The Chemistry of Joy + How to Achieve Emotional Wholeness with Tanmeet Sethi, MD
Show Snapshot:
Midlife is a time of life that reveals new truths and can sound a clarion call for transformation. In today’s show, integrative physician and social justice activist Tanmeet Sethi, MD, invites us to see joy as an innate human right accessible to all regardless of our financial status, race, gender, or circumstances. In her new book, “Joy is My Justice: Reclaim What’s Yours,” Dr. Sethi unpacks neuroscience from an equity lens and shares inspiring stories about the range of human capacity and powerful mind-body exercises for emotional wholeness and joy on a cellular level.
Show Links:
Follow Tanmeet
Tanmeet’s book: Joy Is My Justice: Reclaim What Is Yours
Quotable:
Happiness is external... joy is innate. It's embodied. We had it when we were born, we still have it, and nobody can take it away. It doesn't come from receiving something or from achieving something.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:03
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Beauties, you are tuning into this show every week for a variety of reasons. To learn something, be entertained, for company on a walk or a drive, to feel connected to other women who are navigating the same challenges, changes, and transitions at midlife. Your reasons for popping in your air pods each week may differ, but we are all united in a shared human story, which is to say a story of joy and struggle. And since there is no cure for being human, we are sometimes muddling through at best or deeply suffering at worst. My guest this week is here to help us put joy in sharp relief. Integrative physician and activist Dr. Tanmeet Sethi has written a gorgeous book called "Joy is my Justice," which shares methods for shifting your nervous system and biochemistry into joy at a cellular level. Tanmeet is also a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, a TEDx speaker, and has spent 25 years working at the intersection of medicine, science, and social justice serving marginalized and global communities experiencing trauma. In a world where wellness is commodified, or primarily resides in a space of extreme privilege, Tanmeet is signaling a call for everyone to reclaim joy, not as a destination or a solution, but as a profound practice for healing. I am very excited to explore this with her today. Welcome Tanmeet.
Tanmeet Sethi 1:28
Oh Katie, thank that intro was so beautiful. It really just, really summarized what we're going to do today. I love it.
Katie Fogarty 1:36
Well, I am very excited for this conversation. I am midway through your beautiful book. I'm excited to explore this with you. And because we're having this conversation during mental health month, right, but we all know that a focus on mental health needs to be 365 days, your work, your new book, "Joy is My Justice," as the manifesto for joy and healing as a human right. Right, you posit that joy, and what we often refer to as well being, should be accessible to all of us, regardless of race, financial status, or the right kind of life. As we begin this conversation, I would love if you could introduce yourself a little bit more deeply than I did and share what your work is with our listening audience.
Tanmeet Sethi 2:18
Thank you. Yeah. So, as you said, I've been in this intersection of medicine and social justice for 25 years, and really working to advocate for all all human rights in medicine and medicine as a human right. And working nationally and globally in trauma, really, in the areas where manmade and natural disasters have created suffering of the worst kind, school shootings, hurricanes, Ukraine, all all and more. And it was really my own personal life as well that intersected with that 15 years ago when my own second child was diagnosed with an incurable disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which is like an ALS in children. And I realized that all my justice work, all my activism, was going to get me nowhere with this challenge, and that there was no fight to be had externally, it was going to have to come from within, and to really deepen my work with my patients and myself to understand joy as something that I could reach or touch, even when happiness was not available. Because as you mentioned, this extreme world of privileged wellness implies that we're trying to be happy. But when we can't be happy in a cognitively challenged situation, like loss, grief, oppression, or trauma, what's left? And joy was what was there.
Katie Fogarty 3:50
So this is a good time to maybe ask if I may, like I know from reading the book so far, that you distinguish between joy and happiness, that they are different. Can you help define for our audience what these two words mean to you and what they mean in the book and in the work that you do in the world?
Tanmeet Sethi 4:09
Yes, so happiness is a beautiful thing. I hope everybody has a lot of it. But it's a binary construct. It's a cognitive evaluation. It's really hard to be happy in one moment, if you are scared, angry, frustrated, depressed or anxious. And yet, there are ways that we can still strive for well being but when we decide that we can't be happy, we almost feel further oppressed, that we're broken somehow, that we're not good at feeling better. Whereas joy draws on the same deep well as our pain. It's the same capacity for love and meaning. The reason we have so much pain. And joy allows us to acknowledge everything that is here and simultaneously hold a moment of gratitude, compassion, hope, and know that we can hold both and have a bigger story. So joy allows us to feel better, but also to feel more power, more connection, and more meaning in our life. And so it allows a more expansive conversation.
