Kerry Washington

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Good day.

What a great episode we have for everyone today.

We really do.

Truly a banger.

Yeah.

Is that cool to say, banger? Am I pulling that off? Yeah. Okay, great. Kerry Washington, I love Kerry Washington.

She drops some bombs in this.

She does, and she does it in the most elegant, non-shameful way that I really, really dug.

Me too.

And she's a party, also, guys, what could be more exciting? She was an anthropology major. Wow. Oh, what a day to be alive. Mm, what a banger.

Don't say it twice. Oh, you're gonna try to, yeah, okay.

Don't double dip.

Yeah, I think once is good.

Okay, great, once per rep. Please enjoy, Kerry Washington.

He's an object spitter.

He's an object spitter.

I know.

It's great. You're so tiny.

Does everybody say that? We're a funny combo, because I always get, you're much taller in real life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she gets you're so tiny, and we're often together. It's so cute.

Amplifies. Yes, exactly. Ooh, it's real, it's happening. Ha ha!

Ha ha!

We're so happy to have you. I'm so happy to be here. We've been trying to have you for years.

Oh, I've even begged you in person, in real life. I've been at Independent Spirit or something.

Yeah, yeah, or like Night Before, those kind of industry things.

Yeah, back when I attended those, and I saw you,

I would always. Back when those things happened.

Yes, I would always say, you've got to come on. I'm glad you waited until there was a strike, so we can hardly talk about your career. That's the ideal time for you to arrive. You don't have to wear headphones, but if you want. Oh, no, your hair's so good, you probably don't want to wear headphones.

I don't mind, it'll puff back up. Okay, okay. Maybe I'll put it around.

Let's see. Oh, this is kind of like the challenge we have when we try to do hats.

I like that. I feel like I should start doing that,

because my hair. You do a two to match.

To the under.

That way, you guys are both matchy. Is it gonna stay, though?

You could also put one ear off, and pretend you're recording an album.

And be really cool.

I'm coming in on eight or 12..

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. Wait, I went to the harmony one more time.

I don't think it's working for me, in the same way it's working for Carrie.

I don't know that it's working so well for her. I think it's slid off her.

Yeah, I'm using my shoulders to try to hold it up. I might just go the regular way.

You can also ditch them if you want, but we like it, because it's very intimate. It's all about your own voice, right?

In a cave, we're in a cave now. I like the candles. You guys have candles going?

Oh, I did it for you, because it smelled weird when I walked in,

from Friday.

Well, it smelled kind of smoky. Oh, wow. Oh, hello. So, hello.

I've been smoking cigarettes up here on the weekends.

That was my fear.

I didn't tell you that.

That was my guess and fear.

After 18 years off cigarettes, I was like, are we sure we want to be off cigarettes? Let's go up to the-.

Let's try it out.

We did allow smoking once.

Yeah, it's happened in here. Really, who?

Who was it?

We've allowed pot smoking, which is fine, but cigarette smoking, you smell it for a week.

A long time. It lingers. A long time.

It's a bummer. The weed smoke clears out.

And you were fine with the weed. smoke in here?

Yeah, I don't really care.

I think we did maybe crack a window, but it was okay.

If he had been firing up lines of cocaine in front of me, I might have white knuckled-.

Would not have been okay.

Like, you know, we know our triggers, right?

I would have gone to the bathroom, I would have come back, would have been a disaster.

Yeah, he and I would have been making out, probably.

That would have been great.

People drink around me all the time. That was the primary addiction. But the only one that I wouldn't want to be around is cocaine. Yeah, because it's just too fun. It smells so good.

It smells good?

No, that's a Jamie Foxx joke.

Ding, ding, ding. Oh, I get it, ah!

He said on that barbershop show, he said, oh, I don't like cocaine, but I love how it smells.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

Is that a Tory Burch bag?

Mm-mm. I love these bags, and I forget that, but it's a black designer. Ooh, I really like it. She's very fancy.

I love fancy.

It just has the symbol, I'll get it for you.

I'd like to know.

They come in all colors. Cute. She's amazing. Do I look super weird now with the headphones? No.

You're an 11, so even if we put some food all over your cheeks, you'd still be like.

Wait, I'm so nervous, you guys. No, you're not.

I am. Tell me why.

Because, I was talking about this with my husband, I've never said yes to this show in years past because, sort of that thing I write about in the book, I always felt like I didn't really have anything to say. I just felt like I didn't have enough clarity about myself, or my journey, or my willingness to talk about myself. So, you can't come on this show if you're not gonna really talk about yourself.

Well, you can.

You can, but I appreciate, exactly.

I agree that you have to be a little vulnerable to be a part of it.

Yeah, that's what's so great about this show, is you guys really go there with people. And I was like, well, I'm not going there with anybody.

We're having a hard time believing you listen to the show, but I'm gonna say. I do, I love this show.

I was gonna say, we're very flattered. I love this show. This show was one of my podcasts that got me through the pandemic.

Oh, my Lord, this is such wonderful news. Well, it does make sense, because I imagine, prior to writing the book, these are all things you're gonna maybe die with.

