Natalie
And Nat — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe problems big and small with you, our dear Reframables.

Rebecca
And why do we call you such a term of endearment?

Natalie
Because Rebecca, are all in the process of being reframed and reframing.

Rebecca
Ooh — that’s different, Nat.

Natalie
I’m keeping you on your back foot.

Rebecca
Nice pivot. This week we are reframing a moment we lost ourselves.

Natalie
ie., reframing self-discovery.

Rebecca
I like it. And we are also going to commit to a 30-day experiment in our lives.

Natalie
Maybe you can join us in that experiment, should you choose.

Rebecca
Yeah, so that’s what we’re doing.

So I just read the sentence by Louise Erdrich.

Natalie
Ooh.

Rebecca
And she had this amazing line — and I actually think it’s the premise of the book, is that Tookie, the main character, has this big moment in her life where she does this crime — and she kind of gets lured into it. And then the book isn’t really about the crime so much — it’s about her reflecting on her life, and reflecting on what she says is this moment that she lost herself. I think maybe it’s her husband that names it. “Is that the moment you lost yourself?” And I just found that line so powerful, like it just really resonates. Does it resonate with you?

Natalie
Oh, yeah. I mean, I love her writing anyways. I remember — I don’t know if this was the same experience for you, but she was introduced to me through her novel Love Medicine by mom. Right? When mom was teaching literature courses. And even though mom used to spend so much time focusing on Canadian lit, it was really interesting that in terms of American lit, the first voice that she put forward for me was this Native American writer, Erdrich, and Love Medicine, and how powerfully that rendered something for mom. And then I went on and taught a bunch of Erdrich stuff, and specifically some of her short stories. I’ve been wanting you to spend some time with that one short story, American Horse. So if anybody’s curious about that one, it’s an amazing text that I would love to have a Reframables book club moment just talking about that specific short story. So if anybody’s keen, join in. But all that to say, loss is definitely a theme that shows up in so much of her work that I have connected to. And that line — oh my gosh.

Rebecca
It feels so specific — like it’s loss, but it’s also specific to a moment. “I lost myself,” or “I forgot myself,” or “I forgot who I was,” or “I forgot the person I’ve been trying to be in the world,” or I don’t know. I think about it in all those ways, and I…

Natalie
Misplaced? Like the idea of a misplaced part of the self that you have to find again, even?

Rebecca
Yeah. I like that. I was reading this book with my book club, I yelled out that line — “I love this line!” And nobody picked up on it — and I don’t know, everyone’s having their feelings about the book in different ways and whatever. I was hoping that someone had resonated as well with that line. But then I was also wondering, is that a particular preoccupation — someone who is pondering their way in the world, and is that a particular preoccupation of ours, that we think about those failed…? I mean, I think it’s definitely my preoccupation. It’s something that I come back to again and again, is thinking about how I am in the world, and then where I failed, and then needing to forgive myself. So I guess also I’m wondering: is this episode really about forgiveness and forgiveness of self?

Natalie
And failure, because you added that word in there, too — which is interesting to me, because loss here then connects to fail for you.

Rebecca
Well, I guess I’m thinking it certainly doesn’t have to. But if a moment I forgot myself, or… could you also say a moment I failed myself?

Natalie
Right, yeah.

Rebecca
I don’t know.

Natalie
Yeah, maybe.

Rebecca
“I failed,” it’s definitely got a heavier negative feeling to it. But what do you think? You would prefer to stay out of that word ‘failure,’ right?

Natalie
I mean, we’ve opened a door here.

Rebecca
Open it, Nat. Walk in.

Natalie
So I’m cracking it open a little bit further and going: I think that my gut instinct would be to not sort of spend too much time on failure. Like yesterday, Clifford and I were putting together Frankie’s new desk. It’s like a Murphy bed that hangs on the wall — but a Murphy desk. I didn’t know this was a thing, and it kind of comes down and it’s great. And anyways and we’re having trouble putting it together at one point, and I’m like, “Oh, I messed up on that part.” And Clifford’s got the drill and he’s not making eye contact at that point, but he sort of looks up slightly and he’s like, “This is not about personal failure, Natalie.” And I was like, “Oh, right, ok. It’s just a desk.” So there might be…

Rebecca
Hold on, wait — that’s interesting, though, because I never associate that with you at all. But Clifford obviously hears it enough to have pointed it out.