Katie Fogarty 5:24
You know, it's interesting, when I'm listening to you talk, and the way you describe happiness, it almost feels like, for some of us, it sort of like presents like a burden, right? Like, you know, I'm not feeling happy. And then the burden is on us to sort of create this happiness, whereas joy is something that's intrinsic to being human. Whereas happiness is something that maybe we earn, or we go after, or there's a sense of - am I characterizing this correctly?
Tanmeet Sethi 5:53
Yes, happiness is external, right. And it implies that you're exactly what you're saying, which is that joy is innate. It's embodied, we had it when we were born, we still have it, and nobody can take it away. It doesn't come from receiving something or from achieving something, whereas happiness really is built on these external constructs. And all those things are beautiful, and they're fun, and they're pleasant, but they actually don't lead to more power, connection, and belonging in the world. And so there is a real difference here. And the difference I feel is important in this mental health conversation is to have clarity that there is a difference, so that people don't confuse happiness and joy, and then think if I can't be happy, then I should give up.
Katie Fogarty 6:44
Right, or I'm not deserving it. It's so interesting to me the way you link joy and pain together, that they're sort of like a double sided coin on this human continuum, and you can't have one without the other. Because everyone who's alive, you know, as your book points out, will endure great pain in their lives, and often multiple times and usually out of your control. You share this very, you know, difficult, you know, learning that you had as a family when you got your son's diagnosis, and that you realize that you needed to still act to sort of unlock and access your joy even during this really hard time. I would love to sort of explore this a little bit more with you, because I think that as humans, we mostly turn away from our pain. I've done that myself, sometimes we bury things, or we ignore it, or we, you know, we reframe it, or we think if we, you know, it's kind of like, if we don't pay attention to it, maybe it's gonna go away. But you've really invite us to take another approach, and really turn and walk towards some of our pain to unlock joy. So walk us through, you know, a little bit of a topline snapshot of how that works.
Tanmeet Sethi 7:49
Yeah. So this is really, really important, because what happens is we walk away, we turn away. I say I wanted to escape my pain. That's primal. It's how we've survived. It's what we're supposed to do to survive where we are today. Yet, if we walk back towards our pain, if we actually acknowledge it, we can walk into something revolutionary, that's this joy. And I am very honest about the fact that I wanted to run the hell away from it. There was nothing about this I wanted, it wasn't the motherhood experience I was looking for. And at the same time, what I now understand is that I was way happier before my son Zubin's diagnosis, and yet, and that's even with bouts of clinical depression, by the way, but I felt like I was happier at times. But now I'm more joyful. I'm not as happy, every day is hard for me and my family. And yet I am more blissful and joyful. How could that be? It's because when I've learned these tools in these practices to tap into my power and my sense of belonging and connection to myself, and then the world, I've realized that joy is a wider container that can hold not only what I'm experiencing or what you may be going through, but it holds the pain so that it's less heavy.
Katie Fogarty 9:20
That's so beautiful. I'm very excited. I know your book is full of different chapters and different tools and different offerings. We're going to walk through a few of them. I wish we had time to cover each one on the show. But as sort of a stage-setting I want to, before we get there and before we get to the tools, I love this notion of joy as being a wider container. I want to talk a little bit about you know, our physical containers of our bodies. A lot of your work is you know, you are a doctor, you've been practicing medicine for 25 years you you are associated with the hospital you are in, you know in private practice. You talk about how experiencing joy can affect our body on a cellular level and sort of the counteracting, or the flip side of that is when we allow pain and trauma to reside in our bodies unchecked, that has negative impacts. So why does prioritizing joy in sort of mitigating trauma, how does that impact our nervous system?
