Episode 79 - The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen - Lisa Gungor

ASL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mJs4qja3M

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if you've listened to the podcast for a while you've probably heard the voice of lisa gunger my name is lisa gunger welcome to the clitoris whale eats the shark and then we find out there's this sea monster that no one's ever heard of and he eats the whale and it's just like no no no you know just one thing after another really first moments the merging of two cells into one multiplying two four six eight maybe the beginning of it all the voice of god the big bang whatever you name it maybe everything came into being like a great cosmic orgasm yeah the cosmic orgasm lady that's my wife 18 years of marriage the only woman i've ever kissed and the only woman that i know of that i would not regret that decision with but aside from being my wife she's also my creative counterpart many of the best gunger songs are thanks to her brilliant mind and gigantic heart and through the years uh i've noticed time again how lisa has often been overlooked and ignored for her creative contributions to the work that we do together a lot of times people will see me and ignore her which i don't know what they're thinking if you've seen pictures of us but far too many times we've been in a space where i've heard michael how'd you come up with the lyric blah blah blah when the lyrics being spoken of were lisa's far too many times we've been invited to an interview where they forgot to get a stool for lisa because they only remember that i the man was coming sure many people approach her and love her i mean how could they not she's very friendly brilliant not bad on the eyes extremely talented the truth is though that she's never been one to try to hog a spotlight she's perfectly content sitting in a dark room by herself playing piano reading books to our girls in our gray rocking chair or just sitting in some tree somewhere staring out at the world in wonder lisa's never been a schmoozer a self-promoter or person to push herself to the front of the line but you know what i am the producer of a fairly large podcast so today i am going to do it for her because here's the thing she wrote a book a beautiful heart-opening uh tissue boxed depleting book and it comes out tomorrow june 26th everywhere the books are sold and um as i mentioned she's she's not a big schmoozer self-promoter and so her marketing plan for it primarily is like she wrote some really nice handwritten notes and gave the book to some of her friends you know that's nice and all but uh as i spoke with mike we decided that we wanted more of you to hear about this book than the friends that got the handwritten notes the book is really just too good um and i know i'm biased i'm admitting the bias up top but it really is an amazing book so today in this special episode of the liturgist podcast mike hillary and i we're going to be speaking with lisa about her new book the most beautiful thing i've seen opening your eyes to wonder why she wrote it how having a special needs daughter has changed her approach to life sight politics belief and we're even going to get to hear her read a few passages from the book it's a lovely conversation i hope you enjoy it welcome to this special bonus edition of the liturgist podcast everybody i hung the pictures my mother made me above the crib she stitched them for my sister and me when we were little and now they would be in a room with my own two daughters needlepoint girls with a puppy and a cat in aged yellow frames i straightened them stepped back and examined whether they were crooked as i situated the space for a second pair of little feet to romp around in scenes flashed by i imagined her tiny face and felt her skin saw myself looking into her eyes breathing her in i saw michael and me sending newborn photos to family and friends laughing at how she looked like a small wrinkly old man as they always do i saw our older daughter amelie meeting her for the first time how excited she would be to have her very own real life sister to dress up and boss around i saw us all singing the absurd and sappy songs we make up at night because making up ridiculous songs is kind of our thing i saw amelie holding her sister's tiny chubby hands as she wobbled about learning to walk they would run into their room together screaming like mad as i chased them telling secrets undercovers while i told them to go to sleep for the hundredth time i saw them calling each other when one felt heartbreak or had a first kiss and yelling at each other for stealing clothes stinking up the bathroom not having enough privacy for the slew of other things that come with having a sibley i realized i had plans for these two little lives already yet i was only situating yellow frames on a wall in weeks the pregnancy became complicated i was put on bed rest saw my trusty ob gyn every two weeks plus a specialist every week the specialist informed us my placenta which i named janice was crapping out on me old janice she was a swallow gal but just didn't want to go to the distance it's common with smokers said the specialist though i didn't smoke rather i drank spinach kale and magical human building smoothies with vitamin powder but old janice the placenta didn't care she rejected it all she's just small the specialist said i looked to michael for some sort of second opinion she's just small she's our little squish she's