Transcripts For CSPAN3 Author Discussion On Health Healing 20221105

Philosophy and freelance journalist who was a finalist for a 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing her book easy beauty, a memoir is out now. Linda villarosa is a contributing writer at the New York Times magazine, where she covers race equality and public health. Her new book, under skin the hidden toll of racism on, american lives and on the health of our nation, was published in june by doubleday. She is a contributor to the 1619 project. Meghan orourke is the author of the New York Times bestseller the kingdom reimagining chronic the long goodbye and the poetry collection sun in days want and half life. She is also the editor of the yale review. Okay, lets do this. So we live in a society where racism and discrimination are into the systems, into the institutions of america. This country was built on the mistake and idea that some humans have more worth than others. The three authors here today, chloe cooper jones, Linda Villarosa and Meghan Orourke have, written books that are an active conversation with each other. And they all ask the same question, which is what does a good life look and feel like and who gets to limit. Im so grateful to be conversation today with these three authors and thinkers and i hope this panel is that it will entice each you to pick up these books afterwards, take part in this larger conversation. So to begin, linda, i want to start with you. Are there was a time you believed in personal, responsible that we each are answerable for our own health. And if something goes wrong, thats on us. Can you tell us how you shifted thinking and what led you to realize there are psychic costs to black in america . Well, first, thank you for this panel. Im really honored to be with you. And thank you for coming. I think what i was shifting the way i used to be, the Health Editor of essence magazine. And it was so much personal responsibility. Each one teach one lift as you climb for black women and i think what really hit me was when i was on my New York Times magazine cover story, why americas black mothers and babies are in a life or death crisis. And i was attracted to that topic because i was so shocked by the statistic that the United States is the only country where the number of birthing people who die a result of pregnancy and childbirth rising. Black women are three or four times more likely die or almost die. And a black woman with a masters jd ph. D. , m. D. , is more likely to die or almost died than a white woman with an eighth grade education. So the idea that its the problem is only can be solved by personal responsibility and doing everything right does not work. And also poverty though terrible and makes everything worse also is not the complete answer to this problem. Mm hmm. Chloe, for a long time, you tried to ignore your body. You didnt write, read or even talk much about your disability. But that changed. You talk about this shift. Yeah. So i. I was born with a congenital called secretly genesis and for lot of my life, my microphone is doing a im too short for. This is like i should just be a scene from my book like that. The things that nothing is built for my body. So yeah. Was a distinct awareness. Think if youre born into a body provokes a reaction set of first thoughts from people, which is all of us. There was this distinct feeling that i always had that my body was a barrier to being seen or understand understood as like a real person. You know, it part of our psychology to draw from narratives that we understand about ourselves in the world. And then to respond visually from that position, those narratives. So when i would walk around in public, whether at school or at the store or wherever i was, i was constantly confronted with first thoughts about disability, which largely informed by a culture that frames disability as as a naked, purely negative as a weakness as a reason to pity somebody, as a reason to think someone less or often less inherently deserving of life. And if thats the reflection that you see over. And over and over and over in the faces of others. Then you see your body as a sort of barrier to being seen as a real person. So the way that i handled that was to pretend i didnt a body for a long time to live in a like a deep dissociative state in my body was just not real. And that there like a real or self in that if i could get people to learn to like unsee me then they could get to know the real me and of course the problem with that is and sure, everyone is smarter than me and and way up on this is like you cant associate from your body where both mind and body and that relationship really important and ever evolving. And so it wasnt working this this complicated act of self erasure that i was involved in. And so that needed to change in order for me to have any sort of genuine relationships with people. But then on top of that, had a child whos right there like thats wolfgang, and hes being really because like videoing this whole thing some reason was like maybe, maybe you like just take like one picture in little. Is my height man. It is so nice but yeah its like you got this meaning the end of this answer is what he means. But anyway, you know, you have a kid and then they start reflecting back your to you. And once i