Transcript - Episode 19: I Guess It’s a Good Thing I Have a Therapy Appointment Tomorrow
Hey, It’s Me
EPISODE # 19
Hosts: Mike Sakasegawa and Rachel Zucker
Transcript by: Leigh Sugar
Transcripts formatted after those from Disability Visibility Project
Please note: transcripts are transcribed directly from recordings of live conversations; as a result, quotes and statements may be approximate and there may be unintended memory errors.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Hey, it's me. So a while back, we were talking about some stuff related to parenting, but I think more specifically about motherhood, and it dovetailed with some stuff that I had been thinking about anyway, related to mothers, and maybe the pressure that especially moms, feel to be perfect. And there's a lot in here. You've talked about motherhood a lot, you know, in your work and with me and probably on the show before, and there's a lot in here too, about the ways that we fuck our kids up, the way that we are fucked up by our parents. Maybe the ways that we can try to figure out how to deal with that later on in life. But I think that there's a lot in here that we could talk about.
So. What do you think?
Talk to you soon.
[Music]
RACHEL ZUCKER: I just wanna warn you that no matter how tragic and tough this, or dark or difficult or complex, this conversation goes, I am not sure I'm gonna be able to stop smiling, so be warned.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You look good.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Thank you. I feel so fucking good [laughs]. Yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah. Your skin looks really good.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Thank you. Thank you.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I actually don't think that it's likely that this is gonna go to some really dark places. I mean, it may, it may reference some dark things. It probably will, but I actually find this to be a topic that is one that I think is gonna be very useful, both for us and for our, you know, what we were calling hypothetical listeners, and then actual listeners, and now that we've been on such an inconsistent schedule, like probably they're hypothetical again [laughs].
But so a while ago, so it's the 26th right now, and I went back and listened to this message. So this was three weeks, one day ago, 22 days ago. You had left me a message where you were talking about some stuff that I found really interesting, and you were talking about the promises that people make when they have kids, and you were talking about, you know, your own parents' promises and whether they did or didn't live up to those, or whether they were, whether those were good promises to make.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: What they had to do in order to keep those promises, if they did. Then you talked about your own promises, your primary promises to your own children, but also, you know, how in some ways those aren't really promises you make to your kids, but to yourself. But also then you talked about something that you've talked about a lot with me on this show, we talked about it on probably every single one of your many appearances on Keep the Channel Open, you've talked about it in a lot of your writing -
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: About your identity as a mother, how that your identity and your role as a mother have been your primary identity for a long time. Something that you used to actually say was that your gender was mother, although I feel like you haven't been saying that as much lately, which has been interesting to me.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And how these promises that you've made are so central to your conception of motherhood, your conception of yourself as a mother, your role as a mother, and how the idea that you may or may not have been able to keep these promises, and maybe don't even want to keep them anymore, is very threatening to your conception of yourself.
So I want to talk about all of this stuff and in, and in particular I want to talk about, I mean, parenthood in general. A lot of the things that you talked about were about parenthood, but also how motherhood is different from general parenthood. And I want to talk about, you know, one of the things that that has come up for me, not just in conversations with you, but with basically everybody who is a mother, and has actually been a subject of online discourse… maybe it's blown over a little bit, but a couple months ago it was a big topic of discourse, how all the mothers are miserable.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Which, that of course then generated a lot of pushback on what that even means, and that kind of thing. But that every mother that I know, especially and, and more so the mothers who I think of as being particularly great parents, feel bad about themselves, feel really like they are bad mothers [laughs]. And I wanted to dig into that too. How does that sound? [Laughs].
[5:15]
RACHEL ZUCKER: That sounds great. And if it's okay with you, I think it might be helpful for me to give some concrete examples from my own life, because you did an amazing job summarizing the concept, and this idea of the promises. And, you know, it occurs to me that there is probably a psychotherapist out there who has used a more subtle term than promise, and that has written about this. I actually have a pretty good knowledge of psychotherapy and the history of psychotherapy, but I haven't seen this exactly, this concept expressed this way. But how do you feel about that? Can I…
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I think that would be fantastic.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. Okay. So I wanna also say, you know, yes, I've written about this, I've written about my own experiences as a mother. I wrote a sort of hybrid lyric genre memoir called MOTHERs. And I wanna also say that Alice Notley recently turned into an owl and transitioned into the afterlife. And, Alice Notley is sort of at the heart of my book MOTHERs, which is kind of about, you know, why was I searching for a mother and a mother figure when my own mother was at that time alive?
So I've written a lot about motherhood, both, you know, as a mother becoming a mother, the kind of institution of motherhood, You know, a lot of my, I've read a lot about this… Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, which is about the experience and institution of motherhood. And I've had a lot of therapy around this. And then maybe we'll talk about this in another episode, I'm not gonna go into this right now, but a lot of what I'm about to say has also come to me through a series of guided psychedelic experiences, which for me were very critical in understanding in a non-intellectual but intellectual way, some of these experiences that I've had, and that maybe even happened before I was born, which was important for me to understand, and as well as my newish practice of Buddhism, and particularly a practice developed or brought to us by Lama Tsultrim Allione, called Feeding Your Demons, in which you personify a demon, a psychological demon, and then you go through a process. It's very similar to parts therapy in psychoanalysis, but it's slightly different.
And so I just wanted to bring up like, there are all of these practices and experiences that have kind of led me into some of this understanding for myself, which I think could be helpful. And I'll say one other precursor to this, to explaining and giving examples, is that a lot of this came up more clearly because I wanted to explain to my three sons some things about me that might explain the parenting that they've experienced from me, and also might help them understand the places in which I was kind of struggling and still stuck and wanting to move away from, and why certain things were very hard for me.
And I did sit my three sons down and had this conversation, and it was very painful for me. Very exposing, I felt very anxious about, kind of oversharing with them. And later when I left you the message, I was pretty revved up around having done this. Now a few weeks later, I think it was actually very useful that I did have that conversation with them, although it was extremely uncomfortable, and at the time I kept thinking like, okay, this, these insights are really important, but they, I should have had this conversation with Mike, not with my kids. But I don't think that anymore. I think that it was okay that I did that. Okay. So I'm gonna give you an example from my own life, from my mother's side and from my father's side, and talk about how both of these things have affected my mothering of my sons.
So my mother was born in 1942 and she grew up in various suburbs of, in New Jersey, various towns in New Jersey. She was the oldest of three children and her, she was very artistic and very outspoken and kind of a free spirit.
