Transcripts for Courageous self-care, with Amber Wardell | Episode 166

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Amber: Self care is having the right people at your table. It’s, it starts there. And one of the things that I had to do was I had to flip my table over. At one point about two years ago, I dismissed everyone from my table and I took some time alone. I was just like, I have to sit down at the head of my table where I have not sat in a very long time. And I need to figure out who I want here. Because at your table, you know the people that you have sitting around you, these are your confidants, these are your guides, these are your people. It doesn’t mean I have to eject them from my life completely, but it means these are not the people who belong at my inner sanctum.

Amber: And so I had to really sit down and think about what kind of people do I need in my life who would lead me to my very best and highest self.

Stacy: Welcome. Welcome. I am really excited about this week’s episode specifically because we’re going to be talking about self care, but we’re going to be talking about false self care and how to do it in a way that’s actually supporting you in living the life that you want to live and taking good care of yourself. I think this is a really great build on my recent episode on hosting a solo dream week. And in that episode I talked about really understanding your vision, understanding how you want to feel in the future, and building your goals around how you want to feel.

Stacy: And so today we’re going to be actually continuing to dive in that direction and how do we also support ourselves, nourish ourselves, and really thrive as humans? So I’m really excited to introduce this week’s guest, Amber Wardell, is a doctor of cognitive psychology and author of Beyond Self Care Potato Choosing Nourishing Self Care in a Quick Fix Culture. She is also a contributor to Psychology Today, where she writes about contemporary feminism and runs a blog where she tackles topics related to marriage, motherhood, and mental health. Amber, welcome.

Amber: Hi, Stacy. It’s so good to be here. Thank you for having me on.

Stacy: I’m really excited about this topic. When I learned about you and your work, it really resonated with me, particularly in a lot of our kind of lifestyle choices as a family related to food and movement and a lot of things that we do that are very, actually very time consuming and require a lot of effort, but at the end of it leave us feeling very nourished. So I loved that you also had your book title around food and this idea of, like, quick fixes. And we’re going to get into the topic of the book and into some practical strategies later, but I’d really love to hear from you a bit about your story and what led you into the work that you do today and eventually into this recent book.

Amber: Sure. So I gotta say first that therapy is what brought me to this journey. Strongly recommend anyone to check out therapy if you haven’t checked it out before, but, you know, it kind of to go way back. For me, things started in a household where I had one parent with diagnosed depression and another parent with undiagnosed anxiety. And in that household, growing up in the, you know, the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot more stigma around mental health than there is today. And so my perception of the way mental health was approached in my house growing up was that there was a lot of shame around it. There was a lot of, you know, shame around medication, shame around going to therapy.

Amber: There were sometimes threats of me going to therapy because I was being bad rather than it being, hey, let’s go to therapy to, you know, to sort some things out and feel better. And so when I was about 13, I decided I am never going to be confused about psychology and mental health ever again. I’m going to go get the highest education you can get in this field so that I understand people better. So I went and got a degree in cognitive psychology. I got my PhD, you know, around 2014. And then I realized, oh, that’s nice. I have this cool piece of paper and I still don’t really understand people any better.

Amber: And then it was then that I realized, oh, I’ve spent, you know, the first 27 years of my life trying to understand other people, and I don’t think I ever really spent much time trying to understand myself. And so it was. It still took me a few more years to realize that I needed. Needed therapy. I tried, like, a lot of exercise. I tried travel, I tried hobbies, I tried church and all these things, looking for the answers. And one day I realized, oh, it’s. It’s going to need to be therapy. That’s what I need. And so I started going to therapy and started healing. And it was from, you know, these three years of therapy that I’ve been in that most of this book comes from.

Stacy: Wow. It’s interesting. I loved your exploration of, you know, you go to school to learn people, but you actually should be starting with yourself and understanding yourself. I love that point of awareness. I also, I never heard somebody explain the orientation of therapy as like a punitive tool, which sounds like that was what was used in your house. And it made me. It triggered for me some memories of. It’s funny because I just had this conversation last week. Somebody mentioned to me that they use. We call. We called it a happy light when I was a kid that these are, like, really common now. People use these all the time. They’re normal part of just bringing light into your life if you live in a place that gets dark really early.