saw some of my worst behaviors reflected back to me by my own child, i realized that this life that i was living of this deep, deep dissociative state where i was really out of touch with my identity was fine if if i didnt affect anyone else but i did. And so it wasnt fine for. So it was an important project not just for myself, but to be a good parent, to start thinking about how to really integrate the reality of my identity, a disabled woman into my lived day to day experience. And also all my interactions with with other people and to not to reconcile the body and the mind. Hmm. So interesting. I to dig deeper into the concept of what it means to feel in the world. But first, i want to ask meghan something and then we can hopefully bring this into a more shared conversation. In your sickness, slowly, over a long period time. And when doctors heard your vague complaints, they were often dismissive culturally. We distrust womens testimony, and i wondered if you could share some of what you came up against. Yeah so i wrote my book to chronic all the slowly unfolding story of own becoming sick and sicker and sicker, which in many ways resists the kind of familiar narratives we know where they begin. Suddenly theres a doctors or a, you know, a fall, the supermarket. And i like to say that i got sick the way hemingway says, you go broke, which is gradually, then suddenly suddenly. So i kind of was, you know, person in my twenties doing fairly with these strange bouts of neurological problems that would feel like like a swarm of bees was suddenly attacking me. And stinging me all over my body. I had bouts of fatigue. I had night sweats, which is unusual for a 22 year old. At any rate. You know, for years i was going to doctors saying it feels like something isnt quite in my body. And as youve, you know, said, man of what . I was really met with over and over was kind of benign dismissal, not not hostile, not bad even but just an incurious city about what i was saying. And over time, as gradually really became the suddenly. And i quite sick and ended up in fact with four diagnoses not just. One of them being an autoimmune disease. I grew really interested in the fact as lonely and challenging as the experience of this kind of invisible illness had been for me, that i was in fact one of millions, and that right now were living through what i call in the book a silent epidemic of chronic illness, this country. And this is before even the pandemic and the advent of covid. So in our lifetime, autoimmune diseases risen at epidemic rates, Something Like one in just an extraordinary number of people will experience an autoimmune disease, mostly women. Now we know that longcovid is affecting a huge percentage of those who covid and looks kind of similar to the types of diseases i end up talking about in my book, which i call these invisible illnesses because often hard to measure early on and not fixable. And so one of the things i do in the book is time mice to personal story to kind of a larger cultural inquiry, to sort ask, i think a driving question why in this hyper diagnose age where you can get a diagnosis for ice cream headache, its called, you know, palliative ganglion neuralgia. Could i when i could barely walk down the street and not get a diagnosis right. And i the answers are complicated. You have to read book to find out more. But basically they do boil to we like to measure things. We like to fix them in our current medical science. And so if you have these diseases that are also very systemic, dont respond well to the siloed Health Care System where you kind of have a problem, an organ, and you go to the doctor for that organ. You have a disease thats affecting your whole body, such as an autoimmune disease or longcovid. We dont have of care or the right tests. So what happens to those bodies are at the edge of medical knowledge is i think the question of this book you mentioned benign dismissal which is true when it happens once. But when it happens over and over and over again that, benign dismissal accumulates into a type of mental malignancy and i wanted to hear a bit from linda because there are many, many false biological beliefs about. The black body that were used justify slavery. And one such lie is that black people have an extreme for pain, which has led to some monstrous treatment by doctors and others in the medical field. Can talk a bit about. Some of the lies told about pain in the black body and how influence is actually still felt. Well, that myth started in, you know, the beginning when black people first came on these shores in 16, 19, and it was used to justify enslavement, all the cruelty that went with it. And i think when i was first looking into it, i kept saying, oh, its a myth, its a false assumption, and then a sort of a medical historian took me under her wing and said, no physicians, scientists, especially southern ones, who owned enslaved people, really pushed that in medical journals. So it wasnt seen as sort of like this is just out in the air. It was actually codified through false science and it was at medical conferences. And, you know, doctors were presenting this information as though it were truth and the through line to today is that many medical students residents, physicians themselves still have belief in an implicit way. And the