going to be fine michael's hug made me feel safe but i could see he wasn't certain he believed himself we went about our week had another checkup we were about to head out of the specialist's office when he calmly told us that not enough blood was flowing to her brain [Music] don't be alarmed but things have changed and we need her to come out today michael called family and texted friends she's coming soon and though the doctor said not to be worried we both knew not enough blood to the brain was more than slightly concerning it feels like only moments ago she came from my body and lay on my chest her five pound frame slight fragile her skin on my skin i kissed her head and once again as with my first i felt the surreal emotions that come with holding your child this was her the one i almost miscarried the one kicking my ribs so hard letting me know she would be strong the one amelie would sing to at night and say sister don't be a stinky butt i love you so much here she was finally safe i held her close and with awe as happy tears came michael leaned in kissed me touched her head matthew perryman jones land of the living played in the background but she wasn't moving much she felt limp and motionless not at all like my first baby felt i pulled her in wondering why she didn't make a sound i watched as her skin turned blue a nurse swiftly took her saying something about waking her up a bit our tiny girl lay like a rag in her hands no cries no movement nurses huddled and whispered moved fast and sent secret glances michael and i held hands confused by the rising tension then finally a single little cry and i exhaled smiled a nurse walked around to the right side of my bed she turned faced me directly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear she rung her hands a bit eyes shifting looking at mine then darting to the floor it felt like she needed to tell me something so i nodded encouraging her with a slight smile to go ahead her voice shook as she began your baby has signs consistent with down syndrome she has a line in her hand and her eyes and that's all i heard i saw her mouth moving but heard nothing it is right here a two-word definition gives me a limited viewpoint for my child my brain is filling in gaps drawing on memories telling me what to feel and just how to see things lisa what's it like to hear yourself read out loud the words you wrote in your book honestly there's a couple times that i have to like stop myself from crying you know remembering the moments in the hospitals still comes back to me so yeah it's a little emotional why do it you've had a pretty intense few years i would say in life and you haven't only gone through them for your own reflection you've done this incredibly tough thing of crafting them into a work into a book um why put yourself through that you know at first i didn't want to i had an editor stephanie smith she actually approached me a little while after lucy was born and i think at first it felt like i would be exploiting lucy or i didn't i didn't want to really talk about all of it in a really vulnerable way part of it was because i was still really going through it and i didn't feel like i i was actually able to write about it but i think it was about after a year that i just naturally started writing because it was therapy for me which songs have always been it's like we michael and i've talked about that on the podcast before it's like if something happens it we can't really like fully like work it out of our bodies until we write a song about it and say it like the way that we want to say it so yeah at what point of the writing did it get bigger than just lucy's story because this book isn't just about lucy yeah i want to say about six months in because i started the book thinking it was going to be a group of essays and you saw me like pasting i had like post-its all over the wall upstairs and constantly rearranging little essays that i had and it took me a while to figure out oh no this is just this is just my story so about six months in it all started coming together i feel like that's around the time i got i had been meditating since for probably about eight years now but had never [Music] really had incredible moments with meditation it always felt like this practice and this all right i'm just calming my mind i was never incredibly excited about meditating so um i got more into it and really started practices meditation and prayer practices spiritual practices again right before lucy was born so i feel like that made me it made me look at myself so i'm writing this book thinking i'm gonna tell the world about lucy and how people need to value her and here's all the problems with our world so i think at first i i felt like there was this immediate shift where i see this baby girl and i've realized all of my prejudice and all of my constructs of the world how those are just crumbling and so then i think oh this is this is the trajectory of my life and i need to tell people how valuable she is and i need the world to open up for her to make room for her and it was through writing the essays that i thought was going to be the book and also meditation that it all led me to myself realizing yeah this isn't just about lucy this is about all of us how we all have this sense that we don't belong and that we're broken and some of that's from the religion i was brought up in and some of it's also just being human that's not only found in religious circles but i don't know if i've met a single person that