almost uncanny ability sometimes to help other people identify their emotions. But when it comes to myself, I really struggle. So this is exactly the type of thing that I'm working on. Yeah. Yeah. it's not uncommon for that to be the case, especially as women and mothers and wives. and that's why I say menopause is often the stage where lots of women, you know, the children have started to leave the house and their husband, maybe it was okay that they were a workaholic for the last 25 years, but now the woman's completely alone. And it's like, oh, I have nothing to anchor my sense of self or my awareness to now all I'm left with is myself. And so oftentimes that's kind of the awakening stage of like, I never asked for my needs to be met. I didn't realize I could ask for needs to be met. And then, then they start to get angry. Because there were never boundaries in place, or, I can relate to this one. Like as a mother, I have three children and a husband, and it is literally my job to make sure that everyone else's life runs smoothly. They have access to packing lunches, or I pack lunches, they've got clean clothes, they've, you know, all of these things. And very rarely is it anyone else's job to make sure my life runs smoothly, you know? so there's an, there's a reckoning day that comes for many women, that is just like, yeah, no, this doesn't work anymore. Yeah. Would you say that women people can go through this cycle more than once? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. it could be. And here's the fun part, which I think also mirrors Taylor Swift's. Narrative, how she puts it together is that it's cyclical and we have many cycles of it. So within a day, within an hour, we can experience, you know, the whole gamut of emotions. It can be seasonal. So what's happening with the sun and the seasons very much plays a role in our emotional, regulation and rhythm and kind of what we experience. and then there's larger cycles. You know, we can have a four year cycle or a seven year cycle. and so yes, we, we can, there are cycles, there are rhythms, and it, yes, it absolutely can happen more than one time. Okay. Somehow that makes me feel better. Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've got more work to do in this area, but I would like to think that I've done some work already in it. So, yeah. No, and that's the thing too about emotions, which I get reflected back to me a lot where people will come in and say, oh, well I dealt with my shame wound. I should never experience shame again. And it's like, oh no. See, this is part of our, that's where you use that word, honey. Oh honey. This is part of our emotional architecture. And that's the thing about emotions is we have either this unconscious relationship with them or we have the conscious relationship. And when emotions are conscious, so specifically shame when we understand this, then when we experience shame, it's all about atonement and making things right? So if you and I are in relationship to each other and I do something that upsets you and you lash out at me in a way that leads me to experience shame, that should signal to me that I need to atone So it keeps us in connection to each other. But most people don't experience it that way because there's no concept of shame outside of how much it hurts. And when we hurt, we want to blame someone or something. Even for ourselves. yes. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is super interesting. So I have for a while thought of shame as 100% bad. Like guilt is healthy and leads to repair, but shame is like internalizing it and saying, well, I am bad. And I, I have been thinking that that's never a good thing to feel or think, but you're maybe correcting this a little bit and saying. That shame does have a positive function, which is to prompt us to atone. I mean, hopefully, maybe I'll just state it in case any listeners aren't familiar with the underlying concept here, that every emotion exists in order to reveal a need that is going met or unmet. So positive emotions we feel when we're having our needs met and negative emotions or what we, what we call experiences. Unpleasant emotions are telling us that needs are going unmet, right? Yes. I mean, yes. I don't like to use the word positive emotions versus negative emotions because that pushes the brain to seek one over the other. When we seek what we believe to be more positive emotions automatically, makes us cringe from what we call negative emotions. all emotions are pointing us in a direction. All emotions are a compass. And if we had learned this in early life, then it would literally be our own personal, navigation tool that would point us in the right direction, left, right, stop, go, you know? but we don't understand this and we spend so much time in our life completely ignoring it, bypassing it, learning that it's appropriate here, not appropriate there. appropriate for some people and not for other people. Exactly. So I don't view anger, fear, or shame as being something negative at all. they have dual purposes or dual roles. So again, when we're not conscious of them and they're kind of running the show without us being connected to'em, that's when they have this more. Negative presentation. when we understand how these emotions begin to arise in our body and we can hear the somatic cue before