[10:00]
She got sent home from summer camp one year for taking her shirt off and playing tennis in her bra. She was very performative. And one of the things that was very, very difficult in her childhood from the time she was a young child until her teenage years, was that her father would hit her from time to time, with his hand or with his belt. And the story as I understand it, is that she was very close to her father, but she would like misbehave in some way during the day when she was at home with her mother. She was not close to her mother. Her mother was a very difficult and frightening person. And then when the father would come home from work, her mother would tell the father to hit her and say, you know, Diane did this and this, you know, you have to hit her.
And this was, you know, extremely traumatic for my mother. And when my mother became a mother, which I think she had very, very mixed feelings about becoming a mother. You know, it was the early seventies. My mother was an artist. She wanted to be free. She wanted to dedicate herself to becoming a storyteller and an author. It's not that she knew she didn't want children, but she was very afraid of having children. And she had told me several times over the course of my life that the one thing she knew about having a child was don't hit the child. And she didn't, to my knowledge, she did not hit me.
She was often very rough with me, you know, very rough, cutting my hair, combing my hair, brushing my hair, you know, rough when she would pick me up. She was very, very scary to me. This I remember as a child, she would lose her temper. She would scream and yell and she was, you know, often neglectful. And would lose me in grocery stores, left me on a plane once in New Caledonia. My babysitter would be very, very angry with my mother, and I remember this too. I remember my babysitter really screaming at my mother for leaving me alone in the bath as a very young child.
So I did not feel safe with my mother. But I did not realize until really a few years ago, that it wasn't just a feeling that I had, that my mother was very unpredictable, that she was very neglectful, that she was very forgetful, that she was very self involved, and you know, those things are scary enough, but I didn't understand until a few years ago that while it is true that she did not hit me, it is also true that I think she wanted to a lot of the time, and that I felt that, and that in my interactions with her, I think this is also part of why she traveled so much, part of why she removed herself from me so much, was that there was this deep promise that she had made to me not to hit me, and it was a struggle for her. I don't know how completely conscious this was, but it was very physically present in our relationship this, there was a rage and an anger, and a just barely suppressed violence that I felt with my mother.
And my experience as a young child who didn't of course know any of these things, was that my mother really didn't love me. She didn't like me, she didn't love me, she didn't wanna be around me. I couldn't understand why she was always leaving, even when she wasn't leaving the country. My primary experience of my mother was of her absence, and of trying to get her attention, and of wanting to be with her and of her, you know, really pushing me away and, and of feeling very abandoned and very unsafe around my mother.
So briefly, my father is the, was born in, at the end of 1940 in the south of France. My grandmother, his mother, had been pregnant and left Nazi occupied Paris with her two older daughters, my father's sisters, and went on her own, hugely pregnant, from Paris to the south of France. My grandfather was in the front lines at the time in the French Army. And you know, let's just say that my father had an extremely, by all accounts, traumatic first year of life.
[14:54]
Three days after he was born, they left Nice, they went to Portugal, his sister got sick, they had to stay in Portugal for, I believe, three months. They finally managed to get visas to come to the United States. They got turned around, they went to Cuba. They, and they came back to the United States.
Meanwhile, my grandfather is trying to get his seven sisters and their families out of Europe. And my grandmother is getting news, either she can't find out what's happening to her eight siblings, and one of them has been killed by the Nazis. And you know, this is like what you call trauma, you know, but to hear my father describe his childhood, it is like ideal, nothing bad ever happened to him. His mother was a saint. His father was a fascinating, wonderful man. He went into business with his father, and my grandparents never talked about the war. Never.
And I think that the promise that my father made when he became, first of all, he was obsessed with wanting to have three children. He only had one, me. He definitely wanted a son, but did not have a son. So we've got some problems already going on there. But I think he, on some level, his vow was to maintain the illusion that everything was always fine, and everything was always good. And growing up, the way this expressed itself was that he was very funny. He was very loving. He was very generous. He was kind of a good time, but if anything difficult happened, he would just leave. He would immediately leave the apartment, and he traveled for long periods of time, and I had a very difficult time as a child understanding what was real and what was not real. And there was this extremely dark shadow of trauma and grief in my family. I spent a lot of time with my paternal grandparents. They were my safest people who I loved, you know, very deeply. There was this shadow and nobody ever talked about it.
Okay, so fast forward to me becoming a mother. I knew from the time I was a very young child that I wanted to become a mother. I'm not exactly sure where this came from, but I cannot remember a time in my life that that was not my primary desire, was to be a mother. And I don't think I realized this at the time, but I certainly see now, that some of the promises that I made to my children were that they would never feel what I felt as a child. So they would never feel abandoned under any circumstances. They would be able to tell me, you know, the truth of their emotional experiences, and I would listen, and I would believe them, and I would not disappear either physically or emotionally. You know, who, whoever they were, whatever they brought me. And also that I would take care of them. I, they would never feel neglected. They would never feel unsafe, right?
I wanted to be a good mother and these were, you know, the things that, that somehow I believed were absolutely necessary even to be a good enough mother. I knew I wasn't gonna be a perfect mother, but in my mind, you could not be a good enough mother if your child felt unsafe, unloved, or that they had to hide things from you, or that you weren't able to be in all of their reality with them every minute of the day.
So. You know, I think that these promises made me a very good mother in a lot of ways. I think they also gave, heightened my depressive disorder and heightened my anxiety disorder unnecessarily. I think it was impossible for me to keep these promises, just like they're always impossible, you know, these kinds of promises, you cannot keep them exactly. And then they, as I said, like they cause unintended negative consequences as well.
And so, you know, I have a child with metastatic cancer. I cannot fix it. I have two children who have had severe mental health problems. You know, even before Abram got sick. I set myself up for believing that these were my problems to solve, that, you know, and so I'll just, one's very specific example, and then, you know, I, I'll take a break from this jeremiad, which is, you know, now Abram and I need some separation.
[20:01]
It's good for both of us. We've been, you know, he's 24 years old, he's in remission. This is an amazing opportunity. You know, we don't know if the remission will last. We don't know how long it will last for. Hopefully it will last a long, long time. But no matter what, we both need some, some space. We need some physical space, and we need some emotional space.
I am not good at separation, because I have so much trouble with attachment, and at first, the only way I could conceive of this need for separation from Abram was to think, if I don't have this separation, I am literally going to break and I will not be able to continue to take care of him. So I need the separation so that I can continue to take care of him.
But actually, I need the separation without being on the verge of a breakdown. And he needs it too. And for me to be able to like not go into a guilt and shame spiral over the fact that I need deserve want, and can have some separation from Abram, and that it's good for him, it has been necessary for me to examine where all this guilt and shame comes from around, just like, I need a break with my kids, right? Because it feels to me like life or death. Like a betrayal, like, like the stakes are so high. Like if I, if I take one step away from one of my children when they are in distress, I don't know, I'll leave them forever. They'll feel abandoned, neglected, unseen, unheard. And they will have like a psychotic break.
