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[0:36] Laura Camien: Welcome to the Spark File, where we believe everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone.

[0:43] Susan Blackwell: I'm Laura Camien and I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:46] Laura Camien: And we are creativity coaches who help people clarify and accomplish their creative goals.

[0:51] Susan Blackwell: You ought to know that just by listening to this podcast, you're joining a warm and wonderful clan of creatives.

[0:58] Laura Camien: But you may also be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file?

[0:58] Susan Blackwell: A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all of your inspirations and fascinations.

[1:08] Laura Camien: Every episode, we're gonna reach into our very own SparkFiles and exchange some sparks.

[1:14] Susan Blackwell: And from time to time, we may even talk to some folks who spark us too.

[1:18] Laura Camien: And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take some of those sparks of inspiration and make something of your own.

[1:25] Susan Blackwell: So without further ado, let's open up the Spark File.

[1:30] Laura Camien: Hi.

[1:32] Susan Blackwell: Good morning to you.

[1:45] Laura Camien: Case, which is the capstone event for our Illum mastermind course, and it's held in New York City.

[1:51] Susan Blackwell: This year we held it in my dream space at the loft at Arzanova.

[1:57] Laura Camien: Very salon-like atmosphere.

[1:59] Susan Blackwell: And yeah, intimate and rocking like docking.

[2:04] Laura Camien: And rocking like Docken.

[2:06] Susan Blackwell: How can it be all those things at once?

[2:09] Laura Camien: It was so farkin fun.

[2:11] Susan Blackwell: I don't know how it could have gone better.

[2:13] Laura Camien: I can't think of a thing, genuinely.

[2:15] Susan Blackwell: And we've had debriefs, we've talked with everybody.

[2:18] Laura Camien: We're like, we circled up. How's everybody feel?

[2:22] Susan Blackwell: It was really magical.

[2:24] Laura Camien: For our clients, we have private messaging threads so that they can be in contact with Laura and myself.

[2:24] Susan Blackwell: They can be in contact with their coaches.

[2:32] Laura Camien: And I did exchange a message with one of our clients who was like, oh, the drop is real, like the afterdrop.

[2:41] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[2:41] Laura Camien: And I was like, I feel you.

[2:43] Susan Blackwell: I feel like I've been pulled in the best possible way out of a washing machine myself.

[2:48] Laura Camien: And I referred them back to the episode of the podcast that we did just this season about creative hangovers because that's what it is.

[2:57] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[2:57] Laura Camien: And I have actually gotten better.

[3:00] Susan Blackwell: I'm really, let me just pat myself on the back while we're all here.

[3:04] Laura Camien: I noticed that I have gotten better doing the thing that we talk about, which is planning for creative recovery time.

[3:14] Susan Blackwell: And I always think, this is a household that loves LeBron James, and so we talk a lot about like what athletes do after a game, you know, everything from the ice baths and the, you know, the seeing of a medical person and the sleep and the like everything is accounted for of like how can I take care of this vessel that I'm in from the chemical cascade, you know, to the effect that it's having on, you know, every cell in my body.

[3:45] Laura Camien: And I have like learned to really think ahead on that.

[3:50] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[3:50] Laura Camien: And so I got a massage.

[3:52] Susan Blackwell: I got a massage.

[3:53] Laura Camien: I sat in a steam bath and like literally thought about like just sweating out all of the worries, all of the fears.

[4:00] Susan Blackwell: It was just like so, it was very, very good.

[4:04] Laura Camien: And I was like, yeah, this is how you do it.

[4:07] Susan Blackwell: That is how you do it.

[4:09] Laura Camien: Susan, what a smart you are.

[4:11] Susan Blackwell: That is so smart.

[4:13] Laura Camien: Thank you. Do you want to share one of your favorite aspects of the Illum showcase?

[4:18] Susan Blackwell: I know that we had what, 11 people presenting.

[4:21] Laura Camien: We could talk about each and every one of them, but that would be the entire podcast.

[4:25] Susan Blackwell: So globally speaking, what was one of your favorite things about the Illum showcase?

[4:31] Laura Camien: Yeah, I would say globally speaking, I was dazzled by how every single one of these illumineers had set a goal for themselves, set an intention for the day.

[4:47] Susan Blackwell: When the day arrived, and all those feelings come up that are like, why did I say I wanted to do this? Why?

[4:54] Laura Camien: They all tapped back into their, you know, their goals, their desires, their intention, and then they lived it.

[5:03] Susan Blackwell: And I know for me at the beginning of the day, my intention was ease and joy, not perfection, very much not perfection, but to be okay with and live with, like, hey, this is who I am today. This is how that came out of my mouth. Enjoy it. And that's what we did.

[5:23] Laura Camien: I watched every single person step up to that mic, do their thing, and have a sense of enjoyment, which was beautiful.

[5:32] Susan Blackwell: It's a wild thing to see that many people, person after person by design step up and take a really strategic creative risk.

[5:44] Laura Camien: Whatever that meant to them, they all did it.

