Over the past year, we’ve had to put our dreams on hold. We cancelled vacations, missed family gatherings, and constantly wondered, How long will my life look like this? But those spaces in our calendars have given us margin to think about what’s next for us. And as we continue our For the Love of Reconnecting series, we’re going to go out on a limb and thinking about what it looks like to reconnect with our dreams. And our next guest, Priyanka Chopra Jonas knows all about that. Priyanka’s a triple-threat: she’s an actor, a social activist and now the author of a brand-new memoir called Unfinished. Jen and Priyanka trace Priyanka’s winding path from India to the US as a teen, and how she’s leapt with both feet into new projects and challenges and discovered that being willing to fail is an important part of leveling up and investing in ourselves. Jen and Priyanka dive into why it’s so important to normalize ambition in women and girls, and why putting boots on the ground is crucial to making our dreams a reality.
Podcast Category: Community
Communication Drives Connection—and Healing: Dr. Mark Goulston
Get ready for a deep-dive into what it means to listen and connect with those around you with our next guest in the Reconnecting series: psychiatrist and executive coach Dr. Mark Goulston. As a former FBI hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Goulston knows how to reach out to and connect with just about anyone. After the past twelve months, we’re all living on edge, and Dr. Goulston gives Jen a few communication tips to guide tense conversations toward calm. Plus, Dr. Goulston shows us how people are icebergs and why asking someone, “What’s really going on?” more than once helps us drill down and discover what the real problem is. And spoiler alert: when we vulnerably share what’s going on with us, and when someone listens and responds without judgment—whether we’re doing the sharing or the listening, true connection really does help us heal. And after 2020, we’re all due for a heavy dose of healing.
Exploring the Joys and Pitfalls of Online Connection: Chris Stedman
Break out a pen and notebook, because today on For the Love, we’re going back to school with writer and professor Chris Stedman, our next guest in the For the Love of Reconnecting series. A former chaplain at Harvard and founding director of the Yale Humanist Community, Chris just wrote a fascinating book called IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives. He’s a millennial who grew up fluent in the digital world but didn’t have a smartphone that tethered him to the internet until after his formative years, when a post he wrote went viral and steered him toward building a platform online. The internet of today is definitely not the one Chris grew up with—it’s no longer something we log in and out of. Chris and Jen talk about the beauty of finding and building community online and expanding our circles of belonging, but also why it’s so important to disconnect from tech every once in a while, because we discover things about ourselves in the silence of retreat that we may not see otherwise. And while sometimes the internet can seem like a place teeming with chaos, Chris reminds us that we have the power to choose how *we* engage with technology, that we control our devices—not the other way around.
Reconnecting with God Through Our Wandering with Bunmi Laditan
With so much discussion around finding different ways to connect in a season where literal physical connections are challenging at best, how do we address when our spiritual connections are faltering? How do we “feel seen” by God when things are not okay and our attitudes are washed in more doubt than belief? Writer Bunmi Laditan (also known by her online moniker, The Honest Toddler) joins For the Love to share her lifelong journey of wrestling with God and faith, and ultimately finding hope, acceptance, and love. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Bunmi ran away from home as a teen, seeking a home and faith that wouldn’t shackle her to rules and tradition. During her wanderings in both the spiritual and physical world, she explored relationships and different faith traditions before finally coming to know a core truth that has informed her ever since: God sees her and loves her—and He would come to meet her, no matter where her wandering took her.
Making Good Use of Our Emotions: Hilary Jacobs Hendel
It’s so hard to feel your feelings—especially when you have all of them all at once, and it’s never a convenient time to process them. For the past year, we’ve all been stewing with anxiety, stress, anger, loneliness, grief, and fear. Ignoring our hard feelings might seem like the easiest way to cope and get relief—but it’s not the only option available to us. Our next guest in our For the Love of Reconnecting Series, psychoanalyst and therapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel, reminds us that when we disconnect from our harder emotions, we disconnect from the life-giving ones too, like joy—and don’t we all need more of that right now?. Hilary’s the author of a fascinating book called It’s Not Always Depression (and psst: she consulted on the psychological development of characters in Mad Men!), and she and Jen talk about the freedom we find when we realize emotions just are, and we don’t have to judge them. In fact, instead of shutting down, Hilary shows us how we can walk ourselves toward self-compassion and healing, which gives us real resilience—not the kind that we *think* we have by stuffing down our feelings.
How Boundaries Can Save Your Relationships with Nedra Glover Tawwab
Next up in our For the Love of Reconnecting series, we’re touching base with a very important and easy-to-lose-hold-of concept: our boundaries. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s how much setting boundaries impacts our life. So why do we feel guilty when we actually do set them? And when was the last time you took a second to think about what you need and what you have the capacity for? Therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab, author of the book Set Boundaries, Find Peace, walks us through how we draw these needed lines, and why it’s important for us to have them in the first place (spoiler alert: they’re crucial for our mental health and keep us away from resentment and burnout). It’s okay for us to ask for what we want and take charge of our own lives, even if some people don’t agree—because in the end, you really do know what’s best for you.
Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Lori Gottlieb
New year, new series! We’re thinking all about For the Love of Reconnecting, where we’ll try to get back in touch with who we are and what we value, so that we can start to inch forward in this brand-new year. What’s holding you back? Is there a real obstacle standing in the way of your growth—or is it just a story you’re telling yourself? Therapist, author, TED Talk superstar and podcast host Lori Gottlieb knows a thing or two about the stories we tell ourselves. In fact, Lori opens up her life in a deeply vulnerable way, taking us into the stories she told herself as a practicing therapist and how she moved past them in her New York Times bestselling memoir Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Lori explains that we are the narrators of our own stories, and how we talk to ourselves and tell the story of our lives shapes who we will become. She asserts that when we begin to take responsibility for our choices and allow ourselves to examine what’s working in or lives and what we can tweak a little bit, we’ll begin to let go of the feeling of being trapped—and find a power in ourselves we never knew was there.
Blame Scars, Forgiveness Heals: Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt
We’re all struggling with resentment right now—separation from family and friends, lost jobs and furloughs, cancelled graduations and vacations, and even struggling to come up with grace for the people living right inside our very houses. But our guest today, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, reminds us how healing and freeing it can be to wrap this season—and the rest of our lives—in forgiveness, even when it’s incredibly hard to encounter our pain and try to let it all go. Katherine’s spent the last few years in the quest to understand forgiveness after a terrible rift with a close friend. And in her journey, she talked to more than 20 people from all walks of life who have encountered tragedy and personal demons—everyone from headline-making names like Elizabeth Smart to friend-of-the-podcast Nadia Bolz-Weber. Katherine recorded her conversations and insights in her brand-new book The Gift of Forgiveness. Katherine’s words will fill you with hope because, as she says, “When we learn to embrace forgiveness, it opens us up to healing, hope, and a new world of possibility.”