it becomes anxiety, before it becomes a panic attack, before it becomes collapse in the form of shame, right. Or before it becomes destructive in the form of anger. When we can hear these emotions when they're light and as a beginning stage of a somatic signal, it's guidance. It tells us exactly what's missing or what's needed. Like you said, in this situation, shame is about atonement. Fear is about, oh, I'm sorry. What is, just define atonement for us just a little bit like reconnection, apology, I would say repair, I probably wouldn't add connection or apology because those words mean something different to everyone. Okay. I would say about repair because, just like being a recovering alcoholic, I'm very, well versed in behaving and, doing things that are both self-destructive and harmful to other people. a lot of people don't realize, you know, we only see our, we only experience ourselves from a really narrow. Vantage point from inside of ourselves. That's how we see ourselves and we fail to recognize that the person who's in relationship to us is having an entirely different experience of us than what we're having of ourselves on the inside. so shame has become a very popularized word. people understand that it has a lot to do with childhood trauma. but with that, there's a lot of blame pointed and people experience that two different ways. They either blame themselves or they blame the people around them. I find that people who relate to being, empathic tend to be the people that blame themselves and. The opposite of being an empath is a narcissist. That's the, you know, kind of juxtaposition or duality of it. And those people with those characteristics, it's still a core wound of shame, but it's an external locus of control. It's an external, place to put their blame. so it, it's stemming from the same place, but the mechanism of handling it is different. Okay. So is there an album or a place in Taylor's discography where you see shame coming up? Or, what happens after rage that we see in reputation. Yeah. So after Rage, there's reconciliation. And this is the album Lover where she's even been quoted as saying it's a love letter to love. Like she's trying to soften again after the experience of rage. if you're a mom and you've ever lashed out at your children and just lost your marbles And then you recognize it and you're like, oh, I didn't like the way that felt. And I'm sure they didn't like the way that felt. So you try to overcompensate a lot of times by getting really soft again, like as the juxtaposition to the rage. So Lover is all about Her softening and, you know, a return to her heart. And then from there, we move into grief, which is, folklore and evermore. and grief is like just this having to let go. It's, longing to be witnessed in our pain. There's a song, called Willow where she says, show me where the others gave you scars. It's like, I know pain. Let me see your pain. Let's meet in the pain. in grieving when, when we connect with it. Gives us reflection and nostalgia and a little aching for what we think could have been right. but the idea is to take that grief and move it into the next stage into action. but a lot of times people, you know, especially when they experience significant loss and they can't really understand what's happening, sometimes can get stuck in the stage of grief for a long period of time. but to get to your question which is the next album, it's midnights, and this is my favorite. I love midnights. and it's all about shame. I mean, from the very obvious. Song where she's like, hi, it's me, I'm the prom. Oh, uh, anti-hero. Yes. Yeah. lavender Haze talks about, again, the patriarchy and the contrast of trying to be soft but also meeting this, part of, how relationships or the business, the industry is idealized and like, I think of purple. I don't know that this is, that there's any truth to this, but I kind of associate shame as purple. More, maybe a little more maroon. Which, which is obviously fitting. Yeah. Yeah. but midnights is like. If we look metaphorically is about liminal spaces. Like midnight on the clock is the time between one day and the next day the light hasn't started to return yet. We're like in this holding space. Midnight is also associated with dream time, right? We'd be asleep and dreaming and maybe in another world. and so it's this contrast. The videos are really quite dark. A lot of them, or at least maybe I'm just thinking of, it's me. Hi. I am the problem. she gives us three images in that where she's. The big Taylor, she's the poet Taylor. And then, she's the showgirl Taylor in that video. So she's showing that there's a split maybe in her psyche, which is what shame does to us. Like we can't make, especially when we're children, right? We can't make sense of the world or the pain we're experiencing. So we have to split off and, we blame ourselves for whatever it is, we create a narrative about ourselves. Like I'm unlovable, I am undeserving, And then that kind of becomes the framework through which we navigate the rest of our relationships and our emotional landscape is kind of built off of this framework. So if you. Look at the chakras on the body and how they're aligned. Rage is like this entry point into the heart. And, and she tries to stay here. She tries to do this like reconciliation, this grieving process, but then