Natalie
Mm-hmm — and he would say that in our family (you, me, mom), that we are very hard on ourselves and want so badly for things to go well or as intended or perfect for all the people that we are caring for. He ties it back to a real self-flagellation. That’s actually what it comes down to for him. So he’s like, “We need to not do that. Please do less of that for yourself.”

Rebecca
Especially while we’re making this Murphy bed.

Natalie
Especially while we’re putting this desk together. So all that to say, I think that yeah, failure is going to be a part of this question around loss. And a moment… I think I’m going to talk through a story where I’m just… why the hell not? I’m going to just share it on here. I’ve spent so much time on this podcast talking about my journey through my divorce — where I got married very young, and then after seven years, we divorced. And that was definitely prompted by me. That was my decision. And then I have also shared about getting married to Clifford, which happened many years later. But I haven’t shared much about a relationship that occurred for four to five years sort of in between those two. And I think I purposefully not wanted to share it because I have spent a lot of energy working my way through what felt like relational failure in that time. I can 100% say that there were moments over those years where I lost myself completely — and I can remember one specific moment. I didn’t intend to cry this morning, but this could happen. So here we are.

But I remember living in that house that I ended up buying my ex-husband out of, and now I’ve got this house to myself and I’m being all brave and doing all these things, and then you and Simon were bringing me a couch — like it was a couch bed, an Ikea one, that I had slept on when I had stayed with you in California, when Elsie was first born. And then you had brought Elsie for a visit and you had put Elsie on my lap, or I had taken her, whatever. So I’m sitting on this white couch from you and I’m holding Elsie. But we were having a discussion. You and I were having like a Natalie-Rebecca moment of discussion, where you were just really wanting me to name where I was at with this relationship, and you wanted something from me that I wasn’t able to give you in terms of a clarity. I didn’t have a clear answer in terms of how to name why this person was treating me the way that they were, and why was I ok with that — because that’s how it seemed to you from the outside looking in: this person was treating me really badly, and somehow your smart teacher sister, who teaches lessons to everybody else, was not paying attention to some seemingly obvious lessons that I was living through right there in front of you. And basically, I think you were like, “What the fuck?” But without saying that — and you specifically didn’t say that because I was holding your six-month-old baby. And I remember you very much saying to me, “I think I’m going to take Elsie back, because I don’t want her to absorb this hurt. She’s too little to absorb it, Natalie.” And oh my goodness, Rebecca…

Rebecca
The hurt between us? Or the hurt…? What was I saying? That’s horrible.

Natalie
No no, it wasn’t horrible. It was really…

Rebecca
Really?

Natalie
No, it was really motherly of you for her, and I think you were also caring for me. I don’t know that we both maybe lived that out in that moment very well, just because it was also new and fresh. But I really think you were basically saying to me, like, “What you’re living here is a lot of hurt, and I don’t want this hurt for Elsie. She’s too little for this hurt.” And maybe in sort of the undercurrent of those words was, “I don’t want this for you, Natalie,” — because it was so much hurt.

Rebecca
You obviously experienced what I said as a deep wound, because I…

Natalie
No.

Rebecca
No, you really didn’t?

Natalie
No no no, I 100% did not experience this as a wound from you. What it was 100% for me was a moment of recognition that somehow I had lost myself. Because if I couldn’t hold my niece, who I love more than anything, through that hurt, then what was going on? And then I think what’s so crazy about that kind of an experience is that it still took years for me to extricate myself from what was only just recently — with a friend that I had lunch with, who was very much tied to that time, and spent a lot of time with me through that. And I expressed to her that my memory of that time was that it was an abusive relationship — psychologically abusive relationship. And for the first time, she agreed. And I found that really fascinating, because for all the years prior to that, I don’t know that she had the language to name that for what it was. So is it that just, you know, we’re now in our forties and we can retrospectively look back on the damages that life is… it wreaked upon us?

