an advice column, but make it a podcast

28:10And then we leave the room and he'll just tuck himself in and get all cozy. And he's so happy. You can see like he goes to bed with a little smile on his face. He's got his bunny. He's got his soccer ball. It's fucking so sweet. And they wake up every morning really happy. And I know when Carmela doesn't wake up, when she doesn't sleep well, because she wakes up fucking miserable and she's miserable at school all day. And if I'm paying for school and insurance is paying for an ABA therapist, and then I'm paying out of pocket for three or two or three therapies in the afternoon and she's miserable, it's sad.

28:40And financially it sucks, right? So sleep is important around here. What also is important to me is connecting with my husband. Again, I'm not going to end a day that we both worked all day with a fight. I love to cook. For For me, it puts a cap on the day. I don't force myself to do it. I love ordering in. No fucking problem. I love going out to dinner. No fucking problem. I'll tell you what our schedule is right now. The kids eat at five. They do not eat with us. We go out to dinner with them a lot. We have lots of meals with them. During the school night, Friday night, by the way, tonight's Friday, we're going to our friend's house at fucking six.

29:23Their bedtime's at seven. So one night this week, they're going to be up till 8.30, nine tonight. That's going to be wild. We don't do this often, but I don't care. Let them, they're going to sleep in in the morning. It's a Saturday, right? And then like they'll go to bed at a normal time Saturday night. They'll go to bed at a normal time Sunday, whatever. We don't freak out over stuff like that. I'm not going to adjust another family schedule. Their daughter goes to bed at nine. All good. So whatever. So the kids eat at five and then they have a bath. So that used to be me doing that. I asked my nanny to leave an hour later every day and she does dinner with them and 90 % of the time now she does bath time.

30:10Do I miss bath time? Yes. and so sometimes I go downstairs and do it with her or I'll tell her not to do it. Also, I love to shower at the end of the day. I shower multiple times today. I love to shower at the end of the day. The kids will also come in the shower with us at the end of the day, which is really cute, or just me and then they get in their pajamas and then they have 45 minutes to chill before they go to bed at 7 p.m. and we listen to music or we watch Classical Baby or we watch a movie or we read tons of books or we build blocks. Like we do tons of things in that 45 minutes. And Davide is not always home for this.

30:49If he is, great. If not, it's no big deal. So we wrap up their night and they go to bed at seven. Also during this time, I'm usually cooking something. So I will have them, Carmela, not so much. She like loves to just chill and be by herself at the end of the day. Carlo will cook with me. and you know obviously that's an important fun time I love to cook and then after the kids go to bed Dobby Day my mom and I sit down together 95 % of the time and have dinner together and I cook it but I love it and it's so funny because my mom obviously cooked our entire lives in this house and it took her a really long time to adjust to the fact that I was cooking every night and she offers it all the time.

31:38But I just like taking care of her, number one. Number two, she's messy. And so I don't want that big of a cleanup. So I cook. I cook the food that I love that is nourishing for my family. It's always like a starch or protein in a vegetable. And it makes me proud and it makes me feel really good. And I also do the grocery shopping and it just like feels like I have control of the kitchen in a way that I really like. And then we all sit down. There's no phones at the table and we don't start eating until all three of us are sitting down. And it's a really important time of the day. And if I pull out my phone, like David gets like, he's like, this is fucked up.

32:24Like we're all here together. And I love that. Who wants to connect with me. And I can't tell you enough, we have very deep conversations two out of three nights to the point where sometimes I'm like, can we just keep it light? Like I'm exhausted. And it's, but it's cute. Like in Davide, my mom will get into these like really deep, beautiful conversations about life or their past relationships. We literally talked the other night about how Dobby Days, like why he loves women, how he, his like vast experience being in a town where he was like free to like roam around, you know, a safe neighborhood, meeting so many different people in his life has made him such an adaptable, wonderful person that has a great deal of empathy for other people.

33:19and like how do we make sure that our kids have that? Like, and my mom, you know, like we're so aligned with our parenting with the kids. Like we really care about etiquette a lot. We care about, Julia Amory said this on her Instagram the other day and it's so true. Like, and it's hard when you're like exposed in the world. And even if I wasn't someone who's online, like just seeing it, it's like, you want your kids to be so kind and you teach that to them all day long. And it's so weird when you see people not be kind. Anyway, we share a lot of the same, mostly all the same values, right? And so included in those values are all of us sitting down together.