hasn't at one point or another really really struggled with their humanity and their place in the world uh so so it took a while to realize what the book was about yeah can you tell us a little bit more about the kinds of things you learned about yourself in the process of writing i had a lot of insecurity come up through the book which i think yeah is why i realize this is all coming back to me so there were many times i just felt like i can't do it this is doesn't sound smart enough this doesn't sound good enough to be to be put into the world which oh i would i would tell myself no no that's not true yeah but that's what i found coming up like in my body and in myself um all the people and this has been said before and what you know like why is this needed and so i wrestled through all of that and coming back to well do it because you want to not because anyone else absolutely needs it but do it because you enjoy it and you are loving it i think even at the end of the book i was still in the place of oh i have to do that like people people need this i want to do something that people need like as a two you know i just want to help someone in the world but really it comes down to does it do you enjoy it and is it meaning is it wonderful for me is it therapy for me so yeah a lot of wrestle in this book and then there were there were times it felt um really easy to just write and things came very naturally and i was like yeah i'm going to write so many books and then like those are really good days those are great this sounds awesome and i'm crying i'm like this is amazing everyone's gonna love this and then i get up the next morning and read up like this is bullshit why did i think this was so good and rewrite rewrite rewrite so there was there was a lot of a lot of personal struggle writing the book and then uh just fear that would come up for me fear of what are people gonna say because is this like a white girl struggle you know by that you mean like that it's not as bad as some other people's struggle yeah out constantly i think of other stories and other people that i know and stories that i've walked through with them that are more tragic you know like this really has to be a tragedy because it's it's it's not when you're in it it feels like the world is ending when you're losing your faith and losing friends and having a child go through surgery i mean i i there were moments i felt like life will never be the same and i i thought i was actually losing my mind moments going through that um there were moments i wondered if michael and i would be married after the deconstruction of faith where we were going to end up i mean it was the the bottom the bottom the bottom um but when you come out of it and i look at it on this side i'm like i mean okay we had a deconstruction of faith and a child with special needs cool you know on this side of it after wrestling through all of it it's it's sometimes i sometimes find myself or not not now i some i found myself being a little ashamed of being so sad because lucy's beautiful and um but but i would tell another mother i mean i have many people who email email us and send us uh questions about our story with lucy because they've had a similar story and it's it's interesting right we allow other people the space to be honest and vulnerable like i give them the space to tell them tell me their worst fears and i'm like no let it out like this is you need to have a safe space just say whatever you feel is the most shaming thing that you have to say there's no guilt like but i don't give myself that same space yeah i wonder if because of this book there will be even more permission for other mothers to do that other women to do that to tell the truth about their lives and hearing what you just said there perhaps to give themselves yeah the permission to not worry if my story is as quote bad sorrowful painful unquote as someone else's but to give themselves permission to look at their lives to see where they've come from and to see how that shapes who they are in the moment and and that they're still here that they still they're still okay they've survived yeah that's a game that uh doesn't have an end like when you start comparing yourself and your story to other stories and either feeling good or bad about how you feel about it there's always somebody being eaten by a bear it's like and even the person being eaten by bear could theoretically be like at least this one's going quick i can't talk about my bear story yeah everybody's got their own story and experience i never questioned the legitimacy of someone's pain and and i never contextualize the amount of pain someone's feeling on some comparative scale with other people's experiences yeah because in my own life i've had things that were this is a poor use of the word objectively but i guess more objectively more difficult that hurt me less yeah than some off-handed look from someone on the street maybe um and the way that we experience pain and loss and fear it's not a thermometer it's not some consistent measurement of the outside world but if we do look at kind of the drama of the last few years people will sometimes say about a book i could not put it down but in my case i literally did not put your book down from the time it arrived in the mail until i had finished it uh like it came out of the envelope i went to my chair in my office i read the whole thing but that doesn't lessen the fact that i had to stop several times because i couldn't see the pages because