Tanmeet Sethi 10:16
This is the key crux here. So really what happens is, trauma lives in our body, we can't control that. And at the same time, what I say to patients every day is trauma lives in the body, but that's also where it heals. So if we can step lightly into our body over and over, that's where the healing can happen. We can't cognitively only heal our trauma. And so what you're referring to is the fact that anytime - just think about it, anytime you've had a great loss, a trauma, grief, a challenge, what happens in our body is we get into, basically, people have heard, a fight or flight mode. Our sympathetic nervous system gets stimulated, but it's far greater than that. It is that, and, we have lost a sense of feeling safe. We are now in threat mode, we go into the primal recesses of our brain, and we actually conceive and see the world as a threat. Now, when we're in that mode, it is these practices in of themselves that basically bring us back into our body, to give us a moment of ease and safety, to tell us you are okay in this moment, even if life is not okay right now. And that is so key that I can't stress it enough for everyone listening, that if you can step back into your body, if you can do these practices and be with instead of away from what is actually happening, you can restore a sense of safety and ease so that you can have justice in your body, even when life is not giving it to you. This is so powerful.
Katie Fogarty 12:04
Absolutely so powerful. We're heading into a quick break. But when we come back, I want to start to explore what are some of these tools? What are some of these steps? What are the some of these actions we can take to feel that sense of safety and ease in our bodies?
[AD BREAK]
We're back from the break. Ee went into it talking about what we can do to feel a sense of safety and ease and and sort of unlock that joy and that positive chemistry in our bodies. I know your book is full of tools. Let's start this portion of the conversation by having you share with our listeners who don't yet have this book in their hand. You know, how do you, what are the tools that you're giving? How is the book structured? What can somebody expect from reading it?
Tanmeet Sethi 12:46
Yeah, so the first part of the book is really about reclaiming some space in your body. So what are the things that may be blocking joy? Is it ancestral stories, family stories, your own limiting beliefs, just also breaking down this whole in greater detail, what is happening in the body in terms of your nervous system, and how you can move into different ways to regulate it. The second part really goes through these tools. And what I want to frame for people is that many of these tools you've heard before, like compassion, self compassion, gratitude, movement, but what I do is frame them through the lens of equity and justice and give neuroscience that's accessible to show you that they're not contrived platitudes when they're used this way. They actually are ways to restore power in your body. And so, you know, I get asked a lot, what's the point of being grateful in a world like this, or if I'm going through something like this, whatever it may be. And first of all, I always tell people is just an invitation. But I also explain that when I don't feel like being grateful, I don't; I feel other things. And when I feel grateful, it's not because I should, it's because I deserve that power in my body. I deserve to take it back. So any of these tools that we're about to talk about are really about reclaiming that power. And so that, that the third part really talks about how to integrate a joy practice into your life. So I'm happy to just even go through a couple of tools mentioning how they work or whatever you feel would be better.
Katie Fogarty 14:29
We're definitely going to do that. But I want to just continue to ask you a little bit about this notion of deserving these tools. Because that when I heard that word just said right now, it really spoke to me because you know, sometimes we do feel like we don't deserve certain things. Maybe we have a critical inner voice or we're feeling uncertain we're at a point for for whatever reasons, listeners could be feeling like, "Well, I'm not sure that I deserve to feel like joyful. I just lyelled at my my kid. Or I'm in this like toxic relationship at work. Or I've just suffered this incredible health challenge or bad news or whatever." And sometimes we don't feel worthy. And I wanted to ask you like, you are making a practice right now of recognizing that you deserve things like joy, and this sense of safety as a birthright. What role if any, did aging play in your ability to, I don't want to say the word achieve peace with this, but to sort of recognize that you deserve that did a play any role? Or was it more the fact that you've been practicing this work for so long in these different communities that have been suffering due to poverty, due to addiction, I know you work with a lot with the refugee community. There's a lot of trends, you know, dislocation, they're suffering, there's challenges, you know. Walk us through a little bit about whether it was aging or your work that allowed you to get to this place where you are today?
Tanmeet Sethi 15:59
Yeah, I think it's both. I think it's definitely my work. But, you know, aging has this beautiful, beautiful side, which is that I feel like every year I step more boldly into my truth. And every year, I learn how to sit with my pain and myself in a way that allows me to accept who I am without limiting who I want to be.
