Greg McKeown:
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Greg McKeown Podcast. You know, it’s a place where we go deep into what it takes to live a life that really matters, especially in creating deep connections and safe attachments in those relationships that matter most. And so today, I am beyond thrilled to introduce back to the podcast an extraordinary guest, a beacon of faith, of courage, of wisdom, yes, Jennie Allen, who’s not just a best-selling author but, I think it’s fair to say, a spiritual trailblazer. She’s written a whole series of books. Probably the best known still is Get Out of Your Head, but also, last time she was here, gave us a brilliant insight into Find Your People, which I have referenced again and again since she’s touched the lives of millions, including my own. She’s the founder of the If Gathering, which is just a huge, powerful platform. It’s especially focused on equipping women with the tools to deepen their faith and ignite positive change in their families, communities, and beyond.
But Jennie’s influence doesn’t stop there. As a passionate and sought-after speaker, she has a unique gift for articulating the deep truths in ways that resonate with people’s hearts and souls. So her messages are not only thought-provoking but also transformative, encouraging us to pursue a life of intentionality, of purpose, and connection with God.
But beyond her public’s persona as well, Jennie is a dedicated wife, a loving mother, and a genuine friend to many. We were just talking about this before we came on the air. It’s her warmth, sort of her authenticity, it’s her wisdom that is making her what would we say? A national treasure and an inspiration to so many people around the world. So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the remarkable Jennie Allen back to the show for this part one of our conversation.
Jennie, thank you so much for being with us.
Jennie Allen:
Well, gosh, how do I ever live up to that introduction? That was incredible, Greg, and I have to turn it back to you and say that Essentialism was huge in my life and truly learning to say, “Unless it’s a hell yes, it’s a hell no.” That changed my life. I probably think about it. I don’t know, every few weeks, Something will come up, and I’m like, it’s a yes, no, it’s not a hell yes. So we got to back it up. So that was. That book was so powerful and insightful for me.
So, wow, that was. That was the greatest introduction I believe I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. National treasure. I got to go home and tell my kids I’m a national treasure.
Greg McKeown:
That’s what it is, oh you see, you see, you are well on your way, and I love it.
And, of course, now you have this marvelous new book out, and we will get to it. And on the theme of untangling our emotions, I have an unusual first question for you, which is when was the first time in your whole life you remember crying?
Jennie Allen:
That’s a great question. I was not a super emotional kid, and so the first time I remember being sad was driving home from my great-grandmother’s funeral. I was seven years old.
Greg McKeown:
How old are you? Sorry?
Jennie Allen:
I was seven, and I’m sure I cried before that, but it probably was more like I didn’t get my way kind of crying. This was the first time I, like introspectively, remember crying and we were driving home from Muncie’s funeral, and I didn’t know Muncie very well, but I was. It was the very first time I encountered death, and I just remember being in the backseat, and I remember looking up at the stars, and I remember crying, but I remember wanting to cry really quietly so my parents wouldn’t hear me because I didn’t want them to think that I wouldn’t want them to judge that I didn’t know her very well or that I was old enough to judge my emotion if that makes sense.
Greg McKeown:
Yes.
Jennie Allen:
That I vividly remember trying to cry quietly so they wouldn’t judge that I was crying because I thought I didn’t know her. But I wasn’t crying because of her. I was crying because of death, and it was the first time I was scared of it and thinking about it.
Greg McKeown:
At the funeral. Had you, was it an open casket? I mean, had you seen death now?
Jennie Allen:
No, and I mean again, I’m seven years old. I remember very little of that day. I just remember looking at the stars and talking to God and being afraid that I was going to die, and I just, I remember my thoughts. I remember where I was, I remember being curled up next to the window and putting my face on the cold glass, and I think that’s such. The gift of emotion is, if you think about it, how does a seven-year-old remember that? I don’t know what we had for lunch, I don’t remember what the pastor said, I don’t even remember the building we were in.
But when I was feeling that deep emotion, I remember every thought I was having. I remember the night. I remember the setting, I remember what, where I was, and where my parents were in relation. So it’s just cool, like I think most of our memories are sealed by emotion that we can we can actually hold on to them because we felt something strongly. Because I don’t remember much else about my seven-year-old self, you know, but I remember that.
Greg McKeown:
Well, that raises an interesting question. Like seven years old, go back to seven for a moment. What’s the happiest you were at seven?