of the betrayal of my tear ducts right i'm trying to absorb information which is important to me and then my emotions were like no we need to respond to this material i'm like later we haven't finished yet but i mean even for me especially rereading the things about um lucy going into surgery that reminded me of so much it wasn't even secondhand fear of my own life i remember waiting to get a call to hear the surgery went okay and just being terrified of the alternative and that is in no way a small human drama yeah that is a profound that that is a parent's greatest fear is to go through that experience and that period of unknowing a kind of satan's schrodinger's cat experiment of is my child alive or dead yeah and the way that you interpreted all those experiences into like this gracious open-handed look of life that results in wonder um well it's quite a trick it's it's quite beautiful i think beyond uh people finding the courage to tell their stories i hope also people who read this book find the courage to embrace life and its fullness because so many of us were given these really shallow social scripts that said focus on these wonderful things pretend these other things don't exist or compartmentalize them or or grieve quickly if you're going to grieve at all and the way that you [Music] drew in a dance party with your family a strangely rebellious relationship with a half puerto rican man and heart surgery for your special needs child all as part of none of it being separate none of it being taken aside all of it being part of life i just thought was important and gorgeous yeah thank you yeah that was a real shitty question though that ended in a period you got me all teary mike thank you oh i appreciate that i was just gonna echo that i what an incredible piece of work lisa what an incredible gift that you've given us those of us who are lucky enough to read it i really felt so i felt so moved i felt so inspired to see connections in my own life between things that i'd thought at one point were painful and at another point became my most favorite thing about me or about my life and it really it's a it's a constructivist's dream your book it's a it's a therapist's dream this way that you have taken the intergenerational journey of your mother and you and your girls and everyone who comes before and who comes after and see that everything has its place even the scary and the unknown things that found their place have become beautiful and have become this invitation into more fullness and some more aliveness into more wonder like mike was saying it felt like the book if anything was two things to me it was the gift of seeing you and the invitation for me to see myself and my own life and so thank you thank you for challenging that insecurity and the fear that said i don't know if i have anything to offer because if anything you modeled a journey that i would hope that i could take that that the women that i work with could take that all of us could take to see to see the beauty and the painful things to continue to have our worlds expand and grow and to find joy and to name the pain and to speak the truth and to know that we can survive it all thank you yeah thank you man you guys are making me feel real good it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists one thing i've noticed lisa in in you since 2014 where which was sort of the climax of this story the when all the shit hit the fan relationally with all you know and the world fell apart for us um is how lucy's birth in particular and and the pain that we had experienced made us and made you see those on the underside of power those who are not as privileged as we had lived most of our especially married lives with and how that affected your your view not of just lucy and down syndrome and ableism but i feel like your your passion for feminism and social justice and racial equality and you know you've always been a person that has been passionate about social causes but there was something that changed a little bit after lucy and i perceived did you perceive that and could you speak to that yeah yeah he he he perceived that because there were times i was yelling yelling at him something in me perceives as i'm screaming [Music] i descend you are changing life that's awesome oh man yeah i've definitely put michael through it sometimes because my sensitivity i mean the pendulum swung swung hard oh man yeah where do i want to start on that um i never fully understood ableism i i went to school for interior architecture and we had to take a codes class and i remember one day they had us all there was for an hour we had to get in a wheelchair and wheel ourselves around downtown and it was really difficult and that is the only time in my life i had a small taste of what that would be like and so we have these experiences where you know we get little tastes here and there and then i have we have lucy and then we moved to los angeles where i realized okay we have to really start early looking for schools looking where where she gonna belong which where can she go um even so i so i started having really terrible experiences at the schools i went to and not not only at the schools but the therapy sessions that we went to um so first of all the schools sometimes i would have lucy with me sometimes i wouldn't if i had lucy with me and told them i was interested in lucy coming to their school they would actually frown and that thing that you said mike that really struck me like there's some things that