Cleo Wade: Ask Me Anything

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0:48Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you, and then let it go. For me, our soul is like, it's unbound. It's limitless. But we use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves. And that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the Goop Podcast, where we bring together visionaries, scientists, healers, artists, and seekers. I'm so grateful that I get to interview these extraordinary thought leaders and share their wisdom with you.

1:37And I love listening to the conversations that are led by my co-host and dear friend, Cleo Wade. Cleo is a beautiful poet and author. I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. Hi, this is Cleo Wade. For this special episode of the Goop Pod, I will not be joined by a guest. Instead, I'm doing a round of Ask Me Anything. I made a little note to my Instagram following and asked if anyone needed advice on something going on in their lives or was curious about something going on in mine.

2:25And here are some of my answers. If you would like to send some questions for next time, you can reach out to me through Instagram. I am at Cleo Wade, or you can email me. My email is Cleo at CleoWade.com. I really love hearing from all of you. And I really appreciate those of you who trust me with asking me really important questions about your life. I don't take it lightly. So, all right, we'll dive in and next week we'll be back to a regularly scheduled programming, but let's try this.

3:03Someone wrote, I just got promoted to VP of the company I worked for at the age of 28. I have no college degree and my path looks different from those around me, but I have walked bravely and boldly trusting. I'm about to embark on a move to Nashville in two weeks to begin this new chapter of building our company there. Any advice for me? I am moving away from my siblings. I am a triplet in my hometown. It is my first time to ever move away, but I am single and am in a wonderful position to embrace. However, a part of me is still anxious. Any words of wisdom? First of all, congratulations. How amazing.

3:45And I I know that if many of you are listeners of this pod, one of the things I love the most about the guests that come on, whether they're with me or with GP, is that it's all about people who created their own path, who didn't see a path towards their goal that felt right. So kind of went out into a wild field, took a machete and cut their way through creating their own path to get to where they wanted to go. And this is another example of that as someone who moved away at a very young age also to New York City. It was really scary, but I think that sometimes anxiety or this kind of anxious feeling you're talking about is a version of excitement and aliveness kind of running through our bodies.

4:32And it's really important to move towards that at time. Anxiety does not always mean danger. Anxiety is sometimes an excitement that flows through us and is telling us to move, to do something, to take one step forward or sideways. And so I think it would be really cool to use this anxious feeling you're having as energy to keep you in flow and moving. And it sounds like you're already in this amazing flow. And I'll also say Nashville is a very cool place. I've spent a lot of time there. One of my very close girlfriends lives there. I know GP goes there a lot and has an amazing Nashville guide on the goop site.

5:17So if you need an email me and I'll, I'll send it to you. And it's really, it is kind of scary to leave your siblings. That to me really stuck out, but especially as triplets, I have a lot of friends who are twins and it's, it's really hard. It's, it's kind of crazy because you're the only people who kind of shared a womb and that's a bond that is unlike any other, but there's FaceTime, there's phone calls. And I think sometimes we move away from those we love. It can, it can connect us more deeply with them because when we do spend time with them again, the time is kind of more focused on quality and you don't really take them for granted.

5:58And what I will say is when I was younger and I had a roommate for a long time and we moved, we stopped being roommates because we lived alone. Something we did that was really important is at some point we said, you know what, we don't know how to be friends without living together because we're used to just spending time together because the other was home when we got home. So we'd watch a show. We actually just didn't even know how to make plans or how to make quality time. And something that really helped was us kind of having that moment of pause and saying, this is how we're going to make plans now that we no longer live in the same place.

6:30This is how we're going to have a quality bond and relationship. And these are what we both feel like we need to make sure that we're kind of seen and our connection remains kind of strong and fostered. And that was really, really helpful. So I encourage you to maybe think about doing that with your siblings and good luck. Okay. Our next person. I turned 31 last June and have been working from home since December of 2022. I haven't been able to go out with friends and socialize. The only way for me to go out is if I have to do groceries or take the dogs to the vet or my aunt needs me to buy things for her.

7:11I went in July to watch Barbie alone and I felt okay at the time. I do miss socializing with friends, but I've been feeling restless since last year. I'm trying to push myself more and I have been working out and been listening to multiple audiobooks and reading more any advice you know it's really interesting because time in community is as healing as working out or listening to a great book that is rooted in an inspiration and so I do think that finding spaces of community are really important and not leaving the house only for an errand is really important. Even if you're not going to be with others, but I think going outside to get sunlight on your body, going outside to get fresh air, going outside to observe the world around you and go on a nice long walk and do things outside of the house for yourself and to try to be in communities with others is important rather than just saying, I went outside because I did da-da-da-da-da-da.

