Beyond Anxiety

From anxiety to activism - Lynn's transformation from passive observer to engaged participant illustrates creativity's power as both balm and bridge. 

In this episode of Book Therapy, we explore how strategic activism and community connection can emerge from our most vulnerable places. Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck provides insights for embracing creativity and purpose, showing how finding your unique contribution can shift everything - for you and your world.

Substack Article Mentioned: How to Resist Strategically on 14 June — Short 'Strategy Only' Version

Transcript

Minal Bopaiah 0:11

I'm Minal Bopaiah, your host for Book Therapy, the advice podcast for book lovers. And today my guest is Lynn, who is a boomer who's disturbed by the erosion of civil society and the rise of fascism. Hi, Lynn. How are you today? Hi,

Lynn 0:26

Minall. I'm good. I'm still disturbed, but I'm still having a good day.

Minal Bopaiah 0:29

I know. Aren't we all just sort of productively dissociating? Right. So you wrote in to us and your sort of very succinct question was, as a baby boomer, I feel as though so much of what my cohort has worked for is being lost. I'm deeply disturbed at the erosion of the great society I was raised to believe in. My dad is a Holocaust survivor, and I feel very stressed about the rising fascism here and around the world. So, I mean, just easy things for me to recommend books for and help me through. But talk to me about where you are today, Lynn, since you wrote in and, you know, asking for advice.

Lynn 1:09

You know, I'll just tell you this morning, like most mornings, I woke up and I I had an argument with myself about whether or not I should read Heather Cox Richardson. Do I really want to start off the day there being frustrated? And I do, but I didn't let myself because I don't think it's good for me to get to start off the day that way. I'm trying to have, you know, I just back from vacation. I'm trying to keep the mellow going. And, I just find it so hard to read about– I mean, I can control not looking at the news. And for me, protecting myself from visuals is important. But if I listen to– even if I control what I listen to or read, I get really freaked out about people being stuffed in cages. Yeah. I actually had a conversation with my sister when I was on vacation about how this is the first time in my life that I've ever thought that it's possible for me to end up in a jail cell. If I were to go, which I want to, to a place where people are being stuffed into vans and protest, might I end up in a terrible place? And that's where I'm at.

Minal Bopaiah 2:38

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you're alone. I also, yeah, I mean, I think those are real fears. They're not imaginary fears. I don't think people's anxiety right now is fantastical or paranoid or, you know, like, you know, there are things to be scared of in the world. And so I can hear that. Does it, is it that, but am I hitting it right that it's making you anxious or depressed or is there other feelings that are coming up?

Lynn 3:16

No, it's making me more determined to go to those places. But I, unlike before January 20th, you know, I'm going with the different, when I'm afraid of something, I'm more likely to turn and face it. This is the first time I've had a real fear. It just makes me more careful. Like I think through what I don't take my phone and make sure they can see my hands and don't touch any I.C.E. guys and, you know, stay on the edge of the crowd. Like I'm still going, but I'm scared and it just makes me madder that I'm scared and it makes me more determined to go. So that's my circle.

Minal Bopaiah 4:01

Yeah. Yeah. I can, I get that. Can I ask, have you, What's your experience with activism or protesting? Like, do you have a long history with it? Are you part of groups that engage in it strategically? You know,

Lynn 4:18

I've always been an informed voter, but that's been the extent to which I've engaged. It isn't until my fascism button got pushed that I have become more politically involved. And You know, in our previous conversation, I talked to you about how I have this fundraising background and how can I use my fundraising background to fight for democracy. And I'm doing that now. And it's interesting because I'm part of a group of women in our 60s and 70s who seem to be some of the leaders in all this. But most of them got fired up for Hillary in 2016. I just kind of did my normal thing. I voted for Hillary. But no, I haven't been. And I live in D.C. and I've lived here forever and there's a million marches. And I've been to some of them, but it's usually because somebody encouraged me to come with them. But yeah, I'm just way more motivated now because there's so much at stake.