have happened in my life that i'm like yeah resilient i can get over that that like hit me like a knife in the heart someone frowning at no no oh no she's she's not her existence what we want here her existence isn't enough even if i would have had a very bright talented child then they would want her so i never saw that to that extent before um and it was i it was awful i left those three schools just like i didn't know what to do with myself i felt like i was about to just have a breakdown and then feeling on top of that oh so many people have felt this their whole lives they've not been wanted here they don't belong in this world um yeah i mean one time i was holding lucy and i sat on the on the sidewalk and just cried and then at the therapy some of the therapy places i went there's one like the regional center here in los angeles where we go and they evaluate the children is unbelievably uh it's it's it's it's so terrible that they the t the people who work there are underpaid they have terrible offices the parents who come are wheeling their their children in wheelchairs there's no parking for them it's all street parking in los angeles that's you to park sometimes three blocks away so i was upset because i had to walk three blocks with my child who can walk you know i mean lucy will you know get stubborn and sit down and and so when i got in i was like oh my gosh this is really far and then i realized there's people on crutches wheelchairs parents who have to carry their children in and you're going through this entrance that's it's trash bins the entrance is all trash bins a teacher or a therapist has to come out unlock the door for you it's not even an electric gate that opens up to make it easy even for the therapist nothing is easy about it and so i got in there and i was like what is going i i voiced that to them i was like this is is this where you guys normally meet or is this like a temporary are you guys having some construction happening they're like no no this is how it always is and i was like this is terrible this is not acceptable for you guys or the families and they were like oh my gosh could you could you please tell someone we've we we need funding we need and it's like so not only do you have a single mother on that's that's barely making it and has a child with special needs pulling herself together and going to like i mean there's like a million appointments that you have to attend um and all of the appointments are then telling you where your child measures up to all of the typical kids which for the first two years left me devastated every time you know you feel this like you're incompetent like you're not doing enough i need to do more so you're stressed out the whole time and because that's all it is is where does your child fit according to all of our charts so not only are you going to this appointment that encompasses all of that but it's hard to get there like it's just really hard so i think yeah so there's that piece i didn't see how hard all of that was and it really broke my heart for all the families who have walked this road before us and have harder circumstances than we do wow so i raged against that and still rage against that i could feel my heart pounding right now and then um i i don't i think there was this whole new thing that opened up for me as i wrote the book uh about equality with the sexes and that i that that was that was unexpected for me um because when we first moved to los angeles we were still looking for a church and when i was writing this book i was still looking for a spiritual community that looked like the traditional church and every time we would go back like i would drag michael and the girls i'm like no i just miss it i miss community i miss i miss singing with people i love singing uh with a large group of people which is a funny thing to really miss but i i love it and we would go and we would sit down and just like clockwork i would feel my body start to shut down um starting to read that book the body keeps the score so i started understanding what was happening because for so long i felt like this is just my cynicism against the church i didn't fully understand why i was responding the way i was responding but what kept going off in me was i'm second here oh my god i'm second i'm second here and i didn't i didn't feel that when i was little because the pastors of the church we had was a man and a woman and the woman was a strong ate and she was just like bold and everything and she got a lot of shit from the community for being a woman pastor i didn't really feel patriarchy happen until i started going to public school because i was homeschooled for a long time which is interesting thing to say uh because like my mom couldn't buy anything without my dad getting upset so like i felt this freedom in the church but in home dad definitely was the leader so then we go to college and michael and i start working at these mega churches and that's where i really start seeing it and then we plan to church in denver and i don't realize why i don't feel like this is equal and i don't i feel like is it because i'm a woman and i'm told time and time again no it's not but that that gut thing where you're like but you're looking at all the men and you don't look at all the women and you're only getting advice from all the men and no advice from the women so it writing this book as i'm looking back on all these memories i i saw i finally saw it and i think that that was really hard to come to terms with