8:16I think it's really important to enjoy and find joy in being outside of the house. I also think that there are certain apps like Bumble for friends that are really cool. And maybe it'll be easier for you to start with something that takes place online and then can maybe move offline when it comes to meeting new people. It might be easier to get on the app and meet and start talking to someone and then make a plan around seeing a movie or something like the Barbie movie. It's really interesting because the next question here, someone said, what is your inspiration behind your new book and what can we expect from the Remember Love Tour?

8:51And we're doing this really cool thing on the Remember Love Tour, which is that I'm actually going to partner with Bumble for Friends to create what we're calling a friendship hour, which is that we're going to start every tour stop an hour early so that people can come and meet new friends because your story is very common. People are feeling a little estranged and a little alone and a little unsure of how to reenter kind of socializing or social norms after the pandemic. So I really don't want you to feel alone in this feeling. This is something I have heard consistently over the past two years, so much so that we're doing this project with Bumble completely for free.

9:35I just reached out to my friends there and said, we've got to figure out an easier way for people to connect and it'd be easier for them to connect in real life and then connect offline more easily than saying, here's my Instagram, or here's mine, or here's my number. Because I do think people get a little scared to just text someone they've just met. And so we're hoping that we can connect people through having profiles on this app. And so I think just like how we have to kind of open up our minds about how we date now and say, you know, I think 15 years ago, it felt weird or scary to date on an app.

10:09And now it's become very normal. I think we have to start looking at friendships that way. I think that especially the more people are working from home, living in more isolated communities, moving out of cities and into kind of smaller towns or living outside of the big cities, I think it's really important to be creative in how you meet people and do it in a way where you can pace it in a way that's comfortable for you. So this is not to plug Bumble for friends by any means, though I think it's amazing, but I really love this app because I think that it's an incredible way to meet people. And so think about it, but know that you're not alone in this and And start by going outside for yourself.

10:48I will say that. Yes, go meet people or try to go to something where you feel like whether it is somebody's book tour or whether it's a concert or somewhere you'd feel okay going alone and know that you could make community there. But first and foremost, go on a damn walk for you and just feel the sun on your face and on your back and listen to a song you love in your headphones and be outside and maybe kind of try to heal that relationship where we've been afraid of being outside for a couple of years and maybe work on healing that kind of fear first and saying, I'm going to just go when I'm going to be, and I'm going to live in the world around me, even if I don't talk to a soul that day, but I'm going to enjoy seeing the trees and the clouds and the sun and everything else.

11:37I think that's really important. All right. New question. This person says, I think I'm in love with someone younger than me. I don't know really. It might be an infatuation or maybe I'm just attracted to him. How can I tell if I am really in love? I think love is something that is an energy that we are always finding out more about. And so I don't think that we always have to look at love as I saw someone and my whole life changed forever. I think that even the people who feel this concept of love at first sight, often, if once you enter a relationship with someone, you might notice that people often say, I didn't know you could love this deeply or in this way, because really big love happens in the relationship.

12:26It doesn't quite happen in the watching of another person. And so I think, get to know this younger man, and actually start to figure out if there's room or willingness for both of you to invest in a connection where you can see if love kind of takes place and you'll see if it gets deeper and deeper or more and more meaningful or if you just think he's really hot and that could also just be that. At Goop, we believe the spaces we spend time in shape how we feel and how we connect. That's why we're drawn to Convene, a global hospitality brand reimagining work in meeting spaces centered around design and care.

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13:54Convene for the moments that move your business. Okay. Next question is, how do you confidently claim a profession that many people don't take seriously? I have one of those professions. I'm a poet in 2023. And so I do feel I have some experience on this. And by the way, 10 years ago, really no one had this profession. And I remember spending a lot of time in DC. I had a boyfriend who lived there. And I often tell the story about how everyone there was really uptight and mean to me every time I called myself a writer or a poet. And I think even my boyfriend at the time had embarrassment about it.

14:39I remember at one point he was introducing me to someone and he called me a professional poet. And I was like, I don't need to be called a professional. I'm a writer. I'm a poet. I, I'm an artist. I can, I do what I do. And I don't need anyone to clarify some type of worthiness in their own value system for me. But I think because I really worked privately on myself to be okay with who I was and my decision to do what I wanted to do, regardless of not seeing other people do it and know that other people wouldn't be able to understand it, but knowing that it's really not my business if somebody can't understand my decisions.