Jennie Allen:
My dad had a little old, even old at the time, yellow Mercedes convertible, and we weren’t wealthy. We had a simple little one-story house with three bedrooms. It wasn’t you know, that could be go either way there, but it was. It was kind of. He was into cars, and I remember on Sunday afternoons he would say, let’s go for a drive, and I remember my hair would all be in my face, and I just remember we’d go to the park, we would go get ice cream and he would just, we would just be together. And I just remember feeling so much excitement and joy in that whole experience that we would do pretty regularly.
Greg McKeown:
So it’s not a single moment when you think of it that way. It’s just that you had many outings that followed that pattern.
Jennie Allen:
Yes, well, they brought me joy. I still am a wind-in-my-hair kind of girl. This is funny, I haven’t thought about this. I love being on a boat or on a little scooter or something where I just like the wind in my hair. There’s something about that that brings back really nostalgic, happy feelings, even though my hair is a mess afterward. It’s actually not practical, but it brings me joy.
Greg McKeown:
Well, I mean sounds like it’s probably because of those experiences. You’re seven years old, and you’re with your father, and there’s no stress, no stress from him, no stress from you, there’s no strain, there’s just childhood, there’s just freedom, and so I can easily imagine that there’s a neurological connection to that. So once you feel that again, you feel not just free but safe again. It’s more than free, yeah.
Now, your father was an entrepreneur, if I remember right.
Jennie Allen:
Yes, he was. I never knew what my dad did. I still don’t totally know what my dad does. He had one of those jobs. I mean, we joke that he was in the CIA because he had one of those jobs, and he would probably.
I would say he was private equity he would help raise money for companies, and I remember
Greg McKeown:
You didn’t know what it was because it wasn’t a thing you didn’t see.
Jennie Allen:
I wasn’t old enough, yeah, to get those kinds of words, and so I didn’t know. But I just know he was on the phone a lot and always talking about deals and wanting to close deals and I remember, I even remember as a kid knowing that my parents were taking risks, so there was evidence of that in our family where they would pull back financially so that he could change jobs or take, you know, go out on his own. I remember that moment.
Greg McKeown:
So you remember. So what was that? There’s a moment where they actually sort of sit you all down and say, “OK, look, for the next little while, we’re not going to be doing all the normal things because it’s an uncertain period.”
Do you remember a specific conversation?
Jennie Allen:
I would have loved a conversation like that. I was more reading the room. I was the oldest. And so I don’t know that they probably thought we would pick up on it all, but I do remember things. I remember specifically a day when I was probably more like 10 or 11, at least starting to notice myself and what I wore and what I cared about. You know, my parents and my mom saying, you know, that I wanted a certain pair of jeans, and she said, “We can’t, we can’t afford that right now.”
And I remember that was one of the first times she’d ever said those words to me. I mean not, I just didn’t ask for a lot; it wasn’t like we had a lot.
It’s just I don’t remember like asking for a name brand or anything. So you know, I remember she got us our Keds at Walmart and I wanted to draw the blue on when we were real little, but I was OK, like I made it through, sure. So you know, I do think that was one of the first times I really remember wanting something and realizing, wow, like we can’t afford it. But I didn’t. I didn’t live feeling like we were under financial tension. I think they worked hard to protect us from that.
Greg McKeown:
How old were you when you had that conversation about the jeans?
Jennie Allen:
I would say it was probably 11, 10, or 11, somewhere ahead of preteen.
Greg McKeown:
Would you say? that you felt safely attached, as when you were young, in those years? Did you feel safe emotionally in your home?
Jennie Allen:
That’s such a great question, and it’s one I’ve been reflecting on a lot as I’ve worked on this project. I have really, really incredible parents. I mean, top point, one percent of parents. I mean they, they love each other, and they love us, and it was a safe home and I remember that feeling in large part safe, but I do feel like they weren’t very emotional.
So my mom was Midwestern, raised Midwestern. She didn’t cry about much at all. I remember telling her incredibly difficult news that would affect the rest of her life about one of my sisters. They charged me with reporting it, and she said her first words were, “OK, we can do that, we can go through that, we’ll be OK.”
I mean, that’s just that that was my mom. And then my dad was more of a military guy, and so he, I would say he is more emotional. I love my dad. He’s very tender, but I would say he wasn’t raised that way, and he didn’t. He didn’t cry a lot; he wasn’t super tender when I was young, but I don’t remember feeling unsafe.
