Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together to reframe some of life’s big and small problems. We’re moms, writers.

Natalie
We have soft boundaries. We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability together and with our guests, because we like deep dives. So come with us — let’s reframe something.

Rebecca
Hey, Nat.

Natalie
Hey, Bec.

Rebecca
I sounded low energy there.

Natalie
I went high. You went low, I went high.

Rebecca
I went low. You know why? It’s because I was thinking about all the commuting I’ve been doing for my teaching. I love the teaching, but not the commuting. I’m having empathy pains for your years of commuting.

Natalie
Thank you for saying that. And you know what? I was doing that kind of morning drive before the age of podcasts.

Rebecca
Question: if you were commuting tomorrow, would you listen to our podcast?

Natalie
Most definitely — though I will say a radio voice who kept me sane on the road for all those years was the CBC’s very own Gill Deacon.

Rebecca
Ooh — and our next reframing resilience guest.

Natalie
That was smooth. We are smooth. With Gill, we discuss resilience from a number of angles: her health challenges over the years with breast cancer and long COVID…

Rebecca
And how she used writing to help her reframe along the way — yes, my sister.

Natalie
We learn a lot about Gill, actually: her love of improv…

Rebecca
And her new Substack (in the show notes). We are now in fact Substack family, Gill.

Natalie
So let’s get right to it: reframing resilience with Gill Deacon.

I’ve said this before with the other folks that I have gotten on to our podcast over the years, but there are certain moments where I end up feeling a bit like a fangirl, and I find that funny because I don’t really succumb too much to celebrity culture. That’s not sort of my thing — I don’t know what my thing is, but that’s not it. But I was, like, really pumped about this, Gill.

Gill
So what you’re saying is you’re a CBC radio nerd.

Natalie
I didn’t think I was. But you know what, after 20 years of commuting in Toronto traffic and listening to you, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I get to chat with, like, this woman who has actually been a part of my life.” I don’t think I fully anticipated that until I reached out.

Gill
Radio is funny that way. It’s so intimate, and we really do develop relationships with the people that we hear. My gosh, I hope I didn’t sound like this on the radio for all those years.

Natalie
You sounded exactly what I needed you to be.

Gill
I’ve got, like, some lingering holiday cold… and anyway, morning voice, so apologies. But anyways, some version of this voice, yes, was intimately connected to a lot of lives. That’s the beauty of radio.

Natalie
Yeah.

Gill
And podcasts, so good on you for creating a way to connect with people on your own too.

Rebecca
Is the microphone so comfortable for you? Like, is this just a very comfortable space for you now?

Gill
I’ll tell you, I was interviewed for something I forget recently and I can’t remember why, but I didn’t have headphones on. I was talking to a microphone, but I didn’t have headphones on and it felt so weird because I’m so accustomed. You know, and I’d have people into the studio and they’d try to put on these big lumbering things over their ears and ruin their hair and whatever. I always said, “You do not have to wear those if you don’t have to,” because a lot of people are so uncomfortable with them. And I’m the other way around — I’m very comfortable. It’s the combo — sitting in front of a microphone doesn’t bother me. I don’t think much about it. And to me, it goes hand in hand with hearing what’s happening in my own ears. So it is very comfortable.

I feel like, you know, this is the avenue that I have for many, many years at CBC, and television to me is the same, but with more annoying stuff in the way — cameras and makeup and all that, that you have to deal with. But it’s just an avenue for connecting. And that’s why I get out of bed in the morning — is making connections with people. So it doesn’t feel intimidating or irksome the way it maybe does to some people having this microphone pointed in your face.

Rebecca
You just kind of settle in.

Gill
Yeah.

Natalie
It is kind of funny with the earphones, actually, how an added intimacy — an added layer actually because it is so…

Gill
Yes.

Natalie
Like, Rebecca and I literally spend our lives together working and planning and doing all these things, but everything sounds just a little different when I put the earphones on.

Gill
100%.

Natalie
Like, a different kind of closeness which is, like, for good or for bad. That’s what it is. Which is an interesting thing to kind of analyze. I hadn’t really considered that, that this equipment that we wear is part of the storytelling. Thinking of storytelling, I found this quote. It’s an Alice Walker quote, it’s very short: “The process of storytelling is itself a healing process.” And I wondered if that rung true for you in that resilience is our theme here and, you know, that has been a theme that’s certainly run through your life as a journalist and with, you know, cancer diagnoses and long COVID, yet you’ve always continued to tell stories. So just wondering how that might sort of sit with you.