15:20but I really kind of had to be my own cheerleader and have my own pep talk in that way. And really believe in myself even more than my friends or people who believed in me. And so I think the kind of confidence in claiming it, I can't say that I feel confident every day or I felt confident every day then, but I knew I had to claim it because if I didn't claim it, anyone could take it from me. And I loved it and I wanted it so badly. I wasn't willing to let anyone take being a poet away from me. And so I think when you work on your love of self and you work on your love of the thing you want or what you feel like you are, this big part of who you are, you know that it's really do or die whether or not you claim it.

16:05And so I think you'll get to the point where you realize that you have to do that. The next question is how do you break up with a friend that you've loved and cared for, but it's draining you. I think friendship breakups are the most impactful, least talked about ruptures in relationships that there are. I think there are millions of people walking around with a shattered heart because of a friend or having a friendship that disappointed them or didn't work out or didn't honor their bond or love for each other. And I think we really do fall in love with our friends. I mean, it's kind of random and arbitrary that we think that this idea that we fall in love only happens in a romantic dynamic or in one where sex is involved.

16:52I think we kind of have deep infatuations with friends, and I think we have deep bonds, and I think it grows into love. And I think that the way that we are with friends is often very similar to how we are with romantic partners. And I think that because of that, they can also fall into these really toxic dynamics, just like a romantic relationship where you can find really kind of unhelpful codependence and friendships and kind of unhelpful boundaries or lack of boundaries and friendships. And so a lot of the times we think we're having a breakup with a friend when really we are having a giant gap of space or a parting of ways.

17:31Friends, you know, we kind of make them at certain points in times of our lives. And then And we, no matter who you are, how old you are, you have these giant growth spurts. And as you grow, you know, it's normal to feel that you completely grow in a different direction from someone that you're really, really close with. And unlike a lot of romantic relationships with friends, you don't always end up having a lot of the commitments that tie you to figuring out your growth together, right? You know, because you might live with your romantic partner, or you might have kids, or you might have bought something, a house together or have a pet together or whatever.

18:09So you have these kind of small or large incentives to kind of try to align your growth to maintain the relationship. And with friends, sometimes we have these things where we wake up and we feel totally different and there's not much linking us. I mean, it could be your best friend that doesn't live in the same city as you and there's not much linking you to being super connected with them. And so as someone who's gone through a fair amount of friendship breakups, I wrote about this a lot and remember love and something I really focused on was this idea of allowing relationships to shift and change or fall away and then perhaps come back or perhaps not.

18:48but leaving the love. I think that if you really loved someone, it's kind of a line within you that is crossed and whoever's crossed it is kind of there. And for real love, that is good and healthy love, however you define that. And don't try to force yourself to not love someone or not kind of cherish that the kind of memories you have with them and the relationship you have just because you maybe don't like them very much right now. Because what I will say that I've learned from friendship breakups is that your friends especially do tend to come back around in some way. I've had some things I would have called a friendship breakup if I would have had that language for it 10 or 15 years ago.

19:31And I've had the friends come back around and they are the friends that feel like family because they knew you during really critical points of your life. And I've had friendship breakups where you almost just needed that space so that you could re-meet. I have friends who we were friends in our early twenties and used to kind of go out all the time. And then, you know, kind of had a rupture in friendship and then re-met again as moms. And it was beautiful to watch our kids play together. And the dynamic is definitely different, but the love is still there. And so I do think that a lot of the times when we're upset with someone or we don't like them anymore.

20:11Part of how we torture ourselves is by trying to not love them or have no fondness for them. And that's a really conflicting thing because those things are just existing in you. And those are just the kind of contradictions we all live with. So let yourself not like them, let yourself still love them. Allow space when space makes its way between you and someone else, and then allow flow if flow does come back in and don't be ashamed of all the feelings that might accompany everything that happens when all of what I just said happens, you know? So when you have to allow the space to come in, there'll be grief and there'll be sadness.

20:50And there will be things that are really hard to deal with. And I think don't minimize that because it's a friend. I think you should give friendships, the same amount of energy, contemplation, love feelings as you would a family member or a romantic relationship. Because a lot of the times with friends. They're as close as, or closer than those types of relationships and have, and have been there for you in really significant ways. So I'm, as I'm looking at the questions, I see that four different people asked me about breaking up with a friend. So that's my advice on that. The next question is I am having a difficult time grieving my dad's death after friends and family aren't as present.