100%. Right? Yeah, I was gonna die with secrets I didn't even know I had. And then some of them were things that I just was like, there's no need for me to talk about that.

Yes, now you have to do press for the book.

Yeah.

And this is a pretty common sitch, where it's like, you're safe in your house, or wherever you write.

Yeah.

Back of your van down by the river.

In my closet. I actually did a lot of my writing standing in my closet.

But let's be honest, your closet is 1,200 square feet, right?

It's not. I kept thinking like, shouldn't I have a fancier closet while I was in there? It does have a tiny little island in the middle, but like I share a closet with Nnamdi. There's nowhere to sit in my closet. You can just walk around the little tiny island.

That limits us to jazz and classical?

Yeah. Or like gray noise. Gray noise. Ooh, like a nice. Something that drowns out my noisy kids.

But from the closet to now out on shows. Yeah. Having to talk about it's an entirely different thing, isn't it?

It is.

How's that been going? Because you've been doing it now.

I have been doing it.

Does it feel like it cheapens it when they reduce it to some of the more exciting or salacious parts and they just hit you right away and you don't have the ramp up and you don't have the context?

I feel like I've been really lucky, present company included, to be talking about the book with people that are more thoughtful. So it hasn't felt too reductive.

You haven't done TMZ yet?

Not yet. Okay, that's coming up. That's tomorrow. This afternoon. Oh, this afternoon, okay.

So I think it's been okay. It's been okay.

I actually feel more and more free. Every interview that I do, I feel a little bit more liberated, a little bit more myself, comfortable, yeah.

Well, I think a little bit of reservation about talking about what you've written is a common pattern. And then what also is an incredibly common pattern is you do it and then, whatever shadow you had in your head, saying, they're gonna say this about me, they're gonna say this, when you realize that it's just recognition.

Yeah, of the truth.

The people who, you know, they don't wanna know about this, they're not stumbling across it, right?

That's right.

Like no one's at a fucking biker bar right now going, I just found out Olivia Pope's pro-choice.

Yeah, that's right. Fuck her. Feeling betrayed. Yeah. This isn't happening.

I'm gonna try to go there. Yeah, it's like the proverbial hut where they offer you the goat balls. They eat them and it's a great honor.

Oh, shit. If everybody else is eating goat balls, I guess I have to eat goat balls.

Here we are, culturally. I have to meet them.

What a upsetting analogy.

What did you say, stunning?

Upsetting. Oh, upsetting.

Yeah, stunning and upsetting.

It'd be great, though, if you just go, wow, what a stunning analogy. Felt, so complimentary.

Well, you're probably gonna ask this, so I'm jumping the ship. If you were gonna die with a bunch of secrets, what changed? that made you feel like, no, I need to write it?

I feel like in some ways the universe tricked me into writing this book, because a lot of what I write about in the book is this kind of revelatory information that my parents dropped on me a few years ago, shared with me, is probably the kinder way to say it. Right after that, actually, but I just was totally compartmentalizing and, like, I'm not gonna deal with that information. I sold this other book idea and that book idea was like a very pop-cultury, here are the 10 things I learned from Olivia Pope and very like, sticky, cute, culturally relevant, easier, not so searching and digging.

Episode of Sex and the City.

Yes, I sold that book and then every time I would sit down to write it, this other new information was with me and I was grappling with it. I just felt like I couldn't write an honest book about my experience and the things that I knew and felt, without dealing with this other thing. My whole being was sort of flipped inside out by this news that I just felt like I couldn't write that other book. And so I tried to give the publisher all their money back and was like, I'm not gonna write a book, I really can't write a book right now. and they were really patient with me and just kept saying, well, you know, maybe just try writing something just for yourself.

Can you tell us the new information?

Yeah, but if you haven't read the book, you should stop listening now, spoiler alert.

Oh, you think it unravels if we know this?

No, but if you don't wanna know, I think the book is still readable. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so this is great.

So for the next, we're gonna put 30, well, no, then we're gonna talk about it. Well, yeah, tell Monica.

I think it will make people wanna read it more, to be honest, to get more detail and more.

Yeah, my parents sat me down a few years ago and told me that my dad is not my biological father, that I was born from a sperm donor.

Whoa. Wow.

Yeah. Wow, wow, wow. Can I be dead honest with you? The book is seven hours and 48 minutes and I'm six hours through.

Oh, no.

So I didn't know that. Oh, no. No, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also, this is very relevant to a lot of stuff we talk about on here. We had a show called Race to 35, where I froze my eggs. We talked to a lot of people in this situation. Whoa.

Now it's so common. Our kids, half of their friends, are sperm donor, egg donor, surrogate, adopted.

Yes.

AI. even, some have some fully functional robots. Some are robots. Yes, robot children.

In the class. But my parents were like renegades. You know, this was 76.. There were no sperm banks. They had tried and tried and tried.

They got to screen the app?

No, there was nothing to screen. There were no applications. There was no nothing.

Did they at least know the ethnicity? They could say, we want a black parent.

My mother said was, we just want him to be black and we want him to be healthy. Okay, great. That was it. But also, what did they know about healthy? There was no DNA testing.