Katie Fogarty 16:28
Okay, that like I need, I feel like, I transcribe these shows, so I have show notes, but like, I need that, like, printed off on a sticker and like stuck on my wall. So I can look at it. You've blown my mind. I think that is such an incredible, that's just what this show is about. And I I'm so excited that you said that, you know, and it's, I don't know, I'm just blown away. How can listeners who right now are thinking like, I want to feel that way, you know, what are some of the tools that you use in book, because you go through multiple tools, and you know, there's 10, 12 chapters in this book, you know, we're gonna, I know we can't get to them all, we talked about covering chapter six, which has really resonated, which is called Why not me, we talked about the chapter on forgiveness versus grace. Maybe gratitude is not enough chapter, what has made the biggest difference for you and which tool has made the biggest impact on your readership to date?
Tanmeet Sethi 17:27
I think one of the biggest ones, someone asked me at a book event which was my favorite one. I said, That's like asking me who my favorite child is.
Katie Fogarty 17:36
I have three kids so I know that's hard. I know that's hard.
Tanmeet Sethi 17:39
I know, and my children all threw up their arms, like, what do you mean, you can't say it? But anyway, I think that one of the biggest ones is actually related to what we were just saying that you were, you know, wanted to put on a sticker, which is self-compassion. And what I really want to frame for your listeners is why now self-compassion feels like the boldest justice I can have. Because I will tell you, I took it, I feel like it's given in this wellness world as a really a big woo, like love your body, love yourself, accept yourself, you know, and over and over, as if it's that easy. And also, as if there isn't a nuance around it, about also wanting to improve yourself. So let me just break that down. Because what we don't get taught to us is how self-compassion works. So how self- compassion works is that if you are berating yourself in your mind, which, by the way I'm human, so I know you and I, and everyone does do it constantly. I do it all the time. And if I'm berating myself in my mind, that is like someone yelling at me. That is a threat. And my brain takes it as a threat. I go into the primal recesses of my brain, and I want to run away and survive, I am in no capacity for change. I cannot get into my frontal cortex and actually motivate to change. And so what happens is, my brain actually tells my body, my nervous system and my brain together, say, it is not safe out there. Stand down. You cannot do this. Now, if you're already berating yourself, and then your body and brain take hold on that, think about that, how are you ever going to change? So let's just take a common example. You want to exercise more, and you slipped up. You didn't get to the gym this week at all, or whatever it is. The first thing we hear is, I'm just, you know, I'm such a loser. I can't do this. I don't know why I think I can change this. I'm not even sure why even try. I mean I could go on and on.
Katie Fogarty 19:51
Of course you're like I'm disorganized. I like I'm not good at scheduling. Why am I not prioritizing what I care about, you know?
Tanmeet Sethi 19:58
And so then what happens though is that somewhere in our conditioning, we have mistaken, misconfused, accountability with shame. So I have never seen a dictionary where accountability included shame, it isn't there, we have imposed that. So we somehow think if I don't keep myself accountable by telling myself, you're a loser, you need to do better, then I'm never going to do better. The truth is, if you hold yourself in compassion, your brain and nervous system will know that you're safe. And you will engage your executive function and your motivation and prime yourself for change. This is neuroscience that has been shown over and over. And so what I mean by how I can accept myself but also who I want to be is that there is no way that you if anyone out, there is a parent listening, you don't think about helping your child not eat ice cream at midnight, because there'll be up all night, or a coke or whatever, I don't know. It's not about those foods being bad, it's just about it not being okay to do it at midnight and try to go to bed. And you wouldn't help your child understand that if you didn't love them. Compassion is actually at the root of all change. But we've confused it for you know, this shame, a shame accountability. So I'm hoping that helps you understand a little bit about how I reframe compassion, and then teach you how to do it in a way where you can hold both?
Katie Fogarty 21:35
Yes, absolutely. Because, you know, I think you sort of you alluded to this a little bit like we live in this culture in the US, at least, you know, I know I've got listeners from all over the world and but in the US, there's this this notion, I think of relentless optimization, you know, where like, we are relentlessly optimizing and trying to be better or improve, and if so, that has that negative quality of this sort of.... where we fall short, we berate ourselves. And this is something that is so human, you actually share a really interesting story in your book. You had an interaction with a Buddhist nun, you share that you like open the curtain to walk into see your patient, surprise! Because you don't normally see a Buddhist nun on the other side of the, you know, the curtain, but she was experiencing stress, which is not something that we, and she was experiencing, the stress is sort of physical manifestations in her body, and you ran through all sorts of checks. And she, you know, it was hard to have that conversation, you know, we think of Buddhist nuns as being very zen. But you in that book, in that particular chapter, you said something that I wrote down, which you said pain is wise. And I thought that was so interesting, you know, what is we can ask ourselves this question, you know, when I am suffering, what am I, what is my body, or my spirit trying to teach me during this moment? You also in another chapter in chapter seven share an equation I've heard you talk about in your TED talk, I watched several of your TED talks, I know you've done a couple, in preparation for this and in both chapter seven in this book, and in one of your TED talks, you share an equation that you say transformed your life and thinking around pain and suffering. And I would love it if you could walk us through that.