Like the stakes emotionally are that high for me when I try to just imagine taking a step away, right? And that only makes sense to me in the context of like these intergenerational promises that we make and that we try to keep and, and how hard but possible it is to like relearn, to identify that I'm trapped in a kind of story, but if I see it and I practice with a lot of support and, and self-love, which is really the key here. I can, I can break this pattern. And there's a way in which, you know, we hear a lot about patterns of abuse, right? Like kids who are hit are more likely to hit their kids.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Or their partners.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Or their partners, right. So we know that there are patterns of abuse, but I think that it's not always that it's exactly the form of abuse that gets repeated. It's also the way in which these very wonderful attempts to break the patterns of abuse turn into maybe neurotic tendencies rather than pathologies. But still these very deep kind of habits, these entrenched ways of being, that are not healthy, that are, that are harmful.
And yeah, I mean I think, I think, you know, I spent so much of my life wondering like why I was so fucked up when, as far as I could remember, nothing overtly terrible had happened to me on the scope of, you know, being abused, you know, and I also spent a lot of time wondering why my kids seemed so fucked up, considering that from my perspective, you know, at, at the time when Moses and Abram became very, very depressed, I was still married to their dad. I knew that no one had ever hit them. I knew they had never been abandoned the way I had. They had, you know, they, I had, I had been vigilant about those kids and their safety, their physical and emotional and mental safety from the fucking moment they were born, vigilant, you know, and why were they still depressed? Why were they anxious? How did this happen? You know?
So I think it's, yeah, it's been really helpful to me to, to see the way these patterns get carried on, even if it's not in the way they're like the most extreme versions, in the way that we usually hear stories about intergenerational trauma and abuse.
[25:01]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah. There's like so many different directions that I kind of wanna go in off of this, but I had a couple questions first. And the first one was, you used the word attachment a bit ago. You said that you have a lot of difficulty with separation because you have so much trouble with attachment. And you have brought up two different frameworks of understanding certain things and, and moving through things and working on things. One being a psychotherapeutic framework, and one being a Buddhist framework, and attachment means something kind of different in those two frameworks. And I'm, I'm wondering which one of those you were thinking of?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Well, what part of what's interesting is that in my recent experience with Buddhism, which is mostly Vipassana Buddhism, they're actually not so dissimilar. And a lot of the dharma teachers that I work with are also psychotherapists. And there was an amazing moment in Costa Rica a few years ago where Lama Tsultrim was talking to psychology researcher and Buddhist practitioner, a guy named Dan… Oh my God, what is his last name? It'll come to me. And they were having a panel discussion, and Lama Tsultrim said, I think that, you know, the Buddha’s mother died not long after he was born, and he was raised by his aunt, who was like a foster mother to him, Maharajapati, and Lama Tsultrim said, I think that the Buddha had an attachment disorder.
The whole room made a sound like, are you kidding me? Like the, you know, Lama Tsultrim is the emanation of an 11th century, you know, Buddhist nun, you know, and, and Dan, the psychology researcher said, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So I think, I don't see Buddhist attachment... I, I know that like, yes, attachment leads to suffering. And so the practice of non-attachment is a deeply, you know, important part of Buddhist ideology. At the same time, I think it's really important to separate the monastic from the householder world of Buddhism. And this is part of what practitioners like Lama Tsultrim have been talking about and have been very helpful to me.
So, Lama Tsultrim had a baby who died of SIDs, and she, Lama Tsultrim, had been, you know, a, a Buddhist for three decades, or more, like a, a renowned Buddhist. And then, you know, much later her husband died and she was like, “It was devastating. It was devastating to lose this child. I, it was devastating to lose my partner. I had practiced non-attachment.” I had, you know, so I think healthy attachment, right? A healthy householder, non-monastic attachment in the world… we live in the world of attachments, right? Like unless we live in a monastery, unless we've renounced family and all these things, is very complicated, you know, I mean, Ram Das and Jack Kornfield have said over and over again stuff like, you know, it's easier to basically live in a Buddhist monastery and like meditate for 10 hours in the pouring rain and hold your seat as a Buddhist than it is to go home for Thanksgiving and see your family. Right. I don't see a total… I think that psychoanalysis and Buddhism are much closer, and I, and I'll say one other thing about this without getting like too much in the weeds [laughs].
I think that the Buddhist psychoanalysis, which is a field, a very thriving field, is a really important course correction from our friend Freud, whose ideas about, you know, attachment and particularly, you know, about parents and children, and particularly about mothers, like, you know, the idea that like a child would see a woman or their mother as a castrated man is so insane. I mean [laughs], I always thought this like, are you kidding me? Babies are like, men, where are your breasts? Like, that's just not, like babies are not interested in their mother not having a penis, you know, and this is all very heterocentric, but like, they're interested in whether a person has breasts or not, because that's where their food comes from. So Freud has really, there's some problems with Freud there. There's at least as many problems with Freud as with the Buddha [laughs].
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Okay. Gosh, that's gonna lead me off in another direction too, because I wanted to talk about the difference between motherhood and fatherhood.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
[30:03]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But the other thing from, you know, your first, you know, things you were saying at the beginning there is, you know, you were describing the ways in which you need to have separation, and how that was very difficult and felt very frantic, very desperate life and death. Obviously having this experience with Abram's illness would make that a lot sharper, but I've known you long enough now to know what it was like for you before Abram was diagnosed, and this was something that you were struggling with even at that time.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And I wonder how it is different, or the same, or any of these things… I feel like right now you're talking about it in a, in a different way. But the way that you were talking about it when things were at their sort of nadir in your caretaking of Abram was not actually that different from how you were talking about it before. It was just heightened, and all of these questions about like, what does it take to be a good mother? What do you have to do? And this is something that even I think on this show that we've even said, like, I think that you are an extraordinary mother and that nobody could have taken care of Abram better than you did.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Thank you.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: It's interesting to be sort of a little bit on the other side of all of this now, and I do sometimes wonder if like, sometimes we need to have some kind of extremely critical low point in order to, to, you know, wanting to say about addicts reaching rock bottom. I don't know.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: That’s not really a question, I guess, but it's something that I was thinking about as you were talking, you know.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. I mean, I, I think the low point for me came before Abram got sick. I think the low point for me, and it, it was a, it was a real breaking point, was when Moses was having intrusive suicidal thoughts, and it did something to me. I went into a state of trauma then, but I didn't see it that way at the time. But the idea that I, I knew intellectually that you can't always keep your kids safe, right? You know, like when I was 19, my best friend's boyfriend died in bed with her of a heart attack, of a probably congenital heart defect, you know, that was completely unknown. Another high school friend of mine died in a car accident driving back home from college. I understood from a young age that even young people die, and that, you know, those people's parents could not protect them. I think that, in a way -
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And also that the people who experienced those losses, their parents couldn't protect them from that.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Right, right. But there was this, somehow, this, it was it, it felt like a violation of this contract, of like, what made it possible for me to be alive, almost, like my own life and my existence, and my reason for being on this planet, was like destabilized when Moses was going through that. And you know, just trying to figure out like, when is it time to take him to the hospital, or what kind of treatment, or you know.