They should have thrown Parallel Parker in there. Like good Parallel Parker, healthy.

Ivy League education, something. No, no, no, no. Something way more practical. Now you can do all of that. Now you can, but back then.

But you lived in Brooklyn. Parallel Parking. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Bronx. Parallel Parking was tantamount to breathing oxygen. I mean, it would have been a skill that could have saved years.

And I'm not great at it. Neither am I. That's where they, that was the big mistake.

Yeah, wow.

So my parents told me this thing. It was a family secret that completely changed my sense of who I was and who they were to me. And so a lot of me, writing the book, was about me trying to make sense of that.

And answered this nagging question you had had since you were very young, which is, you felt like there was some distance.

Yes.

Right?

Some weird emotional distance between my parents and I.

Yeah, what I love about the book, there's so many great things, but I loved learning the things that you and I had in common.

It's so fun. Like what, tell me, tell me.

Well, first of all, you're the first guest we've had. that was an anthropology major who wasn't an active anthropologist. Oh, wow. Like my friend Jason DeLeon, who now teaches at UCLA in the archeology department. He's the only other, maybe we had him.

We might have, but they like,

But no, we're the only two actors.

Yes, yes, yes.

How thrilling. It's so relevant, right? Don't you find it so relevant in the work?

What I tell people in interviews.

I do.

I think it's an easy intellectual architecture to lay out, which is like, you learn to be culturally relative. So in cultural relativism, you're not judging the people. you're saying. You're not interested in drawing a verdict. That's right.

You cannot judge your characters.

Now, have I ever been about to audition and thought like, huh, no, I'm gonna treat this just like the Maasai or the Kalahari Bush people or the Yanomami. But I do think it gave me-.

I haven't heard those words in so long, so fun.

It gave me a worldview that I did embrace. Or maybe I was looking for a major that would let me embrace it. But what drew you?

I think, very similar. I am so fascinated by how people become who they are, why they are, who they are, and how they express who they are in language, dance, music, food, behavior. So all of that is this combination of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Just what makes a person a person and how do they express that personhood?

Yeah. I think mine was like, just growing up, I had a sense of like, I don't know if I dig this society, or if I agree with it.

Like the rules of it.

Yes, I don't know. Like all these rules, everyone's agreed to, some of them don't feel right to me intuitively. There's gotta be different ways. And I think I really wanted to know what the different ways were, because I don't think I really was super excited to just embrace the thing I was being given.

Oh, that's funny. Similarly, I think I was from a very young age, as I write about, really confronted with the idea that I was living in one culture in the Bronx and going to school in this other culture on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at Spence. And they felt like entirely different universes that were just 45 minute commute from each other, but they were entirely different galaxies of behavior and identity. So I was trying to make sense of that.

Well, and you would think you had a bit of a intermediary step, which was first. you're just in your PS, 71 or whatever. it was, right?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. PS 182..

182, okay. And then you get moved. Does it become PS?

And then I go to PS 71.. You're so good.

Wow. Good job. Okay, so, yes, they are going to combine schools to offer some gifted and talented programs.

They wanted to move the gifted and talented program out of the black neighborhood and put it closer to where the white kids live.

So the white kids didn't have to bus in. Yeah. You, at what, third, fourth grade, you now move to a predominantly Italian school. So it was the first one.

Yes, that's right.

And you probably thought you were at apex otherness. I was like, whoa.

All these white kids, very different culturally. All of us had grandparents who came in to Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, the whole thing, but they spoke a different language. They were so different. At that school, they celebrated Columbus Day. That was the biggest holiday of the year.

Well, this is great because it's very rare that someone gets to experience the many different things. You are in a weird position where you could kind of evaluate, because to me, the socioeconomic bond is pretty strong. It's huge. So I guess I'm curious, the culture shock you got from being in an Italian place versus being in a wealthy place, which do you think was more stark?

Spence, the socioeconomic difference. At PS71, we were all still middle class, working, middle class, upper middle class, but we were all in that zone. Spence, when I set foot on that land, there was a sense of betrayal. Like there was a world that was being kept from me and people who looked like me. We didn't know that you could live this way.

Well, you would eat with silverware in China.

in the cafeteria. Yeah, we didn't have sports in my school. We had China and silverware.

Tablecloths?

No tablecloth, unless there were special events. The mother-daughter tea after school, they pulled out the tablecloth.

This is like Hogwarts, right, Monica? Are you going to Hogwarts with the real cutlery?

and the real china?

But I have a weird question I just thought of. Did you feel guilt that you were, quote, picked to be in this world, that no other black people were, I assume?

There were a few of us, but not from my neighborhood. I didn't grapple as much with survivor's guilt in the beginning. I think that happened later, like in college, when I did realize that this had sort of set me on a different trajectory.

Well, you were probably bumping into kids. you had sleepovers with and you're seeing how their lives.

But I did feel pressure to be one of the few chosen to go off and make something better of your life, elevate your existence. I definitely felt pressure. Like I knew that they were giving me financial aid and a scholarship, and my parents were working extra hard to provide this opportunity for me. And so I didn't want to screw it up. All these people were investing in me and I didn't want to waste that.

