The Megyn Kelly Show - Bridget Phetasy on Trauma and Recovery, Victimhood, and Marriage

00:00:00.580 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.160 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are off for a week this

00:00:16.540 summer, off with the kids, but we wanted to keep the podcast feed going for you with some

00:00:20.960 of my favorite episodes from the archives. Today, love, love, love to bring you my conversation

00:00:26.640 with Bridget Phetasy. Oh, epic. It was from episode 44. She's the host of Walk-In's Welcome

00:00:33.540 and Dumpster Fire, and she recently had her first baby. Well, back when I first talked

00:00:39.000 to her back in December 2020, she revealed to me and to the world for the first time

00:00:43.080 that she was married. Love the fact that she broke it on our show. It was a funny, it was

00:00:48.540 emotional, and it was an inspiring conversation on victimhood and entitlement, drug abuse and

00:00:54.820 recovery, overcoming some deep trauma, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy this as

00:01:00.780 much as I did the first time.

00:01:03.780 You and I have never spoken before, but we've corresponded on Twitter, and I am a big, big

00:01:09.520 fan of yours. I think you are one of the funniest people, but like most great comedians, one of

00:01:16.280 the most clever and smart. It's a great combo, and it's why comedians are so fun to spend time

00:01:21.120 with, at least virtual time in my case. Do you know you're funny? Like, do you know that

00:01:27.000 about yourself?

00:01:28.740 That's a great question. Thank you for saying that. That means a lot coming from you. I

00:01:32.640 really respect your work and your just work ethic and just your whole vibe, really. And

00:01:42.200 so I don't know that I... I grew up in an Irish Catholic, very big family. And I always joke

00:01:51.140 that my upbringing was like a roast battle. You kind of had to be able to tell jokes and

00:01:56.960 make fun of yourself in order to survive, or you would just be demolished by... It was

00:02:02.240 a huge family. So I don't know that it was something that I ever thought I was as much as

00:02:10.060 just a survival mechanism growing up. And then it became a coping mechanism as my life progressed

00:02:17.800 and there were some more challenging experiences. I definitely default to humor. So then it just...

00:02:26.100 As far as stand-up goes, it was something I never considered I could do. It seemed like

00:02:31.120 something that just really crazy, brilliant men could do.

00:02:35.220 Mm-hmm. So it's so funny because I'm noticing a theme. You're now the third guest I've had

00:02:40.800 on who has specifically cited her Irish Catholic background as the reason she's so outspoken

00:02:47.180 and sort of out there. First was Piers Morgan. Then there was Andrew Sullivan. Now there's

00:02:52.180 you. I too am Irish Catholic. So I don't know if there's like a theme emerging here, but it

00:02:58.100 bodes well for my little Irish Catholic, Presbyterian, Scottish, Dutch children, I guess, maybe.

00:03:04.360 I'm not sure which side wins out. We were very, very feisty and raised to be very independent.

00:03:10.400 And one of the things it's... I was just... I've been thinking a lot about my grandfather and

00:03:14.700 grandmother on that and my dad's side a lot. And they were just so resilient and funny. And

00:03:21.660 my grandmother never really took anything too seriously. They were just so optimistic. And

00:03:27.120 it was... It is that very Irish... Everybody's telling jokes around a funeral and getting drunk

00:03:35.900 and awake. It's just that very... That culture of laughing through your troubles. And I'm very

00:03:42.940 grateful that I was raised with that because I don't know how I would have got through. I remember I

00:03:49.100 was the kind of class clown when I was in rehab, for lack of a better word. And I was just trying

00:03:56.100 to keep everything light and uplifting because it was so heavy, obviously, when I was in a treatment

00:04:01.900 facility. And that really saved me, that and being able to write. I think those two things. But that...

00:04:08.700 I think that Irish Catholic thing is definitely... I always said I was a recovering Catholic. In many ways,

00:04:14.860 I've reclaimed some of that. But it is that just funny way to view the world in the worst calamities.