34:01We do take the kids out to dinner a lot. We love doing that. Sundays, we do not make plans with anybody. Sundays are for family. So if we want to have people over here, great. But usually Sundays are just for us. It gets hard because we both of us end up kind of working on Saturdays. But Saturday night is usually a date night for the two of us or Friday night. So I'd say like one night a week, we take the kids out to dinner. One night a week, we either go out on a date or we go out with another couple. Or sometimes we'll put the kids to bed and we'll just go have like a nightcap because sometimes it's been like such a long day and Davide's like, I'm not really ready to go to bed.

34:37I don't want to watch anything. And we'll just sit and talk like we're on a date. And that could also just be in the backyard. That just means us like putting our phones away and doing something in our home that feels like a ritual outside of just like getting into bed. So to answer your very simple question with a very long response, I would think deeply about letting go of an idea that you have for what the evening looks like. So where I adjusted is I cook dinner, the kids go to bed. I used to want us all to sit down and eat together. It's too hard with Davide's schedule. If Davide is going to be later than 8 PM, then the rule is I can eat like my mom and I can just eat without him and he can eat when he gets home because I'm not going to, I'm not going to be like hungry and texting him like, when are you coming home?

35:35When are you coming home? Because whatever he's doing is important. He's clearly trying to get home, right? So I just want to make sure at all times that we are alleviating tension. So this could mean like preparing something at a time that works for you and then like assembling it, right? Like at the time when your husband gets home, like I'm not bitching to him about that. If this is, listen, there are exceptions to this. If he's being disrespectful of your time, if he's, you know, saying I'm going to be home in five minutes and doesn't come home for an hour. That's a different scenario. But I think really clear communication, like not saying like, it's okay if you stay late, but then you're mad about it later.

36:16Like we don't do that. We only say what we mean. So, you know, there used to be a little bit of tension around dinner time where I felt like, yeah, I'm cooking. Like you should be home. And he's like, I'm fucking working. Like, how are you? And then I'd be like, well, I'm hungry. And like, I want to start my wind down know if my evening, like I want to take a bath. Like I don't want to, you know, whatever. And so, or get my emails done or something. And I don't want to bitch at him about stuff. Anything that we can alleviate bitching and tension between the two of us is like top tier important, super top here.

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44:12How do you stay so open to the world and people around you? That question makes me want to cry. You know, we've had people on this podcast that have been doctors, that have expressed scientifically the importance of community. I reference this book all the time. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the Italians. in, I think it's like the second or third chapter of the book. They were the outliers in the United States because everyone was all of a sudden getting swept with a variety of diseases, a lot of them being heart disease and cardiac disease. And this group of Italians that all immigrated together, the town started with an R, I can't remember, which is crazy because I've read this book so many times.

45:07They were void of all of the very common diseases that were like crippling our country at the time. And, you know, a bunch of doctors and researchers went there and studied them for at length for a good period of time. And they were doing things that most doctors were advising their patients not to do. They were eating copious amounts of red meat. They were ingesting carbs. They smoked. They were drinking every day. They were having caffeine every day. They were doing all these things that we are told, you know, and of course, we are told that because there is medical research for it. Of course, these things are going to make us sick and they're going to shorten our lifespan.

45:56and all of those things. And the only thing that they did that made them outliers from the rest of the people that they studied were that they were a community-based group, that they were in community on a daily basis with one another. There was a market and a cafe, and they all were friends with their neighbors and they all hung out after dinner and they all had coffee together in the morning and they all knew each other's names and they all would gather together and play games together and had traditions together, the entire community. And so they felt safe and they felt seen and they felt loved by one another.

46:43And so, you know, that's the driving force for human survival. You know, if you watch like Shawshank Redemption, it's like what makes somebody, it's so funny, I got to, what a privilege. I got to like study this my senior year of high school within the context of faith and like what makes people faithful. and there's a human desire to survive and there's a human desire to connect. And that probably also is, you know, evolutionarily in place to make sure that we procreate, right? But it works outside of that. We want to have friends and we want to have family and the loneliness epidemic that we're all seeing that's happening now is very real.

47:40And I want to focus so much on the fact that I live a life of extreme positivity and love. And I float through my days with so much joy and happiness. And I'm not a highly stressed person. And I don't future trip. And a lot of that comes from a lot of different things. I've been through a lot of things. I've seen my dad dead on the floor of this very room. And I've been told that my daughter's never going to talk or walk. And she's starting to, you know, it's like, but my faith keeps me going. Right. And so and being online started for me from a place of having a blog, because I felt very alone in New York.