Minal Bopaiah 5:22

Yeah. Well, I think what you're describing is someone who is who has been engaged at a certain level and is looking to sort of level up and for deeper engagement, right? And so I wouldn't say you're a beginner, but you might be new to deeper levels of engagement. And I think that that can be really terrifying. There was a really good Substack article a few weeks ago, and I'll put it into the show notes for people who are listening. the title of it and the author escapes me and I apologize for that. But the takeaway was that, listen, like now we need to engage strategically and things that were sort of no brainers, you might want to rethink. And this was actually ahead of the No King's Day protest on June 19th. And he said, you know, the writer, I believe it was a he, and I will apologize deeply if it wasn't, but he was saying that You know, if they're using facial recognition software to basically sick I.C.E. on people, then people of color may want to rethink this, whether they want to be videotaped out at a protest. You know, whereas white people like you, if we can be transparent about it, have a little bit more cover. in going that you know in going to these protests uh and are not likely to be deported by I.C.E. because I.C.E. is clearly engaging in like racial profiling right like it is not actually based on citizenship what's going on um or whether they're illegal or not that's not what's going on right now uh and so you know he had sort of recommended that you might want to think about who is put at risk if you go there and your face is captured, right? And that we are not at the beginning of fascism. We're like further down the road. And when you're further down the road, then the strategies of resistance have to change, right? You can't just do what we would have done in the 90s or the 2000s or during the Iraq wars and things like that, right? Because the game has changed and the consequences have changed. So I don't think that your anxiety about that or your anger about that is unwarranted, I think it might actually involve or require a more strategic response to what's happening. And part of that might be also developing connections with people who have, you know, who are seasoned in this sort of resistance because when we're dealing with this level of government oppression, I think it is very dangerous for individual citizens to stick their neck out and that there is more protection in groups who have more resources, who have a strategy behind them, who can provide the sort of information that's needed to negotiate these so that people can make informed choices. Because there are still people who are willing to get arrested, but they're doing that in a more informed way than somebody who just... you know, is wrong place, wrong time, you know, arrest.

Lynn 8:41

I have read and I agree with the idea that people like me who have more freedom, at least today, should use that freedom and I do want to.

Minal Bopaiah 8:54

How, have you really sat and thought about like what's at risk and what you have to offer? Like made a list?

Lynn 9:07

No. I spent a long time trying to find some people who could use my skills.

Minal Bopaiah 9:15

And?

Lynn 9:17

I found one of the small, I always call them franchises. I know that's not the word. What's it called? Indivisible groups.

Minal Bopaiah 9:27

Yeah.

Lynn 9:28

So there's a group here in this area in Montgomery County called Indivisible Montgomery. And they have been working with another group, which is called the States Project. States Project introduced all the indivisibles the opportunity to do something called giving circles. You know about giving circles. So I got in a conversation with these women and I said, I'm trying to use my fundraising skills. And they said, oh, come on with us. We have a giving circle, but we haven't been able to figure out how to make it really active. So now I'm basically doing like a mini capital campaign. I've had them do some stewardship to previous donors. Now I'm having them do some specific asks to get leadership giving for the quiet phase of the campaign, et cetera, et cetera. And it's great because they have all the political– savvy, and I have the fundraising knowledge. And together, we're trying to really... Oh, and what's nice is the money's going to Virginia, even though they're in Maryland, because the states project is all about maintaining or flipping the legislature in different states, and then they pick the ones where they have the best shot, and Virginia is the one. So I'm already working for Abigail Spanberger, doing silly little things that you do, But I have an opportunity to do more with this group. So I'm engaged. And that's another way that I manage my anxiety because I don't have to read Heather Cox Richardson if I can get up and do something that is a contribution. So that's where I'm at.