Tanmeet Sethi 23:22
Yeah. So that equation is S equals P times R, and it's suffering equals pain times resistance. The P is there, we can't change it. Or if we can change it, we need to get into clarity. The R is the resistance. I don't want this to be happening. I wish this weren't my life. This sucks. Why is this happening to me, and the S is multiplied exponentially by that resistance. So the more we resist what's happening, the more we suffer. Now people will say, doesn't that mean giving up? No, it means lowering the R so that you can see the P, the pain, and then you can manage it, whether that's attending to your sadness, with compassion, or whether it's fighting in a protest on the streets to change what's happening. You cannot do that when you are bogged down in suffering. And these systems of oppression thrive when we do not. These challenges we have get stronger when we do not. And so the way to really get your power back is to lower that resistance.
Katie Fogarty 24:29
Let's talk about that a little bit, because I know that you work, you know, a lot of your work is rooted in social justice, you know, racial equity. And, you know, in the book, you say that this notion, it's not a notion of surrender, but it's a notion of or maybe it is, you know, of just sort of like walking with your pain experiencing it and sort of, you know, using this equation right now, but it's not about giving up on the fighting the systems and inequity that exists in the world. So I'd love , can you expand on that this is not, you know, what you just talked about does not necessarily apply to these systems of oppression that that we all exist within, or in some of us really exist within and you can't you can't, you know, have positive thinking or you can't feel resilient in the face of extreme poverty or, or physical danger or addiction.
Tanmeet Sethi 25:20
Right. So, so let me, and it's, it's a really good question because the nuance is really important here. Resistance does not mean anger or motivation for change. That's important. Resistance means wishing it were different right now, so much so that you can't even see the pain and change it. So you know, in my case, I'll just take my son's example. It was saying, I don't want this life, I don't, why does my child have to have this? Why can't this be different? Now, of course, that's all normal. And it, it comes through all of our minds and hearts, we can't change that. But when we get bogged down and stuck in it, we actually can't even manage the pain itself. And so it wasn't until I lower that are that I could really find these tools, and really help myself find joy, true joy. And if you're fighting systems of oppression, if you're fighting any kind of unchangeable system that is bogging you down, if you can hold that, I am angry, I want this to change, but not get bogged down in the, why is this happening again and again, you can actually move to change, you can get into that clarity of your executive function and really figure out oh, you know, what I need? I need to join that advocacy group. I need to support that politician. I don't know, whatever it is for you. Yeah. And so, you know, this is a really important thing. And it actually relates back to well, I'll see if you have any more questions about that, because it relates back to a tool that you refer to earlier, but I'll see where you want to go from here.
Katie Fogarty 27:00
Well, you know, maybe this is the tool that you were thinking, which you may be thinking of this tool, which is sort of the Why Not Me tool, which I thought was really interesting in chapter six, because, you know, chapter six, you shared you and your husband, were talking about your your son's, you know, diagnosis and, you know, processing the impact it was going to have on on him and you know, his life and your family. And you were saying it's very easy to fall into why me? Why us? And then one of you said, Well, why not us? You know, why not? And the recognition that, you know, I explored this idea with Cyndie Spiegel came on the book, who wrote the book, Micro Joys. Good things happen....bad things happen to good people. And that is, you know, as we said at the top of the show, there's no cure for being human, you know, we have to figure out how to walk through that, walk sort of hand in hand with the pain that allows us to, you know, experience the double sided coin of joy. Is that the tool that you were talking about? Or is there something else?