Stacy: But I remember as a kid, one of my friend’s moms had, you know, a happy light. And it was just so strange. You know, it’s this, like, this weird thing that this family had this, like, secret that the mom had a happy light. And it’s just so funny compared today where people, like, will literally just talk about it, like, oh, yeah, I sat in front of my. My happy light today, and I felt a lot better. It’s such a difference today than it was in the 80s and 90s.

Amber: Yeah, it was a significant source of shame. And it was. If you were in therapy, it was because something was wrong with you and you were trying to be fixed rather than seeing therapy as, oh, this is what. This is what healthy people do when they realize that they need to be healthier and they have wounding that they need to heal. But it definitely wasn’t like that when were younger. And I don’t fault my parents for it either. You know, I think that we. We have to make do with the culture that we’re in. Right. And at the time, that was how people felt about mental health. And I just grew up in a family that was a byproduct of that.

Stacy: I think having empathy for the context of parenting is so important. You’re. Because you’re right. There’s so much awareness that we have today that just really wasn’t the norm back then. So I love that you have that perspective and that empathy for your family. I’d love to talk a bit about the concept of courageous self care, which is a big theme in all of your work. And I love to hear that juxtaposed with this concept of self care potato chips. So go give us the difference between those two things.

Amber: Sure. So the whole concept of self care potato chips came from therapy and my therapist who one day were sitting in therapy and I was telling him, I was like, I just don’t understand. You know, I had been through a separation from my husband and then we had reconciled and things were happy and moving forward and they were really good. And yet I still felt, even though everything should have been perfect, it seemed like things just weren’t quite gelling for me. And I said, I don’t understand. I’m, I’m doing all the right things. I’m exercising, I’m eating right. I’m, you know, making sure that I get alone time. I’ve insisted on that with my husband now. And I’m taking bubble baths and like all of these things. And I was like, and I’m still not happy.

Amber: I’m, I’m still not happy in who I am and happy in my relationships. And my therapist said, well, you’re just eating potato chips is all. And I said, what? And he said, well, you can’t get full on self care potato chips. And he went on to tell me that these things that I was doing, this chasing of these tangible things are not necessarily bad. You know, it’s good to go get a bubble bath or you know, eat a greasy bag of potato chips when you need to. But I wasn’t doing the things that a person really has to do in order to achieve that sense of self love and self esteem and self worth. And he said, that’s what you have to start doing.

Amber: And one of the first things he said to me was, you seem like a woman who knows how to speak but doesn’t know how to be heard and isn’t used to being heard. And I kind of balked at that for a second.

Stacy: Wow, that’s like a, that had to be an interesting moment for you to hear that. That’s like a statement.

Amber: Yeah. And, and the interesting thing about it was it kind of bifurcates, right? Because on the one hand, it’s the idea that like a lot of times as women in society, we just get used to not being heard. We used to be get. We’re used to being steamrolled. We’re used to being told that we’re supposed to be quiet and meek and subservient and generous and all these things. And so that’s one. Like you’re used to speaking and just people not hearing you. On the other hand, and I have a whole chapter about this in the book, maybe Amber, you don’t know how to communicate in ways that allow you to be heard. And that’s when I was like, oh, you know, because I realized that in a lot of ways that was true. I am an emotional stuffer, right?
Amber: So I’ll stuff feelings down rather than talk about them. And so then later these feelings come out in passive aggressive ways. They, they come out in explosive ways that don’t actually help me foster good relationships with others and therefore not have a good relationship with myself. So what we began working on was how to cultivate this courageous internal type of self care that we all have access to, regardless of where we are, how much money we have, what resources we have access to. And these are things like setting healthy boundaries, speaking our needs, figuring out conflict resolution, which is something that has gotten lost in a lot of self love, self care spaces. So often we just jump right into like go, no contact, set the boundary. And that’s not always the healthiest or most nourishing way to take care of ourselves.

Amber: We’re meant to be in relationship with others. And so courageous self care, nourishing self care compared to the self care potato chips is really about cultivating that internal sense of self worth and self esteem that allows you to communicate with other people in a way that is harmonious and honest and authentic in order to have more harmony within yourself and more acceptance and love with others.

Stacy: I love that concept. And you really well articulated it brought to mind an experience I had with somebody where they set a boundary. It wasn’t because anything had happened or anything bad was there. It was just around their kind of time and energy. But that boundary was not set with any consideration of how it impacted me and burdened my life a lot. And, and, and I had also had no contribution to that boundary being set right. So like they just kind of drew it around themselves for all people, for all things. But it pushed off then onto me a lot of extra things that I had to take care of without my needs or me as a person being considered. And I’m sure we’ve all had those situations happen in our lives.