she's like traveled down to where shame is. It's at the root. And then the rest of her album arc is taking it and pushing it back out. And when we do this, if we look at it through the lens of chakras, what we're doing is activating our higher order intelligence centers, so our crown chakra. getting a little off track here, but, after midnight, she moves into fear, which is the torture of poets department. When we crack the facade of our identity with shame and like, oh, maybe the things I believed about myself and my relationship to the world, maybe those aren't true anymore. When we crack that facade and we address shame in that way, we then feel really exposed. So it's fear. We don't have that armor of unconscious identity to navigate the world. When we come back up out of shame, everything feels a little raw and kind of vulnerable. And, and we kind of don't really so much know how to navigate. And then after tortured poets department, that takes us into life of showgirl and that's where she emerges and she's got that armor of anger on, but it's integrated, it's intentional. She's intentionally boundaried. She did the whole arc from album to album to album. And I think she's got to be an empath. I think she's gotta be a deeply feeling woman to be able to do this and, express emotions in such a way that allows us all to feel it and gives us language for things that maybe we never had language for before. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Okay. So this is really interesting. I would've guessed that tortured poets department was shame, but you know, obviously I'm following your explanation here. So, I guess it's also surprising to me that fear feels more vulnerable than shame. I guess shame you're saying is a form of armor. I mean, you said armor for anger, but There was something, I guess I'm not quite following about how shame is a way of protecting ourselves because most people don't know that they have shame. If you look at the first 20 years of your life, if I go into the other room and talk to my kids, they probably could only pinpoint shame surfacing in really big situations, if someone intentionally trip them going down the hallway or someone put them in a trash can, you know, like really obvious things, they have no conscious awareness that shame is existing, and they probably develop some narrative about themselves between the ages of zero and seven years old. That has to do with shame. So the way that the brain and the psyche works is it splits off from that because shame in its raw form is so painful. Most of us can't. we can't even begin to want to navigate that experience. It's the darkest of the dark, the lowest of the low. And when I say your shame experience, I, I mean most people when they're doing this will touch shame just a little bit and come back out. If you were like in the spiritual communities or more mystical communities, they would talk about shadow work or inner child work, or maybe even in IFS doing parts work. This is very intentional excavation work where you go down in and you spend time in those parts of yourself that you've abandoned. So there's a lot more to like, really what I'm talking about. But for the purpose of this podcast, right? Like, we go down and we come back out, we go down and we come back out. So from rage and reconciliation, grief and down into shame, like that's the down process. And then fear and integrated anger is the back up and out. And so yeah, without your identity, because all of us have identity built around shame. Again, most people don't recognize that shame is, what protects who they think they are. Just for an example, Swifties might be a little, a little like that, but we won't pick on Swifties. If you look at someone who is super into sports. Maybe it's a football, you know, the NFL. Ironically. and they're die hard NFL fans. They've got a team. They wear the colors all the time. They watch every single game. Nobody in their house is allowed to root for another team. There is this really fragile sense of self that is built around this construct of being this team fan. And if you try to take it away from them, and I mean just challenge them or have a conversation about what it would mean to support a different team, and they get really defensive, that's a sign that identity is built around that concept. And our identity is not a concept. It's not the clothes you wear or you coloring your hair pink. Or even the fact that I listened to Taylor Swift, that's not my identity, who I am underneath all of that, that is me. But we walk around with this kind of armor, these concepts like I like this and I dress like this, and I talk like this and I do these things. I'm a mother, I'm a wife. But none of that is actual the truth of who you are underneath. So a lot of our identity is constructed around shame. Okay. So we have these personas or identities that we construct to make us feel secure in order to not have to deal with the shame. Yes. Okay. so then you're saying like midnights is maybe where she is dealing with the shame? Yes. Okay. So she's, she's turned, yeah, she's turned the mirror inwards and she's looking at herself and she, she gives us this very clear picture that there are three parts of herself that she can see. You've got the poet version, the larger than life version, and then what appears to be maybe a a