Gill
It does resonate for me completely. Writing is how I make sense of things as they’re happening, or after they’ve happened. And sometimes it’s long after they’ve happened, but I definitely do write my way through things, kind of coming to understanding around them. So that connection that, you know, as I said, is sort of primal to me, I can’t help it. So that’s the storytelling. You know, writing and connecting with people, that’s kind of storytelling for me. I’m an oral storyteller on the radio, and in podcasts as well. But yeah, absolutely, that Alice Walker quote makes a lot of sense to me.

I always feel better when I’ve taken that dive into examining what’s happening. And in the case of something like long COVID, the uncertainty around, “Am I going to get better from this? Is this ever going to go away? What even is this?” It took a very long time for me to even get a diagnosis of long COVID — like, close to a year. So writing was a real solace. Very healing in that respect too, because it’s not to say it is something that you can control, and there is no certainty there either, it’s sort of seeing what comes out — but it’s healing. I agree with that part of that quote most. It’s so healing to make connection with my own experience and make connection, ultimately, with other people who have had their own versions of a challenge or whatever, something similar. So storytelling, obviously it’s ancient, it’s in all of us, it’s what we all do every day in our own ways. And it’s part of how we connect with one another, for sure, which is I think why we’re here.

Rebecca
You were saying at the beginning that your son is filmmaking. Have you passed on the…?

Gill
Yes — as I’ve rearranged a lot of his editing equipment around me here to make space. He’s hijacked my workspace today. But yes, I have three sons and they’re all artists. The youngest is studying filmmaking and does a lot of filmmaking himself. And the older two are musicians and music producers.

Rebecca
Oh, wow.

Gill
Telling stories through music. Yeah.

Rebecca
To pick back up on the long COVID thing, that’s interesting. And when you say it took a year to get a diagnosis, is that because it was so new and doctors didn’t…?

Gill
Basically, yeah. I mean, I didn’t get sick at the outset of the pandemic. Like, 2020, people who started to have extended symptoms at that point must have been really in the dark. We didn’t even have the word ‘long COVID’ — the term. Yeah, there were a few factors that made it hard to come to a diagnosis for me. Number one is that long COVID just generally is really hard. They call it a diagnosis of exclusion because there’s so many possible symptoms. I think they say you can have sort of any one or combination of 200 symptoms — could be long COVID. So it is pretty hard for doctors to sort through that.

I had the added complication — well, a couple, I guess, of having a history of being a cancer patient a few times. And so there was that extra, “Hmm, is this another version of that?” But the extra strangeness is that I never had an active case of COVID. I never tested positive. To this day I’ve never tested positive on a rapid test or a PCR test. So I didn’t start the typical COVID lying in bed feeling lousy and then, hmm, never quite get better. I just started to feel more rundown and so on. Anyway, I did obviously have COVID at some point. I just was always asymptomatic.

I want to say this because so few people know about this: if anybody else is in that mysterious situation, most people have had a known case of COVID, but if you haven’t and you want to know if you’ve ever had it, there’s a blood test that my doctor didn’t know about, but my oncologist eventually told me about it. It’s called a nucleocapsid test. And it can distinguish between the natural antibodies — or not antibodies, sorry, the natural protein marker that you would have from having a case of COVID versus the protein that you would get from having been vaccinated (which I had been fully vaccinated).

Anyway, so once we figured it all out, then I was able to get referred to a long COVID clinic. This was 10 months or so after starting to feel symptoms. I finally spoke with a doctor having by that time seen rheumatology, respirology, internal medicine, endocrinology, my GP 5000 times, every blood test you can think of, oncologists — I can’t even list. I saw eight different doctors before finally seeing this long COVID specialist who, unlike every other specialist who’d been like, “Huh, sounds unfortunate, but can’t help you here.” And this doctor said, “Oh yeah, that’s long COVID.” And I said, “Oh, ok.” But they can’t give you a pill or a treatment because there isn’t one. But it was some reassurance to know that, “Ok, now I know at least what I’m dealing with here.”

So yeah — but that took a long time to get to that. So it was a lot of months of keeping fears at bay based on my health history. I certainly had, you know, the potential for some anxieties and health concerns to rear their heads. So keeping that in check, and just navigating all that uncertainty was a lot. And then when I got the diagnosis: ok, that’s one box checked, but how long is it going to last and what do we know about it and how can I get out of this? And yeah.

Rebecca
Like, what did you do? Like, how did you manage that uncertainty? That’s so much. And also the time involved in that — like, all the effort and time to go to all those doctors.

Gill
Yes, which is more of an effort when you have long COVID because you have no energy.

Rebecca
Right.

