Rethinking What It Means to Be Good (with author Maggie Smith)

0:02Don'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 will 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.

0:51And 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. Today, I'm chatting with author and poet Maggie Smith. You may be familiar with Maggie from her memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, which was originally published last year. It is out now in a new paperback edition, so if you haven't picked it up, I highly recommend that you do so and that you share it with others.

1:36It is a book about her divorce and a meditation on grief and being a human and how we can hold contradictions and complicated feelings at the same time while also giving language to our painful experiences. Maggie and I sat down on the pod and talked about what she has learned and reflected on in the years since her book came out. And I am so happy to be able to share some of her wisdom with you. So let's begin.

2:07I saw you say something about your paperback being cozy, I think you said, and it actually does feel really cozy. I like the like soft pliable, like take anywarness of, of a paperback. It's so nice. And I think paperbacks feel a little more inviting to kind of write in and annotate yourself also. And so much breadth on your pages that I think for so many people, especially if they're going through it and you're kind of their comrade in their own kind of grief or parting of ways from loved ones. There's really so much space to make it your own, which is so nice. Oh, I love that. I always read with a pen.

2:48And it's hard for me to lend books once I've read them, because sometimes I'll even start drafting something of my own. If I get an idea, you know, in the margins, I'm like, well, I can't lend that out now because someone's going to see my messy initial notes for something I might write someday. This is me now. Yeah, yeah. They don't need to see every hell yes in the margins with exclamation points. It's fine. We recently had Anne Lamott on the pod and I love her so much. And so much of her, did you read her newest book yet? I haven't. It's on my summer. It's in my summer stack. So it's a really sweet book.

3:29And so much of it has to do with this idea that when people really know us, that's why we're kind of afraid to be in these relationships because once they really know the real us, the parts of ourselves that we have yet to find our own okayness with, that we will, surely they'll find out we're unlovable because we have that kind of under pinned feeling. And something I really loved about your book was that what you make really clear without saying is that you cannot authentically connect with somebody without being honest. And you had this kind of fearlessness. And I don't know if a heartbreak makes one more fearless because you're kind of already in pieces.

4:16But there was so little afraidness on each page of, will this sound lovable? Can I be my entire self? And I love that so much because what I find that most people reading a book, especially one that is going to relate to them so thoroughly and what they may be going through is that they really need somebody who feels like a friend and that is wholly themselves and completely honest with them without being afraid of what it's going to sound like, be like. And you did not wrap yourself in a bow once on a single page of this book. And I really admired that. Do you feel that this broken heart left you without fear to kind of get that way on the page?

5:06I don't know. I mean, in some ways, the best thing about the worst thing happening is that the worst thing happened. Right. So so it's like, well, there's no sense of dread anymore. You're not sort of waiting for that thing to maybe happen or trying to stave it off. And so maybe it is a kind of invitation to lean in because in some in some way, what do you have to lose? but I guess I would also say I didn't feel fearless as I was writing it at all. And so it actually makes me feel a little braver to know that I maybe came across braver than I was feeling at the time. I mean, I love that you said I didn't put a bow on it or on myself because I I really set out to write a book that was as true as I could make it, only being one person with one perspective, right?

6:08So you're never going to have the whole truth as one person. And I really didn't want to have to be the hero or the good guy of the story. I mean, not just because it's not true. That's just not accurate to how life is, but also because it's not interesting as art. Like I don't actually, not only do I not want to write a book where I am like the hero of the story and everything's great and clearly I have no flaws. I don't want to read a book like that. Like, that's not interesting to me. I want to see someone like me who is messy and flawed and deeply human and scared, but who does things anyway.

6:52And I want to know how they got through the worst case scenario, because if they got through the worst case scenario as a messy, fallible human being, then maybe I've got half a shot at doing it myself, right? Like forget the idealized version. That doesn't help me. You know, you open the book by saying, this is not a tell all, it's a tell mine. For me as a reader, I felt that that was almost like your North star on every page, you know? So was that idea conceptualized before you wrote this or after you wrote this, you know, were you able to kind of go through and then realize, oh, this is a tell mine, not a tell all?