[5:46] Susan Blackwell: And that is, it's like watching a miracle, little gods one after another making miracles right in front of your eyes.

[5:55] Laura Camien: It's so inspiring.

[5:56] Susan Blackwell: It is.

[5:57] Laura Camien: It's amazing.

[5:59] Susan Blackwell: How about you, Susan?

[6:01] Laura Camien: I think one of my favorite things about the day is that, I mean, there's a lot of adrenaline. There's a lot of, but it's also the audience that comes.

[6:14] Susan Blackwell: Friends, family, industry professionals.

[6:18] Laura Camien: They are so open-hearted and so encouraging.

[6:25] Susan Blackwell: And it is this creativity party.

[6:29] Laura Camien: It's really, really fun.

[6:32] Susan Blackwell: It's so supportive.

[6:33] Laura Camien: Like, I don't know about you. I'm remembering a moment that we haven't talked about.

[6:38] Susan Blackwell: It's so supportive, like being cradled in these like hands of just love and I want you to excel. I want you to, I want to celebrate you and elevate you, which is the whole thing that we dream of creating.

[6:53] Laura Camien: There was a moment where I almost started to cry at the end, where we're like, we're about to thank everybody for what it meant for them being here.

[7:04] Susan Blackwell: And I had like a little, and the people in that room were so attuned, like so attuned.

[7:12] Laura Camien: The audience goes, oh.

[7:15] Susan Blackwell: And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys.

[7:18] Laura Camien: And all of a sudden, like I felt like I didn't need to cry.

[7:21] Susan Blackwell: Do you know what I mean? I was just like, oh, we were so, everybody was like right there.

[7:27] Laura Camien: They're so intuitive. They're so empathic. They're so compassionate and so connected.

[7:34] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Really great, warm room, a lot of laughs.

[7:38] Laura Camien: Oh my God.

[7:39] Susan Blackwell: Oh boy. There was a moment built into the show where Laura Camien just like stomped down the aisle to spotlight the swag bag set to purse first by Bob the Drag Queen.

[7:54] Laura Camien: That tickled me so much.

[7:56] Susan Blackwell: And also, Amory Petersma, OG Sparkfiler did with her company, Trust Your Taste, customized cheese pairings that kind of spotlit every single Illumineer.

[8:10] Laura Camien: And it was delicious.

[8:13] Susan Blackwell: It was fun. It was just a party.

[8:14] Laura Camien: It was a creativity party.

[8:16] Susan Blackwell: And that, like that, those cheese pairings are like the most incredible way to feel seen, to make someone feel seen, to be like, look, I saw the essence of you.

[8:25] Laura Camien: Yes.

[8:26] Susan Blackwell: And I felt this and I felt this. And I've made this combination representing you, the beauty of you, the weirdness of you, the uniqueness of you.

[8:34] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[8:34] Susan Blackwell: It's incredible.

[8:36] Laura Camien: And we took that moment and made it a moment where people in the audience met each other.

[8:40] Susan Blackwell: And I can't even tell you the number of people that were like, oh my God, the person that I met during that moment.

[8:46] Laura Camien: Like, I didn't even realize like who is gathered here today, who you invite into this circle is extraordinary.

[8:53] Susan Blackwell: I'm like, yeah, you all are amazing.

[8:55] Laura Camien: And you should know each other.

[8:57] Susan Blackwell: You should know each other in this community.

[8:59] Laura Camien: And you should be memorialized in cheese.

[9:01] Susan Blackwell: And that's right. I have to say, and this is an endorsement. This is an endorsement.

[9:05] Laura Camien: It is unpaid and it comes from the bottom of my heart.

[9:11] Susan Blackwell: As somebody who has done a lot of event planning, I've worked in offices where I was charged with that.

[9:16] Laura Camien: I've worked with a lot of event planners.

[9:18] Susan Blackwell: If you're the kind of person who is in a role where you are charged with planning events, weddings, corporate events, what have you.

[9:29] Laura Camien: You need to go Google Trust Your Taste.

[9:32] Susan Blackwell: Anne-Marie Petersma's company.

[9:34] Laura Camien: She's a certified cheese professional.

[9:36] Susan Blackwell: That's right. And if you want to make your event special, get Anne-Marie Petersma to create customized cheese pairings in honor of it.

[9:51] Laura Camien: Yeah, your wedding reception, your anniversary, birthdays.

[9:56] Susan Blackwell: It is so delightful.

[9:59] Laura Camien: I feel like it ups the delight quotient.

[10:01] Susan Blackwell: I was like, this is the thing that has made this event, which is already extra extra. It's made it extra, extra, extra.

[10:07] Laura Camien: It was so special.

[10:09] Susan Blackwell: And I just want to say we get dibs on Anne-Marie for every loom showcase from here till the end of time.

[10:14] Laura Camien: So no, you can't book her on that day whenever it is.

[10:18] Susan Blackwell: Pick a different day.

[10:19] Laura Camien: Dib a different day.