Gill
Yeah. I could make a joke and say it’s a long story and it’ll be published in a book — which is true. I have a book coming out that’s not about my long COVID. But in the course of going through that, I basically came to realize: ok, waking up in the morning and having a recovery and/or some answers to what’s happening here is not an option, so I have to take that desire for certainty off the table and I have to change my relationship with uncertainty.

And that became something really interesting for me because there’s so many uncertainties, you know, in all of our lives. Let’s, you know, look at the wildfires raging through Los Angeles. Look at the, you know, political craziness. What’s going to happen with Trump tariffs? I don’t know when this is going to air, but it doesn’t matter because the looming threats of climate and politics and health and avian flu — I mean, there’s just millions of wildcards swirling around us all the time, and how do we establish any solid ground? It’s that constant uncertainty is something that became interesting to me beyond my own, you know, health condition.

And so I guess the answer to the, “How did I do that?” is a lot of things that can sound cliché until you’ve really had to put them to the test — like really working on being present, and choosing what I pay attention to, recognizing my own agency and how I feel about a given circumstance, and yeah, lots of time trying to focus on things that I could appreciate. You know, there’s always moments of beauty and moral beauty, as some people call it, and hope and small bits of awe and wonder in every single day, no matter what’s happening. So yeah, trying to focus on those. There was a lot.

Rebecca
Yeah. I don’t know that term, ‘moral beauty.’

Gill
There’s a guy who… oh, I have his book right there. It’s called Awe (A-W-E), by a guy named Dacher Keltner. “The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” So I read that as part of my inquiries. It was all about inquiry, this writing I’ve been doing about how can we change our relationship with uncertainty and anything else, but the idea of observing moments in a given day — again, you can choose to roll your eyes and say this is trite, but try this, it’s remarkably powerful. Somebody holding the door for you as you’re leaving the grocery store. Even observing across a parking lot someone, you know, waving at another person and asking if they need a hand. Or whatever it is — children pausing to show something to one another in a playground. Like, just human interactions that are in and of themselves sort of foundationally good and beautiful. And they’re happening all the time around us. And if we miss them, I think we miss the chance to be filled up with appreciation.

I mean, in his book… I’m pretty sure that’s where I first read the term, I think it’s Dacher Keltner who talks about it. He also talks about finding moments of awe and wonder wherever you can. That can be as simple as that and it can be, you know, the shape of a snowflake or whatever — like, sunsets and all the things. They don’t have to be sort of massive climbing the top of mountains to experience, but it’s a choice. What we spend our energy thinking about and what we focus our attention on is always a choice.

And I think even that is the simple bottom line for, you know, “How did I get through that uncertainty?” Sort of stopping and taking stock of, “Ok, what am I…? Do I really want to be all bent out of shape about the fact that no doctor has an answer for me?” I could, but it doesn’t feel very good. So what else can I get my head around for now? That is my strategy for resilience, always.

Natalie
Really, I could have used your book. The full title is “A Love Affair with the Unknown”?

Gill
“A Love Affair with the Unknown,” yup.

Natalie
Yeah — which I really love the framing of it being a love affair because I feel like we attach such emotion to love, and the idea with attaching emotion to uncertainty that’s not framed as negative is a really radical reframing of living, which… man, we’re going on a family holiday next month. The nine of us — so Becca’s crew, my crew and our parents. And we’re very excited about this, but we haven’t been on a hot holiday in, I don’t know, five, six years, whatever. It’s a real gift to get to go all together. But the last time we were on holiday, I was still kind of at the end of only having come to awareness — with all the work of doctors, it took three years to sort of figure some stuff about my condition post-sepsis survival.

So it was on that holiday that my right leg, which is my leg that struggles, it blew up again. Like, it started to react in the heat. And so I was losing my mind because this was just so scary to me. And I remember I was like, “Rebecca, I need any drug you have. Anything.” She’s, like, pulling stuff out of her bag just to, like, calm me down. I think I took random antibiotics. It’s not ok. Don’t ever do that. To anybody who’s listening to this, I was not my best self. But I was so scared. And thinking back on that time, I didn’t have the tools to kind of make my way through what I’ve now learned is just my body’s reaction to heat, post-what I have lived through.

And now I can go on this holiday five, six years later and know what’s coming and prepare for it, but also just sort of accept that that will be part of the holiday. So maybe I can pay more attention to the waves. Maybe I can actually slow my mind down and be there, really. But it does make me mourn a little for the Natalie at that time who didn’t have the ability to see what you’re describing. And so much of that could have come from how I could have maybe written my way through it, done some of the work that you’ve described. So I’m grateful that your book is coming out for others to avoid that. But it’s just amazing what can be done when we can either accept or navigate or revel in the uncertainty. I’m still definitely making my way there.