Stacy: Certainly then if you add in like a conflict or you add in like tension in the relationship, in this case, there was none at the time. There still isn’t. But I, you know, I remember in that moment being like, I respect this person’s boundary and I respect them and I’m not, it’s okay, like, whatever, I’ll just do it. But on the other side of it, I remember thinking that this just stinks because if I put my what I think would be a realistic boundary up also, there’s no room for us to collaborate to achieve the thing that we both want here. And it sounds like what you’re offering is another way of building space that you need to build that’s also sensitive to the people around you and how your actions and your boundaries impact them. Is that a fair reflection back?

Amber: Absolutely. And I’m sorry that happened to you. And unfortunately I think that’s becoming more and more commonplace. In the book I talk about toxic self care culture and often that toxic self care culture tends to be rooted in hyper individualism, which is this idea that like, well, I am a sovereign person and I must protect my peace and set my boundaries and yes, do that. And also we are designed to live in relationships with others and there are people who love us and want intimacy and relationship with us. And when we lean into this hyper individualistic behavior, like your friend who says, like, I’m putting a boundary around my time and the other person gets no say in this whatsoever.

Amber: And then if you say to your friend like, well, hang on, this isn’t fair, this isn’t how I want this relationship to go, then it’s, well, you’re not respecting my boundaries. And so I talk a lot about like how, okay, if you are working on going no conflict, setting boundaries, speaking your needs and all of these things, but you’re not also working on conflict resolution, finding creative problem solving strategies, figuring out how to find empathy and compassion for others and meeting them where they are, then that’s not self care. And the reverse is true too. If you’re just like leaning into people, pleasing and having too much empathy and not enough focus on yourself, that’s also not self care.

Amber: And the balance is found in the middle where you recognize that yes, I have to protect my peace, I have to put boundaries around my time and my energy. But if I want to have a happy, fulfilling life with happy Fulfilling relationships. I have to understand that there is another person or other people in this dynamic and that there has to be some kind of back and forth. We just risk becoming a little bit like what your friend did to you, I think, rigid and inflexible and unable to kind of move with other people.

Stacy: I really love all of what you’re sharing. I’d love to drill in a little practically in your own experience from your story when you had this awareness in your therapy conversations and recognize these behaviors that were resulting from these not really going deep with self care the way that really needed to happen to be fully nourished in your inside of yourself. What did you do to shift that and what was the result of that?

Amber: The first place that started was in my marriage for sure. Because like I said, we had just had a marriage separation and were coming back together and were committed to doing it right this time. And so one of the things that I said was if we’re going to do this again, I am going to have to insist on my time and energy and all of that being respected just as much as yours. Because we had kind of fallen victim to this typical kind of American family dynamic where my husband worked and I worked from home. I was self employed and so I was the default parent and my work never got to be prioritized because I had the children. And over time that became entrenched into our day to day and I was dying on the inside. Right.

Amber: And so you know, the temptation is to come back in and to say, okay, we are going to completely change this up. We’re going to split all of the domestic labor and the parenting 50 and I’m going to get 50 time to focus on my career just like you have. And we’re going to split everything down the middle.

Stacy: Right?

Amber: That’s, I think that’s where a lot of people within self care spaces kind of fall into a trap of like, especially within marriages of like, okay, well then everything’s going to be 50 so that we’re fair and equal and all of these things. And what I had to decide was that healthy and happy within the context of this marriage means releasing equal and leaning into equitable and learning the difference between those two things and practicing that in my marriage has also now come forward into my other relationships.

Amber: But as an example, you know, I think when we talk about domestic labor, domestic engineering, and people say, well, we should split it 50 in our household, it can’t work like that and my husband and I had to negotiate there to figure out, okay, how do we make time and space for me to pay attention to my career and my interests and the things that I want to do to help my own career and our family, while also understanding that the majority of our income comes from my husband. Right. So we sat down and we kind of worked out this 70, 30 kind of split that’s equitable, where, you know, I take care of 70% of the children and the household stuff and I own all of that. My husband has 30% because that’s equitable.

