When Life Falls Apart: Lake Bell on Parenting, Divorce, and Choosing Peace

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0:35Motherhood is humbling, to say the least. One minute you think you've got it together, the next your whole world is turned upside down by something you never saw coming. Today, we're talking about those moments, the moments that crack us open, that force us to rewrite the story we thought we were living and somehow give us a new kind of strength. My guest today knows this intimately. She's lived it. She's taken those hardest chapters of motherhood and turned them into a gift for families everywhere. It's Lake Bell, my favorite actress, and today she's here to share her story with us. Welcome to After Bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins.

1:27The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen. And Dina, child behavior experts, moms, and co-founders of Big Little Feelings. And we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy. Nope, we're here to tell the truth. The unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids and re-raise ourselves in the process. Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks, it's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be. This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud.

2:03And we're so glad that you're here. Lake Bell is here. She is one of my favorites. I'm going to go ahead and say just people, even though I don't know her personally. But I feel like I know her personally because I just love her work. Lake Bell is an actor, a writer, director and voice artist. You've seen her in No Strings Attached. Harley Quinn, Children's Hospital. You've heard her voice in countless animated films. But what I love most about her is she doesn't just play characters. She tells stories boldly through every medium she touches. And her newest story is different. It's deeply personal.

2:45She's just released a children's book called All About Brains, inspired by her daughter Nova's journey with epilepsy and her own experiences growing up with dyslexia. It's all about celebrating neurodiversity, about helping kids see their differences, not as something to hide, but as their unique superpower. Lake is also a mom of two, so we can all relate. I believe it's 10 and 7. Is that right? 10 and 7? 8 and almost 11. Yeah. Oh, okay. We're getting even further up there. And she has also navigated the path of divorce, now co-parenting. She's done the hard work of co-parenting with grace and therapy and commitment.

3:26She's lived the messy, the real side of motherhood that we all know, but rarely get to see reflected back in the public. I cannot wait to get into this conversation. Like, Belle, oh my God, thank you for joining the show. Listen, thanks for doing what you guys do, which is just create a place to, you know, be momming in community, even if it's remote and virtual. I think that, you know, whilst I hate social media and technology, it does allow for this like leveling and kind of camaraderie among parents in the hardest moments, you know and in extension I mean lots of things but yeah but yeah so I think that what you guys are doing is very cool and I think you know parenting in general is like hard and then on top of it with all the technical stuff and sure sprinkle a little divorce on there you know it's it's gonna it's gonna get exciting little neurodiversity well no diversity yeah and you're on the right show because I'm neurodiverse.

4:36So I have ADHD. My partner who's on maternity leave, she just had a baby, but she just was recently diagnosed with autism at a late age. So you are in the right place. And I think a lot of our community is sort of discovering either their own neurodiversity or their child's neurodiversity. I think we're all sort of in this new era where kids, yes, are being diagnosed more. And that's not necessarily because there's more of them. It's because a lot of us got diagnosed later on in life. So luckily, I think for our kids, they're getting diagnosed early. And that's what I kind of wanted to touch on with you is before we go into your daughter's story and the book is your own personal story, growing up different, quote unquote, with a different brain?

5:26I think it would be correct and a correct and fair assessment to say that we just weren't aware before and that it wasn't as part of the lexicon in parenting and schooling to talk about neurodiversity. You know, usually, you know, I my brother and I both in our household heard the words dyslexia and ADHD. Like I think actually ADD was what in the 80s or 90s, whatever, is what people were using. But basically, I was at a very rigorous all-girls school, Chapin in New York City, and very academic and prides itself on, you know, great results and college prep and all that stuff. But I definitely was put into like this slow reading class, you know, like something's amiss with Lake, you know, and it turned out, yeah, I just had dyslexia.