Gill
No, and don’t please mistake me for sort of some, you know, “Yup! Got it all figured out! Just reading my book. I know exactly how to do it.” I mean, it’s not, like, a book of tips, you know, it’s a every day…

Natalie
Choice.

Gill
Exactly. It’s a muscle that we can continue to try to work. And I, as I say, feel better when I do. I was thinking of your story as an example of that sort of stoic philosophy — for ancient Greek stoicism. And again, I’ll get the wording wrong, but it’s basically: don’t suffer future pain. Like, so much of our stress and anxiety is stuff that we think in our mind about what this pain in my leg is all about, or what this situation happening is going to mean. You know, “I’ll never get better, I’ll never be recovered from long COVID,” whatever.

And so often we are catastrophizing into the future and at some level convincing ourselves that it’s true — but it hasn’t happened yet. You can’t know what’s going on with your leg and then, “Oh, look at that. Look at that. It’s actually what happens in the heat. How about that? Ok.” So all the pathways that you went down in your mind about… and again, this is not said with any judgment. It’s like me with the, “Oh, really? You thought you were never going to get…” You should have seen me riding my bicycle this morning — like, I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do that again, but that was my catastrophizing taking a ride on the anxiety train or whatever to some future state that doesn’t exist. So don’t get ahead of yourself, yeah.i

Rebecca
Sometimes people ask us if we make money doing this podcast. The answer is we don’t. In fact, every hour we spend on Reframables is time not spent at a paying gig. And the steps to making a podcast are actually many. Finding the guests, booking the guests, reading the books, planning the questions, editing the interview, uploading it into the podcast world, making the artwork. So if you value this podcast, please consider supporting it with a financial contribution. Memberships start at $6 a month on Patreon and include a monthly extra where we record our five things in a week. In this world we have to support what we love, and with that support an energy comes back to us — so thanks for going to patreon.com/reframables and becoming a supporter. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to be making a podcast, but here we are, three years later, still doing it with your help. So go to patreon.com/reframables — now, on to the show.

Did someone point you in the path of writing? Like, did you have a person with wisdom in your life that said, “Hey, what if you…” Or did you do it yourself? Like, did you source your own wisdom to get on this path of…?

Gill
You mean the path of writing?

Rebecca
You kind of found your own healing in a way through the writing and the listening. I think sometimes when I’m in crisis, I don’t necessarily do the thing — like I don’t necessarily go to the thing that I know will heal me.

Gill
Right, right.

Rebecca
You know what I mean? so I guess I’m just curious: was that you sort of knowing yourself and sticking with your practice of writing, and then it starts to come, and then you start to…

Natalie
Because your past books weren’t like this — that’s what’s interesting to me.

Gill
I mean, the book I wrote about going through breast cancer the first time, which is called Naked Imperfection, it was like this: I’ve always been a creative person. I was a musician, I was in theatre for many years, and improv. That’s my other level of comfort with uncertainty — is I spent a lot of years doing improv. Not stand-up — I haven’t crossed that scary bridge. But yeah, being part of an improv comedy troupe, and yeah — I mean, you don’t have a script, you don’t have a plan, you don’t know where it’s going, and you love that. So I’ve always been a playful maker of one sort or another, and have written, you know, quietly in places that no one will ever find for a long time.

And then I started writing books that were, you know, sort of the… what’s that category called? Prescriptive nonfiction — like the toxins in body care and all that kind of stuff and how to avoid them. But my memoir, Naked Imperfection, was the first I found out about the Banff Literary Journalism Program. It was 2010 and I was just coming out of my first round of breast cancer — what I didn’t know at the time would be the first of two. But someone said, “Oh, you should apply for this.” And so I got into that program which was a month-long glorious, blissful, “Bye husband, you’re on deck with the three kids and the dog, I’m going to spend a month in the mountains and do nothing but write.” So that was pretty glorious, but it certainly established that practice of writing every day and writing through whatever was happening and whether you have a specific thing to write about or not, you’re still writing every day. So that habit has certainly been established for me.