[10:22] Susan Blackwell: Laura.

[10:23] Laura Camien: Susan.

[10:24] Susan Blackwell: Congratulations on successfully navigating the loom showcase.

[10:28] Laura Camien: Would you like to give me a spark?

[10:30] Susan Blackwell: I've got a spark. I am excited to spark you with this today.

[10:35] Laura Camien: It's kind of fun.

[10:36] Susan Blackwell: It's kind of deep.

[10:38] Laura Camien: It could go in a thousand directions.

[10:40] Susan Blackwell: So we're gonna see what exactly happens.

[10:43] Laura Camien: Are you ready for this?

[10:44] Susan Blackwell: I'm ready.

[10:46] Laura Camien: Okay. So a few weeks ago, the craziest thing happened.

[10:52] Susan Blackwell: I am working at my favorite cafe as I do, and it's nearing the end of the day.

[10:58] Laura Camien: And Wes calls me.

[11:00] Susan Blackwell: That's not the crazy part, but Wes calls me and he says, What are you doing?

[11:05] Laura Camien: I said, Well, I'm about to kind of pack up and head home. Why? What are you doing?

[11:08] Susan Blackwell: And he says, I'm at Barnes and Noble.

[11:14] Laura Camien: And I thought maybe you'd want to meet, um, you could meet me around here. We could go to dinner.

[11:18] Susan Blackwell: I'm like, You said, you said what now? You're where now?

[11:24] Laura Camien: And he says, I'm at Barnes and Noble.

[11:28] Susan Blackwell: I read the description of a new book and I had to come get a copy. They didn't have any left at Strand.

[11:35] Laura Camien: Wow.

[11:36] Susan Blackwell: Friends, that's exactly right, Susan. That's what I said. Wow.

[11:40] Laura Camien: Like my jaw hit the floor.

[11:43] Susan Blackwell: You read a book description and you had to go get it immediately for you.

[11:50] Laura Camien: This is a book you want to read, not for me. I'm not saying that Wes never reads.

[11:54] Susan Blackwell: I'm just saying I haven't seen him with a physical book in his hand for a long time.

[11:59] Laura Camien: This is a man who is more likely to have drumsticks or mallets or a guitar or a banjo or a washboard or spoons, anything that can make music in his hands.

[12:10] Susan Blackwell: And please trust me, he is literate in ways that I am not.

[12:13] Laura Camien: So I have the ultimate respect. I'm not saying this with any judgment.

[12:17] Susan Blackwell: I just haven't known him to read a book description, drop everything, and walk to the bookstore to go get it.

[12:24] Laura Camien: So I say, What book is it?

[12:27] Susan Blackwell: And he tells me the name of the book.

[12:30] Laura Camien: And this is the craziest part.

[12:33] Susan Blackwell: Susan, I was like, shut the F up.

[12:38] Laura Camien: I just read the description of that book, and I have already ordered it. It's going to arrive tomorrow.

[12:45] Susan Blackwell: Amazing.

[12:46] Laura Camien: Now that is something very like me to do. I will get a book. Someone will tell me about a book. I'll get it in 30 seconds if I think I want it because I don't want to forget and never remember to get that book.

[12:57] Susan Blackwell: So that was very like a me thing to do. But Wes and I reading the same description and acting on it immediately. This is like lightning striking twice in the same two spots simultaneously.

[13:11] Laura Camien: This is a very unlikely occurrence.

[13:14] Susan Blackwell: And yet here we are.

[13:17] Laura Camien: So would you like to know the description of the book?

[13:20] Susan Blackwell: I would love to.

[13:22] Laura Camien: Okay. I will also add that we both read that Anne Hathaway has already bought the movie rights to this book.

[13:31] Laura Camien: Here is the description. A trad wife influencer named Natalie wakes up in the world she was cosplaying online in the year 1855 and has to live the life she was so enthusiastically promoting.

[13:51] Susan Blackwell: Wow. If that book had a finger, that book speaker would be on the pulse of the culture.

[13:57] Laura Camien: Uh-huh.

[13:58] Susan Blackwell: Uh-huh. And I have to say it's one of those ideas. It doesn't happen often, but it does sometimes happen. It's one of those ideas that made me think, damn it.

[14:06] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[14:09] Susan Blackwell: Why didn't I think of it? It's awesome. That's awesome. Now, having read the book, Wes finished it before I did, by the way. I can say this. It did not end up being the story that I would have written. It's not the story that immediately appeared in my head. And that's okay. It was still great and it's worth reading. And frankly, probably went even deeper in ways that I didn't expect or didn't think of right away. But it is a great example of how you can take a log line, a single sentence description of a story, give it to 10 different people, and you will get 10 different stories.

[14:47] Laura Camien: So if that log line excited any of you the way it excited me, don't worry, you can still write your version of that story. So today's Spark, this is not a critique or a book report. So I'm going to try to avoid spoilers. I'm not gonna get into specific plot stuff, but I would like to talk about the topics that get explored in the book rather than tell you all the details. You ready for this?