And that's where, yes, the white kids are free to fail out. Like there's so many of these rich kids. They go there and they fuck up the whole time.

They get kicked out. They go to another school. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But no, you got to be top notch.

It's that twice as good thing. You have to work twice as hard to get half as much. Yeah, that's right. The dentist. Yeah, the dentist thing.

Average dentist.

Yeah, living next door to Mary J. Blige. One of the greatest R&B singers of all time.

and the greatest comedian of all time. So my good friend, Joy Bryant is also from the Bronx.

Yes, she is. I love Joy.

And she too went to a boarding school.

Yes, she did. We had very parallel experiences. She just was a supermodel. So she had a different path. in that way.

Sure. Because I love Joy.

And then was like, this is an amazing show. Actually, I'll tell you something, buddy. When I met my now husband, I was kind of out of an engagement. And so I was in a stage of not knowing if I believed in marriage. I didn't know if I wanted to have kids.

I didn't know this until researching you that your husband played football at Berkeley.

Yeah, then was a Raider.

Goes down as one of the greatest Raiders of all time.

One of the greatest Raiders of all time.

Oh, my God, cool.

I know, so cool.

I really like this for you. I've never met him, but I'm like.

He's also the nicest, you would adore him.

And he's an actor.

He's an incredible actor and producer. When he made his first film that he produced, he got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. And I was like, do I have to like go pick up figure skating so I can be on the cover of Sports Illustrated? How do we even this out?

It's like a little stepping on your shoes, toes.

Yes, but I love it. I love it. Cute.

Some people just can do everything. It's annoying.

He's one of those people. He's like a Paul Robeson.

Who's Paul Robeson?

Oh, you have to go look him up. He's a really important civil rights leader who was a football player and an opera singer.

Oh, no kidding.

A true Renaissance man. Yeah, truly, truly extraordinary.

Or like Terry Crews. Terry Crews, so radical.

Acting, painting, football, all of it.

It's crazy. Incredible artist. How did you guys meet, if you don't mind my asking?

No, we met backstage at a play I was doing on Broadway. He's a big theater guy.

What a unicorn this guy is.

I know, so special. And he came and he was represented as an athlete at the same agency that I've been at as an actor. He's at CAA. He's still at CAA, but then in their sports department. And so I got an email saying like, one of our really important football players is coming to the show.

Four-time Pro Bowler.

And I was like, I guess so.

You're like, I didn't have sports at my school,

so I don't care. Yeah, we didn't have football in New York City also. And I had all these stereotypes about what a football player would be. So I was like, oh, great. And I said to one of the other actors in the show, like, I got to go talk to this guy.

Yeah, will you save me in 10 minutes?

I'm like, I'm not gonna have anything to talk to him about. And I come downstairs in the theater and he is not at all what I was picturing in my head. Shame on me for all my stereotypes. Yeah, he looked like James Baldwin, like peacoat and a beanie. Like, look like he just got off a plane from Paris.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God, fine. Make yourself scarce.

Yeah, I'm fine.

I was like, oh, I'm in trouble.

So mom and dad are pretty opposite, right? Mom is, we'll say, type A.

She's a professor and overachiever. She's very elegant and composed and super smart.

And dad's a good time, Charlie. He fucking charismatic, great dresser. You and he, whoo. We should go to the bar together.

I mean, you wouldn't leave. We were actually doing an interview together for the book and somebody said to my parents, like, what's your advice if a family's trying to work through family secrets and you know, what would you say? And my mom was like, you know, I would say it's really important to talk to somebody, whether it's a pastor or a therapist or a good friend, to talk to somebody you trust. And therapy is really important. My dad was like, I disagree.

You get him with such a breakthrough.

Oh, my God, it's kind of true. It's great. And that's, I think, a lot of what, for me, has been kind of the result of this book and this process. really, with my family of this secret being told and us working through it together and going to family therapy, is, I think that would have in the past devastated me. I would have been like embarrassed and ashamed and would have been angry.

Well, look, you know. what's so funny is those kinds of things, yes. All of our parents are extensions of our own identity and ego, and when they visit set, it's always nerve wracking, but it's just universal and it's kind of sweet. But what's funny is you could brustle up against that he's being uncouth or low brow, or something. What you're aspiring to in the book is knowing yourself, is to be authentic to yourself, is to be fully integrated with who you are.

Yeah, he is who he is. In some ways, I had to deal with the betrayal of my mother differently than my father, because, in my opinion, my mom actually kept a secret from me, but my dad truly bought into this alternate reality that I was his and he was mine. There was no secret for him. I didn't really understand denial till being in this process with him, but it's so beautiful. It was just like that thing got locked in a section, I don't know, out of his brain, out in the world.

He just placed that somewhere.

Yeah, when I sat with my parents and I said, I just spoke to the doctor, he said that there's a 0.000001% chance that we are biologically related. He's like, there's a chance.

Right.

Like that's his-.