study really struck me was it was a medical students in, i think it was 2016 at the university of virginia. And it was 222 white medical students, residents and 40 believed, at least one myth that black skin was thicker than white skin. That and this paint that a different pain tolerance a different kind of blood coagulate in a different way. These were just made up. But so of them believed so many. And then they also had a control group, which was people were not in the medical field. And you know the majority of people believed those. And i looked closely at one of the studies and to see how they were talking about pain. And it was two people, a black person, a white gets their hands slammed in a car door. What hurts like but you know, the the even the medical students and the doc and the residents were believing that it hurt worse for white people than it would for black person. So that that that still floating around. Its still affecting medical Decision Making is. Yeah. Thats terrifying. Its also amazing to think that america was actually built on fake news. Yeah. Yeah. So, chloe, theres moment in your book that i actually have not been able to stop thinking about, and its when theres a moment when youre at dinner party and shifting a lot because youre in pain and your friend says to you, youre so bored, you can leave and that struck me as a particularly isolating moment. And i wondered if you could talk about the act of translating your body pain for other people and how these moments have shaped your sense of self in the world at, large and small. Yeah, i mean, i think thats been a really important part of my life. I think if you were in sort of what the book, you know, gets out its like were all every single one of us is constantly when were in a world with others, we are constantly engaged in acts of translation. And sometimes you meet people that like briefly lift that active and you can feel as though youre speaking a native tongue again. So theres a scene in the book where that happens to me for a moment with International Celebrity Peter Dinklage, where i end up as i sort of scan my way into this party for Peter Dinklage. And we have this moment where im you know, i dont have a contemplation. He and i have very similar bodies in a lot of ways. And we both had been, which is this is like a constant part of my life is is bartenders looking over my head to the person behind me. And it happened to me and then it happened to Peter Dinklage at the same part it was his party. So i was like really bad. And we just looked at each other across room and we had this moment. We were like, yes, you and i speak and so i had like, you know, this moment of of being like peter understands we were, which is in a way, you know, a sort of problematic of me to to think because it sort of reducing him down to a set experiences that we share, which is often what people are doing to me that im resisting. But yeah, i think for i, you know, because im constantly managing my body language is a little bit different than. A lot of peoples i have to do certain physical things to make myself comfortable. Really you know so its a lot of shifting. Also, like my body fit into anything. So its like just sitting here in this chair. Its like if i lean, my feet are on. This is a short person problem. Some short people in the room like if you lean forward your feet are on the ground, thats good. But then your back hurts. So then you have to lean back, but then then you cant reach the microphone and and then your hips are up. So im just kind of always shifting, but also i have to like sometimes cross my arms, my chest, to give my spine a little bit of support, which can look, im unhappy and this can be, i think, a difficult way of reading me. Like, i think i can be sort of disorienting to some people because i know that im always trying to like short circuit a little bit, but i think this all comes back to also in the book and an interviewer asked me this recently like they said when people are dealing with disability shouldnt they just of use the golden rule like treat people the way that they wanted to treated themselves. And i was like, thats not the way to do because you dont live in a body like mine. So dont me the way you are. Like, dont use your. And is. I have to do this with you, too. Like, not to project my own. You know, lens of the world on you, but rather to try to, like, dissociate your own reading or separate your own reading or your own desires. From my body, and just try to see me as a singular person. So, like, one example is like, i fall, i have a very precarious sort of walk and people always kind of rush over, try to like pick me up. But what theyll often do is like pin my arms, which i need to balance. So its like those great intentions, right . Those kind intentions of like i want to do the thing her that i would want for myself or for me is actually a very limiting and often like dehumanize teasing thing. Does this make sense, what im saying . So that is a really difficult thing for us to do because of course, like a grand empathy project, which is quite we cant do that for every stranger, which means that for all of us were in of this constant negotiation an act of translation. And i think ideas i turn over and over and over in the whole book and of course, come to this point at the