uh my own my own blindness my own times where i didn't listen to my own body um and i started telling myself you're crazy you don't you can't trust your own self is the story i started telling myself and i had that story reinforced by other men in my life um no you can't trust yourself you're an emotional woman and the realization of that was like a new a whole new breaking open of anger and grief and freedom you know um and it was hard to hard and beautiful to get into this new space where if i feel like i'm facing what do i say facing a patriarchal situation but that just exists always so i don't know what to say but it is an acutely patriarchal situation that i have learned and i'm still learning to to remain calm through it and not just be triggered by it because i know triggering i know the triggering circumstances that i've been in uh rooms rooms full of men and all of us talking about them saying how patriarchy doesn't exist but but this is why women can't be a present the president because look at you lisa you're getting upset by this very conversation if so the irony here is that i actually agree that women are emotional and can't trust themselves i just also think that's true about men and all people like it's such a ridiculous notion that oh yeah but super objective yeah right yes yeah right i was in that room where that man said that and i feared for his life because i saw the look at lisa's eyes i stood up and yelled it was it was literally a circle of men sitting in a room i was the o the only woman and when he said that i stood up and i was like nah and we got in trouble because security that was there like you guys want to be quiet and he's like see that's proof wow mike is shaking he's rocking and shaking a very very intense level of unlike oh what's the story now if the story then was i can't trust myself and i think you say in the book too like you learn to bury parts of who you are to be a member of the tribe to to be a part of this community what's what's the story now it's very different now i i think i can go into those conversations with more understanding of the system and people's programming um can you trust yourself now yes i i think there are times i can i know when i'm getting worked up i think i can finally recognize or am recognizing within myself that feeling of going off the rails and being very overly emotional the books i've read now i think i realize okay i just need i need to calm down before i can [Music] listen to myself because if i'm listening to myself while i'm raging uh then that would be sometimes destroy lots of things so i think i've i've been able to allow allow myself to be angry but i'm able to recognize how to get back to a centered place and still hold rage does that make sense so i'm not i'm not like just there's a difference i feel this difference of i'm just rageful or i'm angry about this about the system and it's making me spiral into the abyss and then there's a place i can be centered and still be angry about the system and hold it in the one thing right the as the wave crashing and and the beauty and the pain and the unfairness and the fairness of all of life i i think like i feel like it's like this ball of swirling waves that i can hold like in front of my chest and be more centered and thoughtful about it rather than me flailing and spiraling [Music] measurements you wake up flawless post up flawless flossin on that flawless queen bee that's beyonce for anyone who doesn't know if you don't know get out of here i'm sorry judgment it's fair though earth can often feel like a stage instead of what she really is the womb we were born from it can feel like she turned on us from day one let all of the people measure us poke us test us to see where we fit on the human scale but i don't think she turned i think she screamed and yelled to all of us look look don't you see what i have given you if only you could see maybe you would stop turning your face toward the sky and asking to be blessed don't you see that you are don't you see that i have i was born two months early and four pounds light jumped right into the measurement system from the word go just like everyone else did my mother said people would stop on her walks to admire her new little bundle of joy only to gasp in horror at how gaunt and frail i was after she unveiled my face my cheeks gained the weight first and so donned the nickname bug eyes and chipmunk cheeks my parents did a lot to help me catch up and i continued having that catching up feeling well into high school i learned quickly that there are two kinds of people in the world winners and losers i heard sports was supposed to bond people but i just didn't see that happening at least not for me i knew which category i was in and it wasn't the winners but i found where i belonged in church not even realizing i was still buying into the winners and losers system it was just the godly version i got my feelings of belonging from believing i was part of the elite the ones who had the truth so everyone else could play sports all they liked i had the truth of the cosmos in my hands [Music] there's a chart for almost everyone tests for almost everything so we know exactly where we stand compared with everyone else so we can know if we are special in this world special how many people have spent their entire lives needing to know they are worth something not ever feeling like their lives belong on this life producing planet i have found my own charts i live with them every single day so for