6:28And it was, you know, it was just I felt other I felt like you're dumb more than the other kids, you know, and I was like, OK, so I have this tariff that I'm going to have to pay out for the rest of my life or something, you know. and the truth is it's just an adjustment and and I my mom was always really I will just give credit to my mom and it's like I remember this that my mom even then was like okay so she has dyslexia they were I remember there was one thing they said you'll never they were an amazing they are truly an amazing school and I still love them my sisters went and everything but there was just at that time, I think globally, the way the language was and how it was regarded to have some kind of learning difference was like, that's going to really, that's going to be problematic for your success as a person, you know, whatever that means.

7:28And my brother who had ADD, ADHD, he also was kind of put in this category of, you know, you know, he's going to have troubles. And I think that both of us kind of managed it. And my mom was in support of that management. And really, that's just adjustment in learning style, right? Like, okay, so the shape of your academic career is going to have just a little architectural difference because we just have to kind of adjust. And that means maybe there's a special tutor. And obviously I have the great privilege to have the means to get a tutor, right? And in public school systems now, my kids are at public school, IEPs allow for that kind of different architectural shape in their academic career.

8:26And I'm very grateful for that, you know, and I think that, you know, then even as a parent, how do you support your kid by using language that doesn't make them feel like, wow, this is going to be a real tax that you're going to have to pay out for the rest of your life. I think, you know, the more we're aware, and especially the reason why I wrote this book is so that the language starts really early. And that it not just like what it is, but like how you welcome it into your family, you know, and how you can look at it as like, oh, well, you're going to be a poet. You know, you're a great artist.

9:05The way you think is actually what makes the world more robust, more diverse, more full of culture and different shapes. Like this is, I mean, especially as an artist, I feel like all the great, you know, great thinkers have something unique in the way that they think, you know, to make them great. And that's what I loved most about reading your book as someone who was in the same situation you were, you know, felt a lot of shame, a lot of what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me. And now parenting and being able to read my child, this book, who has a different brain. Your daughter has epilepsy and I want to talk about, you know, finding that out and what that journey was like for you.

9:54but being able to read this book to my daughter who is neurodivergent was really special to watch because from can you imagine and it sounds like your mom was kind of there with you so that's awesome but I can't imagine being at an early age and having the messaging not be this is what your deficit is this is what you won't do in life this is what you are going to be held back with And instead, the focus is this is what makes you so unique. This is what makes you so good at X or Y or Z. And when my daughter was diagnosed, her first word was, oh, that makes sense. That's why I'm so good at this.

10:36Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and this book was really just affirming and uplifting in the neurodivergent experience. I just absolutely loved it. I recommend it to anyone who has a neurodivergent kid or not, because it's also really helpful for your non-neurodivergent siblings friends to be learning about these different brains to be able to accept them. Yeah. And also, I think why I like it for more sort of brains that do not have a neurodivergence, what I like about it, certainly for children who are just getting to that place where they're kind of questioning like, okay, so I'm the way I am in my body, and here's my identity, and here's my friend, and their identity.

11:24It's helping kind of having these like empathetic kind of, you know, cues and whatnot. Because I think when I read this book to when I read it all about brains to a classroom, it's really exciting to see how many, you know, it takes forever when I read it. And I allow it. I tell them, like, it's going to be a long haul. OK, I'm going to really take up some time here because there's, you know, raising hands. that's me I feel that you know and even and some kids raise their hand oh I have you know ADHD too and of course those are the kids that raise their hands the most yeah my daughter also has ADHD so it's like you know and and I'm like okay so let's hear from some other people and someone might raise their hands I have autism I really relate to that and you go okay well thank you so much can you tell me a little bit about you know do you relate to Elliot you know and tell me it basically I find that kids that are, have more typical brains find themselves relating so deeply to someone who might have some other kind of condition that feels like very over there, but they're like, oh, I absolutely relate to that.

12:42And then it just kind of levels the playing field a little bit. And it just feels like a sense of little community building in the room, you know? I had the exact same experience because I'm reading it with, with both of my kids. And how old are your kids? My kids are eight and six. And they also have a two year old who's just, you know, a little ray of sunshine right now. And so I'm reading the book and the undiagnosed one, the neurotypical one, if you will, she keeps saying, oh, I feel like that sometimes or I feel like that sometimes. And I actually at first I was like, no, honey, like we need this is a book about autism.