[15:23] Susan Blackwell: I'm ready.

[15:26] Laura Camien: Okay. The New York Times says yesteryear. Did I say the name of the book? The book is yesteryear.

[15:31] Susan Blackwell: I think so.

[15:33] Laura Camien: Yesteryear. Yeah, the name of the book is yesteryear. New York Times says yesteryear is a thriller and a scathing critique of how women perform for the internet. It's also a book all about religion, belief, and delusion. Other descriptions say that yesteryear explores the dark side of American nostalgia, influencer culture, and the trad wife traditional housewife movement.

[16:05] Susan Blackwell: Uh-huh.

[16:06] Laura Camien: I wrote a few things in the margins as I read, you know, as I read, which is what I do and why I have to have a physical book, because I have to make little notes everywhere. So here's the first thing I wrote about five pages in. I wrote, Oh, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Have you ever heard someone describe an aspect of themselves and think, huh? That doesn't quite compute. That doesn't align with my experience of that person. Like there's a disconnect there.

[16:41] Susan Blackwell: Yes, I have.

[16:43] Laura Camien: So to me, this is one of the most interesting things you can give a character that you are writing a belief about themselves that runs counter to their behavior and the way that other people see them. I love this because it is such a human thing. I don't know right now why I'm thinking of Willie Lohmann, right? Your death of a salesman. This idea, he has this grandiose idea about himself and his life. And but what we're watching is like, huh? That isn't the way the people around you respond to you. So something is off.

[17:24] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[17:25] Laura Camien: So there's so many, so many in you know, fascinating examples of that. In this particular case, there is a through line about this main character that makes her for some people really unlikable. That's some of the criticism that people are like, I wish she was more likable. But I found it fascinating. As a person who lived the first part of my life building what I thought was quote unquote the perfect life. Well, actually being completely disconnected from my authentic self. I related to this aspect of her, the part of her that just had to keep repeating something over and over to herself as if she was willing it to be true.

[18:09] In her case, she says, and who was I? A flawless Christian woman, the manic pixie American dream girl of this nation's deepest, darkest fantasies, the mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. She says, sometimes it actually makes me sick how perfect my life is and how good I am at living it. I mean, there are times when you just want to punch this woman in the face. But actually, what I was struck with was sadness because she really wasn't fooling anyone. And the way the book is written, you can see that she wasn't fooling anyone.

[18:59] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[18:59] Laura Camien: You know, um, in fact, the only way that she could fool anyone is by curating a life for her online followers. Yeah. That's it. And through that world, through that lens, she could become who she was trying to believe that she really was. In that world, she could almost believe the story that she told herself about herself. Wow. Obviously, I'm fascinated by this. But this leads to the idea of digital performance that is another theme of the book. And I'm going to talk more about that in a second. But in this case, the specific performance of idealized religion and patriarchal gender roles.

[19:44] Susan Blackwell: Ugh.

[19:47] Laura Camien: When it comes to the patriarchy, I can't speak for the author or what she was going for, but what kept coming up for me is the internalized misogyny that women inflict on themselves and on other women.

[20:05] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[20:05] Laura Camien: When we internalize these ideas of what it means to be a woman or a good woman specifically, to be perfect, to never express a need, to never express a less than attractive emotion, to never be a bother to anyone, to be a perfect mother. It was kind of hard for that to be mirrored back, honestly. I just know too many women who have some level, even if small, of this breed of perfectionism and the belief that if they can just do everything right, they can avoid any negative emotions or negative experiences.

[21:00] Susan Blackwell: Women internalize misogyny and how they pass it on to each other. There is a very painful thread that runs through this book about the betrayal she feels from her mother and from every other woman in her life. She can't express it, of course, but it is seething under the surface. She believes that every woman is a liar, and that lying is in a woman's nature. Even her daughter is a liar just by the nature of being female. Is that some old Adam and Eve religious bullshittery?

[21:44] Laura Camien: Well, it's not because it speaks to the performative nature of being a woman that the whole book is talking about, right?

[21:53] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[21:53] Laura Camien: Because it's like so if we're all performing, we're all fucking lying all the time. So she doesn't trust anything that comes from another woman. And you see you see the world through the lens that you have assembled. She knows she can't trust herself because she's lying to herself about how who she is. So she assumes that everyone else must be lying too. But there's also a very specific thread about being lied to about motherhood, that it is some grand experience, that it is what she was meant to do in the world. And there is a very bitter disconnect for her. Clearly, as you're reading, you can see that she's experienced postpartum depression and she's not getting any help for it.

[22:48] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[22:48] Laura Camien: She's never like it is never directly talked about, but it is so clear that we have some mental health issues going on. She neither seeks support nor has anyone who could support her. There is only reliance on the Bible. I want to read one of the passages that covers the pain of being lied to by her mother. So Natalie, our main character, is sitting outside with her teenage daughter. This is the teenage daughter that she suddenly has in the 1800s. Um, so she doesn't know her that well. But here they are sitting outside on the front porch, and her daughter asks, has anyone ever lied to you?