What I missed out on, probably, and they would agree with, is I didn’t have a lot of emotions. They weren’t super emotional, so there wasn’t a lot of training on emotions. We didn’t openly express them, and we didn’t, so therefore, I didn’t get any real understanding of what they are and how to navigate them.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, what you’re describing is OK, safe, which is non-trivial, yeah, and not the language and the tools to be able to piece apart what people are feeling and which part of that they’re feeling, so that you have an accurate understanding of what’s going on inside of you or inside of them. Right that that skill level wasn’t there.
Jennie Allen:
Yeah, and I’ll add another layer. So my dad, he was critical growing up and he would admit this, and we’ve talked a lot about it. He’s come so far in that category, and I don’t feel that way at all anymore.
Greg McKeown:
When you say critical, what do you mean? For example?
Jennie Allen:
He was critical of everything, like when you came home, if the house wasn’t clean, of our parents, of our achievements.
Greg McKeown:
Ok, but that’s quite a lot there. I mean, especially if, like you know, there’s there’s there’s being critical of things that you yourself are directly responsible for, right, that’s a certain kind of criticism. But to criticize, ok, the home’s not how I want it to be, or to criticize your appearance specifically like that, that’s hard.
Jennie Allen:
That’s hard for me as a girl, yes, yes, that’s a big part of my story and the big part of why I have such a great relationship with God because I found grace and forgiveness there, and that was new for me. But my dad also was super loving, and you know, it’s interesting, when I was approaching my 30s, I remember feeling like I was supposed to go to him. I had done a lot of counseling around this and felt a lot of freedom and healing in it. But I also felt like God was saying you need to go talk to him. And I was like, why? I couldn’t figure out why. Because either he was. He said to me, “Hey, Jennie, you’re right. All those times, I was critical of you.”
And then it’s like, oh gosh, I didn’t imagine that, that all that was true, that’s horrible. Or two or two, oh no, I never felt that way. Or, and then it’s, you know, completely dismissing so many things I observed or felt as a child. So I couldn’t see a good outcome candidly.
And but I did it. I wrote it all out. I wrote all the good things that he had done for me and all the things I was so thankful for, and that was pages. I mean, he tucked us in every night. He sacrificed so much so that we wouldn’t, you know, have to worry about things like genes. We usually could get what we needed, and there’s so much my dad did. Well, he led little Advent with us every Christmas, Like he was intentional and loving and present.
And so when I got to the pages that were so hard, I mean, he just wept and wept and wept, and he said at the end, I could have never seen this coming. He said, “Jennie, you’re right, but it’s my problem, it’s not yours.” And he said, “My family.” He goes, “Let me tell you about how I grew up.” And he went into that and his wounds and his hard things, and I mean it changed everything. I had a whole new perspective of my own childhood, hearing about my dad’s childhood and understanding how we’re really all just doing the best we can and we’re all going to pass down our wounds if we don’t work through them. But my dad was so humble in that moment, and he still is to this day. I mean, he’s so self-aware today and kind and goes out of his way to heal things in us that maybe were broken earlier in his life.
Greg McKeown:
Well, one of the things that makes me think of is the reality that to build a powerful, beautiful family culture is an intergenerational project, so I believe and have personal experience with the power of a single change agent that somebody who says, well, I’ve gone through massive traumas, and I’m not talking about myself, but one of my parents and to see how they responded to that and what they built, is inspiring and powerful. But I have learned also you can only do so much in a single generation. They could only go so far. And so it’s my job to go further, hopefully way further than they were able to go and so that my own children can go way further than I could in building a culture where of course, you can talk about emotions, but you can also just handle so many complexities because there’s that much greater health. I don’t think you can spring there in a single generation. That’s what I hear, at least in that story that you’re sharing.
Jennie Allen:
That’s interesting. I think I’m a little more optimistic than that because I’ve seen incredible strides and growth just by being willing to learn and listen and heal. I think so much of how we hurt our kids and continue cycles of toxic thoughts, and living is we aren’t honest with ourselves about what’s real and true and difficult, and so I feel like you’re right.
You’re definitely right. I do see generational strongholds, there’s no doubt, and in our family too, but I also think I don’t know. I like to believe we can do better, but the way we do better is not trying. The way we do better is to understand our weaknesses and to depend on God, and to watch as we are humble with our people, like to say I’m not good at this and how much I look at my parenting and I’m going man. The best moments I ever had with my kids were the times I messed up, but I said it, and I think about my relationship with my dad, and I’m like, you know, something did break when he said to me I’m sorry and explained to me where it came from. Something broke in me, a thing I’d been carrying that I probably would have carried till death. So I agree with you and I also want to be just a little smidge more optimistic that we can see change in our generation in a big way.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, so let’s just talk about that a little more. So I don’t know whether there’s a difference of opinion or semantics, but we’ll see.