end where i realize, like, thats not a disability thing, thats just as a human thing. But the bodies that were in make that translation project very singular and really interesting. And thats both the challenge and exhaustion of being alive in a world with others, but also the thrill of it and the way in which people such different physical and mental lives can find is through that active of labor. So. 75,000 things i want to say right at the exact. Same time when that happens, you write. So beautifully about that feeling of and about people trying to help without understanding the theyre helping it. Its just its so interesting. And it also made me think about the fact that everything that is created in our society is is created for the average person one white man and there is no such thing as an average person. So thats a whole nother conversation, we can have another another panel next year. So so much of these books explore is that between self systems. And id love to hear from all of you about the ization of our care system. If you would like to kick this one off. Megan so, so im just on the silo yeah, id like to hear about the silo position of the Health Care System. Yeah. So, you know, i think that what, what im trying to explore my book is this problem that, you know, when we have the rise of all these systemic diseases, how does a siloed Health Care System thats really, you know, built on specialists who dont communicate with one another, how does that system care for people with chronic illness . I think it goes beyond even the silo as vision of the Health Care System. And to this deeper questions that im exploring in the book is what do we want from health care . What does the care part of Health Care Mean . And also, when are sick . And this gets at questions that. Both linda and chloe have brought up, which is when we are sick, how do we want to be seen . Right . Do we want to be seen as a collection of parts, a car . You know, i just had this image when i was that it was like i would go to the this doctor and it was like they would check out carburetor and then i would go to another and they would check out whatever. I dont know enough about cars. But, you know, the engine, the cover or whatever, the oil. But like no one was ever looking at me like a whole person who was maybe different from other people. So one of the things that im really interested in the book is the ways in which the the real gains of medical science, which have to do with measurement and ideas of replicability and. This goes back, i think, to what both of you were talking about. You know, the advent of germ theory brought with it. This idea germs came into our bodies and they did things to us that could be measured by being the same. One of the ways you knew that it was a such and such germ, that it did the same things to everybody. And thats one of cooks postulates the late 19th century. But as think weve all just seen with the covid pandemic, in fact the same virus can have a very, very different set of impacts on different people. You know, can have a seven year old whos affected mildly and a 30 year old who seems to almost not sick at all. And then months still cant walk up the stairs right and has some form of longcovid. So i think the the questions me are yes, silo ization is a deep problem. But also the the it is a subset of a bigger problem which i think is what is the ethic of that we value and how the medical system set up or not set up to deliver that not only for patients but for Health Care Workers themselves. And also in what ways is the medical system actually a reflection of the larger culture that might have, you know, all kinds of biases in and also has, you know, i think just general we were really bad at talking about illness, chronic conditions, yet so many of us live with them or, know someone who lives with them. But we tell stories of radical overcoming or kind of spiritualized dying. If you think of the woman in love story. Right. So anyway, yes, thats a long, rambling answer, but that was a good really answer. So. Linda, were you talk a bit about the Racial Disparities in this country country and what youve come against personally and also in your research, what youve discovered . Well, i think the the reason i wanted to write my book in the first place was because there was such a mismatch with why are we the, i guess, now second wealthiest nation in the world . Why do we spend more on health care than other country . 12,000 per person, per year. But then all of our health are the worse for the wealthy countries. We have higher infant mortality, higher maternal mortality, lower expectancy than every other country. And then its is treated as a mystery because its like, well, we have such technology, we have such many clinical innovations, and we spent so money. Why . Whats going on here . But it really is just sort of what were saying here is if you are if theres a lack of care in health care, then people dont get. Well, and also, i think for people of color, marginalized people, is what i know the best is something happens to us before we reach the Health Care System and the toll living in this country where treated badly over for so often in so long of a period of time makes you more sick. And thats used that i know it as weathering a of accelerated aging that