[23:36] Laura Camien: I consider the question, which feels structurally like a thin sheet of ice over a deep body of water. Any movement, and we could both fall through. I think of my mother sitting at the edge of the hospital bed when I was 20 years old. Soon you'll feel like yourself again. Young. I was so young then, young enough to think my mother was telling the truth. But she was pretending, wasn't she? Always pretending. Though I don't blame her for it or for waiting until just the right moment to let me in on the secret. It's all a vital game, isn't it? No, more than a game. It's the long golden string of insincerity that threads together the entire human race, a shared agreement between women to insist back and forth in endless conversations that this thing we spend our whole lives preparing for, the thing we were born for, is anywhere close to what we thought it would be.

[24:46] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[24:46] Laura Camien: And do you know the truth beneath that secret? The water beneath the ice, it never stops. You never age out of it. Your mother lies to you, and then you lie to your children, and your children lie to their children, and then you are an old woman looking back at your own life, lying to yourself. A lifetime of drowning. And then you are dead.

[25:16] Susan Blackwell: Oh, Natalie.

[25:18] Laura Camien: Natalie, there's a lot in there. It's a bit brutal on women, I have to say. The whole the whole book. Um, she's grappling with it all and does it in some ways that there are times when she also offers a forgiving perspective. So I do want to share that from time to time. She also writes this people lie for all kinds of reasons. They lie to hurt people and to help people, and sometimes because they can't bear the truth. Sometimes people are lying to themselves simply because they cannot look at the reality of it.

[26:00] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[26:00] Laura Camien: And like I'm not a mother, so I can't say anything for sure. I I I certainly cannot judge. I don't know what that experience is like, but I can say that I had an awareness in my 20s that at that time, it's changed since then, but at that time, no one ever seemed to write about or talk about motherhood being anything but great. It was not, it was just an unspeakable, maybe reality. If it was your reality, it was it that might be true, but you were not to speak of it.

[26:36] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god. Do you feel that, Susan? Like it for a period of time when we were younger, you hadn't heard anything but good things about it.

[26:45] Laura Camien: Well, it's so interesting as you're saying all this, Laura. I'm thinking, yes, that it's all presented as sort of this hallmark miracle, Mother's Day miracle.

[26:55] Laura Camien: And I had from a very young age my own perception where I was like, this seems exhausting. This seems, yeah. And I knew from a really young age, I was like, this is not for me. And so I just had my own quiet intuitive truth about how I perceived it. But I think you're right. I think that I think that there are probably miraculous elements to being a mother, but it's not until fairly recently, honestly, fairly recently, that where I have peers and contemporaries who are mothers who are speaking honestly about the ups and the downs of it.

[27:46] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[27:47] Laura Camien: And making it more acceptable to speak their truth, whatever that truth may be. And that can include like, hey, yes, I love being a mother. My life didn't end and shouldn't have to end once I, you know, brought this child into the world. There's more life to live, um, with that child in mind. But I was the opposite, Suze. I always assumed that I would have kids. And like I was the neighborhood babysitter. I think we've talked about that. Like I was every up until like literally till the day I left for college, there would be like five-year-olds, eight-year-olds knocking on our front door and saying, Can Laura come play? And I would be like, Yes, I can. And I'm out the door and I'm playing with the kids.

And I just assumed that I would. And I assumed that I would know when the time was right. But I distinctly remember I was sitting in an, I know the office, the conference room at Blue Man Group. I was sitting in the latitude and the longitude. I totally know the day that I was like, oh, you can say that. We were, I don't know, a meeting, you know, meetings never started on time. So we would just, you know, bullshit and talk about stuff until we started. And I remember I was in a room with a few like friends and coworkers. And one of the women said, Oh God, I don't fucking want kids. And I was, I am not kidding you. I gasped. I was like, You don't? And she was like, No. I don't, I mean, she was just one of the, she was from Boston.

She was like, I don't fucking whatever. You know, she just was like, I'm gonna say whatever. And I had this moment, Susan, where I was like, pause and wait. The sky did not fall. No lightning did not strike her down. I'm waiting, I'm watching, I'm waiting. Nothing bad happened.

[29:56] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[29:56] Laura Camien: So that was truly a moment I was like, wow, it, you can say that. Like I knew that certain people thought that. I just was like, you can say it out loud. So when I was growing up, part of it is because like I remember the only quote unquote negative things that I was told about it was like, if anything, they would say, Oh, yeah, of course, childbirth is painful, but God has taken care of that. God's made it so that once you go through it, you forget how painful it was. Like you literally don't remember how painful it was. You just remember the beauty of it. And they used to make jokes that, like, oh, if women really knew how painful it was, or if they could remember how painful it was, they wouldn't have children, or they wouldn't have more than one.