13:17We need, you know, this is about your sister. But then I realized exactly what you're talking about, where it's actually bridging the divide together. So it's like, hey, you know how your sister or this friend that you have or that friend that you have that has autism or ADHD, you know how when they're in really loud spaces and it's really overwhelming that, you know, they just explode. and you're telling me you also feel really overwhelmed in big spaces. That's something you have in common. That's something you guys can talk about or share about, or it's not so othering to see this sort of different experience that makes this kid very different or quote unquote weird, or they're wearing noise headphones.

13:57It's sort of saying, oh, they're doing that because I also feel this way. And I understand that it's building that empathy and understanding. Yeah, I feel like, you know, growing up, there were so many kids, like I can just think about the classroom when I was a kid and looking from side to side and be like, okay, so that person clearly had some neurodiversity that was undiagnosed, you know, it's just, I think we are afraid of and unnerved by things we don't understand. And so this is just like a bridge to understanding, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So let's go back. Talk to me about when you discovered Nova had epilepsy.

14:39What was that first sort of moment and then the journey after that? Nova had febrile seizures, fever seizures, which a lot of parents will know what that is, which is just the rapid onset of a fever. They fall into a seizure. She started having that at about one and a half years old. And they were really dramatic, really scary, you know, grand mal seizures, falling over unconscious, lasting up to anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute. And, you know, that feels like an eternity. So once that happened, we started, you know, we knew that we were in a new chapter. and she, her neurologist was like, this is very common actually.

15:31And that she will grow out of it by the time she's six, febrile seizures kind of dissipate and they go away. And then at five years old, she had her first grand mal seizure without a fever. And we went from, you know, 30 % chance of having epilepsy to 100 % you have epilepsy, you know. And so from that point on, and as we entered the pandemic, you know, Nova started her sort of epilepsy journey. She has a genetic mutation. I think genetic testing was really helpful for us. And I recommend it if you're dealing with certainly epilepsy, because then it's just helpful to understand. And I mean, the brain is so full of mystery.

16:16And I think what I've learned the most about, you know, from talking to neurologists at this point is that, you know, no matter how much you study the brain and think, you know, you know, the roadmap that leads from A to B, it is just always, it is always a surprise. There's always something to debunk exactly what you just discovered. So whilst, you know, the heart is like, okay, I see the, I see the map, you know, we got an A, we got a B, we got a C, this has got to flow from here to B, you know, and, and the brain is just like, I am from Mars. I will constantly be, I will be this mysterious woman that will continue to enthrall you.

17:03are like, no, I have this brain figured out. I know it. And it's going to go away in three months, you know, and then there's like, sorry, that's not, it's the opposite. It's just a magic trick under at all times. So I think that with Nova genetic testing was great because it was like, okay, there is a genetic mutation. That's some hard evidence. So now we know what boat we're on. You know, the ocean, who knows what it'll deliver us, but we know what boat we're on. So Nova ended up being a person who has 11 to 16 seizures a day, not all grand mal, but some are, you start to learn that seizures come in all different shapes and forms.

17:51And her grab bag is grand mal seizures compounded with myoclonic seizures, which are more like stutter seizures. And those can be tiny ones that are just like, or they could be like, you know, during whilst you're talking. So we would be logging all of these seizures through the pandemic and trying to figure out medications. Medications is like the bane of your existence, I think with any kind of neuro divergence, but certainly seizures and epilepsy, it does add this like weight of how do we get them to stop? You know, if anything else, it's like the seizure itself isn't the thing that hurts her, but the ambiguity of when it's coming and the anxiety that that incurs is just like kind of brain numbing you know for a kid and for the parents and so that part of it does give you a sense of urgency and trying to figure out what medication works but then medications big girl medications are scary you know and so you have to go through this real I mean you know with any kind of nerd of it you know it's like medications are nobody is like hey i want to put my kid on medication nobody wants to put their kid on medication you know and the side effects and the you're trying to balance you know is this better or worse as they grow up and as they develop and but you know with epilepsy you're just kind of like i you know we are i mean i'm two home two-time home birther okay i don't I'm like I don't want to put anybody on anything you know but with the epilepsy and you see your kid fall over and go unconscious you are listening you're like what and and yeah I I mean the CHLA Children's Hospital Los Angeles really has done such an incredible service to me and my family and my children both because my son Ozzie was hypoxic at birth.