But that relationship — it was kind of validating to have somebody else who was very intimately connected to all of those stories say, “Yes, that was psychologically abusive, what you navigated — what you lived through.” And yet you were the one that was able to say that to me earlier on. So I think that there’s just something really crazy, wild, nuts (I don’t know, whatever is the perfect descriptive term), to sort of comment on moments of forgetting the self, of the loss of the self. Maybe, Becca, I don’t even know that I knew that part of myself. Was there something that I didn’t even know I had lost or forgotten, because I had never really known it was there? Like, honestly, there are parts of me that sort of wonder, looking back, if I didn’t actually value myself until I finally left that relationship. So there you go, Reframeables. So there’s something in that, right? Like, there’s something in retrospectively considering it all. But can… sorry, I just want to finish this one thought. Can a moment, like the idea of Erdrich saying, “The moment you lost yourself,” — it’s really weird that perhaps my moment, my recognizing that moment, was split apart by years. So it’s like the moment started with you and Elsie on that white couch.

Rebecca
With the intervention?

Natalie
Yeah, with, like, my intervention.

Rebecca
With the harsh intervention.

Natalie
Not harsh! Loving — but that it took… like, it was a moment that was spread out over another couple years. And I think that’s very interesting. Just human nature — the slow, pondering, oh my gosh, tough slog it takes to kind of get to knowledge.

Rebecca
It makes me think of addiction. It’s never one conversation is going to be like, “Solve it. You just needed to hear that.” It’s that all of us, I don’t know, get addicted to different feelings or different…

Natalie
Pain.

Rebecca
Yeah — pain cycles that we’re familiar with. Also, it’s making me think of Anne Lamott. I was reading her new book last night — it’s called Dusk, Night, Dawn. I think she wrote it maybe post-pandemic, during the pandemic, but one of the things she talks about is that our biggest maybe project or need in life is to work on self-love. And when you say that, it’s funny, because you’d think we’d just have it, right?

Natalie
By this point, anyways.

Rebecca
Well, I mean, maybe in our forties we’re getting better at it. But you’d think that as a child… I don’t know. I’m just amazed at how self-love isn’t just…

Natalie
Natural.

Rebecca
Natural.

Natalie
Or something gets worked out of us pretty quickly, yeah.

Rebecca
Yes. Is there a moment when self-love disappears. You would imagine that we try to nurture it and then it… when did we lose our self-love, and then have to regain it?

Natalie
Yeah, gosh.

Rebecca
Like, why didn’t you have it? Why have I struggled with it? I guess it’s a universal struggle.

Natalie
Ok. I mean, like, I’m not going to make you now… I’m not going to obligate you to weep, but would you say that looking back on your life, that there was a moment where you lost yourself? Does it work like that? Does it play out like that in terms of language?

Rebecca
I don’t know if there’s one moment. I think what resonated for me in that is that I feel that my life is so many of those. It’s such a constant feeling for me that I keep losing myself and losing myself. And that was how I heard it, that I’m like a flipbook of moments that I’ve lost myself. But it’s daily. I think you said to me, “Death by a thousand cuts.”

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
So I was even thinking today, “Have I already lost myself today? Is there a moment that I was too mad, reacted, made a bad choice?” And I don’t know — maybe not yet.

Natalie
Clifford would be looking at you, up from the drill. “Rebecca.”

Rebecca
“Everything’s not about your personal failure.”

Natalie
“Not yet. Just put the damn desk together with me.” No, but that’s so interesting, because even as you say — I’m picturing myself as your older sister if you’ve lost yourself. Think of Hansel and Gretel, and I’m, like, leaving little bits of breadcrumbs for you to follow your way back. I mean, I need to do that for myself, but I feel like I can help you. That’s why we need each other.

Rebecca
That’s what makes me ache a little bit for even us and you — is that you’ve just been so devoted to helping me find my breadcrumbs. And I think during that really difficult period that you mention, I wish I had approached that situation with more softness for you, because I think I wasn’t very soft about it all. I think I was almost like, “Slap, slap. Come on, sister. This is bad for you.” But it wasn’t gentle loving you through it, was it?