So this book really brings all of that to life. It's like a collective secret that everyone agreed to keep for generations. When I was old enough to understand what my own mother went through, not just in childbirth, but what she gave up in order to have kids, I got some perspective on frankly, like why she might have resented me. And when I could really understand that as an adult, I thought that's legit. That is completely legit. She went to college to be an art major. She went for one semester, met my dad, got married, dropped out of school. She gave up her life at 19 years old to have her first child and her second child at age 21. On the one hand, I knew that she wanted us to have access to more things than what she had in her life. But on the other, I felt her anger that she didn't get to do or be all the things that she had dreamt of. I didn't understand that as a child, but I certainly do now.

[31:52] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[31:52] Laura Camien: So after reading this book, I felt grateful for my mom in this way. We had, you know, a complicated relationship, but she never tried to persuade me that motherhood was nothing but a beautiful thing. She never, she didn't have rose-colored glasses about it. She expressed sometimes a bit too often how hard it was, how unfulfilling at times, how much she had given up. So it was kind of like my mom's generation that was like, we're not gonna, we're we're gonna start maybe speaking the truth a little bit, you know, just a little bit at a time. So the next topic the book covers on the current modern nostalgia for a quote unquote simpler past.

[32:36] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[32:37] Laura Camien: I certainly get the longing for a pre-cell phone, pre-constantly online past. I genuinely long for those days of like running around outside, nobody knows where you are, how to reach you. You don't even know what time it is unless you stop to ask somebody. There is so much joy in that. But this longing for the days when men were men and women were women, ladies, as the book will illustrate, we can dream bigger. Let's not go backwards. The days of yore mean you have no bank account. You own nothing in your name. Your time is not your own. You are trapped and have no way of making your own choices. You don't like the way your husband is treating you. What do you think you're going to do about it?

If you could bake a better sourdough to get him to treat you more kindly, if you could cut the grocery bill in half and still feed the family, he might be nicer to you. If you could get those cows milked before sunrise, no, you're not doing anything about it. You're sucking it up, buttercup. When it comes to a husband, you get what you get and you don't get upset. The manual labor, the physical hardship, the lack of autonomy over any aspect of your body, your mind, your life, just your money, your money. Enough said about all that, ladies. Let us dream of a better future. We are not going to find it in the past. I promise. So let me go back to the theme I mentioned earlier: the idea of performing a particular role, especially the online performance.

[34:33] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[34:34] Laura Camien: The book really weaves the fact that most women are performing a role in many areas of their life, whether they're aware of it or not. And many are making the choice to be performing a role online, crafting a digital persona. It brings up incredible awareness of how different we are when we are being watched, or when we want to be watched, how we might believe things would be different if people were watching us. I came across this interview between Lee Stein and Fortessa Latifa, the author of the book, Like, Follow, Subscribe. Protiesa said, When I watch mom influencers perform motherhood online, it seems so much more glamorous and peaceful than my own motherhood. Sometimes when I'm doing the dishes or filling bottles or folding the laundry, I imagine a time lapse of chores being done, common style of video on those accounts.

And it motivates me. In the writing of this book, I've occasionally found myself narrating my day for an imaginary audience like the mom influencers and family vloggers I've studied. And then we went out for a walk because it's so important to get outside. I think as I strapped my daughter into my Ergo baby, hashtag sponsored, if I was a true influencer. We walked for two miles. I got my steps in, and he loved looking around the neighborhood. After that, it was time to start our bedtime routine with a bath. I watch myself from above like some kind of omnipresent God. I imagine a world in which my motherhood is commissionable and perfect and linked, where the work of a mother is valued. In the imagined world, I am not lonely. I have thousands of friends waiting in the screen of my phone.

[36:40] Susan Blackwell: Remember when Madonna came out with that documentary, the first of its time?

[36:44] Laura Camien: Remember Warren Beatty?

[36:46] Susan Blackwell: Yes, that's exactly what I was gonna say.

[36:48] Laura Camien: Warren Beatty said what?

[36:50] Susan Blackwell: She doesn't want to live off camera.

[36:51] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[36:52] Susan Blackwell: It was prophetic.

[36:54] Laura Camien: It was prophetic.

[36:56] Susan Blackwell: He saw the world as it was evolving and he said it was such disgust, and everyone talked about it.

[37:03] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[37:04] Susan Blackwell: And look at the whole world now. It's amazing that that moment was captured.

[37:06] Laura Camien: It's amazing.

[37:11] Susan Blackwell: It's really amazing and released. That that was not lost in the edit.

[37:16] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[37:17] Susan Blackwell: That was the moment.

[37:20] Laura Camien: This also made me think of something a friend of mine told me. I thought about this a lot. I dropped it in my Spark pile, of course, but for now it's just rolling around my brain because I'm not sure what to do with it. But he shared this scientific article with me about how, in some recent research, they have proven that at the cellular level, like literally atoms. Atoms behave differently when they are being observed. Think about this. It's not just a self-conscious awareness of being watched. They have proven that our cells behave differently when being observed. I'm going to totally butcher this research, so please enjoy. But basically, they were tracking the movement of atoms in a box, for example.