foreshadowing of the life of a showgirl version. Okay. So then that next step sort of between. Midnights and showgirl is recognizing these are the ways that I have felt shame and, and sort of peeling off the layers or putting down the masks, taking off the makeup, taking off the costumes. Which is sort of an ironic thing to say because we're saying that she's taking off the masks and taking off the costumes and makeup and stepping into this showgirl role. But it's like, I guess she puts them back on intentionally, she puts on the showgirl persona, as you were saying, towards the beginning and says, okay, I'm no longer confused about whether this persona is me Like I know who I am, but I am happy to play this role for you as a performer. Or she, she could be saying, I see the fractured parts of myself. Here's the poet Taylor. We see her show up in tortured poets department. This is, you know, my, I read books and And then there's the life of the showgirl, the one that loves to perform, the one that loves the attention, the one that loves the glitter and the glamor, but obviously there are hardships with it and things she has to face with it. And then there's the third version, the larger than life version that maybe that's TS 13, maybe that's the next version of Taylor that we get to see. And it's not that she's one or the other, she's all three. And more, right? Like we are complex human beings and we try to pin ourselves down into these boxes. I don't know. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I think so. Okay. So I'm like gonna oversimplify on purpose to see if I'm tracking. Okay. So I love the example of anti-hero. So in midnights, she's in the shame. She's like, oh, there's these three parts that have been maybe battling each other in ways. And actually it's okay that there are these different sides of myself and it's time for me to just embrace that and love of all parts of myself equally, maybe. then it's like, maybe it feels good for a minute, and then she's like, oh gosh, like this is scary. Like what if everyone else sees all those parts? Because some of the parts maybe. Aren't, as good at protecting themselves or, Fear is about either novelty or like, I see this pattern and I need to proceed with caution. Fortnite is a good example on tortured poets department, her and, post Malone, and it's this black and white motif and she talks about, I went into the backyard, you gave me flowers and now I've buried them and you're a good neighbor. again, kind of this concept or this contrast of like seeing herself in the light, she's the lighter, whiter version'cause it's in black and white and he's the darker, version of it. And he is got the tattoos. And then I think there's even a point in the video where the tattoos kind of erase off of his face. Again, mirroring this whole like meeting yourself. And we have a dark and light side and we all have this, experience of extreme vulnerability and. It's authenticity. Like when I step into any moment and I'm gonna get on a podcast with you, I have moments of fear. Right before I've done maybe close to a hundred podcast recordings, I know my work on emotions, but there's still a, a moment of like, this is unknown. I've never spoken tomorrow before. What if she X, Y, z, And so I don't know that it necessarily symbolizes anything specific about her. Just the experience of like, oh, there's this new kind of vulnerability before I step into the shoes of the showgirl before I reveal myself maybe. Yeah. Okay. All right. So. Then showgirl is where she has that integrated anger with boundaries. it feels like there's also perhaps more joy or, is that, is there some kind of quote unquote positive, you know, pleasant, emotion that results from having those boundaries? I mean, I. Are you asking in general? Yes. I mean, when we metabolize these negative emotions, for example, when we metabolize, shame, what we end up with is integrity. Think about atonement and when I apologize and repair after rupture in relationship, that restores a sense of integrity in me. When we metabolize, anger, what we get is clarity. Clarity of voice, being able to communicate clearly, having a clear picture of where we're headed, what we expect, what we want. And when we, metabolize fear, what we get is authenticity. So I can step into these moments of vulnerability and realize that like. Maybe it wasn't that bad, or I can reveal another layer of myself despite the potential for being hurt or exposed So is there a positive emotion associated with this? I wouldn't say there's a positive emotion. I think you get very real access to things that make you feel whole and solid, rather than focusing on positive or negative emotions. I just don't do that. When I give people language for joy or love, or even the word safe, then it becomes a weapon in relationships. I don't feel safe with you. I don't feel safe here. This doesn't bring me joy, so I wanna run away from that. And I think that these are really bad. Ways to navigate the world, and can often lead to greater heartbreak and misery. When you're chasing a feel good experience, we might even call that addiction. Wow. Okay. I am gonna have so much to think about after this. But, um, I guess I have two final questions that I'll ask at the same time. I'm really curious to know how the song Wood fit into this analysis of like, boundaries, and