So, yeah, something broke in me like in a, in a very serious way. And that also was the beginning of the end of my marriage. I mean, the beginning of the end of my marriage started with the beginning of my marriage, but-
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I was just gonna say that [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. Yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: For both of us [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah [laughs].
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I mean both of our marriages [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. But I mean, it was something I could not come back from. The thing I could not come back from was that, and, you know, this might be important in our transitioning to talk about the difference between motherhood and fatherhood, although I'm not sure I have that much to say about that, but my husband did not share the experience with me. And his experience of Moses' illness was like, he was kind of like, what can I do? What do you expect me to do? And I couldn't understand that response. Like I couldn't understand it. I couldn't accept it, and I couldn't respect it, and I couldn't tolerate it.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I don’t respect it either [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: I mean, I just like, I just was like, who?... Like
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Like, you know what I think about your ex-husband? [Laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: I do. I do. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I had an idea of motherhood, which was, I have no limitations as a human being when it comes to the care of my children. I have no physical, psychological, or emotional limitations.
[35:00]
I keep hitting up against them, right? And then I'm like, so the fuck, what? You're tired. You're having a panic attack. You feel like you'd rather actually be hit by a car and be killed than have to deal with this kind of like, grief and suffering? So the fuck what? Get up and go get your kid. You know?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Or like, you know, whatever it is. Right?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And you literally, you literally did that.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You know, fighting off like a, a fainting several times.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. Yep, yep.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: With Abram.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yep. And a few times I slept on the floor outside of Moses's room when he was really, you know, suffering. I would, I would watch him everywhere he went, like, you know. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's possible, if not likely, that that level of vigilance and commitment and love also fucked up my kids. You know?
That they felt that, that it's possible that they, depression and anxiety is related to that on some level. I don't know. It's also true that like, I actually do have human limitations, and you know, people have been telling me this for years and saying things like, well, but you know, the whole oxygen mask thing, you gotta put on your oxygen mask before you put the kid's oxygen mask on. And I'm like, yeah, of course you have to put the fucking oxygen mask on first so that you can put your kid's oxygen mask on and then somehow fly the plane to safety because like, you know, like, because you gotta catch your kid to safety, right?
And I think that again, like my type of neuroses, my, the expression of my particular kinds of mental illnesses, have made me a highly functional person. And I think people have benefited, because instead of shutting down, I just activate, activate, activate and keep going. Keep, like, I just, you know, I just like do and do and do. But the truth is like, I cannot keep my kids alive. I just can't. I can't cure cancer. I cannot make my children, you know, want to live, you know, when they're deeply depressed. I can't, I can't redo their childhoods. I can't redo their genetics. I can't, you know, they are separate from me. They are their own people.
And like healthy separation is very, very new to me. And yeah, and, and like being able to tolerate the lack of control over this, let alone start to enjoy the separateness, enjoy my own life, not just feel of service to others. I watched an Ally Wong special last night and she said, you know, the problem with our generation of women is that, what does she say? Equal pay. I don't just want equal pay, I want equal pleasure.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And that whole concept is so new to me. Like even beginning to like imagine that I could say that and want that and get that and enjoy that is really like in the past few years only.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I think there's something that, it reminds me of like a, a lot of, I know, I know this is like a very, it's not like a necessarily a widespread thing, but I've just noticed that a lot of the women who I either know personally or know through social media have talked about who are older than me, have talked about something about the experience of going through menopause, sort of unlocks something about this for them.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You know, and they, they'll make jokes about, you know, entering their crone phase or whatever. But that you're, once you've moved past the stage in your life where your body is telling you that you're supposed to be fertile and you know, attractive to men, and then that you're supposed to be taking care of a child… once you get past that point, it, it unlocks something, which I, I do find very interesting, even though I, I know that for many women, menopause is also very, like, can have a lot of shame associated with it and a lot of changes in, in your own concept of self-esteem and your worth and things like that. The thing that you said -
RACHEL ZUCKER: A hundred percent, I mean, to completely oversimplify, I am now in my sexual prime, and I think, I mean for me, in part because I always wanted to have kids, sex was absolutely inextricable [00:40:00] from reproduction.
[40:01]
And you know, the transition -
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Well, we also, both of us had a lot of sexual dysfunction in our marriage, so -
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I, and I, I, I tolerated it and I didn't imagine more because that's, that's wasn't what sex was for me. But what were you gonna say?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Well, just, you know, you brought up your ex and I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and say that both of us think that I'm a much better parent than he was, or is.
RACHEL ZUCKER: [Laughs] Yes. Yeah. I think you are a wonderful, wonderful father. I love hearing you talk about your kids. I love getting to kind of share them through you. I mean, you're, I don't at all wanna say…
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I didn't wanna stop at that point, so, yeah.I mean, I appreciate the compliment and everything.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Sorry. Keep going, keep going, keep going. I have something else to say about that, sorry. Keep going, keep going, keep going. I have something else to say about that, but keep going.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: My point in bringing, in saying that is, I think that I am a good parent.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Irrespective of my gender, I think that I am a better parent than many mothers are.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I think that if I'm being honest with myself, I can say that, and it's not, it's not too much of an asshole thing, kind of to say. What you were saying about him, the thing that I can think about is, this idea that there should be no separation at all between a parent and child is just not something that our culture applies to fathers. It does to mothers. To all mothers, and this I think is so much why all of the mothers I know, especially the ones who I think of as particularly good, struggle so much, and the dads don't.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: If I have struggles along these lines about a healthy separation, from my children, and what I can and cannot accomplish for them, what I can and cannot protect them from, how I can help them and, and all of the ways that I feel inadequate as a parent, which I do, and you know that I do.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: This is something that's, that's individual for me. This is something that is a product of my specific set of inheritances and experiences, and it's not really something that I'm receiving from the culture, and I think that that makes it really different. It's not that I want to downplay my own struggles as a parent. All of the things that you were talking about are things that I relate to very deeply. You know, I think about my own parents and I think about, you know, my, my mother has often talked about her father and how his parents beat the hell out of him. He grew up in the Ozarks during the Depression, and he was born in 1926 and, you know, grew up in a really difficult time, in a really difficult area, and his parents definitely believed in corporeal punishment. He hit his kids.