Natalie
Oh, I don’t know. I’m not going to put that on you. You didn’t know. We were just learning. We were babies, really, in so many ways, right? Like, emotional babies in that response, or in that respect, just because it was all so…

Rebecca
Yeah.

Natalie
But yeah, softness is great.

Rebecca
I would just like to say that if you encounter a very troubling situation again…

Natalie
Let’s go through with softness.

Rebecca
Let’s do it softer.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
No screeching or pushing the other one out. I don’t know, whatever we did. I feel like there was a moment with a car that was really aggressive, and I don’t want to be that way. I think that’s just…

Hey Reframeables: a little housekeeping. Don’t forget to rate, review, or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts if you like what we’re doing here on Reframeables. Your feedback really supports this reframing project of ours. Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter, which comes with a free delicious recipe from Nat. And we have a new segment for our Patreon subscribers: mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. So check us out over on our Patreon, and consider a donation if these reframing conversations have supported you or someone you know. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Reframeables.

Ok, this is an interesting, weird one, but Violet doesn’t want to get her booster shot.

Natalie
Right, ok.

Rebecca
So I said, “Oh, we’re getting it tomorrow.” I thought it was nothing. I thought we did shots now with…

Natalie
With ease.

Rebecca
We all just get needles in our arms and we all do it and we just go, “This is life,” and we don’t care. But she was really upset by it, and she didn’t want to get it, so it turned into kind of a thing. And then she was crying, actually. And then I started just saying “Sorry, sorry. I’m sorry.” I don’t know what I was doing. I just started saying ‘sorry’ so many times, just in this kind of detached way or something — like as a strategy. “I’m not going to get riled up. I’m just going to sort of detach, and just be really uber-calm.” And then finally she said, “Mommy, you’re saying that word so many times, it doesn’t even mean anything.”

Natalie
That girl’s worldly wisdoms, oh my goodness.

Rebecca
Oh my gosh. So smart. But then I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Here is another possible way to lose myself — by detaching.”

Natalie
Becca.

Rebecca
It’s so weird. And I don’t really mean this as… it sounds really self-flagellatory, but maybe I’m just seeing it as the interesting ways we are as humans. You can lose yourself through reaction, which is a big one for me, but then you can also lose yourself through not being present. I think we’re maybe working with different definitions here of this moment. But even at church yesterday, someone was talking to me. I really wanted to be listening to you and Tamara. I sort of stopped listening, and then I felt bad later. I was like, “Oh, wow. I really missed the opportunity to be present in that moment with that person, because I was…” So anyway, this is the weird way my brain works.

Natalie
It’s not weird. That had already happened to me, because you were talking to Tamara, and I had somebody talking to me about something I really didn’t want to focus on, but I had to listen.

Rebecca
We just all really want to be talking to Tamara. Tamara, you’re our favourite. Also, I’ve started this relationship with an acupuncturist, Jeremy. He’s new in my life.

Natalie
Ok. I think he’s also in mom’s, right?

Rebecca
No, she goes to someone else. Maybe the one I want to go to, but I do like Jeremy. And he says that just noticing in our bodies, just noticing anything, is enough — and the body will get to work. So then I was thinking, “Ok, I’m just noticing these times I’ve lost myself.”

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
And is that enough?

Natalie
Or maybe it’s a start. I don’t think I can go as far as saying it’s enough, simply because…

Rebecca
You needed to do a step.

Natalie
The doer in me needs another couple steps — somewhere to go. But I like the idea of it being a starting point. This idea of Erdrich’s, “A moment where you lost yourself,” kind of connects me back… and we did do an episode a long time ago that we called Loss and Found, but we were talking then about emotional losses of the heart. But here it’s much more turning the lens inward, and now it’s like looking at the loss internally, right? Loss of ourselves.

Rebecca
And where we did it to ourselves.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Is that what we’re saying? Like, “I make these choices.” It’s about our own personal choices?