Blast one millionth hole. Yes, that is his truth, you know? I would imagine if I were him, I see the motivation, which is. I meet you, I fall in love with you, I love caring for you and being in your life, and I can feel how much you love me. And the scariest thing in the world would be that you would find out I'm not your real dad and you wouldn't love me as much as you do.

I know that their choice, particularly because it was 77, it wasn't the world we live in today, where everybody's freezing eggs and going through catalogs of donor sperm. They were renegades, they were so courageous and so innovative and took this risk. And I know that their decision to not tell me was not meant to hurt me. It was to try to protect me.

They made a call and it was the wrong one, maybe. Well, I mean, it was what it was.

Back then the doctor would say like, you have this sperm and then go home and have sex, and then there's plausible deniability and nobody thought there would ever be DNA tests. So for him, he really was like, that kid is mine. Yeah, okay, lovely.

So everyone's trying to foster this idea.

And I think for her, it was like, why tell her, why stress her out? And then she says, then, when I was in my 20s, she was gonna tell me, but I had this crazy eating disorder and she was like, I'm not gonna tell her now. She's crazy enough. There was never a right time to tell me.

It's really complicated. Look, you are who you are, and we love who you are, and you like who you are, and your children love who you are.

That's very kind.

I can relate to, I wouldn't want to erase any of my trauma.

No, it's the journey.

But secrets are palpable.

You feel them, we're as sick as our secrets. You feel them even if you don't know what they are. There's that sense of not feeling safe, feeling unmoored. I knew that I wasn't getting the real. I didn't trust the environment that I was raised in.

And, I'm sure, had a very hard time, probably still have a hard time, trusting anyone.

But the gift of them being forced really into telling me is that it has, I think, given me back a sense of trusting myself. You're like, I knew it. I feel like in these years, I've been able to mend that pathway with my own intuition to say like, I fucking knew, I was right, I'm not crazy.

It can reconfirm the trust with yourself, which is great.

Huge, and that is to me the most important one. That's the huge gift of what they've given me is this ability to trust myself, to know the truth of myself.

How did it come to be that they were forced to tell you?

I am friends with Skip Gates, the Harvard professor who once had beers with Obama at the White House. So he has this show.

He does the heredity thing, right?

Yes, he has this show on PBS called Finding Your Roots. And when Scandal was ending, he was like, I know you haven't had time to do the show, but now you're gonna have some time. Can we get you on the show? And I was like, yes, like my mom loves this stuff. She's done tons of research on her side of the family and we really don't know a lot about my dad's side.

And, if I can add, your mother's parents are from Jamaica. Yes. So that's always gonna be a confusing lineage to sort out because of the history of Jamaica. And then your father's family is all from these islands in South Carolina.

But my mom, she's really done a ton of work on her lineage, like back to Irish and Scottish immigrants in Jamaica who worked on plantations. But my dad's side, we didn't know a lot. And so I was really thrilled, and I thought they would be really thrilled, and they were at first because they thought it was all like public records and census research. And then I was like, now if you can just spit into these tubes, also for the show, and my dad started having panic attacks. Oh.

Yeah, it was really hard.

The big lie he's been trying to keep forever.

But again, it wasn't like, when my mom first said, do you think you're nervous because of what she might find out genetically? His response was, what are you talking about?

Like his body knew, but his brain did not.

His brain was not ready.

The body was keeping the score.

Yes, his brain had to catch up. Wow.

Yeah. I talk pretty openly about my childhood and it involves my mother. And I've had my mother on this show.

Yeah, I know.

And she has been incredibly generous in saying like, your story's your story. You're entitled to tell your story. I'm a part of it. And then I have my story and you're a part of mine. Was it hard for you to write the book?

I think this is the thing that is most moving for me is that in the past, when I have said no to coming on a show like this, I think it's been very connected to the idea that I've never really felt like the lead character in the story of my life. I have devoted my life to being these other characters because their stories were so clear, but I never really felt secure in the value of my life as being an important story of its own. So a show where I talk about myself is like, why waste everybody's time? And when I got this information, it felt like my first call to adventure. It felt like, for the first time, I was the protagonist in the story.

And- That is lovely.

It's also for me as a mother-.

I was just gonna say-.

Such a profound example. Because I was like, oh, this is the job of parenting. actually. It's not about us. And it really has allowed me to say, I get to be the lead character in my story of my life.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Right. I don't want them to feel unmoored in their origin story. Like. I want them to feel secure about the magic of where they come from, so that they can leap off into their own adventure. Yes.

And there were many things over the years that were being kept from you, that your mother had been married before your father, that she had had a stillborn. There were things that were leaking. Your father was a part of a 10 year long investigation.

With the IRS.

And ultimately had to go to court and admitted some guilt. And you wrote a letter and they asked you to do that. So things were trickling.

And the sexual abuse that I was keeping from them, right? There were all of these secrets that we were keeping from each other.

Yes, all in theory, to protect one another. I know.

To love each other.

That's what's sad is like, none of it is nefarious. The intention ill-advised, but the intention is like protecting everyone. But it does not protect you. And in fact, the more flawed you are, the more helpful it is to me. Cause I feel flawed and I'm messing up all the time.

It gives me permission to be human.

Yes, to fuck up.