Tanmeet Sethi 28:00
That was one of them, yes. And this is a really powerful question, because what it really did was break down exactly what you're saying, once we said it out loud, we couldn't really find the answer to why not me, because it does imply why me implies that I'm too good for this, and it creates a disconnection between us and humanity, our humanness, and when we say why not me, we actually stand in a more powerful pose, we actually create cellular change in our body that allows us to connect to the fact that we are human, bad things happen. We didn't deserve it. It's not fair. But this is the part of being human. We all share suffering and pain. And we also all share the right to joy. You know, I just had a book event with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who many people may know is one of the leading social justice fighters in Congress right now. And she actually shared that this question transformed things for her this year during a very difficult year in her fight for justice, because she realized that this was what she needed to keep her motivation and strength to fight for change. I found that really powerful.
Katie Fogarty 29:18
Because she said....I don't want to put words in her mouth, but when I'm thinking about how I might use this tool in my own experiences, like when you sat down this like angry burden of like, why is this happening? Which is not something that can ever be answered necessarily, you know, unless you know, you know an illness is not something that you can just, if you want to rail and throw your hands up and rail like why me?, why me? then you're carrying around this heavy burden and not actually taking the step freeing up the space, getting the clarity, to allow you to release the anger and then move into this new situation. Which is not necessarily acceptance, but it's just, or maybe it is acceptance. Do you feel that acceptance plays any role and unlocking joy?
Tanmeet Sethi 29:59
Yeah, I I think it does, I don't think it's exactly the way it's, it's always provided on a platter, which is that it feels more like giving up, surrendering, and but the way you described it is exactly how I think it plays a role. I feel like your co author of my book here, Katie.
Katie Fogarty 30:17
I had, I've had the experience, I talked about, I can't remember what show I talked about it on, but I was so upset about something that was going on in my life, and I literally felt like, I had read a quote, and it was saying something like, carrying anger around is like, you know, carrying a lump of hot coal. You know, like, all you're doing, the person who created this anger in you know, they, let's just say they, you know, they did do something wrong, but I'm the one that suffering, you know, they're not suffering, I'm carrying around all of this anger. And I find like, when I released the anger, then you're able to be in conversation about what occurred, you know, just carrying around those upset, angry feelings was literally only punishing me. Not, you know, not the person who had, you know, sort of generated this, this sort of state in myself. So, you know, I wish we could explore every single tool, I wanted to talk about forgiveness versus grace. And can you share with our audience what you mean in that chapter?
Tanmeet Sethi 31:17
Yeah, I, I'm really done with forgiveness.
Katie Fogarty 31:21
Which I love. I love, I'm here for honesty, tell us why you're done with forgiveness. By the way, we get to midlife, and we're done with a lot of things. So I want to know, I want to hear why you're done with forgiveness.
Tanmeet Sethi 31:31
Yeah, I'm done with it. It feels like yet another thing the world is asking of me and I'm like, God, you know, I'm already in pain. So I'm done with it, I get the power of it, I get the science behind it. What I offer is a different frame, because I actually don't think it's forgiveness for at least my joy path. And everyone's is different. Mine is grace. And Grace actually comes from the Latin word gratis, thankful, it's another form of gratitude. But it actually is, for me a powerful revolutionary form of forgiveness. Because what it is, is saying, if the world has wronged me, if a challenge feels unfair, or unjust, I can give or if a person, especially if a person has wronged me, I really don't have the energy or the wherewithal often to forgive them, especially if it's very, if it's in the realm of evil. You know, I don't want to forgive evil. And I actually, though, can give them grace for being human and having flaws like me, and I can say, I don't want them around me, but I'll give them grace, they can go do their work, and I'll do mine. If I've done something that's harmed myself or disappointed myself, I can give myself grace for being human, it's soft, but fierce. If I get I can give the world grace. It just gives me space, it creates spaciousness for me to do my work. Forgiveness feels really solid to me, like, either I forgive or I don't, it's very binary. Whereas Grace allows a continuum of fluid expansion of space around me. And so I'll tell you, just this week, last week, I mean, you know, it's, it's just the universe gives it to you. I wrote this book, and then my son's physical therapist was stretching him at school, and had a slight fracture in his knee from the stretch. Now he's very fragile. She was beside herself. You can imagine she was just berating herself. And we've known her for a long time. She's just a beautiful human being. We trust her implicitly. She called me she just, you know, was beside herself. Oh, my gosh, Tanmeet, I don't know what I'm gonna do that. I mean, I literally said Go read chapter 12. And then I said, I gave her two chapters: Self-Compassion and Grace. Now, it's so easy. That's all I have to do. I gave her grace. I really did. And I said, Yeah, it's so scary. I hear you. It's so hard. We've done it, anyone could do it. It is what it is. I really truly felt so sad that we had yet another thing to manage, and simultaneously, was able to just give her grace because there was no way for me to change what had happened. And honestly, it's happened with us I have a story about it in the book. And so the way that I gave her grace allowed her space, and it gave me space to just manage my sadness. So that's just how, I mean I go into into much more detail in the book, but it is allowed me much more healing than forgiveness ever had.