Minal Bopaiah 11:16

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a perfectly fine place to be, if that's your question. I don't... I think that we've had a... How do I want to say this? I think we have this maxim that it's important to be informed and that there was actually some recent research on news audiences and a lot of people say that they... consume the news because they believe it makes them a better person. And I asked the researchers about it and I was like, what is that about? Are they looking for self-help knowledge? What are they looking for? And basically they're like, no, I think it was just this idea that being informed makes you a better person. That seems to be this maxim that we hold to be true. I think that that's worth interrogating on some level. And I want to be very clear, I'm not arguing for being ignorant, for being uninformed. But we live in an information age where the amount of information is increasing exponentially. We now have the internet at our fingertips. The flood of information is far more than the human brain can consume, more than it has ever been in human history. And so I do think that it warrants this, you know, really interrogating this idea that knowing more makes you better because I think you can flood yourself with information that doesn't, that leads to paralysis or depression instead of like action and engagement. And, you know, I've worked a lot with public media and with news organizations. And my big question that I keep trying to get them to ask is, what is the right media diet that leads to healthy engagement and not disengagement and despair? I almost want public media or any media company to be like, okay, here's your news diet. Here's your meat and potatoes. Here's your vegetables. Here's how much you need a day, like 20 minutes, and that's it, right? Because otherwise, it just feels right now like the fast food, like supersize me version of like news, where they're just shoving all of it down your throat, and we're all like bloated from it and not able to act because of it, right? Like we can't, it's just consumption without digestion or insight. It's not nutritious. you know, it's like low calorie, addictive news instead of like really insightful, healthy stuff that can make us more engaged. And I, you know, I think Heather Cox Richardson is absolutely part of a healthy diet. I also think that maybe you don't want to eat first thing in the morning, right? Like maybe, I don't think that you have to wake up and look at the news. I don't think that that makes you a bad person. I don't think that makes you less engaged as a person. Well, and I also think like we, you know, I think we have to decide in what way do we want to be engaged in the world? Like what is our singular purpose? And what I mean by that is like there's a lot of things that need help and attention right now, but obviously you as an individual, myself as an individual, can't give our attention to everything, right? So what is the thing that we would really be interested and passionate about dedicating ourselves to for a period of time? And how can we do that? And then let go of the things that we can't attend to. You know, if you really care about... And everything is intersecting. So really, it's like, what's your piece of the pie, right? Like, you can care about democracy and voters' rights or the state legislature, right? And that means maybe you're not working on climate change or maybe you're not working on like an international humanitarian crisis, right? and that's okay. And so what is the news you need for your purpose, for your job, but also for like your greater like interests that keep you informed at that level? And then the flip side of it is like, who, you know, to remain humble about things you don't know and then to know who to go to when you have questions about those things.

Lynn 15:47

Yeah, I mean, I think I've done some of that. I'm not proud of this, but I sort of reveled in the cable news, you know, the MSNBC and CNN. When it looked like Kamala was going to win, I sort of was like, oh, good, let's all just keep trashing Trump. And then when the election happened, I was like, okay, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. And I just cut out cable news altogether because it's repetitive and I just didn't like it. So I've done that and I read Heather Cox Richardson, but as you say, not for breakfast. I'm trying to kind of keep myself calm so that I can balance my life. I'm trying to stay informed. And as you say, I'm trying to focus on what matters most to me. It's kind of like with fundraising, where if you give 10 bucks to everybody, your impact is reduced. And if you gave 100 bucks to one, and I believe in that, and I preach that. So that's what I'm trying to do with my attention and my time and my energy.

Minal Bopaiah 16:54

Yeah. Have you read Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck?

Lynn 17:00

No, sounds good.

Minal Bopaiah 17:02

You might really like that, Lynn. It came out just in January. It was very well-timed. And I'm sure you know who Martha Beck is, right?

Lynn 17:13

Is she a woman who's a Mormon?

Minal Bopaiah 17:15

She was a Mormon.

Lynn 17:16

Yeah. I've heard of her.

Minal Bopaiah 17:17

She was a Mormon. She went to Harvard. She's a life coach now. She left both her marriage and the Latter-day Saints. She... I think she remarried or at least she's in, I think she's actually in a throuple and still lives, you know, still is a adjunct, I believe at Harvard and has written this really fascinating book called Beyond Anxiety about how the response to anxiety, the thing that will really help you mitigate it is actually creativity, right? And that you can, just like you can get into an anxiety spiral, you can get into a creativity spiral. And that creativity is really the answer. But she does a very good job of sort of walking you through, first of all, like how the brain works. Secondly, not minimizing anxiety. Like there are people with anxiety. you know, full-blown anxiety disorders. And you can't just tell them, well, just go draw and it'll be fine. Like, that's not how this works, right? Like, how to really mitigate your anxiety enough to start to be okay with taking 20 minutes or an hour every day to be creative, right? But then she does this whole... experiment with herself where she starts drawing again and then she finds that it becomes so addictive that's all she wants to do all day long right like and that it really helped her let go of a lot of things and when she would draw like and it's not that creativity can't be challenging but it's the nature of the challenge that actually makes you feel like you have more agency rather than the sort of feeling that accompanies anxiety of not having any agency or power right And so I would highly recommend that for you because I think I read it actually in January and February and it helped me meet this moment in a different way than I thought where I didn't feel anymore like it was my job to do all the things that I could do, right? I felt because, you know, and this is another thing I read online, like you can ask yourself, like, if the world is ending, what do you want to do? But then oftentimes when you get to the answer, you realize that the answer is the same as if the world isn't ending, what do you want to do? And so I think you can it became a really interesting way for me to use this moment to push me into like much more purpose driven activities, even if it wasn't work related activities. rather than thinking that my responsibility was to exhaust myself trying to right all the wrongs around me. And that's not to say that I'm not still engaged, right? But you can hear there's like a slight philosophical shift or an angle on it that makes it a little bit more sustainable when you're centering your creativity and how your brain works rather than what we have been schooled to believe is our obligation to everybody else.