I think there's this false idea in culture that you can either be in relationship or you can be in truth. It's weird. It's very weird. That if you tell the truth, it will cost you the closeness of the relationship. As opposed to my, experience in this journey with my parents is that in truth, we're so much closer than we've ever been before.

Well, they're three-dimensional. They've had struggles and they've had vulnerabilities, and that's attractive and it makes you love and want to comfort.

And it means I can be myself, cause they're being themselves.

Yeah, everyone can chill and be themselves.

Take off the mask.

I bet she was relieved ultimately that she had to come forward with this.

Think how much lighter their lives are.

I see it in her every day. Cause also, I've given them this list of like, the book is coming out. So if there are people you need to tell before it comes out, like now is the time. I mean, she has four sisters. She just told them this past May.

They didn't confide in anybody, but each other? Not a soul. It sounds like they didn't even talk about it amongst themselves.

That's right. Cause I think again, he had this other belief. There was nothing to talk about. I mean, what a phenomenal secret keeper that she just walked around for over 40 years with not a soul, not a therapist, not a sponsor, not a best friend. Yeah.

I won't make you get into it. People should read the book, but some sexual abuse.

Misconduct.

It's a peer and it's a kid or it's a teen. And there was all these sleepovers that you guys always had in the neighborhood. And I don't know which we could point to, but I think what's important is that, through some accumulation of aces, your self image starts getting a little warped and you start getting a bit controlling. When does that start?

I do think it's related to the abuse. I don't think I draw that line directly in the book, but I do think because this stuff was happening when I was sleeping and I felt very out of control of it, I think there developed early on this sense that I needed to be in control of my body in order to feel safe. Right. Also, my very biology, this is obviously just in looking back, I didn't know at the time, but my biology was a threat to my parents, right? The truth of my body and how it came to be here was a fact that my parents didn't wanna deal with.

Can I also just add? Yes. Because you know you're a parent. The two of us are sitting around waiting till our own shittiness arises in the kids. Yes.

What is it? Yeah, they had no idea.

You're gonna be examining.

Like I talk about my dad not being in the delivery room when I was born, because I was born on the night that the last episode of Roots aired.

Can't miss it.

And he can't miss it. He's gonna bring the nurses with him. They're the whole nursing staff. My mom is in the delivery room alone with the doctor. And I also think that maybe my dad couldn't be in there, because what if the kid comes out white?

And we should add, because I think it's an important foundational element is that your parents also fought pretty horrendously while you were little, and they thought you were asleep and you weren't. And you started having a lot of anxiety at night even from then. And your conclusion was, I need to be extra perfect for them to save this whole thing.

Because I knew that I was very wanted. I knew that they had tried for five years to have me. I didn't know how they finally unlocked the miracle of me being here, but I knew that I was wanted, which is also really beautiful, right? Like. it's such a gift for a child to come into the world knowing that they were wanted and loved, but it was this extra added layer of pressure as well.

And you could get the sense that they're only together for you, so you better make it worth it. That's not a hard math to come to, even when you're little. Okay, so perfection is the goal now. Yes.

Secret rebellion followed by perfection.

Okay, so that was another part I really love and related to.

It's a dance. It's such a brilliant dance.

It fucks you up for life.

You feel like you're getting away with it, but you're getting away with screwing yourself up.

Well, you are. Yeah, you end up paying the price. But the muscle memory of, even if, like Kristen, leaves for two days, my immediate thought is like, what is the most amount of trouble I can get in without getting in trouble?

That's right, without anybody knowing.

It's just the impulse. I don't act on it, but first thought is, oh, great, mom's gone. I'm living up to this standard for her. Now I can let it loose. We also have some drinking and some weed use.

This is the thing I'm nervous about, my bonus child reading, because she's 17 and I was like 15.. Because it's New York City. So we're going out to clubs till three, four in the morning. On Monday night. On Monday night, my favorite club, Soul Kitchen.

And did you have to use a fake ID or was it unmerged?

We had some fake IDs, but we were just real cute. You knew people. We were real cute, we knew people. Good, Sandra, you're winning.

Fucking. Drew Barrymore was at Studio 54, for Christ's sakes. I know, I know. It's New York.

She was famous, but.

And this is in the 80s and early 90s.

89, 90..

Oh man, what a time to be alive.

And did your parents know you were sneaking out?

No, and in fact, this is the part of the book that troubles my mother the most. This is the part that hurt her feelings the most, which was interesting, right? Because a lot of what I'm writing about is the secrets and betrayal. And she read it and was like, I was really disappointed to read about all the high school partying stuff. And I was like, that makes sense.

But was her sadness over the fact that she doesn't think you trusted her to know that about you and still accept you?

I think that it was happening and that I lied to her about it.

Okay, so just straight up. resentment over the lie. I think so. It's a classic textbook.

Well, yeah, because no parent's like, I wish you had trusted me to tell me you were going out to a club because they would have just said, no, you can't go to that club.

Well, I would, right? I'm pretty open and I'm understanding, and I expect that they'll do drugs and I expect that they'll have sex. So I feel like I've really laid down the red carpet for them to be honest with me about it.