Amber: It’s something that he can manage when you take into account his other responsibilities with work and negotiating that was really difficult. You know, it meant being willing to, on the one hand, really stand up for myself and say, here is the bottom line of what I need. And on the other hand, being willing to be flexible and to understand that I cannot load up too heavy of a burden on my husband in the name of my own self care and expect us to have a healthy, happy, functional home. And I think through that process, that really difficult process, that was like a baptism by fire. And now I’ve been learning how to do that in my other relationships as well.

Stacy: It’s interesting hearing you talk about that because it reminded me when my husband and I started dating got married, all that. I always had this idea that both of us would work part time, we would split everything exactly down the middle and you know, literally everything would be so split 100%, 50 everything. I just was sure that was how everything would go. And in our home, you know, he’s been home, a stay at home dad now for over 11 years with our children. And that’s been interesting to navigate because we have no blueprint for it. And it’s interesting hearing you talk about that because it got me thinking too about if he decided to go back to work. It’s not really on the horizon at any point in the near future, but he’s a teacher, he has a master’s in education.

Stacy: How would we do that? Because certainly I couldn’t take half. There’d be absolutely no way I could ever take half of what he does. I mean, he does almost everything, kid. I mean, I do all the appointment managing and stuff, but he does all the grocery shopping, all the cooking. We outsource cleaning, we outsource gardening. And that’s how we keep it like functional is actually through outsourcing in our home. But some of those, it’s, it is really A negotiation. And I’m sure that there’s some listeners, especially maybe somebody who hasn’t had to navigate this before, that maybe bristle at that idea of like 7030 because we want it to be 50. But in my experience in my home as well, that’s just absolutely impractical. We would never be able to function. It wouldn’t make sense in our home.

Amber: And I think that a lot of what’s out there in self care culture is incredibly impractical and can also be very myopic. Right. It’s, it’s just of course in a perfect marriage, in a perfect world, everything would always be 50, but it just doesn’t always get to be. That all becomes a negotiation. And I just feel like so much of that has gotten lost in this ultra hyper empowered, individualistic self care.

Stacy: What an interesting area to think about. It’s not something that I really thought about in relation to self care. And the other thing that, I mean just circling back to our earlier conversation is really the power of therapy to reveal, you know, what’s actually underpinning a problem. Instead of, it’s just like with this idea of self care potato chips, it’s so easy to try to bandaid things or like think that you know what’s going on when really there’s so much more going deep need or something much deeper under the surface. So wow, that’s really interesting to think about. I want to, I want to talk about one of the things that in our kind of like pre interview conversations that you brought up that I thought was really fascinating.

Stacy: You said that the most important work of self care is difficult because it requires confronting self limiting behaviors and beliefs, challenging our inner demons and pushing past our comfort zone. Can you expand on that a little bit, especially in relation to your journey and maybe you could even offer a little bit for the listener as well as they’re kind of considering what they could start to do to start going under the surface and really excavating what’s really going on.

Amber: Yeah, sure. So I think that to answer the first part of the question, my personal journey, I think if we’re not asking ourselves in what ways am I the problem here, then we’re doing ourselves a really big disservice because even when we look at relationships where it’s a very one sided problem, right. And I’m going to take like abuse and neglect off the table for a moment because that’s a different beast. But in normal relationships or in typical relationships where there’s not abuse and neglect. Even in those cases where there appears to be one person who is the prominent problem, there are still underlying things that you can be doing that is affecting this. And, and it’s not victim blaming, it’s not yourself up to acknowledge these things. It’s to say there are things that I’m doing here that is affecting this dynamic.

Amber: And for me, that was people pleasing. It was realizing that I would do and say and sacrifice just about anything in order to feel unconditionally loved and accepted and approved of by people. And because of that, I would show up in relationships, I would seek out people who seemed difficult to gain approval from, almost as though it was a challenge to myself. Because if you can get that person to approve of you, then wow, you must really be likable, you must really be a good person. And none of that was happening consciously. I’m not going to sit here and say that I knew this and was like, let me go find all these difficult people.

Amber: But I will say that there’s this, this internal drive that I have that would bring me to those kind of people and then would evoke all of this people pleasing behavior. And so I tolerated disrespect, I tolerated a lack of reciprocity. And as people began to realize that they could do these things to me, they could disrespect me, they could not show up the way I was showing up and I would stick around, well, let’s just reinfor enforced exactly the behavior that they were already doing that I didn’t like. And so a hard thing for me was realizing it’s not my fault that these people are treating me this way, but I can choose to not tolerate or accept this anymore. And that took some really deep work because it’s not as simple as just saying, I won’t let people disrespect me anymore.