7:33Or did you kind of have that and then say, as long as this page is a tell mine, it belongs in this book? Yeah, yeah. It was really the sort of compass for the entire project. I don't think I could have written this book if I hadn't at least conceptualized, forget written. But if I hadn't thought my way through those first couple of pages where I talk about that, I don't think I could have written the book. I really don't. I think I knew really early on that I was only going to be telling really a fraction of the story because it's only my perspective. And I don't think I could have given myself permission to write the book if I hadn't gotten really clear about that early on.

8:21I remember telling my agent and she said, she asked, she said, why do you feel the need to say in the first sentence what the book isn't instead of telling people what it is? And I said, you know, as a vegetarian, I really appreciate particularly restaurants in Europe who, when you, you go up to the restaurant and they have it posted outside the menu, right? And so you walk, you don't have to have the awkward moment where you sit down at a restaurant and you have your water and the napkins in your lap and then you realize there's nothing on the menu you can eat. And so I really wanted the reader to know what was not on the menu in the first paragraph, because if you want a salacious book that's going to tell you a bunch of things, which, you know, no fault in asking, no fault in being curious, but this is not that book and it was just tonally important for me to be really transparent about that from the from the jump 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 convene's sophisticated purpose-built locations are designed to inspire connection, whether it's a board meeting for 10, a team offsite, or a workplace membership that gives you and your team a home base.

9:47With hospitality at its core, every detail is taken care of, so your in-person time feels seamless, elevated, and intentional. If you're looking for a new workspace or planning your next offsite or meeting, schedule a tour today at convene.com. And for our Goop listeners, mention Goop to receive up to$500 off your next meeting or event reservation rental fee. This promotion is valid for all new clients on select spaces booked and actualized prior to December 30th, 2025 and subject to availability. Convene for the moments that move your business. Now that you've had about a year of reflection and not just reflection, but really community-centered feedback, I imagine, on this book, because what I found and love so much about having a, and I'm assuming your readership's probably mostly women.

10:43What I really love about that in my own work is that people tend to turn books that impact them into talking circles in a very kind of, you know, ancestral way that women have a do. And so having gotten the kind of feedback and felt in these different communities, What are you hearing or feeling that women related to so much in this book? Yeah, when right before the book came out, actually, an excerpt ran in the cut. And I heard from people so much about that particular excerpt, and it had to do with work-life balance, really, and sort of whose work matters in the home. And so I hear a lot from people about those kinds of issues, about how do you sort of carve out time?

11:38How are you your whole self in your marriage, particularly, I'm hearing from women about this a lot, particularly as parents. How do we balance the sort of caregiving and the time and effort that that takes with sort of professional life. I'm hearing that. I'm hearing from people who have been divorced or in it now. I hear from people who were like, I wish I'd had this book when I was in it, but I'm glad to sort of be kind of healing some older scar tissue with it now. I think what amazes me so much about the feedback I get from this book is how many emails and letters and DMs I get that start with, and maybe you've had this too, that start with, I've never reached out to an author like this before.

12:27And that is such a privilege, frankly, to feel like something you've written or articulated or sort of like offered of your own wreckage might inspire someone to kind of come out of their shell in a way that they have not been inspired to do before. That's been really, really meaningful to me. I feel like that's also a testament to how yourself you are on the page, because I don't feel that work that impresses people creates the inclination to reach out, but work that really feels so familiar and generous is what makes people feel like they can reach out. And so I think that when you can make a book an offering, which means that your hand's out the whole time, I think people feel more comfortable maybe reaching out to that hand.

13:22And I think your book does that in so many ways, even in just how it's written. It's really interesting because it's an amazing way in which art can support someone through what is a spiritual and mental health crisis in a way. Because I think when you're going through a divorce, I always think about that scene in When Harry Met Sally when she's going into the self-help aisle. And it's like, how did this? When did this? And, you know, so many books that help people the most are actually ones in which an artist or a poet is painting the kind of feelings space without clinically telling you what to do.

13:57And while those clinical books are so important and so valuable in moments of crises and deep despair, it's also, I always encourage people to find that kind of poetic prose or lyrical prose to hold their hand as well, because you need the how to get the love you want book. And you also need the Mary Oliver poem. And, and because that is, as you really talk about in your book, you know, this kind of the more abstract it leads us out of just these narratives of plot, you know, the villain, the hero, the roles in which that, you know, traditional kind of psych books land us in actually more often than not.