But he didn't do it as bad as his parents did. That was something that my mother always, as critical as she was of her father for being a brooding drunk and depressive and angry and mean and abusive, that she also always made the point that he was trying to do better than his parents did.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: She always told me that when she had kids, she knew that she was never gonna hit them, and she was never gonna do these abusive things to me and my brother, and yet I grew up feeling enormously neglected by my mother, and I still feel very alienated by her. I, that my mother does not understand me, and I've sort of tried to make my peace with the idea that she never will, while also, you know, and, and if my mother was neglectful of me, like, I can say she didn't mean to, because it was that she had to work all the time. And poverty does that to people, you know, and there's, it's not her fault, but that is also something that does affect me. And, and I, I have wanted to be a parent for a long time as well.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I'm gonna need a second [laughs]. We all go into this saying, or at least maybe not all of us, but I know a lot of us go into this saying, I'm not gonna do that to my kids. The thing that was always really important to me was to treat my kids as though they were their own people from the time that they were very little, and to try and meet them where they are and understand, because I didn't want my kids to ever feel… I didn't want my kids to feel unseen. And I think for the most part, they don't.
[45:00]
There's a way in which, and I've, I've been joking about this since before I even had kids. There's a way in which we, we all kind of can't help fucking our kids up. Whether that's through the way we raise them, the way we just exist in the world, in their, in their view or our genetics. Though I do try to, like, we, we both know that like, you know, mental illness and anxiety and depression have a strong hereditary component.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: So, and, and, and that's the kind of thing that somebody maybe like you and me might say, like, well, that's the way that I fucked up my kids. But, but if, if we're, if we're, if we're taking maybe a slightly broader view, we can say, well actually maybe that's the way my parents fucked up my kids [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And their parents. But, you know, one of my kids right now is struggling with a lot of anxiety. And I have had to, I've had to really examine the ways in which I have contributed to that. My partner has helped me, has helped point out to me some of my own anxious tendencies and avoidant tendencies and, and things like that that were things that I hadn't realized despite having been through many years of therapy. And also, I'm, I too am, am deeply, deeply aware of the fact that I can never be the only influence on their lives, not least, which, like they have another parent -
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Who is in a different household now. But also much of the trauma of my own life came from not my parents. You know, I did get abused a lot, not by my parents, but, you know, I got abused by other kids at school and there are just things that I, I've always known I can't protect my kids from.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Right now I'm struggling with how to help my child through this anxious period to try and give my child the tools that she needs. And she's of course, very resistant to that [laughs]. A lot of the things that you've been going through are things that I, you know, in different ways have also felt that I'm going through as, as well.
And I, when I'm thinking about these stories that you're telling me about, the promises that your parents made, it's just so striking to me that the things that we do as parents, whatever their intention might be, is not necessarily what comes across. When I think about the story that you're telling me about your mom, about how your mom made a promise not to hit you, but that she wanted to hit you, but didn't, right? What you're describing, you felt was that she wanted to hit you.. And what she, I have to imagine would've been feeling was, “I'm not.”
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And what you're describing about her not being around you is abandonment.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Which, it makes perfect sense, right? And whether or not she was conscious of it, I have to hear, what I hear in this story is she's trying to protect you.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: By removing herself from this situation. Even the story, I think that this was something that you shared in the previous episode, and we can cut this if I end up cutting that out of that episode, but about you being locked out of a room and sobbing and trying to get into the room and being completely ignored.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I don't know what was going on inside that room. I, neither of us know whether your mother was struggling with that or whether it was fine for her. You know, my own mother has described locking herself in her bedroom and hearing me and my brother just like whispering outside the door like, “I want to talk to her. No, you have to leave her alone. You have to leave.” You know, things like that. And just putting her face in the pillow and sobbing.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Because it was too overwhelming. These are the kinds of things that end up feeling like neglect and abandonment to the child, even if it's something that, it's just maybe whatever my mother or your mother had to do in the moment. And being able to hold all of that at the same time and say, I can see that this is what you needed to do, and it really hurt me deeply.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Is such a hard thing to do.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I don't know how, I don't know. This thing that you're saying about practicing self-love, practicing healthy attachment, healthy separation, it seems so crucial. I wonder if there's a way to do that, you know, in ways that end up not fucking up our kids. But then again, I think maybe there's not, maybe that's okay. And at some point our kids just like, we had to go through some sort of therapeutic process to begin healing from these things, and we're gonna carry 'em around all the time, but at some point, we have to take responsibility for ourselves. At some point, my kids and your kids have to take responsibility for themselves as well. I don't know, but…
Something, something, something that I both struggle with and try not to struggle with is just this difference between, you know, I say your experience and my experience. There's a lot about your experience that has always resonated with me. I think that in, you know, our, our exes are different people, but there are ways in which I think each of us, despite our, our different genders, each of us is the parent who has more skill at meeting another person where they are.
[50:27]
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: It's a little challenging for me, just that, I don't know, I find myself so angry with so many men and so many fathers for not feeling the way that I feel about my kids, you know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And yet also feeling the sort of cosmic injustice that, this way that I feel is an unjust thing that the world requires of mothers, you know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And I don't, I don't fully know what to do with all of that. I guess it's a good thing that I have a therapy appointment tomorrow [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Um, it's totally okay if you didn't, but did you listen to that Daily… what was it?
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I did. I wrote down this, this quotation from it. Can I read it?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Sure.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: This is the thing, it is this therapist named Terry Real from the May 25th episode of The Daily, where they were replaying an episode of Modern Love. And he said his own quotation, he was, it was very funny. He was saying, like, “If I can, you know, be so pretentious that is to quote myself. Family pathology rolls from generation to generation, like a fire in the woods taking down everything in its path until one person… until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. that person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.”