Amber: You have to go deeper. You have to say, what is it? What is that deeper drive that makes me need their approval, that makes me need to chase it? For me, that was realizing that in my household growing up, there was some instability, there was some lack of predictability, and there was sometimes the withdrawal of approval and of love if I wasn’t behaving the way I was supposed to behave. And so I had to begin doing the work of realizing that I am worthy of love and respect and dignity no matter how I’m showing up, no matter whether I’m saying yes or no matter where, whether this person agrees with me or approves of me or not. And that was hard, hard work.

Amber: And it wasn’t until I had done that work that I was then able to start addressing the problem, which was the people pleasing behavior. And so for your listeners, I think that what I would recommend is, first of all, if you can, if you have access to a therapist, go. Because some of these things are really hard to navigate by yourself. But also I think a good thing to do is to, like, just sit down with a journal and write down what are the things that are going on in my life that I do not like? What are. Where are the relationships that are going sour?

What’s happening at work that I don’t like? You just list all these things out and begin looking for, like, what am I doing that I could be doing differently that might change these things?

Amber: And from there, start asking yourself the question, what is making me engage in this behavior that is enabling that their behavior? Does that make sense?

Stacy: Mm, yes. Yeah. And that, to me is a lot of internal. There’s a lot of internal clarifying that goes on there. And I imagine that takes some time and it takes some commitment to continuing to do the work. Because sometimes when you sit down to excavate those things, it may not come the first time. It might require a few sessions or some. A long walk where you think intentionally about these things. What do you. And obviously, I know you’ve recommended therapy. I totally agree. Again, I just think everybody should go at least probably more than once in their life. But maybe it would be helpful on that, layering on this internal work that you do. Could you share practically how self care shows up in friendships, in other relationships? Like, what could that look like on a practical basis?

Amber: I think one of the things that I always say, especially in friendships, is like, self care is having the right people at your table. It’s. It starts there. And one of the things that I had to do was I had to flip my table over. At one point about two years ago, I dismissed everyone from my table and I took some time alone. I was just like, I have to. I have to sit down at the head of my table, where I have not sat in a very long time. And I need to figure out who I want here. Because at your table, you know, the people that you have sitting around you, these are your confidants, these are your guides. These are your people who are going to see all of. Right. Like, you’re bringing to these people and you’re.

Amber: You’re living your life out very Vulnerably in front of them, right? And so one of the first things that I had to do was realize that there are people sitting at this table who I, I would not trust to give me advice on things. I, I would not trust them to like, guide me in a way that would actually benefit me. So why are they here? It doesn’t mean I have to eject them from my life completely, but it means these are not the people who belong at my inner sanctum. And so I had to really sit down and think about what kind of people do I need in my life who would lead me to my very best and highest self. And I started mapping that out. Like I need a person who understands what I do for a living.

Amber: So like, I need someone who writes and someone who is like living their life very publicly, right? I need a spiritual kind of friend, someone who understands my spiritual beliefs and can work with me on that front. I need someone who strongly agrees with all of my values, who I can check myself with and make sure that I’m in alignment. I need someone who radically disagrees with me on a lot of things so that I don’t find myself in an echo chamber, but someone with whom I can still have respectful dialogue. And so I really think that that work of getting the right people around you is the first really important step towards good self care in our relationships.

Amber: Because when you have volatile, dysregulated, or even just unpredictable people in your circle, you can’t really expect to be able to do the hard work of self care because you’re not going to be getting the proper guidance and wisdom that you need while you go that path.

Stacy: It’s such a powerful move in your life to acknowledge that somebody doesn’t fit and then to actually make the steps to disengage or remove that person from your life. And it’s so hard. I’ve had to do this a couple of few times throughout my life and the first time was in my 20s. And that was one of my most painful experiences, was realizing that a friend that I loved was actually really harming my life in that relationship and having to let that go. Still loving that person for who they are, but loving myself enough to also not bring that into my life. It’s very painful.

Stacy: And I think, you know, if a listener has not done this yet, it’s so painful when you go through it, but on the other side of it, you make so much space for the right person who is going to Bring light and in challenge. I love that you brought up the idea of somebody who disagrees with you because we shouldn’t always be around people that 100% align with us or we’re never going to grow and we’re never going to polish our own ideas. So I love that. I love that idea so much. On that similar. I know we looked at one element of self care and relationships. There’s another concept that you talk about which is self care hygiene. And I would love to know about what that is and how does that show up in a person’s life.