You know, when my father died, I wrote a few things in the Globe and Mail and for CBC, and I don’t know, just it’s become a place that I go pretty regularly. I try and write every day. I don’t, but I certainly have a fairly regular relationship with sitting down and writing. So that’s why I wound up… And to be honest, I had been speaking with my literary agent prior to… I was sick but I didn’t know what was the matter, but I was still going to work and still doing stuff and I had said, “You know, I had this idea for a book about uncertainty, because there’s so much uncertainty in the world, you know?” From doing improv, from going on air as a live radio or television host when things you think are going to happen, “Oh, oopsie daisy, that didn’t happen. Now what are we going to do?” And then going through cancer a couple times — like, I’ve done a lot of thinking about uncertainty and living through uncertainty.

And so I thought, “What if I sort of dabble in some ideas that could apply more broadly?” She said, “Oh, great idea. Work on that.” So I started working on it and we’d have these meetings every few weeks on Zoom and I’d say, “Oh, I’m still writing but I just don’t feel very good.” And so eventually I said, “You know, my lens on uncertainty has shifted,” because I’m now right in the middle of something that by this point, I had done every single test and my doctor was utterly stumped. And so that’s partly how it came to be that I was riding my way through the uncertainty of long COVID, because I was already trying to think about uncertainty, and suddenly had a whole new perspective on it.

Natalie
I need some of my students to listen to that very specific section of what we have just talked about there, what you just shared, because as researchers — so I teach in a med program at Yorkville University and when they have to start into their thesis work, there’s this feeling of, “Well, if I’ve chosen a methodology, then now everything is clear, right? So, like, if I’m going to be doing narrative inquiry, I’m just writing.” Which can end up meaning that in their minds they get really thrown when the inquiry piece, which is the evolving, emerging, ongoing, you know, marathon, it doesn’t go the way that they thought it was going to go and then they can get really thrown. And that’s fair, and every researcher has navigated that at whatever level, but I think that what you’ve just described is so important. You can decide a path, but then the path will take.

And Becca, as a novelist, as a writer, I think you’ve lived that in lots of ways. There’s so much written out there about how the story gets told and, you know, choosing to let the story guide you. I think that’s what Claudia Dey talked about when she was on here, right? Talking about the way that she was writing. When she was on, she was talking about Daughter, but other novels had written different ways. But what you’ve just described, I think is really powerful, because I think that that speaks to more than just a writerly experience. It’s actually, like, a living.

Gill
It’s funny because I’m in the process of putting together a series of writing, but also podcast interviews about uncertainty, sort of in the lead up to my book coming out. I’m still just steeped in this topic and so interested in it. So I definitely want to talk to artists about that — because uncertainty, that’s the only place that art happens. I mean, otherwise it’s a colouring book, or paint-by-number. I mean, you can’t make art if you already know what you want to get. But also to the point of your students, I mean, some of the people I want to talk to as well are, you know, scientific researchers. Again, those breakthroughs — you think you’re going down avenue A, and suddenly a sharp turn comes along and you’re on side road X, and “Wow, look what happened,” you know? Uncertainty, it’s the only place that possibility lives. And I just think knowing that, in terms of the helping us through hard things and being resilient, is a good sentence to remind ourselves that uncertainty is really where possibility lives.

Rebecca
My teenage daughter, more than my youngest (maybe that’s because of age, and maybe when you’re a teenager, you want to control things more), but I feel she doesn’t necessarily have a positive relationship with uncertainty, so… But I’m just thinking about how that crosses all ages and the more comfortable we can get, the easier life would be. I was, like, looking at my email this morning and I’m personally waiting on things — we’re waiting on projects. One half of my brain was being really negative about it, just thinking, like, “There’s nothing.” Like, “There’s nothing happening.” Like, I’m waiting for 20 things. But yet when you say uncertainty is where possibility lives, on the other hand, hearing this, and I think the healthier part of my brain was also going (I hope), “This is a moment of possibility where what is nothing is everything.” These are very good places to be.

Gill
Yeah, it’s that liminal state, you know? We kind of just want, “Ok, no, it goes here, and then this is bup-ba-dup ba-dup-ba-dup-ba-dup-ba-dup-ba-dup.” Like, “I’ve got it.” And we all feel more comfortable that way. I think we’re wired evolutionarily — you know, we have these impulses for safety and security, and we need that. And of course we do and we always will. But in the context of our stressful world — and when you’re a teenager, everything is stressful, you know, basically all the time. Even your brain chemistry is really stressful. So yeah, it’s just a helpful little perspective shift or whatever. You’re right, that straddles ages and circumstances. That certainly helps me.

Natalie
When we were sort of planning — we always plan ahead, obviously, for our conversations with guests and do our research and look into things. But this was…

Rebecca
That’s funny, Nat. You’re like, “We obviously plan.”