And to be imperfect.

It's not like I'd be mad at them, I'd just be hurt. Like, oh, I thought I earned that.

Let's say they do Molly, okay? And they're 14.. I know, that's my heart.

You went right to the jugular on this one. I did, I did. They're shooting dope at 13,. what are you gonna do?

No, I'm saying like, they do this at a friend's house and they come to you and they say, dad, hey, I did Molly last night. Cause they're so comfortable and they might do this.

I think it's really important to first say, I'm so grateful that you told me the truth. Like when I think about the family that I came from and the double task of breaking the rules and then having to be perfect, the telling the truth, I mean, I say it all the time now, as a parent, the most important thing is the truth. I don't love that thing you did. And we'll talk about that. But the most important thing is that you told me the truth about it.

By yourself. Yeah, for sure.

When you don't have to and you're not ready.

But would you say like.

Do you have more?

I know. Where'd you get it? How much was it? Was it good? Was it good?

Yeah, were you eating an air sandwich all night? Or what time did you fall asleep? Do you need a Xanny to go down?

I mean, it's a tricky situation, I think, because you want them to be honest, but also, are you just gonna say like, I guess it's fine that you're doing that.

even though you know they're gonna do it. So let's just say that happened. I would say, I'm really grateful. you told me. Did you like it?

Would you?

Yeah, was it fun? Oh, what did you guys do? Did you blah, blah, blah? Great. I'd say, look, you know, having had a lot of experience with that drug, it's pretty addictive.

I'm learning so much right now.

So we just gotta keep our eye on this one. It's also gonna lower your serotonin, a shitload. On Tuesday, you're gonna be suicidal. That's coming, but I'm glad we talked because I want you to know it's coming, but we'll get through that.

And you can come to me when you're really depressed.

Yes, not when, you're gonna be depressed on Tuesday.

I don't have quite your extensive history, so I wouldn't have that much wisdom to offer, which in the moment, I'm feeling a little jealous of.

Well, look, I think we could be of service to one another.

Yes, 100%. I can talk to your kids a lot about sugar. Yes, exactly. Even now, I say to my kids, you know, we come from a long line of users. And so in our family, when people drink, sometimes they lose their jobs, they lose their lives, they lose their marriages.

This is in you, yeah.

Yeah, I think the bottom line for me is like, I would parallel it with trying to control whether your partner cheats on you or not. It's not up to you. They're gonna do that or they're not. Me behaving jealously in anticipation of that, if anything, will push it in that direction. To me, I work backwards from, well, that's not an option.

Which then they will find a way to do it for sure.

Even worse, everyone I know that was raised that way really got fucked up from it. For me, I'd much rather go like, A, they know their fucking genetics. We're like seventh generation hardcore drug. It's for real in us. And so I would just go like, I know you're smart enough to evaluate that you probably have a predisposition to it.

One of the funniest thing that has ever happened, Lincoln was like two or three and Dax was going to an AA meeting and he was like, I'm going to my meeting and Lincoln was like, I wanna go. And he said, don't worry, you will.

It's very similar. She goes, why do you have to go? And I go, because I'm an alcoholic and I have to go there or I'll drink and it's not good when I drink. And she goes, I don't wanna be an alcoholic. Because she wanted to go and I go, you might be.

I'm not naive enough to think. We don't know, we don't know. But I do think the common thread is to be able to be in truth with your family and yourself. If you can't tell yourself the truth about what's happening in your life and you can't tell at least one other person, I'm in trouble, I need help, then you're screwed.

Can I ask, who knew about the molesting? Did anyone ever? Did you have any boyfriends? you told this to?

Yeah, friends. Best friends? You did, okay. Friends when I got older. That's good.

For me, I remember the first time I said it to somebody and I was sitting on the hood of my car in a Kmart parking lot. Really? Yeah, and she had just told me she had been raped. and similar to what you said about this room, which is like, oh my God, if I don't tell her this, like I owe her this and I've not told anyone this. And I remember when I told her and she didn't look at me and go, you're disgusting, which is what I thought everyone in the world would say.

There's this shame spiral. I remember the first time that I told somebody about my food stuff.

Ooh, what age was that?

I was in college and the first reaction was, it's fine. Everybody does that, right? Because it is this very socially acceptable, like everybody goes out for ice cream when they break up with their boyfriend, right? It's just that I had four pints of ice cream and would be passed out on my dorm room bed instead of sharing a pint with a bestie. And I had a hard time at first convincing this person that it was a real problem.

I need to be seen by someone who has the same thing as me. So what I loved about, two things. One, we've never really had anyone walk us through that addiction. We had a gambling addict and it was fascinating because of course I know addiction in a lot of areas, but I didn't really know, there's specificities about the gambling ones is incredible, which is, I just gotta get even. I can quit if I get even.

Mine. that I think is different, and I heard this really early on, is that not to say that either one is harder or easier.

I already agree with you and I know what you're gonna say.

You do?

Yes, I don't have to use cocaine moderately three times a day. That's right. I couldn't endeavor to do that.