integrated anger. And then I would also love to know, you kind of alluded to it before with TS 13, meaning 13th album, I would love to know, like based on this trajectory that you've just outlined for us. What do you expect we might see from Taylor in the coming years? I mean, it's fun to do the conjecture stuff and, and think that like I can predict, you know, what might be next. But I, I mean, I really have no clue. I would think that this might be the peak of her career, and if the marriage stuff is real, you know, beyond performance, you know, if there's depth in all of these experiences, maybe this will be the end. Maybe there will be one more. She loves the number 13, She did the ERAS tour. That was such a grand gesture that like, again, she broke records with two years of touring and the way she paid out people's bonuses. I mean, how do you, how do you top that? Do you want to top that? I mean, Or does she call that success? Does she have a bigger marker that she's try? I have no idea. I hope she keeps making music. I love listening to her music, but also completely understand that you've done amazing things and you're still young, and if you wanna like go off and do something different, that's amazing too. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I also. Hope that there's more, because the lyrical complexity of this album has been really fascinating and musical diversity, like one of the themes, or defining qualities of this album to me at this point after so much analysis is play. Which the way I understand it would fit very well with your analysis about this being an integrated whole self. Because when we feel safe and, comfortable being who we are, then we're, we feel free to play. Yeah. Right. So I, I think there's a lot of playfulness in this album that is really fun to listen to, especially in wood. So I, I can't let you go without hearing how does that song fit with anger and boundaries? I think she talks about fantasizing, you know, and again, kind of to the larger theme, think that she's giving us a fantasy. I think that this plays into the showgirl experience, and not just in the songs, but zoom out into the larger picture. Women are kind of given, well, I shouldn't say given, but we navigate the world through the lens of love. Like success is deeply connected to whether you get love in your life. Did you like the whole Prince charming narrative? Yes. Of like in all the Disney movies, like Success for the Female Character is Marriage. Yeah. so if she's putting on a show as a showgirl, not just inside the songs, but you know, if this album is a role, she's kind of playing as the showgirl, the three separate tailors that we see in midnights. she's like, here, there's this, the fantasy. You've asked for homecoming king and queen, and like, we've got the rings. And, you know, she sings about, we're gonna have a bunch of babies and fill up the whole block or the neighborhood and everybody's gonna look like you and play basketball again, like giving us what we're asking for. So it's a boundary in that way. Like, I'm gonna show up in this role and I'm gonna satisfy your desire, what you've asked me to do by presenting this image to you. Not necessarily in the form of like raw anger, it's just a boundary. So it's the energy of anger. This is what you've asked for. I'm gonna give it to you, but behind this fantasy, something else exists and it's kind of none of your business, what that is. Yeah. Okay. I can, I can see that because I hear that song as like I interpreted it somewhat similar of like, okay, you want this, here you go. And, but I'm gonna take it way farther than you could have ever imagined. And I'm gonna see if I can make you blush first, Yes. And so, and I can also see that as, uh, embodying some anger because she's, Talking about her fiance in ways that women are not supposed to. Right. So there's that sort of take that kind of attitude there as well. Yeah. Okay. And lots of double tundras when she says, I don't need to catch the cadet to know a hard rock is on its way. I mean, hard rock like a, a ring. Right? Or there's the more explicit interpretation of what that might mean. And I think she does a lot of that So there's all different ways that you could come in and start listening to her music. There's just the base level of like, I turn it on and I just enjoy it. Then there's the. The more literature based ways. Lots of people have related her music and her Easter dragging to like women thousands of years ago And then there's the gay community that feels like she's doing a lot of references to the L-G-B-T-Q community and that's amazing. And you know, so it's like everybody is coming in and listening and gaining their own interpretation. But this is the split part, is that we take our interpretations and projected onto her as if we know who she is. Or with these expectations. So again, I think the life of the showgirl is like, okay, here's what you've projected. I'll give it to you, but I'm boundaried. And so I'd be interested to see what TS 13 is gonna be and what version of Taylor we get from that. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. I sure hope we get to see it. It does make sense that with her, her thing for the number 13, like you can't stop at 12. Yeah. Only time will tell, but we do know I dunno. I guess it's hard to even make an educated guess of how much of what she's saying in the album is. What she really means is like the real her, you know, because she's definitely intentionally showing us personas in many places. And my whole analysis on this podcast has been that it's, I'm analyzing it like it's a novel about this character, the showgirl who has many similarities with Taylor, but is not Taylor Swift. But in that final track of life of a showgirl you know, she's definitely saying it has been worth it. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm married to the hustle. And then that's confirmed in the poems that were released with the vinyl editions, which I just did an episode on. And she says something very similar at the end where she says. I'm gonna have to paraphrase it, but it's exactly what you're saying. Like, I'm not going to share everything and it is hard and wonderful. It's all the things and, and I love it. and I choose it every day. Yeah. And then the final line is, and that's how you love the life of a showgirl. I mean, right there, I feel like that ending and like she's telling you, I've stayed conscious the whole time, like we can look at so many other artists that had massive careers, but that collapsed mentally and emotionally and maybe even with their whole life. Right. Some of them have died and. For all we know and see, she appears to have been able to maintain her mental health and her sense of individuality and really can her sense of purpose too. I think like she's been so focused creating art. Yeah, and keeping her private life private. Like we see these images of her you know, going out to dinner or getting out of a car, doing whatever. But that could all be very staged. You know, we don't know a lot about the private version of Taylor. We don't get a lot of images of her lounging on a beach or, you know, getting drunk at a club. You know, we don't get a lot of that with Taylor. There are instances throughout, but not very many when you talk about the kind of larger than life persona that she has. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's all pretty, it's all pretty cool. It's all pretty fun to watch, regardless. Well, I am gonna have to listen to these albums that we've discussed again, and through this lens and maybe try to use it to get more in touch with my own feelings and articulate them more clearly. So I really appreciate the time and expertise that you have shared with us here. It's a really interesting perspective on the album that I think is a really powerful, counterpoint to the, to the accusations that it's, well, like you said, AI generated somehow, or that it's just, her lowest point and oh, she just sort of phoned it in'cause she was busy with the ERAS tour and just the lyrical intricacy and complexity that I've been analyzing tells me that is definitely not the case. But I think what what you're saying here is another layer of confirmation that like, no, like this is actually might be the pinnacle of the work that she's put into the world. Yeah. I think it's a culmination of all of her work kind of coming to a head and, you know, the reinvention of herself through. Each era, right? I mean, it's even defined as different eras represents, like the different aspects of the human psyche, that we kind of split apart and create these identities for ourselves. yeah, I don't think she does anything without intention. So while we all have our theories about the life of a showgirl, no matter what the end result is, is that whatever it is, it was done very intentionally by her. So. Well, thank you again for coming on the show and talking with us about this album and her discography more generally and emotions. And I know I learned a ton, so. I trust that our listeners will as well, tell our listeners where they can find you if they're interested in learning more about what you do. And, I know you, you share a lot on Instagram with a lot of really deep, insightful posts as one would imagine after listening to this interview. So where's the best place to find you and what, what might they encounter there? Yeah. on Instagram, my Instagram handle is Kelly Croft. I just, I share myself in such a, a wild way. My Instagram is written as if I'm speaking to the audience, but it's really like a self-portrait, kind of, again, this complexity that Taylor Swift gives to us. so it often is deep. I think maybe I'm a weirdo sometimes. I don't know. I love weirdos. I always say, if you're not weird, you're boring. So embrace the weirdo. yeah, so I, I'm on Instagram, that's where you can find me. And then in my bio, I've got all of my options for working with me Great, well, I will be sure to include that link in the show notes. And this wraps up our life of a Showgirl podcast, I have been mulling over that conversation with Kelly for the last 24 hours, and I just keep uncovering more and more insights. One of the things I'm taking with me from this conversation is that there's actually something kind of clean about fear, sort of honest maybe that makes it an essential and important step on the path to integrated authenticity and integrity. That fear is hiding beneath the personas we put on to try to avoid facing. Our core fears, and then when we can develop the courage and security to really explore these fears and articulate them and thereby face them, that's what enables us