Natalie
Well, I don’t know. Maybe some people take it a different way, but we’re a little bit ridiculous like that. But one of the things I got all excited when I was writing the notes, I was like, “Bec, you were a clown, and this is what Gill did because of your improv work.”

Gill
You were a clown? Let’s go there.

Natalie
That’s what I wanted to do.

Rebecca
Yeah. Well, I was actually just telling that I’m also doing some teaching at George Brown. I was teaching storytelling. And I always, when I’m giving my background, I do bring up my clown. But I always have to let people just sit with that, because it was red-nose clown, but did you encounter clown in your journey or training? Like, our clown, we learned it from Leah Czerniak.

Gill
Oh, I know Leah. She’s awesome.

Rebecca
Yeah, she’s so awesome. And it was very delicate — not birthday party clown, I say that for our listeners. Like, in no way kind of brash (although you could be brash as a clown), but you didn’t have a purpose in the same way that a birthday clown comes to entertain. Like, it could just be your clown — like, we’d spend a lot of time just standing there as you’d get up in front of the class and just be, essentially. So the clown sort of allowed you to put on somebody else and then you just existed, essentially. And it was actually very entertaining or moving just to watch people be in this different state, almost. You put on the clown nose, you entered this new state. Anyway, so from that, I started making sketches with a partner.

Natalie
I was just remembering, Rebecca, for me it struck me as sad. So that was literally part of the clown experience. My understanding of it was that it was quite sad. So that’s why I was really struck by this kind of link between you and Gill in terms of that clown past and improv. But I’m redirecting the conversation, and I shouldn’t do that, so…

Gill
What I hear when you describe that, and I would say this is the similarity of knowing nothing other than what you’ve just described really about that kind of clown work, but the common ground between that and improv is that you are utterly present and open to whatever comes. And that’s, again, the root comfort. I think everybody should do improv classes because, I mean, when you think about it, it’s such great training for life that you listen more to what’s happening around you. You’re open to, “Ok, this person has said something or done something, and what is it?” And you’ve got that “yes, and,” — I’m using air quotes because that’s the kind of most commonly known phrase associated with improv. But the principle of that is, “Ok, yes, this is happening, and…” Like, being open to, “What does this mean? What are we going to do?” So you standing as a clown, just being there and responding to what’s happening makes you and everyone around you very present. They’re not stuck in some future scenario. They’re right there with you. And so I think there’s a lot of commonality for sure.

Rebecca
I think that’s exactly right. You were sort of uber-present in those moments and I miss that a lot. And I think our world is just so very disconnected from that — like, I was the opposite, like on our phones it’s this extreme opposite from this sort of presence, the energy that is created in the room. I’m also teaching this class on social media, weirdly, but this one guy in the class — it was so sweet. So he’s only, I don’t know, he could be 17 or something. We were discussing concerns, because they’re supposed to be developing their careers using social media. So I said, “Can we all go around and list a concern we have about this.” And his was that he thinks phones are not compatible with wonder.

Gill
Oh my gosh. Who is he?

Rebecca
I know. Who is he?

Gill
Can he run the world?

Rebecca
I know. I was like, “I’m so moved by that.” Even that he, as a young, essentially a teenager is thinking that. But yes, it is so incompatible with wonder and this kind of deep listening that is so life-changing.

Gill
I remember hearing Patti Smith say one time in an interview, and this was years ago before social media was as big a thing if it was at all, she talked about how nobody daydreams anymore because they can just go… you know, if you’re on the subway or whatever, killing time at the dentist’s waiting room or whatever, no one daydreams. And as she says, daydreaming is where the magic happens and where art and ideas and everything starts to percolate. And now everybody just has a, “Oh, I’ll just check my Instagram or whatever, play the crossword.” And we’re never present. We’re never bored.

You know, being present to the discomfort of boredom — again, boredom is where the possibility lies because who knows what’ll… “Oh, maybe we’ll build this cool fort because we’re super bored,” or whatever. Those were our childhood experiences. So that’s interesting. Oh, that sweet young man. There is hope. I literally have this surge of, “Oh, there is hope.”

Rebecca
There is hope.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
And then all the class seemed to really want to consider that. I think that’s going to have to be my mission in teaching — is just that we all be bored together.

Natalie
Oh, Bec, that’s beautiful.

Gill
Give that dude an A+.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Natalie
Yeah, right there. Gill, in terms of, like, your career of interviewing interesting people, who is somebody that inspired wonder for you?

Gill
I can’t think of anybody specifically off the top of my head, partly because I have the kind of brain that as soon as I go into a bookstore I can’t remember any of the books that I want to read, or as soon as I’m in the grocery store I can’t remember any of the things that I need.