when your body has to cope with repeated insults and trauma and that when i first started looking into it about years ago, it was seen as kind a sort of like, well, thats a concept, its a theory. And i interviewed the person who created the term doctor, arlene geronimo. And i remember we had such a great interview. I was like we were on the phone for like 2 hours. And finally i said, you know im from the New York Times, right . Were not just chit. And then i realized she just never got interviewed. And so she was so excited to tell someone and. Now she has a book deal and her book is coming out march next year. Its great because there so much, especially when covid happened and you saw that it was an illness that struck older, but then it first thats what we thought. And then. But you looked at black rates, black rate, black people were ten years before white rates were having worse hospitalization and higher death rates. So if it was hitting people white, folks, when they were 70 or 80, those same kind of happened to black people ten years earlier. Is the book called weathering . It is called weathering. Im glad shes writing. Yeah, i would like for all of you to address this concept weathering. I mean, im assuming it doesnt just apply to a single group, but the lived experience of, you know, living in america which so misunderstands chronic illness and disability and anything thats you know, not able bodied anyone whos not able bodied causes Mental Health issues, medical and biological issues. I was hoping, wondering if you had anything to add to that idea, that concept of weathering and how its affected you . I can just quickly say that i talk about weathering in the invisible kingdom, because part of the thing that im trying to talk about there and i think one of the ways that i want to sort of think maybe or questions differently about what illness is, is it sort of boils down to this we tend to think of illness as this very autonomous, isolated state, right . And we have these myths of personal responsibility and selfreliance in this country. But when you look at this category of chronic disease im talking about when you look at covid you see that, in fact, we part of a very poor you, that our immune systems are porous others and they are porous not only the kind of health care policy, seas, chemical regulation, food deserts, also even to the affects others the way others treat us. And what you can see really clearly in our geronimos work is that demonstrate it. And you can also i think see it clearly in the rise of these autoimmune diseases and where theyre impacting, who theyre impacting, which is to say that many more communities are experiencing them at higher, but getting worse care and you know, not as many diagnosis. So to me, weathering is this really important way of starting to think our kind of relation chip and our responsibility to one another and the fact that as as the poet john donne said, many, many years ago, when he himself was sick with an illness in the middle of an epidemic, you know, no. Is an island. It really turns out to be true. Yeah. Well, would have thoughts on whether you are not not specifically me. This is not in my my but do think and maybe will will will think this is related. I do think a lot about in my book just the weight the toll of narratives of the other narratives that put on us and that we participate in and what that what that does to us psychically. So for me and i think this is true of again lot of us and certainly a lot of disability is that the way that im encountered often with a great deal of cognitive dissonance . Thats the thing i see reflected to me over and over and over again. And im not mad about this. Im not resentful about this because. It comes from the genuine way in which our brains need to make sense of the world around us. In many ways, were machines trying to survive. And part of the way that we survive is by putting visual stimuli into categories we just have to do that, especially as were moving quickly through very space, like the space where we live and so it is an automatic and necessary survival mechanism to look, to identify, to look and classify, to look and file away. Of course, what that can do for a person whos in a non average body is cause cognitive dissonance and sometimes a reaction confusion and and sort of automatic disgust in the eyes of others, which is not personal. It is part of a psychological response. And so the thing that i see over and over and over again is desire in the eyes of others mitigate that disgust response or mitigate that confusion response by appealing to a narrative and me quickly in a narrative so that can manifest for sometimes im very short so sometimes the first narrative that that comes peoples mind is like youre a child. Its very funny if you hang out with me, youll notice that strangers will Start Talking to me like that. So, or like lena and im think for a second me. And then theyll be like, oh, right, youre a an adult person or are just responding to me quickly with pity or with, you know, sort of quickly assigning me a category of innocence or any of comment, which is great. So i can actually get away with a lot of things. I cant believe i havent been recruited by the cia to do some or yeah, many other. I could have been making more money, but you know, theyre