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. So I really loved that interview with Terry Real. I had read some of his work when my kids were younger, and I, I like him a lot and he particularly, you know, specializes in treating men and boys, and trying to help men become less toxic individualistic, and more relational, and so, you know, one of the things that I found helpful in that was he talked about individuals who kind of come from shame, and individuals who come from grandiosity, or maybe with shame and with grandiosity is maybe a better way of putting it. And, you know, you and I have talked a lot about like, you know, do the women in your life forget that you're a man because they like, complain, you know about all the men, and then they're like, but not you Mike. But not you.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But also yes, me.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yes. Right. But I do feel that this construct is, is one of several helpful ways of thinking about why it is that you and I feel very aligned in our parenting and in other ways. And I think one of them is that clearly we both come with a lot of shame. And not necessarily with a lot of grandiosity. It's not to say that we, I'll speak for myself. You know, I have some grandiosity.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: We both have some grandiosity.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Okay. Okay.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: It's come out, it's come out on this show from both of us [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Okay. Okay. Well, in any case, we're usually so anxious about our grandiosity, our moments of grandiosity [laughs]. We feel very comfortable with the shame, even though we don't like it. And I think, you know, self-love and self-compassion are essential, especially when, you know, maybe also with, with grandiosity. But absolutely when you are highly motivated by and, and just like swimming in shame. And you know, I remember when I was having this particular conversation with my three sons and, you know, I'm telling them these things about my childhood and about all of this stuff, I had this moment where I really kind of like, almost was outside of my body and I, it was like this voice that was like, have you lost your fucking mind? You are talking about yourself and your childhood at this moment? When one son has metastatic cancer, one son is like on the verge of graduating from high school and is just all he wants from you is for you to stop talking about feelings.
[55:00]
He's just desperate for you to shut the fuck up about feelings, and he, you're like your mother! You are exactly like your mother. Because my mother was so narcissistic and it was all about her, and it was all about her. You know, she talked endlessly about her childhood, and I even said this to my sons, like when I was younger, when I was your age, I thought, there is no way I am still gonna care about these things about my parents when I'm in my fifties. Like, I'm not gonna care.
And I care more now than I did when I was a teenager and in my twenties! It's a different kind of caring, and it's a, and and you know, I had this moment of such intense self-hatred that I was imposing this on my children and, you know, my, my therapist is so great and kind and funny. She's like, no narcissist worries as much as you do that you're a narcissist [laughs]. Like, like I am constantly like, oh my God, I'm a narcissist. Oh my God, I'm a narcissist. I, that was a, oh my God, you know, what will people think of me? I'm a narcissist. You know? [Laughs].
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You do that with me a lot too [laughs]. You know?
RACHEL ZUCKER: I know!
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: So you, you, you send me these messages where you're like, you're very clearly in the grips of something really serious that you know I care about. And then you're like, I mean, Jesus Christ. How many times over the past nine months have you sent me a message where you're like, your, your child has cancer, and you're like, oh, but I'm not talking about your stuff at all.
RACHEL ZUCKER: [Laughs]. I know, I know. Okay, so this is, this is what I'm saying, right? So I described this whole situation to my therapist and I was like, I, I am just so ashamed. And she was like, wait, what are you ashamed of? And I'm like, I, I just imposed myself on my children, and maybe I parentalized Moses because he was like nodding and supporting me. Oh my God. I've parentalized him. He's 25 years old. He's about to go to grad school to become a therapist, and I'm like, horrified that I've traumatized Moses. I've traumatized Abram, I've traumatized Judah. Like I, I, I'm just like, my intention was to share something with them as a way of connecting with them, as a way of explaining something, as a way of giving them also a little bit of like, kind of self knowledge and almost ammunition against me? And maybe a way to like, push me away a little bit when they need to.
So it came absolutely from being a good mother, being a caring, thoughtful person, I thought a lot about how, what I wanted to say to them and sort of how I wanted to say it. And most of the time, when I'm not in a trauma state, I know I am a really good mother, not a perfect mother, but a really good mother. But in that moment, I felt the shift in my body. I went out of my body and I just, I was like, filled with, I, I literally was like, I wish I was dead. Like, I need to make time, go back, and not have this conversation with my children, and not have done this, and maybe not even had children and maybe not even ever been born. Like it was that level of like anger with myself and terror and frustration and, and shame. Just real, like horrific shame.
And my therapist was like, okay, first of all, you have three sons. This is not the first time that you've had these big conversations with them. They've seen you cry many, many times. They've seen you get emotional many, many times. This is not new to them. This is not out of character for you. You know, maybe this intensity and this kind of information was, you know, new and it might not have been what they wanted to hear. But you have three sons who sat there the whole time. They didn't leave the room. They asked questions, they responded, this is like, what are you ashamed of? Like, where is this shame coming from?
And you know, it's always for me, when I get flipped out of the parent, mother role, adult role into the child role, and I start to imagine that my children feel about me the way I felt about my parents. And they don't. They just don't. And I, I know, but like [01:00:00] Abram is good at telling me the things that are very annoying about me. My other two don't find me that annoying. You know? Or if they do, they're kind of like, fine with it. I don't know. But, but I know I'm annoying sometimes. I know that I'm difficult.
[1:00:13]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: The thing is is that they, they are annoying too.
RACHEL ZUCKER: They are very annoying. All three of them actually. But they absolutely do not feel about me the way I felt about my mother. And on some level, the, I can't fully believe that, and I can't hold that in mind, you know, when I get rattled, when something happens when I get triggered, unless I cultivate self-love and self-compassion in a real way, that is the only way to break that cycle, and when I think that I am a bad mother, is when I start to do fucked up weird shit. When I stay in the reality and the truth that I am a good mother, I continue to be a good mother.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: This thing about self-love and self-compassion, the opposite of that is self abandonment. And that is something that my partner and I talk a lot about because both she and I have very strong histories of codependency and of, of self abandonment. And it has come up, both of us have done it during our relationship. We've only been together for a bit over five months, but already we've, we've both done it more than once. And on the one hand, it's good that we have the other one to sort of call it out and, and note it, but it's interesting to see how it plays out in an adult romantic relationship as well as how it plays out in a parent and child relationship. It is something that we have this expectation that as parents, that, and especially as mothers, that you are expected to abandon yourself.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But you said just now, you said, and it was, I think a slip of the tongue.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But you said three words about, about roles. You know, you, you were talking about flipping from the, and what you said was flipping from the parent adult role to the child role.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But parent and adult are different from each other.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Parent and adult are not the same. And something, I'm not quite in this, this same position yet. My oldest is younger than your youngest.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But you are in a position now where your youngest child is about to really fully embark, or at least partially embark, college is perhaps not full adulthood, but is embarking on, into adulthood. And even me, my youngest now is 10 years old, she's gonna be 11 pretty soon. She's not a baby anymore.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Our relationship with our children changes over like every moment over the course of their lifetimes and hours. And that doesn't change. It's so hard to let go of the knowledge that when they're infants, they do rely on you for everything and you cannot just treat them like a person because they don't have the capacity to be a person yet.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And even though that changes over time, and even somebody like you or somebody like me who is very intentional about trying to treat our kids like people with their own independent agency and their own complicated and complex internal lives, that even when we are intentional about it, it's very hard to separate ourselves from the parent role.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But at some point, and probably nobody ever fully gets over it, but at some point they are adults and we start having to treat them like adults. But I think it goes the other way too, right? That like everybody always talks about that moment. And it's usually in your adolescence when you have this realization, and it can be traumatic, of understanding all of a sudden that your parents are just people. And I wonder if for people like you and me who are, we are both parents who care very much about that role and who have taken that on as an identity, and who are very competent people in many aspects of our lives. Not just as parents, but especially as parents, we are both very competent. And I wonder if that makes it harder for our kids to see us just as people. There are moments when my oldest will try to take care of me and it just breaks my heart.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But why? Why does it break my heart?