So in your story, what I hear is, when you have that conversation with your father, suddenly he unpacks for you what he hadn’t expressed clearly before, which is, well, let me tell you what it was like in my home. Let me tell you how my parents and my father, let’s assume, handled me and the complete lack of emotional intelligence and how harsh that communication was. And so he certainly came into his parenting role saying, “Well, I’m gonna do way better than what I did.” Absolutely, and that’s, of course, is what you experienced. But now, because you’re in a healthier position, you’re able to explore and examine more than you could before and you’ve done your own work, and not suggesting you haven’t. So to me, that is inherently three generations, right? You’re describing three generations.
Yeah, you’re right, and you want it to be better for your children too. So go ahead. What am I missing?
Jennie Allen:
Yeah, and I would say I look back at that grandmother and grandfather, and they were super special, but I absolutely I think that’s the power of a little bit of self-awareness and reflection is there was a critical spirit that they had, specifically his mom, his dad less so, but I never experienced that from my granddad but, yes, and I think that has to be noticed and, like gosh, that’s in me, that came from a message that I received as a young child that I have to measure up and if I don’t, they aren’t gonna be proud or they’re going to be critical.
So I do think those messages that we get and this is actually a book I want to work on in the future because I think it’s even different than our emotions and different than our thoughts. I think it’s messages that you’re talking about generationally that get handed down without us even realizing. They are so much part of our fabric that we don’t even know that their thoughts, we’re thinking they’re just part of who we are, right, and that often gets communicated through our parents. So I think it’s super important to know what those are, to name those, to notice those, and to be able to understand if they’re true or not true.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, exactly, and that’s what we could call it like the systemic look at our lives. But I’m also thinking of like, for example, what you have described, unless I have misunderstood. It is foundationally a pretty healthy family of upbringing. And I’m thinking now of other books that I’ve read, one of which I gave to my mother at one time, and she was reading it, and she said, “Greg, he does make it sound like it’s really easy.”
And when I read that same section, I hadn’t had that reaction because it didn’t seem like he was making it seem especially effortless or anything or like there’s no strain. But I thought, my goodness, yes, but she’s coming from it from a completely different place than me, and the journey she’s already made is so much, so monumental. And so I think that there are people, even listening to this, who have been through, who their family of origin was so massively traumatic, and on so many levels, that for them to even get to the point where they just say, I’m not going to pass on viciousness is a tremendous achievement.
Jennie Allen:
I like it, Greg. I mean, I think it’s grace. I think you’re describing grace for ourselves to not get everything right and yet celebrate so much that we have overcome, and I think it’s a beautiful way to look at life.
One of my favorite books on earth that I reference all the time is called The Pilgrims Progress, and it’s about this guy that it’s probably one of the most sold books in the world and it’s written by John Bunyan, and it’s about a guy that meets God early on but then continues to fall into all these messes, and I think that’s not the way we want to view the world. We want to view the world that we get our act together and up and to the right. It all works out, and I think what we’re both saying is it really doesn’t ever go that way, but what we can do is take what we’ve been given and go further past it.
Greg McKeown:
I love that. Yeah, I think the idea I’m trying to tap into here is a biblical idea, right? This almost nonchalant phrase in scripture of unto the third and fourth generation, and that sometimes that’s, you know, it’s expressed in a sort of curse that will be with somebody for multiple generations. Or it can be like an Abrahamic blessing that says okay, unto many, many generations. This goodness in you will outlast your life, and this idea that what we’re doing has an effect on many generations.
Jennie Allen:
Yeah, it’s terrifying.
Greg McKeown:
It’s sort of the other side of this where we develop, let’s say, something like an intergenerational self, where we see our journey within the big story. And so it allows grace, as you’re suggesting, for our own limitations, but also, I think, inspiration for us to be able to say, “Look, I’m trying to build something that’s better than I had, but I know that you can do better than me.” You know I say that to our children all the time, “You’re going to do better than me, you’re going to do better than we are doing.”
And help them to build on this. You know this intergenerational legacy.
Tell me this. So you met Zach at a camp, is that right, a summer camp?
Jennie Allen:
Yeah, summer camp.
Greg McKeown:
What was, what was that like? Can you remember the very first meeting? What was the emotion of the very first single meeting? Or you saw him, or you know. Give us that part of your story.