Katie Fogarty 34:47
I love this this, this book is really rich with so many anecdotes and, you know, every chapter ends with some sort of prompts that one can use. If a listener is thinking you know, if you are are in a moment of suffering right now, if there's something that you're managing your health or relationships or if you just want to be more thoughtful and intentional about creating a resiliency toolkit, right? We all need to tap into different tools at different points in our life. I mean, if you're not suffering right now, you know, this, this is still a wonderful, incredible read. It's something that gives you prompts to kind of unlock more joy in your life, I highly recommend it. I'm halfway through and so enjoying it. We are moving into our speed round now because our time is coming to a close. And this is, I know, it goes so quickly, it goes so quickly, I could talk to you about this forever. I'm going back and I'm not making it a bumper sticker but I'm putting it in the show notes and all listeners can come follow me on instagram over at a certain age pod and see some of Tanmeet's beautiful quotes from this conversation over there and I invite you to do so. But here is our speed round. This is one to two word answers. So let's do this. Writing "Joy is My Justice "was:
Tanmeet Sethi 35:10
Healing.
Katie Fogarty 35:22
This simple daily activity gives me joy:
Tanmeet Sethi 36:04
Breath.
Katie Fogarty 36:05
Working with communities that are suffering is draining emotionally. I make an intentional practice of this activity to safeguard my energy and my joy.
Tanmeet Sethi 36:21
Movement.
Katie Fogarty 36:23
When life feels hard this activity or action grounds me:
Tanmeet Sethi 36:28
Self-compassion.
Katie Fogarty 36:29
Nice - and maybe paddleboarding. You shared that you were, before we hit record you shared that you are in beautiful Washington State and you're going to be on a lake paddleboarding later. Okay, so maybe this is the maybe this answer might be paddleboarding. You prioritize rest I know from the book by saying no to additional requests that do not move your river of joy. I love this imagery. What is something that might seem small or silly, something unlikely that adds to your river of joy.
Tanmeet Sethi 37:00
Oh, dance.
Katie Fogarty 37:02
Dance, you are far from the first person to say that and I have like two left feet but I need to like get myself into some dance situations pretty quickly because that's clearly a joy activator.
Tanmeet Sethi 37:16
Oh every day. Yes.
Katie Fogarty 37:18
Love it. Okay, finally, what's your one word answer to complete the sentence: as I age I feel:
Tanmeet Sethi 37:24
Bold.
Katie Fogarty 37:26
Nice. This has been such a great conversation. I wish we could have explored all of the other tools, you know the 12 chapters in the book. I'm going to be putting it into the show notes. I so enjoyed this conversation, before we say goodbye though. How can our listeners find you, your work, and your book?
Tanmeet Sethi 37:43
Hmm. Thank you Kate, I loved it too. This was wonderful. I have on my website which I'm sure you will link to. You can actually go straight there to buy my book from anywhere books are sold and I have bonuses there as well for you if you buy the book and including, Katie, a playlist that I made to go with the book
Katie Fogarty 38:03
Oh my gosh. Can I dance to this?
Tanmeet Sethi 38:06
Yeah, it was so much fun, and, but you'll see all the bonuses there. And then I'm most active, I'm on social at Facebook and Instagram, but most active on Instagram and I love hearing from people there and I would love for you to come find me
Katie Fogarty 38:19
Phenomenal. Thank you Tanmeet. This was Dr. Tanmeet Sethi talking about her new book "Joy is my Justice". This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Before we say goodbye, a massive thank you to everyone who has taken time to write an apple podcast review. I see and appreciate you. Creating this podcast is so much fun, but also a ton of work. I love seeing reviews that hype the show up. It makes me feel so loved and supported. You are the best, truly. Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly beauties.