Natalie
I think so. I think that choice is very much connected to this one. And so then it just makes me think of… you just mentioned church, and at the bottom of the stairs there’s that lost and found box, which is actually, like, one of the saddest places in the whole building, because nobody can even find it, right? So who knows what’s in there? But that’s like, in every school there’s a lost and found box, but I know that some of my elementary colleagues would be like, “And that box is the best.” Because so many kids, they forget to go back and find the thing, and then at the end, you’ve now got, like, sweaters for days for your own kid because it’s going to go to waste. So you could frame the lost and found box in a couple of different ways. It’s either the loneliest place in the world or it’s like new opportunities. So I’m trying to think of even how I can reframe my own moment of losing myself. Like, I wonder what Simon thought when he was in the room as I’m holding Elsie, and you’re like, “Give me Elsie.” What he might have thought of this sisterly moment. Maybe there was a part of him that was like, “This is beautiful. Look at them communicating.” Like, who knows how this was all playing out?

Rebecca
Yeah, we need to get him on and be like, “What were you thinking?”

Natalie
I mean, that’s kind of interesting, because in terms of the reframe, the loss of self does potentially suggest that there is the option to find. “What can I find on the other side of this lost and found box?”

Rebecca
Which is really what Jeremy, what he’s saying — the body will work if you just acknowledge it, if you just look at it.

Natalie
Yeah, I like that.

Rebecca
But do you think the counter to losing… do you agree that the self-love and love is the way to counter these moments? So looking, but also loving. Is that how we counter?

Natalie
Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

Rebecca
It’s just: bring love. Bring love in there.

Natalie
Yeah yeah yeah. I think love is the way. I mean whatever, wherever that line comes from (it’s going to be somewhere really obvious and I’m going to feel like a total dummy for forgetting that) — but that idea, that notion that love is the only way forward, is impossible for it not to be that. I think that is the only thing big enough to hold all this loss, and the self, and then somehow make it into something new. I mean, that sounds so big and amorphous and it’s like, “What the hell are you even saying, Natalie?” — but I really mean it. I really think that there is something about, like, if we truly love in a way that is like the love that I think you and I would say that God has for us, which is just so big, right? I mean, so whatever it is out there that somebody else kind of lives out, whether it’s a feeling of God or the universe or whatever it is, that love that allows us to be here, then we should be making that love about ourselves so that we can offer it again. Otherwise then it’s all just loss, and that’s… I don’t want any part of that.

Rebecca
Shitty? That’s shitty?

Natalie
Yeah. That’s shitty.

Rebecca
That’s a shitty world.

Natalie
Yeah. I don’t want that. I don’t want that for Frankie. I don’t want that for Violet. I love that Violet’s like, “That word doesn’t mean anything anymore.” Like, I want love to be the word that can be said so many times that it still means something, because it’s just that big.

Rebecca
Yeah. That’s interesting — that I do say “I love you” a lot, and I don’t think she’s ever said to me, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Natalie
No, no.

Rebecca
And even today we’re starting to have… like, she’s a bit grumpy in the mornings now. I really react to moods, so that’s something I’m kind of working on — is not. But then I was sitting on the couch and I’m simultaneously feeling annoyed at her because she’s sort of being, like, teenagery with me. And then I just gave her a big hug and said, “I love you,” and I decided to just brush all the rest of my own feelings and just put love in. And she really responded. I mean, this seems so basic, but she just perked right up. Like, “Can we not have a big discussion? Can you just love me?” That’s what I saw in that moment.

Natalie
So then we need to do that for ourselves, in the face of these moments of loss. Just a big moment of love. Follow the breadcrumbs.

Rebecca
To the love.

Natalie
Back to the desk that we’re putting together. Every metaphor we could put together here.

Rebecca
Ok, so that’s a big one. That’s big. Less perhaps weighty is I want to do a 30-day experiment, Nat, and I want you to do it with me.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
But you can pick whatever one.

Natalie
The one that you’re doing, or I get to do my own?