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah, that's a great question. And, and, you know. I used to have a little index card above my desk, before I moved, which was a quote from my therapist and she said, use your capacities for yourself. And it has always felt, you know, I have gotten so much support from Moses, my oldest, you know, in the past year and, and even before, but in the past year especially. And it always feels dangerous, and like a slippery slope, and I shouldn't do that. And you know, that it's damaging him and, you know, it's so clearly not damaging him.
[1:05:24]
He, you know, where does this expectation come from that we should not be taken care of by our children in certain ways? And also that we don't take care of ourselves, the way we take care of our children? And I think that that's, you know, that is something that I think that our kids might benefit from seeing us do more.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: [Laughs]. Yeah. Yeah.
RACHEL ZUCKER: You know, I, I really, I really do. And I think, you know, there's, there's, this makes so much sense given everything, you know, given our childhoods, given what we're talking about, which is, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm like, I like can't even finish the sentence because I have so much difficulty receiving the kind of love and care and support that I want to give my children and a romantic partner. Certainly, I have so much trouble receiving this from my children, or any romantic partner. And even from myself!
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: I mean, you have trouble even receiving it from me [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's really, really complicated. And I think it, again, it gets, it gets to a sense of low self-esteem, low self-worth, a lot of shame and a lot of fear, you know, a, a lot of like, you know, we're the people who, you know, just to give one example, it's like, we're really good at cooking, you know, like, like we became very competent people in a lot of different ways, which was necessary and important. And these are parts of myself that I really am proud of and that I enjoy and that other people enjoy.
But also, you know, taking good care of myself does not instantly turn me into a narcissist, and I have to stop imagining that it does [laughs]. Like, I mean, yeah, I have to stop cutting my own hair, for example. Like, this is a stupid example, but like, come on. You know, like the things that I, that I would not pay for, for myself, that I like rush to pay for for my children, the things that I, that I will eat but would never serve my children. The things that, you know, like it's, you know, it's a stereotype, but it's also important, that I want to model for my children, and this is new for me, and especially because I have three cis-male children, but even if I didn't, I want them to feel that they deserve the love and care and attention that I have always given them. I want them to also give that to themselves and to others, not just be happy to receive it. And if I can't receive it, I'm not really giving them that message.
And actually, if I just give it and give it and give it, I mean, we know, we know that it, this is part of why I need a break from Abram. It's, I'm a much better caregiver than his dad. Like eons of a better caregiver. That's good in a lot of ways, but it's not great at fostering his independence and his own resourcefulness and, you know, that's important, right? Like we have to, we have to model self-care and self-love. We have to face like, what is at stake for us in the limitations of our control over our kids, you know, like in a good way, over their happiness? You know, we have to like face the fears that are coming up for us. Like, you know what if your kids don't feel seen by you, despite the fact that you have truly done everything to make them feel seen, and you have always tried to see that… it's possible because let's just say, being a teenage girl in this fucking world is just so complicated and so hard, and just around this issue of, of feeling seen, you know?
[1:10:02]
And it may be that there's nothing that you could possibly do. So like, facing the helplessness that you may feel around that, just for one example. And then soothing yourself. Comforting yourself, loving yourself through, through that. Not just trying harder to love your kids, but loving yourself, and you know, easy for me to say, but about you. It is really, really, really difficult. I mean, at the silent retreat that I was on every afternoon, there was some form of metta practice. Metta is loving kindness, and it's always the hardest for me. It's too intense. I, you know, I can cultivate love and kindness for others, and for myself there's something, it's, it's a practice. It's a very, very difficult practice.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Very painful. And even now saying, oh, it's hard for me to practice love and kindness for myself. I feel like, like I'm gonna listen to this and I'm gonna be like, oh my God.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But I mean, if we're, the truth is, is that like it's something that's good for me to hear and when I say it, it's good for you to hear and us talking about, it's gonna be good for our hypothetical listeners to hear. I find, you know, I, when I do the metta loving-kindness meditations, it's, I have an easier time, like legitimately, I have an easier time extending loving kindness to members of this fucking administration than I do to myself. Yeah. You know? Yeah. These are people who I legitimately think are evil [laughs]. Yeah. But, but even-
RACHEL ZUCKER: And that's part of turning around and facing the fire, right? Yes. 'cause we don't want our children.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But even the thing that we're talking about right now, which is like, this is the level we're on. Like we're, we need to model this for our kids. We need to like show these things to our kids. But like, maybe that's not even the thing, because we're still talking about doing this so that we can do it for our kids. You know? Or the other way that I, that it, that it came up for me when I was talking where, when, when I was listening to you talk just now is, how both of us are like, I am in a relationship that does not feel new but is, but you know, that it is really all consuming. And wonderful. And we are joining our lives together. And it's amazing. You also are, I mean, not to let the cat out of the bag, but you have some new potential things happening.
RACHEL ZUCKER: I'm smitten.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yes. And, but even, even if that weren't the case, you're opening yourself to that possibility. Right. You're, you're opening yourself, so these romantic possibilities, the possibility each of us is having to opening ourselves to this other role of not being just a parent, but being a partner.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And a partner to, to not our children's parent and, and possibly not even to their benefit.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yes. Something that you've said about this person that you're smitten with is that, you know, you, you, you really like how, how much he cares about is kids. Something that I really, really like about my partner is that I think that she is an amazing mother, and I think that she's going to be an amazing stepmother to my kids, and I'm really looking forward to being, hopefully an amazing stepfather to her kids.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: But I, I'm also thinking now, like, what I was thinking is like, oh, all of these ways that, that we are doing these things that, that are helpful in, in our parental relationships are also things that are gonna show up in our romantic relationships. But now I'm also thinking like, you know, when I, when I, about how much my own conception of myself is always in relationship to my role towards somebody else, you know? One of the things that has been so, so difficult for me about the, the four years since my divorce, has been that I lost my story of myself as a husband, that being a husband was my primary identity, above being an artist, a father, an employee, a son. Any of those things, being a husband was my identity, you know? And I lost that, and it was very destabilizing for me. And what kind of rose up to take its place? Being a father has always been, ever since I have been a father, has been a strong component of my identity, but it wasn't the primary one. And it has risen to become the primary one in, in the past four years. That was destabilizing for me too, even still because I had this conception, this, this knowledge, this sure knowledge of, my kids are gonna grow up, they're gonna leave.