just appealing to these narratives. So narratives around disability are often that are people without agency that were sexless, that we die to help other people their realer, more fuller lives. And thats the narratives that people are given over and over and over and over and over disability. So when they see me those narratives that they instinctually put on me and so i think one of the sort of revolutionary things, the most radical thing you can do, i think in general in life, maybe, but especially for disability, is to try to reject those narratives and move as closely to the single human in front of you as. So its a really powerful thing when people just come up to and say like, can ask you a specific question you and why or what might need or what how your body wants to move through this space. I think sometimes theres a fear that thats going to be perceived as rude, and it might be that there are days i dont want to answer those questions, but im personally at least ill only speak for myself. Im always overjoyed when. Im interact when someone interacts with me as if i were a single real person instead of a narrative. And i think thats probably one of the biggest connections our our work, the weight and the psychic and the pain. And sometimes real serious life death consequences of being reduced to narratives and set of seen as as whole and real and singular and specific. Yeah, thats beautiful. And yeah, and its so crucial and important. And then interesting to explore that idea. The narratives that we have about ourselves versus the narratives that are told about us. Do you guys have anything . Do you want to add anything to that about the narratives you tell about yourselves versus narratives that are told about you . I would just add one thing quickly, which is that one of the things im really interested in that i interviewed about close to 100 people who are living with illness, that illnesses that were contested and hard to diagnose. And i think one of the things that is hard to about narratives is that they erase and invisible. What is there right. And so its not only that not being seen or youre part of a larger its that in some ways theres an erasure right and in that erasure if youre living in the state of being erased, you have to spend all of your time fighting the act of erasure and you dont get to spend time being yourself, figuring out your own story or writing your own narrative, i think. And thats one of the real problems that i saw chronic illness with these invisible illnesses, which was people feeling like they had to fight to be seen before there was any actual kind of way for us to out, okay, how do i live now in this new body or this new reality or this ongoing reality thats always changing . Yeah, i wanted to add this semester i teach at the city in river City University of new york, and im teaching premed students. So the first day we we were they everybody was really excited because they have the basics of inequality and Racial Health disparities. And then what i said to them is, how do you fit in to this conversation . And they were like, well, were going to go in. You know, what were trying to do is be really good doctors said people are going to come up to you and think youre the doctor. Theyre going think youre the receptionist. Theyre not to listen to you. Theyre going to say, when is the real doctor going to come into this room . So you are going a system that even your you know, i know you want to be great caregivers, but you have to be prepared to treated badly when youre trying to do good things. And i told them the story of this black woman physician about, i guess years ago she was on an airplane. Somebody got sick, so she went to help and she was brushed away mean pulled off of the patient because the flight crew didnt believe she was a physician and it started this hashtag what a doctor looks like and it was all these beautiful of our physicians of color but i wanted to warn them that the perception of them wont be that youre a medical professional in every case and to be ready for that. Mm hmm. So important. So true. I want to get specific for a minute and talk about the way that racism actually impacts a body. So. It actually i googled it and. I read a book about it. But racism, the release of stress hormones. Yeah. And it sets off a chain of biological events that increase the risk of chronic disease and that chemical cascade is true for mistreatment in general, i would imagine so. Can you talk us through a little bit about what . Racism does to a body. I have this student a few ago and he came from the bronx and he he was in my writing class. We were writing about sort of racial incidents thats happened to you and. Every Single Person except him had something. So im thinking, how could this young kid, the bronx, it was a few years ago. So stop and frisk was still happening and said, man, nothing like that has ever happened to me. And im just like, i just cant believe that he said, wait, i do have a thing. Maybe i dont think this is the same, but ill share it. So he shares with the class he was in high school he was going get pizza with a friend and they were on a date with these two young women and. All of a sudden the police come throw them, take out their guns, throw these two guys against the car, handcuff them, the women are