21:34You know, and remember, love, I wrote this page that says your social circles aren't always your healing circles. And one of the hardest things about grief is that your family is not always the place that knows how to hold the space for your grief, because other people go moving through grief, don't do it the same way as you can't handle it well at all. Grief is something that really kind of profoundly shifts and changes people. and their behaviors. And so I think with grief, the most important thing to find is a place that can hold your grief. I think that spaces that are specifically created support groups for grief of a parent.

22:17I know my friends who have gone through and survived cancer found really significant healing in spaces of other cancer survivors. And I don't think we should ever forget about the power of walking into a space that is set with an intention. And what's really cool about finding groups, whether that's through meetup or going on Bumble for friends or going on Instagram or however you can do a call out and saying, if anyone, you know, has gone through this and wants to start a group, I'd love to host this three times a week or looking up other groups in your area, people going through something similar, going into a space where the intention is, I need help with this thing and I want to help someone else through it.

23:01I mean, that's the principle, one of the principles of spaces like AA, and they're really powerful for people because you know what the space is for when you go in there as you're trying to heal from something. And so I think whether you create your own intentionalized space around this grief with people who you feel like can hear you, even if that means just calling three of your friends or two of your friends or one of your friends and saying, do you think we can have a dinner tonight where I can really just talk to you about how I'm feeling, how I'm moving through my grief and the pain that I'm kind of really troubled by with my family.

23:39And would you mind listening to me tonight? I think that's a really beautiful way to make your needs known. And most friends would love to be there for you, especially during a time like this in that way. I'm sending you lots of love. That's really hard. Someone says trouble with in-laws, any advice? I have a working theory recently, which is when you are blending families in any type of way, whether that's with children or with in-laws and adult parents, adults, cousins, whatever, I think it's really difficult to try to have a relationship with your partner's family that they don't have with them.

24:22So I think a lot of the time people get so focused on the kind of, whether it's the approval or what they want from that parent. So say that it's your husband's mother or father, you know, you think about how do I come in and how do I be the perfect kind of daughter-in-law to them that I'm not thinking about what's actually possible based on my husband's relationship with them. And so for me, something I've learned, especially as someone who's a recovering kind of people pleaser or perfectionist or all the things that kind of make you want to walk into a situation and say, I'll make this better, or I'll fix this dynamic, or I'll help with this.

25:02Or I kind of take a breath and take a step back and remind myself that, you know, I can't, you know, my, my partner's name is Simon. I can't have the relationship with Simon's mom that he doesn't have with her. I just can't, it's, it's, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be authentic. And I don't think it's helpful to our dynamic. And so I think that if they are close, you can kind of be as close as they are. If they are kind of estranged or have a weird way of communicating or have a, you know, have this tentious, that have this kind of tense relationship. I'm not saying you have to have a tense relationship, but I'm saying, don't try to have the smooth sailing one.

25:45I think kind of see where, where they're at and be like, okay, I can probably be as close with her as he is wherever that may be. And even if you think that their closeness is imperfect, part of the kind of self-restraint, I think, and self-preservation and, and kind of choice to have a really authentic dynamic is to say like, yeah, I think that they could maybe, how could I support them being closer? And then maybe we can all be closer, but don't try to jump over them with the closeness. I really have found that helpful with, with every type of family member, to be totally honest. I think that's helpful with stepkids, you know, root for them to be best friends with their children and you can perhaps then be their friend.

26:30But I think trying to jump over and is really just, I have found personally that is satisfying a desire to be liked, not a desire to have a relationship that really benefits the family as a whole. Okay. Someone said your favorite advice you received as a new parent. There's one thing I remember my friend, Sarah Sophie told me this right really close to when I had Memphis, she said that children can handle the truth. And so don't worry about trying to lie to them all the time. And obviously you want to be appropriate with what children can handle and you're not trying to traumatize them, but think about how to deliver the truth in a way that they can handle it rather than hiding and trying to figure out how to lie.

27:13And I think a lot about that type of honesty around my kids and though mine are very small, but I think about that a lot when I talk to my other friends who have teens and I think being honest and treating them like they can handle honesty is really critical to developing the resilience that they'll need. and the type of really clear kind of relationship you hope to have with your kids. My other really good advice, or I don't know if it's advice, but I thought about it at one point, but when I was first in my postpartum, one thing that really clicked for me after having Memphis or helped click something for me was this idea that your motherhood is only as strong as your personhood because somehow when I had that thought and I wrote it down on a sheet of paper and it really, really helped get me through the kind of hardest stretch of the postpartum depression I went through because it helped me focus on helping me out of this struggle in my personhood so that I could really be available in my motherhood and linking those two was critical for me.