[1:15:00]
You know? And then what am I gonna do? What's my identity gonna be then? And there is something about this new relationship that's like, well now I'm gonna have that again. I can get to be a husband again. You know, but that's still defining myself in my role towards someone else. And that's… [sighs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: There's some good stuff there for you [laughs]. There's some juicy stuff there for you. I'm glad you have therapy tomorrow also.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: [Laughs].. I'm still figuring out with this new therapist. It's, it's a, I've only had one session with her so far. We'll see how it goes. I fucking hate having to find a new therapist [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: You know, at the silent retreat, this Dharma teacher, Brian quoted, I believe his name is Engles or Engels, a famous psychotherapist who said, and a and a Buddhist psychotherapist who said, first you have to have a self to get rid of the self. And later in his life he retracted that and said, it's much more of a continuum. It's continuous, this interplay between self, non-self. And I think, you know, that's what I'm really working with as much as possible in my life is like, getting out of the binaries, the dialectics, you know? And seeing these attachment and separation are not two opposites. They are, they are a dance of attachment and separation, self and non-self is always fluid, is always in relation to one another.
And I think that, you know what, what I'm hearing is, in your previous relationships, I was always struck by, you would say like, I really don't like being in the house alone. And, you know, for me, this question of alone or, or together, you know, alone or kind of surrounded by children or with a partner or, you know, has always seemed like a very binary situation. I don't think it has to be. I think that part of what I'm hearing is that you're recognizing that there's something very stabilizing and identity formation and, and your ego and your sense of self sort of thrive when you are in a husband position or in a father position, but primarily in a husband position, supporting, doing, protecting, understanding, responding, loving, caring for. These are things that help you be grounded, that give you a sense of purpose in the world. That make you feel like you can also do the other things in your life, be an artist, you know, but that there's something like, you know, and this probably comes again from you not getting this as a child as much as you needed, that the giving of this enables you to earn your keep, in your own mind, reduce your sense of shame about like just being alive.
But at the same time you're like, I wonder if that's also covering up something that I need to kind of get closer to, which is like, who am I outside of my role as supporting someone else? Who am I, you know, outside of the husband role? And I think, you know, maybe this brings us back to the beginning a little bit, like, that has primarily been a problem more for mothers than for fathers, and more for wives than for husbands. But I don't think it's in itself intrinsically gendered. And I think it has to do. Yeah. I don't know what it would look like for you to explore your non-husband self. I don't think it has to actually be away from your partner or away from your children. But there is something that I think probably you're, you've been avoiding,
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Oh yeah. [Laughs]. Here's, here's something. You know, since we like to go meta on this show, right? Just now, your voice changed. Your voice is different when you're -
RACHEL ZUCKER: I got bossy.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: No, no, but there is, there's something different about your voice when you're able to, when you're able to hone in on what's going on with me.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: And sort of analyze it. And offer some kind of thought, some sort of useful thought to me. Mm-hmm. You know, some sort of direction your voice changes.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Interesting.
[1:20:06]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Becomes more confident. Yep. And I know that's also true. That's also true of me like, just now probably my, my energy is different than when I was in my feelings of, you know, 20 minutes ago. And isn't that like, when we're thinking about how we show up for our kids, or our partners, or our friends, that we have this feeling like, I can't focus on myself because it's too much of a burden, or it's narcissistic or whatever. But then when other people reveal these things to us, it is so grounding and feels like such a gift. And it's not an appropriate thing to do to like a 4-year-old, but a 24-year-old maybe.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Mm-hmm.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You know, I don't know.
RACHEL ZUCKER: That's so interesting. And I think there's something before the fear of narcissism that happens to me, which is just fear. And I think that-
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Where does this role thing come from? Where and, and where does it for both of us? Where does this, it's not just the pain of breaking the role, but also on some level feeling like these roles are in service to other people, which is not, I know that's not how like the world conceives of husbands, but it is how I conceive of it. These roles are things that are in service to other people, and even if it's not about earning love from them, it's more like earning the right to exist [laughs].
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's very multi-layered and, but my guess right now, if I just like kind of feel my way into it, it's like somewhere very early on, you know, I just had this real moment, this memory of, I didn't have a lot of dolls as a kid. I had a lot of stuffed animals, and I would put them all to bed every single night. They each had their place that they would go, and they liked to be near a certain one, but not near a different one. And they, you know, I would tuck them in and I would sing to them and I would, you know, I don't have a lot of childhood memories, but I just like really saw it just now. And so even then, you know, at a very young age, I was wanting to care for these stuffed animals and be in a kind of maternal or parental position with them.
And I think, you know, it's gotta be on some level, certainly for men, but for everyone, the knowledge, that if not for our parents or whomever was there, we literally would've died. You know, countless times like, that we were once so vulnerable. And I think that the, for me anyway, it's like, being in the role of caring for someone or something else, shields me from the terror of my own vulnerability.
You know, whether it's the normal vulnerability that we all had as infants, or whether it was the, you know, fear that I felt, and lack of safety that I felt as a young child much too soon. But I think it's about that. And then I intellectualize it when I start to go into the narcissism thing, but that's actually a later step. Underneath it's really like, you know, I don't know what my own wants and needs and desires are in a romantic relationship and I probably won't get them met. And I don't want to ever be that helpless child again, and so I always want to be in this other role of being like, your insightful wise friend, you know [laughs], who can, who can see so clearly what's going on. And with like great love and compassion, I can offer up a potential insight into your situation. Because the alternative is to be in that, in that intense vulnerability.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Yeah. You and me both.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Yeah. This was good, Mike [laughs]. This was deep.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: All right. Should we, should we end it?
RACHEL ZUCKER: We should pause it, and we should say to be continued, but we, yes, we should end this particular chapter.
[1:25:05]
MIKE and RACHEL: Okay. Alright.
[Music]
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: You've been listening to Hey, It’s Me with Rachel Zucker and Mike Sakasegawa.
RACHEL ZUCKER: Hey, It's Me is a production of Rachel Zucker and Likewise Media.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: Editing on this episode is by Mike Sakasegawa. Music is by Podington Bear, and transcription help is by Leigh Sugar.
RACHEL ZUCKER: You can find more information about the show, including contact information and transcripts, at heyitsmepodcast.com.
MIKE SAKASEGAWA: If you'd like to hear more from us, you can find Rachel's other show, Commonplace, at Commonplace.today.
RACHEL ZUCKER: And you can find Mike's other show, Keep the Channel Open, at keepthechannelopen.com. Thanks for spending this time with us.
MIKE and RACHEL: Take care.