all of my programmed reasons i needed to know what to expect just what the charts were for my lucy i sat on the sofa in the hospital and googled life expectancy for people with down syndrome according to the global down syndrome foundation quote today the average lifespan of a person with down syndrome is approximately 60 years as recently as 1983 the average lifespan of a person with down syndrome was 25 years the dramatic increase to 60 years is largely due to the end of the inhumane practices of institutionalizing people with down syndrome i read on about the tests the lobotomies the precious lives used for research i know we are still evolving as humans but come on we still eat our own inhumane practices in the name of progress i sat there staring at the hospital wall wondering what the future would hold for someone like me living in this world of progress just how long until my iq isn't high enough my body not able enough my life not producing enough to deem me a valuable human being i found myself thinking okay well she has this syndrome but maybe she will be on the high functioning side of it oh god please please please let her be on the high side but the earth spoke back don't you see what she is i realized i was buying into the same garbage i was fighting i wanted lucy's life to be valuable but i have ill-defined what valuable is and this idea comes only because i have felt this in myself we have all felt it our value lies in our ableness it lies in whether we wow someone with our ability or disappoint them with inability we are the tree ashamed of its branches we have bought into this idea that our bodies and lives need to measure up to something but when i look at my girls i already see it pure beauty if you were to hold yourself as a baby in your arms you surely wouldn't have some of the ideas you now have about yourself i think you'd see things differently i'm sure my mother looked at my chubby naked baby body and loved every inch and now i can stare at my naked self and see so many flaws shrink and disappointment at what isn't big enough for small enough for just what wobbles when i don't want it to she is so behind or she is doing so well according to which measuring stick exactly to what we civilized humans think thriving is our measuring stick is limited to the able the sound mind and the healthy and so we have people swarming the measuring stick wondering whether they stand out fit belong at all the game is played everywhere the future i will visit schools looking for a good place for lucy to thrive i will leave many of them telling myself to breathe deeply others i will leave with hot angry tears it will be after the fourth private school and the third public school furrows their brow and says there really isn't a place for lucy that i will stop and realize something the system isn't broken the system was built this way and i'll walk away feeling the unfairness of it all lucy will be put into a category and not even given a chance the beautiful tree shoved into the shadows with rationed sunlight and water [Music] it makes me think about all of the other children who were never given a chance all the people with illness or physical difficulty the mothers and fathers who faced racial discrimination and i'm just now getting a little taste of bias [Music] i'm really excited for you to hear the feedback from other people as the masses read it and to have this experience of seeing how your journey and all of the growth even through the writing of the book can continue to teach you can come back to you through other people's stories and insights and seeing things that you might not have seen i mean i've told you but i'll tell you in front of everyone else as well how proud i am of you for this book i think it's absolutely amazing and wonderfully beautifully written um thank you for being vulnerable with it thank you for all the work you put into it i saw it firsthand how much of your soul went into this book and on behalf of the world thank you because i know it's it's inspired my heart and opened my heart to read it and i've lived a lot of it um but for you to put the lens that you did through telling these stories and how these stories have opened up your eyes again not just to lucy but to the world to to the other to yourself to the all um well done i'm proud of you and thanks for sharing it with us thank you baby i was gonna ask what it was like what it's like michael to see your story as it's lived through lisa's eyes this is the two of you meeting and even like all sorts of other parts of your journey together yeah i love it it's interesting seeing yourself written about yeah through somebody else's eyes and i think she does a really good job of letting the reader into her eyes you know letting her letting letting us see the world through her eyes so seeing myself through her eyes is an interesting little feedback loop that happens and yeah i mean i was i felt loved i felt seen our experiences took on even another dimension my memories kind of took on a another layer of perspective in my book that's coming out i've written about a couple of these same stories because they're kind of have to they're foundational to our lives and um reading her book has allowed me to see uh subtleties in our experiences that i probably wouldn't have even picked up on and sometimes he's in my experience i'm really thankful that i could glimpse so deeply into her heart and and words and story to be able to to understand her more um so that we can be good partners