to move into integrity and integration. That's what Kelly means when she's talking about metabolizing emotions, or in this case, fear. genuine, unadulterated fear is actually the most vulnerable emotion. And allowing that vulnerability facing our fears is what opens the door to integration. I've long thought that facing our shame was the most vulnerable space emotionally, but now I'm realizing that even as it's also self-destructive, shame is still a self-protective mask, designed to shield us from facing those even deeper, truer fears. Once we deal with our shame, once we really come face to face with it, by peeling away the constructs we use to create a layer between who we really are and the world, the shame gives away to fear because shame is actually a way of avoiding our core fears, common to all human beings. The fear of abandonment, rejection, and engulfment, or loss of autonomy because shame, blaming a fundamental flaw in ourselves for the bad things that happen to us, maintains the possibility that we could somehow change who we are enough to protect ourselves from those kinds of horrible things ever happening again. But the reality is that those things are always possible. To some degree. There's no type of person who can't be abandoned or rejected or engulfed, meaning controlled. And when we realize that, when we stop thinking that we are the problem, not reality itself, it's scary. Fear is the recognition of danger, either physical or emotional, and pain and loss are an inevitable part of life. But we can begin to protect ourselves to a degree by accessing our anger and creating boundaries. And this is what we see Taylor Swift doing in this album. She creates boundaries around each of those three core fears, abandonment, rejection, and engulfment. Father figure is clearly about refusing to be engulfed, refusing to be controlled, and claiming her. Actually romantic shows her refusing to be rejected. Saying you can say the worst possible things about me, but I'm not gonna take it as rejection. I'm not gonna allow it to wound me in that way. And she protects herself from the fear of abandonment by committing to never abandoning herself. As Kelly discussed, boundaries are about what we can do. We can't control what other people can do, it's entirely possible that Travis or the showgirls fiance. Could leave her. She cannot control that. But I think that's one more reason that the end of the album, that it ends on the life of a showgirl about being married to her career is so important. she's saying this romantic commitment is important to me and I do trust it. I'm facing my fear of abandonment in that relationship by moving forward with it, with wisdom. She's shared with us in honey and other places, reasons that this guy is different from the others, but she ultimately rests in her sense of security that comes from her own self love and acceptance. We hear that in eldest daughter in the interpretation that she's singing to herself. She's saying, I will never leave you. You are home. It's a coming home to herself. And we hear that echoed in the final poem. in what people are calling the prologue series of poems where she says, they say that love is a choice you make every single day, and that is how you love the life of a showgirl. Well, I think that's how you love any life. that's how you love any person. That's how we love ourselves, is by making that choice again and again committing to return to the truest version of ourselves that we can find seeking atonement. When we mess up reestablishing boundaries, when we sense that anger, And facing our vulnerability when we feel fear. As Taylor writes in the sixth poem, it's beautiful. It's rapturous. It's frightening. It's all the things and more so here's to loving ourselves. Just as we are, all of our parts, all of our performances, all of our mistakes, Here is to standing strong inside the glass cages that try to keep us small and to pursuing our dreams. Despite our fear, here's to living the fullest life we possibly can. N and to always remembering that while we can't control what anyone else says, thinks or does, we can control the story we're telling ourselves. Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure, This exploration of the life of a showgirl, I've had so much fun unpacking this album and interacting with you on social media. I hope you'll come follow me there or continue to follow me there and also check out my new forthcoming podcast. The soul and science of great writing where I'll be continuing the kind of thoughtful, analysis that you've loved so much but adding some practical writing tips. I'll continue to sprinkle in some pop culture deep dives, and after the conversation today, I think I'll have to dig into anti-hero for sure at some point. But this does bring us to the official close of my life of a showgirl era. It is truly been a gift. And that is it for today's lesson. thank you so much for joining me here for this literary analysis And pop culture fun. if you're loving these deep dives. Come join the discussion on social media. My links are in the show notes. I'd love to hear your questions, comments, and insights. class is always about bringing you into the conversation, helping you to do your own thinking and come to your own conclusions, so I'd love to see you involved. Until next time, class dismissed.