14:38Yeah. I mean, in a way, I think all literature is self-help. Even if, you know, it's not offering you advice, it's with you in as a sort of companion, right or maybe they're permission giving or maybe they're just it's something that you can enter and you feel like the that speaker or narrator or poetic voice is kind of standing shoulder to shoulder with you and and is with you through the thing I mean I think the thing about poetry and I write everything as a poet probably even emails so I don't know how to like remove that part of me regardless of what genre I'm actually writing and publishing in.

15:16But I think the thing about poetry is it's not really about offering solutions to problems. It's just about articulating the problem. It's not really about having all the answers to all the questions. It's about asking and asking and asking. And sometimes you will come to an answer just in the way that you you know, sort of approach from different angles, the same problem. Yeah, I certainly don't have a lot of relationship advice in this book. But I think what people will find is commiseration, you know, and, and that, that feeling of sort of not being so alone in the human experience, which is I think what we want books for period is to read about somebody else's experience and feel like, oh yeah, there it is.

16:11Like it's, I don't need someone to fix it for me. I just want to feel seen and heard and understood. It's like the difference of that friend you call for advice and the one who's just going to say, tell me more or listen to you. And the person who's going to kind of jump in to try to fix your problem. I have a friend who, if she's calling you about something, she'll say, she'll tell you whether you need a listener or, or she wants like a thought partner. So she'll be like, I want to tell you about this thing going on, but I really just need to kind of hear myself say it and have it held. I'm not ready to kind of chip away at it.

16:45And it's really helpful as her friend to have that. Yeah. That helps you know how to show up best for them. I mean, I think that's why books are so beautiful because we get to sort of enter them, spend some time with them. And when we need to, you know, put them down, We get to put them down. They're like the friends that don't give us unsolicited advice. So will you tell us a little bit about how you arrived at this book and how you're, and I also love that you kind of opened this book talking about reading Heartburn. It's one of my favorite books, but how you kind of, how the end of your marriage gave way to this in a way, wouldn't you say?

17:34Yeah. I mean, I was writing poems about the end of my marriage. So I was starting to kind of dip my toe in and do it in a way that felt comfortable for me. I love having a poetic speaker. I love being able to get in and get right out, use metaphor. I don't have to sort of expose too much of my actual self on the page in a poem if I don't want to. and it wasn't cutting it, frankly. Like I just had bigger stories. I needed more space. I felt like the more I tried to write this as poems, I felt like I was in an extreme tiny house and I was bumping my head and my elbows and I couldn't stand up straight.

18:16And so I realized, okay, this is going to be a longer form project that's really about self-excavation and learning what comes next and finding myself in the pieces of all of this and taking responsibility for my life and finding a psychologically true form and structure for this story that does what I need it to do, which is not just tell the story, but put the reader kind of into the emotional headspace of rumination, of grief, of reliving the same ideas over and over again, of not being able to sleep because you're replaying the same conversations, of those kind of nagging questions that won't let you go.

19:04And so I kind of say that You Could Make This Place Beautiful was the book I had to write in order to write other books because it was blocking. Like the story I was living every day was taking up so much psychological room that the idea of trying to write something else or write about something else felt so frankly false. Like it would have felt like I was playing with blocks while living my real life. And so I started writing these vignettes just one at a time, I'm not in chronological order. Just what stories do I want to tell? What conversations do I need to recount? What images or metaphors or questions am I playing with?

19:53And then when I had all of it, I thought, okay, now where's the book? And I had to kind of do what I do when I have a collection of poems, which is find the structure. See what wants to come first, what wants to come second. I wanted it to be a page turner and sort of propelled by a narrative, but I also wanted it to have that breadth and sort of processing space and kind of quiet, contemplative, meditative quality of poems. And so finding that balance was really the work of building the book. I'm interested in kind of how you found the balance between, you know, what is, was yours to tell and what wasn't yours to tell, or even how you maybe like pulled back into even say, this is from, from my point of view.