in in moving forward and how to how to be a team to parent these girls in this world with all the problems that this world has and with all the fights that we know we're going to have to engage in to make a way for them to have a fair shot and a fair shake and things i'm really thankful that i could glimpse so deeply into her heart and and words and story to be able to to understand her more yeah it is really strange seeing i mean you wrote a bit about me in your first book it's quite unnerving even though like we can have these conversations all the time there's just this difference that happens and so even reading your new book now as i've read through it it's weird our experience of what happened is because you go you go into this other like realm when you're at least i did i felt very out of body through a lot of the experiences with lucy so when when you say like i looked at lisa and this is what i saw in her but this is how i felt it's i mean i just like immediately cry all the time because it's just it's it's beautiful to share and suffering with someone and you know to have someone articulate it at first when we were thinking about writing this he he was like we should let's just write a book together i mean everything we've done has been together so i felt really strongly that i needed to do this um even one for just having have knowing that i can do something apart because i didn't feel like i could everything even all of our songs everything we've done it's like oh no no i need i need someone else i'm i'm the helper i'm the two i can't stand on my own it was the feeling that kept coming up so there were many times i was like no no we're just let's just write it together it's gonna be better it's gonna be it'll be really cool to have both of our stories in it but i love i've love i love that this is my story my perspective on it and i love reading yours i really liked that when i was going through yours it's interesting getting the other side of it thank you thank you for writing this thank you for letting us in i can't wait to ask all the women all the people that i see in therapy to read this as a way to help support the work that we do for them to see the story to know that they can endure hard things and and so as a therapist i'm grateful that you wrote this as a human i'm so i feel so privileged to be able to know you and and to be a part of the story and and to learn from you so thank you so much lisa oh thank you thank you so much thank you guys for doing this interview i feel like i gotta get in [Laughter] i slept with one of the guys in order to get an interview on this podcast for all the people always wondering how you get your book pitch to this podcast all you have to do is marry one of the hosts amazing that's all i'm just kidding they would have done it anyway i really am grateful i'm grateful that you guys gave the space to talk about this and and all of you have been so encouraging very very encouraging especially in times where i didn't want to say certain things i think every single one of you said said specific things to me to help me keep going and i really appreciate that wow i love you guys oh i love you lisa we've been speaking with performing artists songwriter and author lisa gunger about her new book the most beautiful thing i've seen which is available in stores everywhere tomorrow june 26th you can learn more about the book by going to lisagunger.com where you can not only see a trailer read a little more but also find links to places that the book is available this episode has been hosted by science mike myself vishnu das and hillary mcbride congratulations mama on your book i'm so glad that i am your daughter and that you get to release this book i'm so proud of you i'm mama this is lisa gunger i am so proud of you congratulations on your amazing book release it was such a beautiful read i loved every part of your journey and your story and i'm so glad that you're in my life i hope the world really sees your heart in this book and i hope they're blessed and inspired to go on their own journey of seeing beauty in and through all things hey lisa it's bree and jamie we're so honored to walk through this life with you we're so proud of you and we're so happy that the world can hear the story well done lisa oh my god okay it's me rachel and i'm just i just want to tell you that i am so proud of you it's been such an honor to witness your life and i'm gonna cry i love you so much not every day is that a four pound beautiful little girl enters your life that's lisa didn't mind this numerical child has grown into a beautiful person i couldn't be more proud of my daughter i love you lisa dad hey sister just wanted to call and say how very proud i am of you proud of your courage to tell your story the stories are amazing they make you laugh they make you cry many times i even caught myself thinking wow she is even better at telling stories than dad is probably because the stories are true proud that you continually strive to see the good of people and so very proud of the sister wife and mother that you are your compassion and heart for others is beyond inspiring you are without a doubt the most amazing people i know hey lisa it's trump jesse i love you hey lisa it's jenny lisa it's mr tom hey lisa it's rhett it's your brother david it's mom this is lisa lisa congratulations congratulations i love you so much i can't even begin to put words to what you have meant to me we are so freaking proud of you so freaking proud [Music] you