And the movement of all these atoms was random all over the place. It was unpredictable. Then they added a small hole where a camera lens could watch the atoms. And the moment you added the camera, the atoms somehow knew they were being observed, and they got in line, literally, and suddenly moved in an organized and predictable fashion. I have been thinking about this for quite some time now. I think they use this research to justify the Uber surveillance world we live in now. We'll all behave in a more orderly fashion if we are observed. While some of us older folks can forget that we're being observed, I know I do. The younger generation have such an awareness of being watched and a fear of being caught on camera doing something quote unquote embarrassing, like dancing, or the possibility of someone filming them like flirting and asking someone out and being rejected, they've literally changed the way they live their lives for fear of becoming a meme.

[39:20] Susan Blackwell: When you're saying this, I'm thinking about a much darker version of this, which is police officers who are held accountable, maybe for the first time in generations, inflicting violence against other people.

[39:35] Laura Camien: And if there wasn't a camera present, that all would have just gotten buried.

[39:40] Susan Blackwell: That is correct.

[39:41] Laura Camien: So there are some maybe just enough justifiable, you know, uses that we're like, hey, that's a good result of it. But what we are giving up in exchange, I think is it's really worth thinking about. How we're perceived, how the narrative unspools.

[40:12] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[40:29] Laura Camien: Does that have anything to do with this? Like if at the cellular level we work differently when we know we're being observed.

[40:37] Susan Blackwell: Well, it also makes me think of the recent spark that we did about time to think, where Nancy Klein posits that when someone is thinking, when they're being observed in this very encouraging, quiet, supportive way, it improves their thinking. The observation improves their thinking. So I think yes, cells, but I also think, yes, Nancy Klein.

[41:06] Laura Camien: It's interesting. But to me, it also gives additional credence to the job of acting. If you're not even conscious of this, but you're going against everything happening in the cellular level in order to make it seem like you are not aware that you're being watched. I'm just like, wow. Like it's deep, it's just much deeper than we ever thought. And I often say one of my favorite things about the actors that I perceive as being most gifted. I love it when people appear unobserved.

[41:43] Susan Blackwell: That's right. So that's like one of my biggest compliments for an actor is, oh my God, they just appear unobserved. Do you know how hard that is? It's harder than you even realize. It's hard on a cellular level.

[41:57] Laura Camien: It's hard on a cellular level. You're going against everything inside of you that's like, no, no, we behave this way when we're observed.

[42:06] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. So I'm not sure what we make of all of this, but I have I hope it's been as sparkish for you as it has for me. I have one more little mini spark to share that may or may not be related to this. I don't know for sure. As much as I love my armchair psychology, I am not actually trained to know whether there's a connection here or not. But I came across something else this week, and my brain started asking, what is behind this desire to be watched? What is missing in our experience that makes it so tempting or validating? And what could help?

[42:49] Susan Blackwell: So when I read about this little bit of research, I started to connect some dots. Before I tell you the research, I'm going to tell you that I have a little sign in my office here that says something like, this isn't a rehearsal. This is the show. And girl, we're live. And the reason this little sign resonated for me, that's not exactly what it says, but that's the gist of it.

[42:49] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[43:13] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[43:13] Susan Blackwell: Uh, it resonated for me because probably for the first 30 years of my life, I had a feeling of being disconnected from my life. It was as if, you know, that feeling of like, this is cool, but when my real life starts, it's gonna get really good, right? That's right. This is just the warm-up. This is the precursor to the life. But of course, I began to understand, no, girl, this is it, your life. You gotta own it, you gotta live it.

[43:43] Laura Camien: So the research I came across this week, this relates back to the motherhood theme and the desire to be watched theme in the book. There's a developmental psychologist at Columbia University who spent his career studying the first 18 months of life. Not entirely because he was interested in infant or brain development, but because what he found was that what happens in those first 18 months determines one of the most fundamental qualities of adult experience. It determines whether or not you feel fully present in your own life or somehow absent from it.

[44:24] Susan Blackwell: He called it the sense of core self. Most people assume that this develops automatically, but it does not. The core self is built in the first 18 months of life. It is built by being seen.

[44:43] Laura Camien: Right?

[44:45] Susan Blackwell: Yes. We were at a restaurant recently, and there was a family assembling. Two men came in and they were pushing a stroller with a baby in it. And the men sat down at the table, stroller next to the table, and they both started looking at their phones. And I looked over, and I was looking at the baby, and I was saying quietly to Nathan, I was like, put down your fucking phone to look at that baby. That baby needs to be looked at. And then other family members came in and the women started like looking at the baby and engaged. And the baby was that baby was thirsty. Like that baby was wanted, and that's why it was looking across the table all the way over to me. And I was like, I don't even know if that baby's eyes can focus yet, but it knows that I'm over here being like, hey baby. See, see baby.