48:27and I was scared. And unfortunately, I had a really predatory, fucked up piece of shit fucking boyfriend that I met when I was 18. And he was my first ever boyfriend. And he comes from a nice family. He's around. I fucking saw, he's around. He's made a nice career for himself and he's very handsome. And I hear of girls dating him and I hear girls trauma bonding over dating him. And he pried on me and used me and cheated on me and put me in very dangerous situations when I was 18 years old and brought dangerous people into my apartment and into my life. And he gave me drugs. and I don't know how something really bad didn't happen to me.

49:18But what happened to me was that it put me on like a wheel of self-hatred for like many years as like a young girl in New York City. And I just felt alone because he introduced me to a group of people that were like bad. And so I was really trying to like find my way in New York and like find nice people And, you know, being 18 in 2005 in New York City, you know, this is like pre way pre fucking Instagram or Facebook. Facebook was out, but it was only for people who were in college. And, you know, it was just a very different experience. And I was very lonely. And so I would write this blog. And I remember like walking down the street and somebody was like, oh, my God, I read your book.

50:05And I was like, well, what? This is so crazy. but I was I felt such a rush of community and positivity in a part in a moment of my life where I felt really discombobulated I didn't want to move back home that definitely felt like a big failure it felt like a regression I wanted to overcome my sadness it was like a year of depression and many years of like self-destructive behavior and you know workshopping that on a blog as a young woman in New York City felt really good. It felt really cathartic. And it felt like the community of people that stood around me and related to what I was saying and were like in community with me over shared feelings and experiences, what felt like the best feeling in the fucking world ever.

51:00And so obviously I've continued to have an online presence and maintain my life in this way. And now obviously it's become a huge part of, integral part of my business and my life. And so it's not something that I can turn off in this moment. And I know that when I leave my house and I go to Hot 8 Yoga or I go to Drop Off or we go to Houston's or we go to Found Oyster or we go to Queen Street, that there are people who go online and write about seeing me do these things. Like I'm a fucking celebrity. And it feels like a home invasion all the time. And some will say it's the price you pay for being online.

52:04I think that it's morally corrupt and devoid of morality, humanity, values. I just don't. So I don't want to ever focus on this type of topic because it's loser behavior, but it does create feelings in me at times where I want to close myself off to the world around me. Getting back to the question, how do you stay open to the world and people around you? And so I have this drive inside of me and it comes from my mother. It comes from being a human. And then it comes from my mom because anytime we go anywhere, like I'll, she'll like go to the restroom at a restaurant and be walking back to the table and And I'll like not see her for 30 minutes.

52:50And then she's like playing with some girl's hair at a table that she struck up a conversation with. And now she's like, this is Bethany. And her mom is da-da-da-da-da. And she has da-da-da-da-da. And I told, you know, it's like so cute. Like she's making best friends wherever she goes. My mom is very pure and very open to the world and like dying to connect. And it backfired for her one time poor thing where she thought somebody was giving her a compliment on her shoes at Trader Joe's and they stole her wallet. And so that's a prime example, right? Like she came home, she realized that someone she thought she was connecting with was a ploy for somebody else to take her wallet out of her car at Trader Joe's.

53:27And she cried. And she's like, you know, it takes two phone calls for me to cancel my cards. And they were flagged right away. And they went to fucking Aloe and bought like$700 worth of fucking workout shit. But she was so upset because she's like, why would they pretend to be my friend? And so I hope this for all of you, and I hope this for our children, and I hope this for everybody on this fucking planet that we don't get to the point where we feel like we have to shut ourselves out to the world because we're all fucking connected and are one thing. and we all just want to survive. And I bet you, if you would ask a bunch of fucking random people from all over the earth what their desires are in terms of the experience of being a human being on this earth, I'm sure there would be a lot more similarities than there would be differences.

54:28And so my goal in my day-to-day life is to focus on the things that make us similar, to focus on our shared goals, our shared values, instead of constantly pointing out the differences between all of us. Like I'll see somebody make a comment on something that I fundamentally disagree with and I'll immediately go, well, of course this person thinks this way. Like, look at how they grew up. Like if I grew up in that environment, in that town, in that state, with that type of family and that type of background and that type of like, and I'm not judging that group of people at all. It frees me of the judgment of them.

55:10I go, of course, like that's how they were raised. That's their values, right? Like that's all they know. And I do think America is way too fucking big. And like that fucking keeps us very separate because there are a lot of people that think a lot differently than us in places where we're supposed to all vote for the same thing. And that's very confusing. I say this all the time. Like Italy is the size of fucking California. So when we say like, why can't we get food like that? Why can't we? Italy has just like only like a few million more people than California. So of course they have different fucking systems and higher functioning systems.