Amber: Self care hygiene, I think a lot of times is kind of what we’ve been talking about here is I actually am realizing this in real time through this conversation. It’s been so much fun having this with you, is that I think self care really comes down to the ability to hold two dichotomous ideas in your head at once, which I think we forget about. And that is that it is my job to take care of myself and to do that well. And I’m the only person whose job it is to take care of myself. Because I also think sometimes we can go in this other direction, which is like self care means I am going to expect everyone else to accommodate me and make sure that I’m okay. And you know, we get into these.

Amber: This is sort of a sidetrack, but we get into these conversations. Like you hear people say, oh, well, that triggered me and okay, that’s valid. However, self care may mean learning how to manage your own triggers because ultimately, you know, you can’t control what other people do and say. You cannot move through the world that way. And so, you know, self care hygiene is realizing I’m the only person who can ensure that I am taking care of the way I need to be taken care of. And also I’m going to move through the world with people who I love. I’m also going to move through the world with difficult people. And I need to have a whole bunch of different tools at my disposal to deal as I move through this, right?

Amber: So like, I feel like a lot of times in self care spaces, certain tools get overemphasized, like for example, going no contact, which is a wonderful, very important tool that, I mean, you just mentioned, sometimes we have to do that. But we cannot forget that these other tools, like I mentioned before, of conflict resolution, of learning how to be flexible, realizing that sometimes cutting off a person who is important to us may be good in the short term but could actually cause us harm and Pain in the long run. I think about this a lot when I hear people talking about going no contact with their parents and absolutely, I think there are many, so many valid reasons to do that, particularly if you’re working on breaking cycles in a family, right. Cycles of addiction, cycles of abuse, neglect, things like that.

Amber: But I do wonder sometimes if sort of this trend, this movement towards cutting off your parents, what kind of new generational traumas and cycles we might be bringing in. And I feel like a lot of. I just wrote a blog post for Tiny Buddha that was called I thought I was protecting my Peace, but I think I was just avoiding conflict. And so it’s learning to hold these two dichotomous views intact at one time, which is that yes, I’m taking care of myself, but sometimes taking care of myself means having to self sacrifice sometimes it means having to cooperate with someone that I don’t want to cooperate with for my long term benefit.

Stacy: Yeah, it’s obviously, as you mentioned a couple of times, you have to put aside abuse, you know, traumatic family life and all of these reasons that would absolutely justify cutting off with somebody. And what I’m hearing you say is that sometimes it’s easy to also apply that to relationships where maybe we have a struggle or a challenge or a disagreement, but there is still meaning and love in that relationship and it’s valuable to find your way with that relationship. And it makes me think about in my own life, many of my very close friends from childhood, my own family, we have very different religious and political views, very different. And yet we still love each other deeply and we can look at each other with empathy and love and acknowledge that we greatly disagree.

Stacy: But I still see that you are a good person and I respect you and I care about this relationship and I think it could be easy to go into this lack of, kind of empathy for a different perspective or lack of respect for somebody’s own views, even if you really can’t understand them. And, and I think that would be a really, for me, that would be a really hard way to live with my wonderful friends and family. Like I wouldn’t have them in my life anymore if I didn’t have that acceptance of them as radically different than me in so many ways, but still worth fighting for in that relationship and maintaining that relationship.

Amber: Yeah, and I think we often forget that, like the advice that we hear about how to deal with. Just like I had this conversation with someone this morning on Threads actually, because I had made a post that was talking about dealing with disrespect. And they said something along the lines of like, well, no, no, you don’t, you don’t stand up for yourself to a troll. It’s better to just ignore them. And I came back and I said, you know that like not everything is about online conversations, right? And dealing with trolls. Like sometimes some of us are like, I don’t know about you, but some of us are having in person conversations. And like, it’s weird to me that you just immediately assume that I’m talking about trolls. But nonetheless we forget that.