[45:41] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[45:41] Susan Blackwell: Then we were in a different restaurant like a week later, and there was at a table behind me, there was a woman with a baby. That was the entire party at this table was the woman and a baby and a stroller. And I could hear her through the whole my whole meal. She was like, What are you? Like was engaging with the baby. And I from time to time would look back, and they were just having a fucking blast together. And I turned back to Nathan and I was like, That's how you look at a baby. That's how you look at a baby.

[46:13] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[46:14] Susan Blackwell: It is about. And I don't even have kids, and I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but I was like, gentlemen, look at that baby. You are spot on, backed up by this research. It is about in these 18 months being seen genuinely, accurately by another person whose face reflects back what the infant is actually feeling.

[46:39] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[46:39] Susan Blackwell: It's called mirroring. Every time a caretaker mirrors back the excitement, the happiness the baby is feeling. Yes. Or who mirrors her their curiosity of like, oh, what is that? What are you looking at? What is that? Right?

[46:54] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[46:55] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. It tells the baby, you are real. Your experience is real. And without this, the baby's sense of self doesn't form in the same way. We actually need the sense of being seen accurately in order for our core self to coalesce. If it doesn't form correctly in adulthood, the person will experience a feeling of being somehow absent from your own life, present but not quite there. Like you're watching your own experience from a slight distance.

[47:31] Laura Camien: Wow.

[47:31] Susan Blackwell: It's not disassociation in the clinical sense, it's more subtle than that, but also more pervasive. Many people have completely normalized it. They might not even realize that there's another option. There is the option of being fully here, fully real, fully alive. The good news, the experience of being fully present inside your own life can be restored in adulthood. And it's through the same mechanism that should have been built originally, being accurately seen by another person, not advised or analyzed, just seen.

[48:17] Laura Camien: Huh.

[48:18] Susan Blackwell: Even better news, he found that we can in fact do it for ourselves. We can self-witness and build this core self. And it takes 60 seconds. Just sit quietly, close your eyes, ask yourself, what am I actually experiencing right now? Wow. Not what you think you should be experiencing, or what would be appropriate to experience, or what I plan to experience later, but what am I experiencing right now? What is actually here, right now in my body, in my life? Name it, not to analyze it, just name it to witness it. I'm feeling fatigued. I feel weepy and sleepy. I feel anxious about something that I can't put my finger on. I feel the specific loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't quite see me. Whatever is actually there, name it without judgment, without requiring it to be different. That naming is the mirroring that your nervous system is waiting for.

[49:41] Laura Camien: Seriously.

[49:42] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Seriously. So the experience of being seen, even by your own attention produces something in the nervous system that nothing else replicates. The felt sense of being real of your experience mattering. So I don't know. If you're someone who has the pull to be watched, maybe that is speaking to the desire to be seen, perhaps. Perhaps learning this simple technique to be that mirror for yourself might help you know that you can be your own witness. You can know that your own life matters. Please don't be hard on yourself. This study found that the sense of being real is not a philosophical position. It's a neurological state. And it is one that you can heal.

[50:38] Laura Camien: Back to yesteryear.

[50:40] Susan Blackwell: Thank you for that. That is freaking amazing. And to bring it all the way back to the top of the Illum showcase, again, I think about something as delightful as those cheese pairings in space.

[50:55] Laura Camien: Yes.

[50:56] Susan Blackwell: By each of those illumineers, where it's sort of like here's the pairing, and then and then Anne Marie's description of why this represents the artist with their picture framed next to it. And I'm like, each artist, I saw them go taste their pairing, read their description, and feel so seen. So seen. And it says you are real and you matter.

[51:22] Laura Camien: Oh God.

[51:23] Susan Blackwell: Laura, that was so fun. Uh thanks for going on the ride. I appreciate that. Uh, bottom line, do you recommend that book?

[51:34] Laura Camien: If any of those topics interested you, yes. Now you may have strong feelings one way or the other, but I always think that makes for a worthy read. You know, even if you come out fighting, even if you come out swinging, like, oh, that book, that book. That's that to me is is a worthy experience and tells it's all information, tells you something.

[51:54] Susan Blackwell: Thank you for all of that, and thank you for that book, Rec. I think that's it. This fascinating episode of the Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape and the Mohican people. And as always, we hope it put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen, if there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you'd like to learn more about how to work with us to accomplish your creative goals, you can email get creative at the sparkfile.com or reach us through our website, thesparkfile.com.

[52:20] Laura Camien: We'll even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you gotta share a creative risk that you have taken recently.

[52:28] Susan Blackwell: You can follow us on social at the sparkfile and be sure if you have a minute to subscribe, rate, and five star review this podcast. It really helps other listeners to find us. Also, if you liked this podcast, we hope you'll share it with people that you love. And if you didn't like it, go back to yesteryear before this podcast existed. Get out of here.

[52:47] Laura Camien: If something lights you up and gets your creative sparks flying, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take that spark and fan it into a flame. You know, you gotta take it and make it.

[53:07] Susan Blackwell: When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark files. Could be something that I want to make or how I wanna be. I'll pump it in the spark files. Let's open up the spark files.