Jennie Allen:
Well, he was a year younger than me. I was a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas, and I had already finished my freshman year, and so he was heading into college. So to me, it was like, oh, you cute boy, like you’re so cute, but I had a crush on somebody else there.
So you know, I remember thinking he’s great. But he, the thing my husband has and he has it to this day, and it is truly, I mean, it’s a rare, beautiful quality is he is the person everybody wants to hear from in the room. He is handsome and good at things. I mean, we went on a trip this weekend, and he hadn’t played tennis in forever, and he killed everybody. He’s that kind of guy.
He was the quarterback of the football team and the star of the senior musical. That was who I met. But he doesn’t feel a need to ever draw attention to himself, and he is just steady and content and at home in his skin, and he was that way when I met him, and I think it made him seem more mature than he probably was, or age-wise. But yeah, there’s a humility to him. It’s like he probably is the best. This is funny. He probably is the best, but you’d never know he knows it. If he, you know he’s very humble.
Greg McKeown:
He doesn’t need to point it out all the time.
Jennie Allen:
No, he’s just at home with himself, and he’s very interested in you and very happy that you’re there, and I just, I don’t know. He was very secure, and it was very attractive to me.
Greg McKeown:
Very secure. It’s a nice description, especially if somebody wants to have a secure attachment to someone else. Right, their security helps make that possible.
Now you’ve written about a period again unless I’m getting this wrong, maybe a nine-month period in which he was struggling. I mean, this is fast-forward, of course, years. This is more like. Well, you tell me the date range, but can you tell us more about that?
Jennie Allen:
Sure. So he was pastoring a church for many years and, honestly, I think, just got to the end of himself, and you know we handed the church off to another church in town, that we became a partner with them, and there was a lot of leadership that stepped in and at that point, even though he was still leading, he really was just hit with a dark night of the soul where his, his depression was so low that he would say he wasn’t suicidal but that he can understand why people are like he was that low and so I yeah, I mean it was one of those things where you look up, and your husband’s gone. I mean, he was there physically, and that’s about it. He was emotionally shut down and just barely could have a conversation. It was. It was pretty terrifying.
Greg McKeown:
Wow, barely could have a conversation. I see here a quote from a previous you wrote, blogged about this, but he said, “I went through nine months of intense depression, which happened in three stages. My brain broke, and so I couldn’t have a conversation, I couldn’t look people in the eyes, I would avoid people. There was an I don’t care stage for three months. All I could say was I don’t care, and it was just a dud.”
I mean as you, as you, I suppose. What I’m asking is if you knew now everything that you’ve learned since that experience, would it have changed the way you handled that situation?
Jennie Allen:
Hmm, you know, I think I would have, I would have not been so afraid. I think now, today, I stand at a new year, let’s take that, and I expect hard, I just do. I mean, I don’t mean that in a cynical way, I’m not cynical at all, I’m terribly optimistic, but I just know it will be. I just know we will hit things that take the wind out of us and will surprise us and that we won’t be expecting. I know it, and I know we can weather that.
And I think back then, suffering still surprised me. I think it still had this sting, as if suffering isn’t hard enough. It had the sting of Why me? And the sting of shock and awe. Yeah, now I’m like no, no, no, no, no. This is just the life we lead. I mean, in this world, you all have trouble, said the guy I follow, Jesus. So the hope is not in the world, and that circumstance is working out any longer. And after COVID, right, all of us are there. We’ve all universally realized gosh, who knows what tomorrow holds? So I think that’s a gift. I think it’s a gift to know that suffering will come and to not be afraid of it. Both things.
You could know suffering is coming in, fear it, or you could not know it’s coming and be naïve. And I think there’s joy in just knowing it will come and knowing we will survive it, and I think that’s the gift of that season for us, it wasn’t just his depression, there was about 70 things hitting the fan like it often does in a season of our lives and there wasn’t much right In that season.
It was pretty much all wrong, and we survived. And I think that’s where so much study has been done around resilience and where it comes from and comes from being okay, like doing the hard thing, falling down and getting back up and going. I can get back up. So I think that season, if I could go back, I would want a comfort, but I couldn’t have learned that unless we went through it, so I wouldn’t change anything. I think it was just my moment to realize that we can lose everything on earth and survive and be okay, and even find joy.