Lynn 20:27

You know, I have two things to respond to that. One is I'll be a little vague here because it's very personal, but I had a big loss. And I took up a new hobby, which is very creative. And I do. It's called fused glass art.

Minal Bopaiah 20:45

Yeah, yeah.

Lynn 20:47

And it was, you know, I can get in the zone and it really helps me. Yeah. I had another point, which I just lost. But anyway, I'm a big believer in that. Yeah. Because it just shifts your mind to a different, it gives a different part of your brain.

Minal Bopaiah 21:05

Yeah. And she talks a lot about right brain and left brain. And some of the research that she pulls is from this woman, Jill Bolt Taylor, who is also a Harvard professor who's a neuroscientist who had a stroke recently. I think about one or two decades ago and lost the full left side of her brain and was able to really then experience the right side of the brain without the left side's interference. And the thing is, is our society is very... very much designed for left brain thinking and activities. And we really kind of shame right brain stuff, even though the right brain stuff, it can be the stuff that keeps us healthy and grounded and, um, able to still engage with the world. And so she does a very good job of also explaining that part of it as well. Um, you know, she, it gets a new agey towards the end Just fair warning. Some people are into that. Some people are not. Even I sort of have mixed feelings about that. But I think that there was enough, like the majority of the book, I think, was not just grounded in enough science, but grounded in enough common sense that I found it very beneficial.

Lynn 22:20

Yeah, I am. It's funny, you keep saying things that I have some connection to. I just... I just finished a three-year term on the board of the National Aphasia Association. So I learned a lot about stroke and the size of the brain. I was the fundraising committee chair. There were scientists on the board, and you sit in the meetings, you learn a lot. So it was very meaningful. But I will look for that book.

Minal Bopaiah 22:46

Yeah, I highly, highly recommend that. All right. Are there anything else coming up for you, Lynn?

Lynn 22:56

Well, I have to say, I feel very proud of the boomer women that I see, at least in my community, really stepping up. I think it's got a lot to do with having the time and the leisure. Yeah. And we've spent a lot of time talking about the fact that we used to be young working mothers. So we understand that young working mothers don't have as much time as we have to to devote to this cause. So we're trying to figure out how to be where they are. And one of the things that we're planning to do is go to parks and places where people go when they have small kids and just start talking to them and saying, you know, we know you don't have much time, but we want to make sure that you're aware of, like in our case, there's a special election coming up in Virginia, just being where they are. And being very sympathetic to the fact that they're busy. We know that. We've been there. We're shouldering a lot of this, and we're glad to, but we don't want them to feel left out or frustrated. We want to meet them where they are. Like I say, I'm a very proud baby boomer. I think we were given a lot of benefits. It's very disappointing now because there was an arc that we thought the world was on, and it's really not, and it We feel like we've lost something, but we haven't been sulking. We've been stepping up. So I'm very proud of that.

Minal Bopaiah 24:28

Yeah. I mean, I think that that's great for people who have time, who have the leisure of time to be more engaged. I would also invite you to consider how to incorporate women who don't have children into into this because I think we now have the largest generation of women who are single and child-free in a long, long time. And there's actually a lot of research. I think it was Rebecca Solnit who wrote a book about it, that when you have a generation of women who are unmarried and child-free, that's when you see the most social change.

Lynn 25:07

Wow. I want to read her book.

Minal Bopaiah 25:09

Yeah. I forgot. I forgot what the name of that book is. I'll find it for the next... But it's Rebecca Solnit, S-O-L-N-I-T.

Lynn 25:15

Okay.

Minal Bopaiah 25:16

And so I think engaging women who are not mothers and who are not wives, and more importantly, helping women to see that there is a way to engage with the world and that they have an identity that has nothing to do with their reproductive capacity is really, really important.

Lynn 25:37

Yeah.

Minal Bopaiah 25:37

I think it becomes much more intersectional then. I think you also end up getting women who are part of the gay community, women who might be trans or non-binary folks. I think one of the criticisms I have had about feminism in the last few decades, particularly in America, and what some people will call white feminism, is the sort of focus on motherhood Like I remember somebody on Twitter being like, isn't like all feminism about family values? And I was like, no, there are feminist issues that have nothing to do with a woman's responsibility to her family. And I think that lens needs to be broken a little bit to give this next generation.