Amber: Like, while it could be incredibly appropriate and well boundaried to say like, hey, if I don’t know you, if we don’t know each other, and I see that you hold values and views that are harmful to me and the people that I care about, that I will not grant you access to me. I don’t want proximity to you because you actually hold views that are harmful to people and communities that matter to me. That’s one thing. It can be different when it’s family and friends and we forget that sometimes. And I’ll never forget my first phone call with my editor for this book. She said to me, she was like, what I love about reading this book is that you’re unapologetic about your views on things and where you stand on some of these issues.

Amber: And yet you still talk about how you have all kinds of people around you who don’t agree or who see things very differently. And you’re learning you all together, not just me. Like this is, and that’s another important thing is like the only way to do this is that those people who disagree with you must also be willing to show up to without judgment and with just recognizing like we see each other’s humanity. We are maybe we are going to be forced to be around each other forever because we are family. We have, maybe we don’t get along, but we have people that connect us that we don’t want to lose out on because we can’t get together right. And we just, we forget we’ve lost sight of the fact that conflict is hard and uncomfortable.

Amber: But with the right people, conflict can be productive. And we’ve become so conflict averse that we’re just not willing to do that work. We’d rather, you know, we’d rather cut our own noses off despite our face. Is that the expert cut our nose off to. Yeah, it felt backwards when it came out.

Stacy: It’s so true. That made me that Made me laugh also. With the trolls. No, you just. You, like, what is it? You mute them so they think that everybody’s seeing what they say, but then nobody can see it. That’s the. That’s the trick. Yes. Okay. I want to just. Since you brought up your book, I. We have a ton of aspiring authors that listen to this podcast, and it’s so fun to have authors on, because I know when I was writing my first book, I would always be consuming anything I could from people who’d done what I. What I wanted to do, especially people who’d recently done it. And your book just came out. So would you share a little bit about your writing journey and your kind of experience writing that book? Maybe. Maybe share a challenge or a lesson learned from.

Stacy: From that process?

Amber: Yeah, absolutely. And I want to say first, after looking through your Instagram, what a beautiful place you’ve built. Like, just what a. I wish I had known about your community when I was writing my book, because it’s just such a safe, comforting place to see the things that you’re sharing with authors and these great tips and just inspirational messages. I just. I love it so much.

Stacy: Thanks, Amber. That made my day. I appreciate that.

Amber: You’re welcome. I think for me, I could tell, if you don’t mind, a short little story.

Stacy: Yeah, please.

Amber: So what I would tell your listeners who are aspiring authors is to just. It’s going to sound cliche, but I’m going to get to a more. A more detailed point. Don’t let rejections get you down and don’t stop just because it’s happening again. Example that I always give is when I was applying to PhD programs, I applied to eight different programs and got accepted to one and a half. The half one is a weird story, but, you know, this is six and a half rejections I had. And it’s always, always when you look at successful people, you always go look at all of their successes, and you don’t realize how many failures happened before they got to the success. We don’t talk about that because who wants to talk about their failures?
Amber: But the example that I have with writing this book here is that the original book that I wrote that I pitched to who’s My Agent Now? Was a completely different book. It was about my miscarriages and the spiritual battle that I went through as a Christian, trying to reconcile those losses, while also dealing with anger at God and a crisis of faith and all of these things. And it was very much a spiritual book. And I loved it. I thought it was beautifully written. I poured my heart into it. And I began shopping it around. And my top agent, who I wanted to represent me, wrote me back almost immediately after I queried her. And her email was, it’s a no. It was just straight up like, it’s a no. She’s like, but could we just hop on a quick phone call?

Amber: I’d love to talk to you. And so I. The next piece of advice I would give your audience is do not ever close a door. Don’t ever close the door. Because my first thought was like, oh, she wants to try to sell me something. I’m sure it’s a no, but do you want to buy my coaching class or this or that? So like, all right, let me just do this phone call. And I got on the phone with her and it turned out that she had been following me on social media. And she said, you know, I. I love your content. I love what you’re doing with these feminist topics and these women centered topics and self care and self love and therapy and mental health. Why are you writing a book about miscarriages? And I was like, this is what mattered to me.

Amber: And I started writing this two years ago. I love this book. And she said, I understand that. She’s like, but first of all, this is not the book for you. This is not your book. Maybe down the road we’ll publish this one. But this book is not in alignment with the audience that you’ve built. It’s not in alignment with your personal brand, and it’s going to be a hard sell because you are, you know, a mouthy, swearing, liberal bisexual woman with short hair and like, talking. It’s just, it’s not going to land how you think it’s going to land. Do you have anything you could think of that is more aligned with what you do on social media? Because I love your writing. It just can’t be this book. And I was.