55:48It's a fucking tiny ass fucking country. You could fit how many Italy's in Texas? What, three? Like what? Like it's so, and that's one state and we've, what, 50 states? Like it's like, so it gives me, I have a lot of grace for the judgments of other people. Things we do in Italy that blow people's minds that are very normal in Italy. Getting back to the question, I have an innate drive like the rest of us do to connect with one another. And there's much more positivity in the world than there is negativity. Something that I think is really important that we all need to remember is I saw this on TikTok, actually, and it just summed everything up so perfectly to me.

56:33And I did a deep dive in the comments, which I usually don't really do. But when you see a TikTok video that essentially is like sharing some sort of positivity, you can see that like that post always attracts a level of positivity. And, you know, the same type of like frequency that the video is putting out lies in the comments. And so this man was saying that he was working at a restaurant and he at the end of the day was filling up, you know, when you work at a restaurant and the ketchups are empty, you have to combine the ketchups into one. And he was really frustrated about it. And one of his employees looked at him and said, wow, you need a bigger world because he was so upset just over the ketchup.

57:08And it's so fascinating because to me, you see people getting really bent out of shape about, you know, anything, something somebody says on Instagram or reclining their seats on a plane, which has been a big topic of conversation on TikTok lately, and who is performing at this thing or this choice for this thing and you see people get so bent out of shape. And I think the perfect response is like, like you need a bigger world because what is going on in your life that you're so easily bent out of shape about something that is insignificant to you. And so I think feeling insecure and out of control or like a sort of like lack of agency in your own life is probably the reason why you're getting irritated about things completely out of control or things that are so small, they should be unbelievably insignificant to you.

58:08And remembering this becomes a really great way for yourself and for myself to like snap out of it. Like if my life is so mundane and so boring and I have nothing going on to the point where anything anybody else is doing online or in real life or cutting me off is setting me off that much, that means that I need a bigger world. This is a me problem. And getting upset about what somebody else is doing to you because you feel out of control in your own life is basically just kind of like a coping mechanism. One of the couple of like the comments that were amazing is somebody wrote, my grandma once asked me, is your life really easy enough for this to be a problem?

58:50which I use all the time on my mom. And, you know, I'll tell her like, oof, seems like you haven't gotten out a lot lately. My mom never gets bent out of shape about things, but, you know, it's just a good reminder. And then she'll remind me the same. One of the other comments that I really loved was somebody said that it felt like a version of this Reader's Digest story from like the 90s or something where a woman, it was called the Woman Test of Reality. and it says life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are all not the same lump and one should know the difference, which I thought was really beautiful.

59:30You know, you become obsessed with things because you're that bored. And so you should really look at your boredom. But again, that keeps me objective and aware because your brain will invent fake problems if you don't go out and find real ones, right? And so I just charge it to the game and it has nothing to do with my life. And you are never going to catch anybody yucking my yum in my life because it's beautiful. And it's beautiful because I'm in community. We have a wonderful family. We have wonderful friends. I love going online and talking to all of you. You listen to this podcast. you know 99.9 % of you to feel something and to feel like you can relate to something to feel like you're talking to a girlfriend because you want to connect with people it's so beautiful what a what a thing like that we get to experience this life together you know like strangers hold hands in tragedies I think about those things I think about who I want my kids to be and how positive we are around them and so how positive they are in character building and grit and like all these things that make a person dynamic and wonderful.

1:00:52And it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with negativity or hatred. And so those things just get put in like the sewer and they get swept off. And what's left is like a beautiful life where I get to meet somebody like I did yesterday at the farmer's market who hugs me and is like, I listened to your podcast on my postpartum walks. And I'm like, you do? Oh my God. I'm so lucky that you're in a moment where you feel like a big life change and that you trust me enough to lighten an hour of your life. And that's like worth everything. Right? Like, so there's nothing's going to break me to be closed off to this beautiful world that we get to live in, even when it's the worst, because everything is the best.

1:01:44Oh my God. Dami Day. Coming home singing? Hi, honey. Okay, you guys. So I'm going to do the next round of this with Amanda and we're going to do dating advice, which is going to be so funny and cute. And then catch me on my sub stack in my chat where we are going to, speaking of not being close after the world and the community, we are going to have a thriving, beautiful advice chat that hopefully becomes this beautiful little world that includes a bunch of women giving advice to each other, whether or not I am there, which is going to be just beautiful and fabulous. So I love all of you and thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.

1:02:36And that ladies and gentlemen concludes this week's episode of Everything is the Best. I hope you enjoyed it. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that stuff. Maybe leave a comment. Go ahead and follow me on Instagram at Pia Barancini and I hope you have a fabulous, fabulous rest of your day. Love you. Ciao. Thank you.