20:50Yeah. I mean, part of, part of what I did in the, in the prologue with the, this is a tell mine, not a tell all was sort of set that expectation. So that I, you know, the rule of thumb for me was to always stay in my own body as I was writing this book. And so if I was present for a conversation, the conversation, at least part of it can be in the book. I never projected into someone else's thinking, you know, whether it was someone I loved or someone I didn't. I just did you ever find yourself doing in that that and then in your editing process have to pull back or did you keep that boundary as you wrote sure I mean there were definitely times when I found like I had written too far into what would be like someone else's country like oh I've crossed the border here like I'm actually like I can look back and I see where the border crossing is and I need to get back on my side of that line and so part of the editing process for me was really trying to delineate and really more with my children than with anyone else.

21:57I think I was pretty clear about what was mine to tell as far as the kind of marriage story goes, but how much of my children's lives did I want to live in this book versus how much did I want to save for them to tell on their own or not as they see fit as they get older. And so a lot of the pullback and editing was about wanting to keep their interior lives interior as much as possible for them. Yeah. When I think about being, you know, even choosing a profession, like being a poet or being an artist, there's a yearning for freedom. So do you feel that when you felt silenced or stuck in what was unsaid before creating this book, do you feel that kind of yearning towards freedom?

22:46Do you feel that your art is a kind of constant breaking further and further to a free place and that this was almost one of your kind of greatest challenge so far in that quest? Yes. And actually, I mean, just thinking about how I started writing about these experiences and poems first, and then I wrote Keep Moving. And I was kind of writing, which is sort of more in that self-help vein, right? And so I was writing about the end of my marriage and about pregnancy loss and about some other challenges, but not in a really exposing way. So I feel like there was this gradual progression that had everything to do with like courage and vulnerability, which are absolutely cousins, right?

23:31Like you don't get one without the other. And this book was like the sort of, for me, not even writing the book, publishing the book was the final step for me. I think writing the book was one step, but there is a very big difference between writing a book that's really vulnerable and then living in the world with that book that's really vulnerable. And so that for me was the last frontier, not saying the end and sending it in. It was being in front of people and having conversations like this and where I didn't get to pick my words as carefully. I mean, I was really, really careful with my words in the book.

24:15And so then to have to sort of talk around it, I always feel like I'm like, just like, I'm just always like, really close to wading into territory. I'm like, wait, but I want to be able to say it exactly. So that's the poet in me. Yeah. What I was really struck by in the writing too, is just the way in which you're so kind of accountable to yourself. It's almost like a, you know, you wrote it and then there's this kind of the accountability we get through maybe therapy or having processed something for a long time. And then I get to come back as the, you know, an editor and accountability partner to yourself.

24:54And so there were ways in which you were still able to be really honest about things that were tough, right? I mean, I think about the scene of you, you know, packing your husband's belongings because he was too busy with work during your divorce. And that's a really, I think, hard memory to want to even share, I would imagine. And then to be accountable to, you know, all of the ways in which that rubs against the feelings you have about, you know, gender power dynamics and the patriarchy and even opening about, you know, your miscarriages, which I'm so sorry that you had to go through, but opening with, you know, seeing anti-choice protesters.

25:33So I'm really interested in how in the stories you are able to hold yourself accountable to these greater ideals you have as a really progressive feeler, thinker, voter, beer, and the real life just kind of things that happen and being able to hold those contradictions on the page, because I We do feel that we're kind of a culture that's so afraid of our contradictions in small circles, our contradictions in the town square. And that's, I think, really hard for people to say like, yes, I packed my husband's belongings. And yes, I'm writing an article that challenges invisible labor in the home and how a man's work is prioritized, valued over mine, art versus business.

26:23I'd love for you to talk to me about just even how you were able to do that, especially in these small vignettes, which is just so unbelievably impressive. Wow. You know, I think poetry is what makes it possible. Which is probably, that should be on a t-shirt that I just wear. Like the answer is that poetry makes it possible. I mean, I think so much of poetry and actually parenting too. It's funny how those two things require some of the same powers. optimism attentiveness dealing with the unknown witnessing witnessing magical thinking yes oh so much magical thinking and and one of the things that it requires is right that negative capability the idea that like two opposite things can both sort of you can hold them in your hands and make space for them and must it's the human condition you know it just I mean it just is and that's the thing is that we, if we can just stop trying to polarize and pit against our humanness, like these things that just, that they just are what they are, you, you know, can be against capitalism and also like the beautiful shoe.