It's taking the tiger out of the cage for a few times a day and saying like, it's okay, sweet kitty, with a tiger, out of the cage. You have to be able to wrestle that.

We live in a buffet, similar to the alcoholism. You're never more than a hundred feet away from booze and we live in a buffet now.

And also the clear delineation of booze, which I think I'm completely powerless over, although, no, that's not true, because I do occasionally, once or twice a year, have a glass of wine or something, cause I'm somewhere. But I have to know that it's sugar and going into my system. That's the substance, right? It's not the alcohol. It's like the alteration of the intensity of the sugar in my system.

Yes. Okay, so one thing I'd like, even though I don't understand the food addiction thing, although I think it's a spectrum, like every other thing, right?

Yeah, and I think it's a little bit like weed also, in that some of it is physical addiction. Like you can identify certain substances like sugar or gluten, and some of it is emotional addiction and not the substance itself. It's a tool to escape and you gotta figure out how to exist without the escape.

And I have, by some measures, disordered eating. a lot of times. I'm like crazy food restriction.

So does the whole country. Exactly, and I work out.

I don't know, do I work out healthy? But the part I loved was you binged, you slept and you worked out way too much, and then you food restricted. But because you weren't purging.

I did not have an eating disorder. Yes, this is so identical. If you don't drink beer, you're not an alcoholic, right?

A friend of mine was, the definition of an alcoholic was someone who drank by themselves.

Of course, we find justifications everywhere. The loopholes.

So you can be as fucked up as you want, as long as you're not by yourself.

I went four days without eating. I would be at the gym for six hours straight. But if I didn't stick my finger down my throat, or even if, this was my favorite, if I stuck my finger down my throat, but it's because I thought I ate something I was allergic to.

There we go, a little workaround.

Therefore, I'm not bulimic and I do not have an eating disorder.

I'd love to be inside your head. You've eaten whatever you've eaten and you're sitting there and you're like, huh.

I think that had macadamia. I think those Oreos, yeah. I think those Oreos had a macadamia in that stuff in there.

Oreos had a hint of macadamia. I'm pretty sure.

I feel like that chocolate cake had sesame. Because the added brain,

once it wants to do something.

Yeah, we'll find a way. We'll find a way.

Yes. So is it mainly dessert, sweets?

That are sort of a trigger? Yeah. I don't eat a ton of sugar now. So yes, if I eat sugar, I have to be very aware of, that's gonna send me on a spin. I'm gonna be extra hungry.

That's such a great point. Your addiction is a symptom. Yes. And when you feel the symptom flare up,

it's easy to get distracted by the symptom.

But it's like, no, no, my body wants to comfort itself. Why am I uncomfortable? That's right.

That's the work now, right? I'm uncomfortable. I'm reaching for this behavior, whether it's time to leave the gym and pay attention to your children, or it's time to put the food down. You're done with the meal. Whatever it is, that's the red flag of.

I imagine the definition of sobriety in a 12-step program for food is similarly complicated as it would be for SLA, which is you're not gonna define sobriety by no sex. For some people, it'll be no prostitutes. For some people, it'll be no porn, whatever it is. Is food the same?

Yeah, and it evolves. It changes. It's different at different times.

This could be healthy because A, there's some rigidity to it.

I think it's great to have that clarity, but my relationship with what is healthy and unhealthy behavior requires a constant reset. I have to be constantly communicating with myself about it and really checking in with myself. Like, is that clean or not?

Right.

Without getting obsessive, not letting my whole life be about that. Right. Because I feel like I am really lucky to have a much bigger life than I did when every single thought was about my thighs and what I'm eating. But I know when my thoughts are mostly filled with that, when I should be thinking about work and life, and that I have to clean it up so that I can be focused on life.

So I would imagine, if you enter on this journey, you're gonna get help for this.

Yeah.

Is there a better expectation of failure? Failure in AA is very, very significant.

Oh, right, right, right.

And it's demoralizing and it's shame-inducing. I don't wanna encourage people to relapse, but I just feel like it could be a little more supportive.

I feel like you have done a lot to shift that, for people, to be more generous around the process, that it's up and down.

And by the way, I haven't re-clicked into the old notion. It's way more about today, which it should have maybe always been. But I also don't know what the future holds. I have great tools and if I fuck up, I will get back. But yeah, the whole thing has changed.

Yeah.

For me, it's good, because perfectionism is such a big part of my disease.

Like, yeah, AA would fuck you up in a way because you can be perfect.

And there are ways to do that with food, which for me, can look a little more like anorexia. And so I can't go in that direction. So I have to be willing to be imperfect in my journey with this, which is super uncomfortable, but necessary.

Is it the same premise as NAAA? I think SLA. You're never not gonna... Is that the prevailing thought? Is that once an addict, always an addict?

That's different. There are so many different ways to be in recovery from this. Eating disorders look so different. So it's not as clean, cut or simple.

Which could be a blessing or a curse, maybe. Yeah, it's complicated. You couldn't be encouraged to make your own program, which isn't truly working. But I guess you find out pretty quickly.

if it's not working. And for me, the big thing is clicking into the spiritual solution. All of this is really just about God and healing and love.