screaming. Theyre a video of it. Like 45 minutes later. It turns out that was a mistake. So i said, then what happened . Said, oh, just we left and we went out and had our pizza and i said, why didnt you say that . That was one of these incidents. He said, thats happened, that kind of thing happens so often that i dont even i didnt think about it in that way. And i just thought every time that to him or any you anything like that or anyone, the of your body go on fire mean especially for him in crazy thing that happened so his the stress hormones get him ready for fight or flight get the body ready he you know the body heats up your Blood Pressure rises your heart rate you know increases and that it makes sense in the short term. But if it happens over and over, that is, what creates the chronic aging that is described in weathering. Hmm. Yeah i over relate to that i have a panic disorder so ive spent ive had it since i was a child so ive spent most of my life in that chronic seat of a fighter flight and and have been hypertensive because of it. So its a really like discernible measurable impact to have to live with that, you know, or flight. Uh, where am i oh, i want to talk a little bit about coping. Okay. I want to talk a bit about coping mechanism and. With you, chloe at a, i think a fairly young age, a doctor gave you some advice about how to manage your pain and call it the neutral room. Will you talk about what that is and what the doctor told you and how you use this practice . Yeah. Yeah, i was very young. I was talking to a doctor about the sort of anxiety that i felt out about like going to the store with my mother and worries about like walking Long Distances across parking lots and, and then like being a burden to her and, and causing her to, like. Hey, thats not my phone. No, thats nice. Since its nicer than and and and just sit, you know, standing in line, stuff like this that all these things caused me pain. And my doctor said, well, you know, anticipatory pain is real in the mind and in the body. So one thing that you can do to sort of mitigate the pain that youre feeling is try to cut off your mind from anticipatory pain. And so he gave me this technique, which he called the neutral room, which is that i identify a small space, a visual space in my mind where i go inside that space. Im just i dont have a body. I float sort of weightless in this space and count to eight. So theres nothing thats happening in my life that eight count. So not walking along, you know, im not walking ten blocks home in brooklyn. Im only walking for 8 seconds or im not standing in a Grocery Store line for, you know, its like im only standing for 8 seconds. And then those 8 seconds repeat and repeat until im through whatever i need, whatever painful experience i need to get through. I learned later that Long Distance athletes a version of this too, where they like theyre not running six miles. Theyll just be like, im only running to that tree. And theyll focus all their energy on just that. They wont allow their minds to sort of take in the enormity of the task that theyre doing. So the neutral room for me is a complicated space because its a space of great agency. Its a space that allows me break down difficult outside of just managing physical pain. I think i can do really difficult things without spiraling out too much because i can stay in this very tight, dissociated space. So throughout my graduate degrees, i wasnt like, oh my god, im to school of school for seven years trying to get a ph. D. Its like, no, im just reading this one. Im just writing this one paper. Never felt like a huge task to me. So on that end of a spectrum, the neutral room is place of great agency. However, theres a threshold that im capable of crossing in which the neutral room becomes a space where i can, absent myself from responsable and social situations that are painful or absent myself from responsibility for. Speaking up in situations i really should, and therefore becoming complicit it with things that im i should really be in difficult things that i should really be engaging in. So a lot of the work of this book and my life is trying to locate that threshold. I get to keep all the good things that this distance or this this stepping back gives me, but not live in this negative space in which it takes me out of the real ness and challenge of my. And then the thing i would ask all of you, maybe youll tell us if you come hang out with us in. The book line is like i think everybody has a neutral room actually. And im really fascinated by what other peoples neutral are or to ask the question more broadly, like where do you go to get reprieve from . The pain of reality like where is the space you maybe its like Bad Television or like some people like run, which is great. You know, some people like healthy dissociative practice is if you do please come find me and talk to me about that so that i can present you but i think we all have that. And so i think for all of us, theres a question of how do we stay on the right side of our thresholds of those practices of reprieve . Because they are very powerful, but also can sort of take us out of the lived moments of our lives. And so i hope if you read my book, i hope for no i hope youll read it because. You think its valuable to think about that . Not because