27:33And that's, you know, and that is, that is what it is. And it is, it is a wild ride of constant, colorful contradictions. And for some reason, we do not want to live in, or we are holding ourselves and each other back from living in that freedom to kind of create real progress. It's really frustrating. And that's, and I mean, the word freedom there, I think is important because I think when we, when we are compartmentalizing and sort of fencing ourselves in, in those ways, like, oh, if you're this, then you're not this. Well, if you're this, if you think this, then you can't think this. Well, if you live like this, then there's no way you're going to what about this yep exactly there's no way to win I mean that that is a that is a losing game no one wins and it's also again not accurate like that's not life life is messy life is life is a frankly it is a borderless country like we just we live and we move and it's very fluid and the more we can sort of keep a soft grip yeah instead of a white knuckled hold on these things the more flexible and nimble we can be again that's poetry and parenting I think the less suffering the experience right do you feel that you were conscious in in and maybe that is just your process in writing your poetry anyway because there is this kind of greater level of consciousness for a better world, I feel, in your writing, even if it's not the words you're specifically speaking to.

29:12But as I feel sometimes as a reader that when you're saying my children, it's kind of an our children feeling. So is it something you're conscious of to almost create that example for your reader to say, we can have the kind of small moments in our lives, rub it up against the big moment, the big ideals in our lives. And I'm going to hold that for you on the page. Are you, are you kind of aware that you're, you're offering that in the moment? Yeah. I don't think I'm that conscious of it when I'm doing it. I think honestly, so much of good writing and probably good living is intuitive. Yeah. You know, like you get the, and again, it's embodied, right?

29:54Like what, But like follow the writing that feels good in your body, follow the activity that feels good in your body. And I think for me, transparency feels good in my body. Like the truth feels good. It's not easy to tell the truth about yourself, to tell the truth about your life, to hold these kinds of contradictions at the same time, to face the darkness, but also try to keep at least half your face turned toward light. it's not easy but it's simple right I mean it's uncomplicated because it's it's sort of it's like I I give up to it right like I'm I I sort of really happily and willfully resign myself to the complicated mess of the world yeah and when you and when you sort of just give up to that and let it carry you and you're not struggling against the current so much.

30:54I mean, my hope is that it ends up being permission giving to other people, whether they write or not, you know, something I say to my therapist all the time is, you know, if I'm kind of sitting, I've been kind of reeling with something is that I'm just like, you know, I'm searching for the exhale here because, you know, and I just, I'm looking, I'm searching for the exhale. And then at some point it'll come to me. I remember recently I said something, I'm not upset about the actual conflict, but all within me, that's unsaid in the conflict. And that was my exhale point. And just to kind of, as a, to speak to what you're saying about in your body, it's like the second I could understand that and it could click, I knew what I had to do next.

31:41It's almost like your body, like the first exhale gives you the marching orders towards the next exhale you need. All of these things kind of landing you deeper and deeper into, you know, flesh and bones-ness. I love that. I've joked for years that I have for a long time sort of treated my body like it's a plant stand for my head. Like it's the thing that kind of carries me around, but everything that really matters is like from the neck up. It's just, you know, the brain and the imagination and the thinking and the heart which lives there too. And, and of course, that's not true, because we're carrying, we're carrying stress in our bodies, like I'd love for my body to stop keeping the score, but it's so good at keeping the score, it's not going to stop.

32:25So, yeah, I mean, part of, for me, part of writing that is so freeing is that even if I'm writing about something painful, even if I'm describing something really difficult, there is an actual bodily pleasure in finding a form, finding a shape, finding a sentence that describes the thing that I'm, that's really amorphous in my mind. And, you know, even for people who they're listening and they're thinking, well, I'm not going to write a memoir about my worst year. I'm not going to write about this. Even just getting out a blank piece of paper and just writing to yourself and articulating it to yourself.