Greg McKeown:
Churchill said something along the lines of this, like no greater joy in life than having someone physically, literally, take a shot at you. He’s talking about being in war and it not killing you and this sense of like, oh okay, still here, still standing, can still keep going, can still get up again. Maybe I’m tougher now than I was before. Maybe I have a sense of gratitude that I didn’t have before. There’s something in that, in the story, I think, that you’re sharing there.
And one of the reasons I think I want to piece it out with you is because I think we live in an era. Maybe it’s always been true, but I sense it now the people who appear to be successful. There’s not much sympathy for people who are successful. You know, like, I could easily see people looking at you in your life right now and say, well, it’s all right for her. You know, it’s all right for Jennie, even though you’ve shared so much along the way about the struggles and so on. But even that itself, because we know that vulnerability looks like courage, and it has a different effect. Even that in itself, people go well. Yes, see, of course, again, it’s all right for her, and in her marriage and in her children, and everything’s great. And I had somebody recently say to me that just in a text exchange. I don’t even know them that well, but they said oh yes, well, you have your picture-perfect children. You have children that look picture-perfect. And I just thought it revealed more about them than about me and about our life. But I thought, man, you’re looking, and you’re looking a certain way.
Jennie Allen:
Yeah, it’s easy to compare, and we live in a world where we’re constantly thrust into people’s lives through the internet and through social media. So I understand that it is, and I’m not saying we could even avoid it unless we just get off all screens. But I think in our humanity, we desperately wanna know we’re not alone in feeling alone, we’re not alone in feeling anxious, we’re not alone in facing the dark night of the soul that we all will face. And so it’s a terrible lie that’s out there that anyone is going to avoid that. No one will avoid it, and I think that’s why I’m so at ease with struggle today is I know if I go to the dark, if I go to the valley again, I know what’s waiting for me there, right, I know the people that will be there. I know my relationship with God and my faith that will be there. I know the courage that will be required of me there, and so I don’t want it, and I sure won’t pray for it or wish it upon myself, but I know it will come, and I think if we can just together go, and I wish you know.
I think one of the most heartbreaking parts of COVID was I remember pretty quickly after it was announced, we were in this moment together and how dramatic it really was, and the toilet paper was running out. You know that first few weeks of chaos. I just, I think, I just thought we would all come together the way we have in the past. You know the way the world comes together in moments like this, and I think it broke my heart because it was worse than the suffering. When we come together, there’s something even joyful about suffering.
I was talking recently about the show Band of Brothers with somebody, and that show has, I think, been released again, rereleased on a streaming device, I can’t remember which one. Somebody was watching it for the first time, and I thought, gosh, that show. I’ve watched that show twice. I will never forget that show because we all were jealous of them. We were somehow weirdly jealous that they were risking their lives and their brothers were dying, but they had each other, and they had a purpose, and it just felt right.
Something about that kind of camaraderie and affection and duking it out against the bad guys together just felt right and beautiful and noble. And I think we got to get better at that. We have to get better at suffering together and going through difficulty together because it really is what’s broken in our brains. It’s why mental health is in the state that it is because we have isolated ourselves from each other, and we have missed the opportunities and the true beckoning that is inside of us. When we feel sad, when we feel anxious, when we feel afraid, that is a call for connection. It is beckoning us, but instead of connecting with someone over it, we feel guilty about it, and we never show other people.
Greg McKeown:
Look, I’m so with you on this. There’s just read recently, and I’m reading it here, “Suffering is a given, suffering alone is intolerable.” And I spoke to people. I referred to the pandemic. Now, when I say, okay, well, this was harder, that was harder in the pandemic, I really have shifted my language to saying in the lockdowns because that’s what we’re talking about mostly, right that was so hard.
Of course, I’m not for a second undermining the cost of lives. I know perfectly well that many, many people suffered because of that. Nevertheless, when we talk about this lingering, ongoing suffering, what we’re talking about was the lockdowns, was the forced social isolation. I spoke to somebody in England who spent two years in solitary isolation. They had been let go of their job, they had nobody else in their life, and the lockdowns were severe and a long period. So for two years, he was with no one. And he’s not an old man. He’s not elderly, which of course that wouldn’t make it any better, but just to form the image. And two years, what is the psychological effect of that For so many people? We’ve never done it before, and so the effects will be, of course, forever.
I’m just going to make a wrap on part one of this conversation For those who are listening. What is something that’s already stood out to you, as Jeanie has shared some of her journey to this moment, some of those challenges along the way, some of those experiences? What’s one thing that you can do differently because of it, and who can you share this with so that you can continue this conversation now that the conversation is at a close?