20:02And so I've had to talk to their neurology department a lot, you know, through the years. But yeah, so Nova, you know, I will happily say that at this juncture, she is seizure free. Seizure free for three years. Oh my gosh, congrats. I didn't know that. That's amazing. yes so that's kind of special for all of us and that was with finding the right medication and everybody's different because all brains are different but her brain liked this certain medication in tepla that we then titrated off with placebo so she didn't know and then eventually because she was seizure free with the fin tepla and then we we were like you're not on medication anymore.

20:50And we took her to Boba time to celebrate, obviously. And we got Boba and celebrated that she doesn't have seizures right now because we never say ever again. That's not what you say. Of course. The genetic footprint there. But, you know, it's really interesting. And what Nova has been left with, and I know that a lot of epileptic, pediatric epileptic patients end up with other party favors of neurodiversity like ADHD, which she has dyslexia, which I have, and she has, it's probably for me and an anxiety disorder, which I'm like, that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. If you were going to get zapped, uh, 11 to 16 times a day today, and you don't know when you'd be anticipating.

21:42Yeah. Well, can I ask about your mental health going through all of yeah you're laughing going through all of that your first time mom she's one having a seizure so it was already stressful for all of us as a as as a species of we were all in pandemic together so that in itself was such an unknown but then yeah having nova her seizures start to kind of unfurl in a way that felt uncontrollable and knowing that in the makeup it wasn't like oh you know did I have a glass of wine while she was in utero and now I you know it was like this she had her little fabric and the tapestry of who she is has epilepsy and so now you need to deal with it so I think Scott my ex-husband and I have worked so hard and we've been in such trenches together and he is such a great teammate in that he has his brain knows how to kind of like his superpowers all like in numbers and precision and formula and I you know I role in, you know, the maternal loving, you know, warmth and kind of worry and all this stuff.

23:11And I have an anxiety disorder too, and I medicate for that. But yeah, so I felt like we really aligned in that. And I give great credit to us as a team, because you can't kind of

23:29decode behemoth life altering things in a relationship without that so look I I think that our even in divorce we are we are aligned with our children and their needs and we work hard at that but yeah my mental health was straining during that time but particularly after when Ozzy was born and hypoxic, that event where, you know, I'm trying to think, didn't know. Yeah. Like Nova had already had been a child with febrile seizures at that point. So I had a child that had febrile seizures. And then I gave birth to a little boy who, you know, came out not breathing and. And that was at home. yeah and so the traumatic you know i he was in NICU for 11 days children's hospital la saved his life 100 so you gave birth at home my first birth at home was beautiful and you know there also was a cord wrapped around the neck but within you know within seconds we were were the baby was fine and we're good and that happens you know with Ozzy he was so big I do feel I should have been told that I could not be home to be honest and I do fault my caregiving staff team because I think you know I'm just following their lead you know at that point so anyway I was home and he came out and the worst yeah the worst nightmare of of him not being with us and not being able to bring him back and he was hypoxic fancy word for no oxygen for five minutes yeah wow and the paramedics came and he was getting he was getting oxygen from my blood because he was still attached to me with the umbilical cord but then you know he was taken away and scott went with him and they gave him oxygen in the ambulance.

25:41And then he did start to breathe then. And, but then he was intubated and put in an induced coma. And that's when you knew you needed medication or how, how did that, how did that journey? Then, you know, you, they're like, birth the placenta. You're like, I'm crashing cortisol. So I don't know how I'm going to get that. So they were like Pitocin. I was at home still. They were sewing it up. And, you know, I was like, got to get to the hospital, then got to the hospital. And I just remember being like, they were like, so eventually we're going to need like you to get milk. And I'm your body, of course, is like, I mean, the ladies out there is like, you know, you know, you've got no your cortisol.