youre thinking about it through my lens, but because think the book is asking everyone else that to jill. Lets ask that question. Do you do it . Do you to have do you have a neutral do you have a version of a place you go to to manage and cope with the realities of our sick, twisted world . Or do you go . I play recreation, soccer and healthy food. I am the how my legs. Im the second oldest in our little and i was the second highest scorer but then i got pushed down by my colleague here on the soccer field, not pushed down literally, but she guarded a bunch of my shots and love it there. I forget everything when. Im there. I just love, love, love playing, soccer. Megan yeah. I mean, i think you know before i got really sick running was my know but but you know why it was probably because i would feel this like fatigue all over me and i would try to you know, i think that our human impulse to just shake off whatever were struggling with. And so sort of like running was this way to shake fog off. But i, you know weve talked about this before, alex. Weve been on a kind of parallel book to this whole year. But one of the things that reading your book really helped me understand and that i kind of get into in my book and my book is really asking all to think about, which is you know i realized belatedly that because i was sick for so long without understanding what was wrong or having it be recognized that had just become avoidant of very many situations that were just challenging for me. So like a party or, you know, things that happened at night when im that most in the evening, when im the most tired. So i had started think of myself as being very introverted and then once i was diagnosed and treated and got much better, i realized that in fact i just had quite energy and so i was always managing that energy and not knowing that about myself. Distorted narrative that i was able to tell. But my initial room is very similar i have this kind of meditation with white light that comes through my body. I use for pain, in particular and its similar. Its like youre just kind of getting through a little bit of time. Youre trying to clear out the pain will tell you it doesnt for me, it just doesnt really work. Its like i do it and im like, this is supposed to help me and it just doesnt i, i want the pain go away. Yeah. So, yeah. Do we have time for one more question now . Yeah. And then our audience or no, no, theres no audience. And then we run out of we ran out of time for you. All right. And then we have to stop talking, you and i. So we can. Yeah, well, one last thing. I just want to say one last thing. Oh. Oh, she is. Really . You have a question . Sorry. Were breaking some rules. Oh, sorry. Very, very quickly. Just excuse me. Im a certified tourist guide and im from. And ukraine and that right. Can you can you talk about this afterwards . Because shortly just to say thank you because thats important topic. And the foreign trip in nature is really great hotel room that made for us perfect. People do a lot of forest bathing very, very. Before we wrap up. Its incredible difficult to get in as much information about three books with three authors in the time period that we have. Im i have not even scratched the surface like its hard to just sort of ease into Something Like this and then break it open. We have that time. So i just want to give a last round very quickly. Is there anything that you really want people to know that you were not able to say during this. 50 minute sprint . I know. I just want to say thank you to you actually, thats all i want to say. Just and to everybody. You just ask such brilliant questions. And i think it is a difficult thing. I mean, i think our books have a lot in common. And also and so i think the way that you synthesized a lot of it, especially in your intros, was so thoughtful and and again, like because this thing i said about like its very meaningful to be seen as a single real person. So so i dont take that that work lightly and i just want to say i appreciate it very much, very generous of you to say thank you. I agree. I often get you know sort of invited to talk only about race and racism and what i know is its this is what i know most because this is what ive looked at. But its anyone whos treated badly. Yes. You know who suffers. Its anyone whos treated badly, especially in the health care itself. So i really appreciate being in conversation with you and broadening out my own thinking and discussion. Yeah, same. Thank you to amanda and to the amazing and linda and to all of you for coming and. I think we are in in our different ways all thinking about the kinds of stories are told that are false stories and writing and books in particular unpack and go beneath. I think that that false floor and find something deeper there that we all need. Yeah i do have say now we have to leave but but these three books together the experience of reading these three books together i had read meghans i reread it is its kind of remarkable because they are literally having a conversation with each other and i its a lot. Say go read three books but definitely buy them we will all be signing books outside and we have to clear out before i get not asked back thank you so much. Thank my is called the stolen year. But the year im talking about is 20, 20, 2021. But now