Amber: It was a weird feeling of like, being crushed and excited at the same time. So the next day I came back and I pitched to her self care potato chips. And she said, that’s it. Send me over the proposal and I’ll sign you today. And it was really hard to let go of all the work that I had done on that first book and to accept that maybe this book, I’m not the right voice for this book, no matter how much I care about it. But to then say, okay, there’s someone who has come along who believes in me, who believes that they can Guide me in the right direction to, like, really be successful. And I’m going to listen. And so then when we started pitching this book to publishers, I wanted to go with a. One of the big five.

Amber: And a few of the big five publishers reached out to my agent and said, hey, we love her writing, we love her platform, we love what she’s doing. But this book, like, kind of have some overlap with some other projects that we’re doing. Could she write something else? And maybe and we could represent that. And that was when I said, no, I love this book. I’m happy with this book. I want this to be my book. And so we decline those people and we succeed. We accepted an offer from hci, which is not one of the big five, but which is quick. Plug for them have been the best. They’ve just been amazing in every way possible. And so I’m so glad I went that route.

Amber: But I think a big lesson that I learned is like, no, it kind of goes back to what we’ve been talking about today. Learning when to be flexible, when to say, like, all right, you’re saying that this isn’t my book, this isn’t my project, so I’m going to. I’m going to let that go. But also learning when to say, nope, I believe in this. I believe in this, and I’m not changing course now.

Stacy: I love that. I think also that. That flexibility and willingness to listen to people that are, you know, experts and in the industry. But you also still have this book that you wrote, and it still exists, and you can still make a different choice down the road if you want to. If you want to. To kind of move that through and pursue that. So I love that you. That you did this and got this book out. It’s so exciting. Congratulations on publishing your first book. Such a huge milestone.

Amber: Thank you so much, and I really appreciate that.

Stacy: So I could. I mean, there’s so many topics we could dive into for so much longer. But let’s just wrap up with what you’re most excited about right now. Maybe the book. I don’t know, maybe there’s other things going on and then also where our listeners can follow you and learn more about you and your work.

Amber: Sure. So I’m. I’m obviously most excited about this book right now. I’m excited to see reviews coming in. It’s just been. It’s been a whirlwind. It’s been amazing. And I hope. I hope people will go and check it out because it was a major labor of love. But I. The next thing I’m excited about, though, is that I really pitched this book as like, oh, I’m a millennial mom. And, you know, this is the book for millennials. And I have gotten so much feedback from Gen X who have said, this is so relatable to me. And the next project that I’m working on is a book called brave beyond 30. And it’s all about learning how to accept our age as we get a little bit older and we age out of the male gaze. And so it’s.

Amber: The subtitle is tentatively Aging Defiantly in a Culture Obsessed with Youth. And I’m really excited with all the conversations that I’ve had with women who are a little bit further down the line than I am and the things that we’re learning and going through. I’m just, I’m very excited about that. I’m excited to tackle that topic and how self care shows up as we get older. As for where they can find me, you can find me at amberwardell.com. That’s where my daily blog is. If you sign up for the newsletter, you can get a free digital download called the Next Best Thing to Therapy. It’s for people who want to begin therapy but maybe don’t have access to it. And so it teaches you kind of how to do therapy from home.

Amber: It’s got self help prompts and things like that in there, journaling prompts and whatnot. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Sensible Amber. And I’m on YouTube, I believe is Amber Wardell.

Stacy: Yeah. And you have a great social presence, very engaging, a really interesting topic. So I really encourage everybody to go follow you. We’ll be sure to leave links in the show notes to your website, to your social profiles, and of course, to your book. Amber, thank you so much for joining me today. I really loved our conversation.

Amber: Me too, Stacy. I really appreciate being on with you.

Stacy: Today and thank you to you, the listener, for joining us. I’m. I know that you got some great tidbits from today’s conversation and maybe you’re feeling inspired to go and order Amber’s book and continue that journey of real self care. Thank you as always to Rita Domingues for her production of this podcast. I absolutely could not do it without her. And I am grateful if you’re still listening all the way to the end of the podcast. If you would just take 30 seconds to go and rate and leave a review, it truly makes a huge difference with reaching more listeners with the message of living a life that is beyond better. And I will be back with you before you know it.