Lynn 26:24

I'm sorry, I'm giving you the timeout thing because I really wasn't prepared. I got to plug in my computer before it goes to sleep. Oh, my God. I need your brother. I need somebody like that. Now I got to find my plug. We'll cut this bit out. Sorry. fact you haven't had to look in four different bags

Minal Bopaiah 27:59

all right we'll start yeah yeah yeah so we can start in maybe just like five seconds and then we'll pick up right where we left off so lynn uh like i said i would recommend that book by rebecca solnit i would recommend the book by uh martha beck on beyond anxiety i think that's really the book that'll help sort of give another way into this conversation, you know, into the work that you're doing now, which is so important. Are you ready for our rapid fire questions? Sure. All right. So what is your favorite book of all time?

Lynn 28:38

My favorite book of all time is a series of books. They're a little bit politically incorrect now. Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Minal Bopaiah 28:45

Oh, yeah. No, I read those when I was like, I mean, they're nostalgia at its finest. Right. And would you ever want to write a book? And if so, about what?

Lynn 28:55

I actually have a biography I'd like to write. I did a little work on it years ago before I got really busy. It's about an interesting woman who was one of the Mothers of Historic Preservation, which is my former field. She was a photographer when photography was one of the ways that women could actually enter the working world.

Minal Bopaiah 29:25

Great. And if you could invite an author to dinner, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Lynn 29:33

It would be E.B. White. Oh. I love E.B. White. Yeah. And his wife, because they're kind of a pair, so I'm cheating. She went to Bryn Mawr, as I did.

Minal Bopaiah 29:48

Oh, a very good friend of mine went to Bryn Mawr, and I actually almost went there.

Lynn 29:52

Did you really? Yeah. There's a... A woman, she was a very well-known publicist, not publicist, editor. Her name is Ursula Nordstrom. I don't know if you've ever heard of her, but she was a children's book editor. And she described herself as not having gone to college, and specifically the college she didn't go to was Bryn Mawr. Because it was a joke. But Bryn Mawr, at the time... the twenties and thirties was really an intellectual powerhouse. Not so much anymore. Now it's a little bit powerful.

Minal Bopaiah 30:35

Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's what a great answer. I haven't heard that in a long time. I haven't heard E.B. White's name in a long time. Okay. And so then last question, if you had to guess how many books are in your home?

Lynn 30:46

700. Yeah. Every book I've ever owned is still in here.

Minal Bopaiah 30:54

Awesome. That makes me feel better about however many are in my home.

Lynn 31:00

How many boxes it's going to take you.

Minal Bopaiah 31:01

Yes. That's awesome. I would love to be in a house of 700 books. So wonderful. Well, thank you, Lynn. I really am grateful for your candor during this conversation. I don't think you're the only person or the only boomer who is sort of struggling with this moment of, you know, increasing fascism and what's being lost. We talked about Martha Beck's book beyond anxiety, and how that can like sort of help and how you approach this work and, you know, being mindful of your media diet, which is really just good advice all around for everybody. We also talked about the power of single women right now and inviting more of those into the movement because I think that you know there's science as Rebecca Solnit lays out on how that is a precursor to societal change and so I think we're in that moment even though it's it may seem very bleak right now there's actually a lot of strengths and opportunities to leverage so I want to thank you for inviting us into this conversation around that is there anything else you want to say before we go?

Lynn 32:15

I guess I would just say that reading is so important to me. Yeah. I have found it very soothing.

Minal Bopaiah 32:24

Yeah.

Lynn 32:26

And I think it's great that you're doing this. I'm so glad you a re. Thank you. It is my pleasure. I also just love reading, although I try not to be a snob. If it's e-books or audio books, I think it's okay as well. But I think, yeah, I think books are our way more than news; books are the way to really understanding the world on a deeper level. And so it is always my pleasure to talk about them and to talk with other book lovers like you. So thank you, Lynn. Well, I wish you a lot of luck. Oh, I meant to tell you that I used to work for a collaborative group about a collaborative podcast group. So I want you to look them up. They're called Hub and Spoke.

Minal Bopaiah 33:07

Okay, I will do. You've probablI heard of Erica Heilman and Rumblestrip. She's one of them. She's one of the people in the collaborative. So I think you should check them out. All right. Will do. Thank you so much, Lynn.

Lynn 33:23

You're welcome.