26:32You don't have any oxytocin because you don't have the baby on you. And you're also like, is he going to live or talk or walk? Yeah. Yes. Is it my fault? You know? So, you know, he, you know, they gave him an MRI. I mean, it was crazy. He was such a big fat baby too. He was 11 pounds. And of course it was a big hit in the NICU because, oh boy, was he just juicy. He had like croissants for arms and legs and every, you know, all the nurses were just like, even in his, in being in a coma, they just were like, I mean, would you look at this yummy dumpling here? You know? And I was like, I know. And I wasn't allowed to hold him.

27:19And, you know, the happy part of the story is that, you know, he did everything early as if to show me that he's okay. So this isn't your fault. This is a random happening. I'm fine, mom. Yeah, I looked at him in the eyes when he finally woke up and I was like, I know you just got here. I have to ask you for just a really big thing. Can you please like just pull a miracle out of the universe? Could you, I know you literally just got here and it's a big ask you know but you're gonna have to do this I remember him saying like I'm okay I'm just I'm totally okay like you know and I was like okay I heard that but also like because they're saying there's a lot of things you know yeah it was really spiritual and and you know I think of him as my magic man he's very buddha because you know I he knows his his mythology and his his part of his sort of like superhero story is that you know he died before he lived So he's very, he's very chill.

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32:10Start Ritual or add Essential Prenatal to your subscription today. That's Ritual.com slash feelings for 25 % off. Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. It was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. A lot of women, again, struggle with postpartum anxiety. I knew my children were going to die, but there was no reason. This was just my postpartum anxiety.

33:00It was just hormones. And I knew those two babies. I knew it. So to have your baby be, you know, close to death, die, come back. Did that recur for you over the next year or two? Was it something? I could not shake the image of that. I bet. And I went to a lot of therapy. I just couldn't. the chaos and the nightmare of that moment. I didn't want to associate with this little person that I'm now going to usher into life and to, you know, support while he gets, you know, I, I, it was just untenable. The nightmares, the, the, I couldn't get rid of it in fact I couldn't my body because he was so big I had this like this reminder of it's so obvious you're supposed to be in a hospital you know like it was like my body had this like evidence I actually had surgery because I was like I'm losing my mind yeah I every time I look at that I go what choice did you make you know yeah and um it was so rough so I am very I took a very low dose of Zoloft right which was like extraordinary I was like wow okay hi I'm back because I remember being like I don't I I didn't know how to I kept asking I don't know how to be.

34:39You know, I remember like I couldn't look, I could only look at the sky because the sky was like pretty, that was really constant. You know, it's like there's cloud, there's maybe a cloud or I don't know, it's blue. It's, you know, there's some basic things up there, maybe like the treetops, like that felt all just like anything lower than that. I was like, oh my god the stories of other people trying to rest oh you know timmy get into your car seat i'm like i don't know if i'm gonna have if i will have that argument with us what a privilege how lucky you are you know like you know i i just threw too many stories too many like my brain was like nope so i think that you know having that kind of and that's just being honest i just was like i can't I can't do it and yes crashing with all kinds of postpartum madness you know and then let's be honest let's come back to Nova Nova got it the worst yeah her little sensitive anxiety brain epileptic you know epileptic in the wings at that point was like you as parents like abandoned me in that moment and because we're all like is Ozzy gonna live right so we everything was like there was no really awesome kind of like the baby gave you this gift and like you know all the good stuff and I saw you did this video about being like you know your son you know or like your little brother's sleeping so you know like all that stuff you know not to cause rivalry like their rivalry is so intense because we just as a family were like triage yeah you know war zone you're just trying to stop the bleeding in one area or the other yeah i i get it she's just like what the f like this guy comes in and then you know my parents are in i'm invisible to them You know, that's basically she's really articulate, like her her vocabulary and like it's like ace.