Natalie
Yeah:

Gill
So I’m having one of those seizing up moments. So I can’t think of anybody that I’ve ever interviewed ever. But as a general rule of my experience is that, you know, talking to playwrights, artists who’ve made something — I’m fascinated by that, the magic that happens when artists lean into wonder or curiosity or uncertainty. Whatever we want to call it — it’s kind of all of those things. And just be a little bit bold and just see what happens. Because every beautiful piece of art that we’ve read or looked at or been moved by in whatever form started that way. And so I often, you know, finished conversations with one artist or another, an author, musical theatre, musician, whatever, I had that feeling of, “Oh, I just need to blow it open and be more open to seeing what could be that doesn’t exist yet.” But yeah, that’s not a satisfying answer because I can’t think of one specific person. I’ll think of them as soon as we hang up.

Rebecca
Yes.

Gill
Yes, yes.

Natalie
When you text us, then we can put that in for our intro.

Rebecca
I agree — like, those are kind of my favorite people to interview too. Like, I also think there’s something so brave about artmaking. I mean, you can be intentional in your artmaking, but sort of the practicality of life and posting on social media and calendars and… you know what I mean? Like, we get so busy with, or…

Gill
And structured with.

Rebecca
Yeah, and you know even, like, making a great meal. All of that. I mean, I’m not saying it all has, like, a ton of value — or it can (and I know we can be creative as a cook, I’m not…), but people who risk and are willing to be in those, like, liminal spaces for a long period of time and you’re risking a lot because maybe you don’t have enough money to stay there. You know what I mean? But you stay, you continue to be in that space and that space and see what comes and see what comes. There’s so much risk in that. So I’m always honoured. So exciting to be in contact with those people who are risking like that. And it’s unusual.

Gill
I’m totally with you.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Natalie
I’m laughing just a little bit about the risk-taking in the kitchen, because Rebecca celebrates me in the most lovely sisterly way for being quite a good cook, because I like it, but it’s because I’m sort of willing to, like, take little risks. And most of the time it works. And I haven’t shared this story yet with her about my dinner the other night that didn’t work because I didn’t have coconut milk and so I decided to experiment and use tomato. So some trained chef out there is going to be like, “Well, that’s very obviously not going to be a curry kind of combo.”

But anyways, my 10-year-old was very generous with me and was like, “Mama, this is… ok. This is pretty good.” And he’s sort of using all these words. And then later on, we’re chatting in the bathroom, he’s washing his hair and I’m kind of around the corner and bemoaning dinner. And I can hear him — he’s sort of like, you know, putting shampoo in his long curly hair. And he’s just like, “Mama, it was just… it was a lot of acid. And I think the acid was fighting your fish.” And I’m like, “What the F is happening here?” My 10-year-old is talking to me about the most beautiful…

Gill
Oh my gosh. All these young people with so much wisdom — again with the hope.

Natalie
So much wisdom.

Gill
And he knew why.

Natalie
Exactly. So much with the hope for this moment here for me because my experiment did not work, but yet my child, he knew why. And he redirected me — too much acid in the tomatoes.

Gill
Yes, he did.

Natalie
But all of it cracked me up because I tried and I failed — but then I gained.

Rebecca
And Nat, cooking in your household — we have to, like, sidebar that completely. It’s, like, its own thing. Like, you — the creativity comes out in the cooking. I’m saying in a lot of households it’s, like, a thing that we’re trying to do well to just check off the list that I made a good meal. So it takes me out of my creative space. But you and the acid and the kid and the freedom.

Natalie
Well, it was funny.

Rebecca
Oh, Gill, are you a cook? What do you do to unwind? Are you in the Natalie household where you’re cooking up an artist’s stew?

Gill
Yes, I do love to cook. To unwind, I paint, I rug hook. Walking is how I unwind often, too — the longer and less plotted out, the better.

Rebecca
I was going to say — do you have a rug in your office there?

Gill
That I can show you? No, not here. In fact, during COVID on the air, I said one of those… I think in spite of ourselves, we all came to… at some moments anyway, during that incredibly difficult time, and I do not want to kind of put rose-coloured glasses in any way on the experience of the pandemic, because it was devastating and harrowing for so many people because it lasted for so long and the isolation and all the suffering when it was at its acute stage, and I think we’re still dealing with some ripples from it, but anyway…

I remember people… we all saw people doing things. You know, we leaned into the uncertainty out of desperation in a way, right? There were people who said, “Oh, I’ve decided to start a pizza shop on my back porch and message me here and I’ll make you a homemade pizza.” Or, “I’m delivering things to da-da-da.” Or, “I’ve always wanted to do this and now I realized life is short so I’m doing it.” And people took up the guitar. People took up French lessons, whatever. And I remember saying on the radio as we were talking about this, and again, trying to find those moments of connection and hope and beauty and creative practice that can sustain us, and I was saying, “I think maybe I’m going to take up rug hooking.” And I just pulled it out like the most random thing on earth.