Rebecca
No, you can pick your own.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
Mine, I was thinking (Simon gave me the idea, and I kind of like it because it’d be really hard for me) is no complaining for 30 days. And then I’m just doing all of Simon’s rules — so he just said, “Do it this way,” and I was like, “Ok, I’ll do it that way.” I love it when people tell me what to do. And then if I complain, then I have to start again.

Natalie
Oh, ok.

Rebecca
This will be excruciating for me, because one of my favourite things is complaining with you.

Natalie
Oh no! Wait a second, I’m affected by this.

Rebecca
Yes. I won’t be able to complain to you, Nat, which is… are we going to have things to talk about? It’s going to be so upbeat.

Natalie
That’s going to be tiresome. Ok, we’re going to try that.

Rebecca
I’m just going to be pointing out good things all the time. You’re going to be so bored.

Natalie
“Look at that bird.” I saw a really great tweet the other day that said, “Why is it that all of a sudden in your forties you start noticing birds?”

Rebecca
It’s true.

Natalie
And I was like, “It’s true.” Like all of a sudden, that warbler means something.

Rebecca
I really notice them.

Natalie
So there we go.

Rebecca
What’s yours going to be?

Natalie
Well, I think I’m going to go back to the Violet thing, and I think I’m going to then practice not saying sorry for 30 days. I will only use ‘sorry’ if, like, I actually hurt someone. Like, if I physically drop something on Frankie’s toe, I will say sorry. But otherwise, I’m not going to say sorry. It’s not going to be like, “Sorry I don’t have this on the menu for you.” It’s going to be like, “You fucking eat this.”

Rebecca
Or, “Sorry I bumped into you,” when you actually bumped into me.

Natalie
Yeah. It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to say sorry. I’m going to find other ways to keep the conversation going, because sometimes I think I even will throw ‘sorry’ in as, like, a conversation bump. You know what I mean? To, like, roll over that little chevron — conversational chevron. So I’m removing that chevron, and I’m putting in…

Rebecca
You’re like, “Sorry we’re having a lull. It’s my bad.”

Natalie
I think it might happen. Rebecca, I’m telling you, I have some shit to work through. So anyways, we’re going to take out the sorry, and we’re going to insert new words, and I will loop back and tell you how that went in a few episodes from now.

Rebecca
Ok. Are we starting October 1st, on your birthday? Or are we starting tomorrow?

Natalie
Yeah. Ok.

Rebecca
Which?

Natalie
Oh — the first. I think I want to start fresh.

Rebecca
October 1st, ok.

Natalie
Yeah. I don’t want to do math.

Rebecca
And then we would love it if some listeners joined us. That would be so fun.

Natalie
Yes, and shared with us.

Rebecca
Oh my gosh. Your experiments.

Natalie
Yeah, that would be cool.

Rebecca
That would be cool.

Natalie
Ok. Thanks for being with me through my tears — my very vulnerable self-expression.

Rebecca
Oh yes, and I love you.

Natalie
I love you.

Rebecca
I love that you’re vulnerable.

Natalie
Trying, Becca. I’m all in my feelings, as Ian Williams said last episode.

Rebecca
“All in my feelings.” I liked how he said that. He just owned that. Did you hear when dad… big news, our dad retired.

Natalie
Well — is retiring in six months, but yeah. Very big deal.

Rebecca
But when he announced it, or when they announced it at church, did you hear my, like, snort?

Natalie
No.

Rebecca
I did a snort sob.

Natalie
Oh, Becca.

Rebecca
From the piano — I know. I was sitting at the piano.

Natalie
I didn’t hear it.

Rebecca
Yeah, so I was vulnerable, too. It’s ugly. Vulnerability feels ugly sometimes.

Natalie
Yeah, it’s true. For anybody who’s not seeing any visual of this video right now, I’ve got, like, an Ariana Grande half-ponytail happening at the top to kind of mitigate the ugly vulnerability.

Rebecca
And I kind of got, like, a weird snarl happening. Ever since you started talking, Nat, my face just went into an, “Oh…” snarl.

Natalie
Well, if anybody wants to see evidence of any of this, you can find us on YouTube.