And somebody who I actually know messaged me — who’s a beautiful artist, Kara McIntosh. And she said, “I’ll teach you how to rug hook.” I was like, “Oh, well, ok then, I guess I am going to do this.” Anyway, and another artist friend, Deb Farquharson and Kara taught me how to rug hook, and it is such a beautiful practice. I had no idea. The thing I thought it was as I was saying rug hooking in sort of a very cavalier fashion on the radio is not at all what I now really treasure. I don’t do it every day, but whenever I get settled in, surrounded by all my strips of material and yarn… I don’t follow a pattern. I just do abstract, as those two beautiful artists showed me how to do. And it’s just really beautiful and relaxing. But I don’t have anything here to show you.

Rebecca
Send us a picture.

Gill
Ok. Yeah.

Natalie
Now we all just have to wonder. We’ll leave it to that. As we’re closing, I had a question about your upcoming podcast, because what I had read about it was that it was about midlife renaissance. And as a woman in her midlife, I am thinking about that a lot. Just, you know, I’m 46 now. I was measuring my age the other day and I was like, “Maybe I’m 47,” and then I was having to do the math.

Gill
Oh, you’ve hit that age where you don’t know how old you are.

Natalie
Yeah, and I was like, “I’m that person now.” Yeah, it’s a thing. So now I’m like, “No, I’m 46. That’s what I am.” And I guess I just was curious if you saw any link between this notion of renaissance and however it is that you interpret it and resilience.

Gill
Yeah, I hadn’t drawn that line, but you’re right. It’s definitely there. So yes, my former producer — I’ve worked with a bunch of producers in my years at CBC, but one of them who’s also left CBC, we always used to say, “Someday we’re going to make a podcast together.” And now we are. And she’s a couple years older than me. I’m 58, she’s 60 or 61 — I can’t remember. And we both talked about how we don’t feel at all like what we thought this number was, when we were growing up or younger, really much at all, what we thought that age and life stage would be like. We are not that.

And most people I know aren’t like that. And we sort of realized, you know, the freedom 55 concept that so many people grew up with… which for any younger listeners was very widespread — there was, like, an ad campaign, it was this trope, this thing that when you hit 55, if you’ve invested with whatever this company is, you can pack it all in and just, I don’t know, play golf for the rest of your life or something. And it’s so ridiculous to all of us now for a lot of reasons. One is who can afford that, and B, who wants to do that. Anyway, you know, there’s “40 is the new 60,” kind of we’re all living so much longer. It’s like a new chapter has opened up that didn’t get considered before. And I feel like there’s no playbook for that. What are we supposed to be doing and thinking and all about when we’re sort of in that midlife (even beyond midlife) crunch. 50-plus, what does that mean?

So we’ve got conversations with high profile people who are in that age demographic, talking about what it feels like to be that age, and also people who’ve had a significant change in their life that happened that gave new perspective and new poignancy or new significance to that stage of their life. And also talking to some researchers who are sort of looking more from an academic point of view of what is happening in our minds and our bodies and ourselves as we get older in the modern age. Because again, this isn’t at all like what it was like to be 50-plus in any other time. So that’s the gist of that one. It’s called “Gill Deacon is Getting Old(ish)” — the ‘ish’ in brackets. So you’re far too young to be guests on my podcast, but call me in a few years and we’ll… no. Yeah, so that’s the idea there. Oh yeah, right. You asked about the connection with resilience, right?

Natalie
Well, I hear resilience in that.

Gill
You’re right. And as I say, I hadn’t drawn that line, but it is. The idea of, you know, how do you want to be when you’re this age? Some of what happens to us as we get older is absolutely out of our hands — the genetic lottery, obviously. But I think we all have people in our lives who are older and we think, “Oh, I want to be like that,” you know? And I do kind of pay attention to: what are the common elements there? And a lot of it does seem to come down to attitude. And so I think the spirit of resilience and not being defined by the number on your birth certificate or the attitude that society traditionally attaches to that age and what other people think you should be doing and so on — I think that that spirit of resilience probably runs through the kinds of interesting older lives that a lot of us aspire to. I guess that’s the connection there.