00:04:25.300 I was shown this... It was like one of those memes online that somebody forwarded with the Lucky

00:04:31.820 Charms box on the front of it. And it said something like, the Irish protest for the removal of the

00:04:36.740 leprechaun because it's offensive. And the bottom says, just kidding, the Irish aren't offended by jack

00:04:42.640 shit. We do the offending. We don't get offended. That's been my experience, at least. And I prefer

00:04:49.180 it that way. I mean, I do think it's hard to offend an Irish person. I think there's something in the

00:04:53.700 makeup that just makes them tougher, more like, I don't really give a shit. And I don't know,

00:05:00.100 just quicker to resort to humor. You're right, as a coping mechanism or just a bridge out of a

00:05:04.460 difficult situation. I was raised, too, to believe that feeling the need to be offended was

00:05:12.360 really just a way of feeling self-important. And it was constantly looking for ways to be

00:05:19.640 offended. It really drives home this idea that you're thinking very highly of yourself or your

00:05:27.020 opinion. And there is that hole in my whole family like, oh, come on, Bridge. What are you going to

00:05:32.400 cry about it? You know, there's that culture. That's so true. I never considered that. You're

00:05:38.520 right. It's more like, how many times have I told you that you're not special? Yeah. We've gone over

00:05:43.400 this, Bridget. Yeah. There's a that I you know, it has a kind of my my grandmother came from a very

00:05:50.380 she was that kind of came from the line of the stoic Irish women. And my dad tells a story about

00:05:57.780 being at his maternal grandmother's funeral. And one of the legends in our family was just that

00:06:02.660 my grandmother prided herself on really only having cried twice in her life. I don't know that

00:06:07.800 this is necessarily a healthy thing, but it was just kind of the you know, you talk we think a lot

00:06:13.660 about the legends that were brought up within our own family story, those stories that get passed

00:06:18.540 down. And she my dad was sitting next to her in the funeral and he was pretty young and he started

00:06:25.120 tearing up and she squeezed his hand so hard that it hurt. And he said, no. And she said, no tears.

00:06:31.200 We don't cry. And that was very much there is. And there is just that kind of East Coast. I was

00:06:37.440 raised in every summer going to Rhode Island, very blue collar family, like, oh, you're going to cry

00:06:42.720 about it. It was, oh, you're going to cry about it. My dad's one of 10. It was you couldn't it was

00:06:48.220 very hard to be a sensitive empath. And in our family, you were you were mocked mercilessly.

00:06:54.420 I always give my mom a hard time. She's Italian. So that's also a feisty side. And she's saying that

00:07:00.660 was the 70s. But she used to say, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. Oh, shit.

00:07:06.760 But it was a different time, too. And it is in part generational. I think, you know, that

00:07:10.920 these kids today, the really youngins there, I don't know, they're so quick to be offended. And I

00:07:16.620 think I think back to, you know, my own upbringing where we laughed at everything. I can't remember a

00:07:22.180 time when anybody got offended. We mocked each other mercilessly. It was a form of affection.

00:07:28.080 And it's not that I loved every piece of it, but it does give you a as you said, a coping mechanism

00:07:33.860 for when bad things happen to you in life. If humor is a go to, it really can be a soothing balm.

00:07:41.460 And I do think that this idea I was raised with, which seems to have gone out of fashion,

00:07:47.180 that life isn't fair. That was just I'm the oldest of five. So there was constantly bickering amongst

00:07:54.040 the siblings and and fighting over this or that. And the refrain growing up was, yeah, well, life

00:07:59.900 isn't fair. And as much as I couldn't stand that it was it's I'm again glad that that was kind of

00:08:06.560 drilled into me. My mother, too, is Italian and she's very feisty in that way. And it was my

00:08:13.920 grandmother used to say, go play in traffic. You know, we're being bad. She'd be like, go play in

00:08:19.460 traffic. And this is a woman who lived through the Depression and lived through war and had 10

00:08:24.940 children. And then all of them miraculously made it through their childhood. She lost one of her

00:08:31.140 twins. I think that was one of the only times she cried and childbirth. And she was just even at her

00:08:37.900 funeral. She had very specific instructions and she said, do not cry. I have lived an amazing life.

00:08:44.440 It was, you know, even even from beyond the grave, she's telling us not to cry. She she wanted it to

00:08:49.980 be a celebration and of her life. And she was always so grounded in optimism and gratitude. And I am I as I

00:08:58.740 get older, appreciate that more and more because life they just even reading my grandfather's letter,

00:09:04.420 he said he was 21 years old and he had this perspective of, well, this is life. Humanity's

00:09:10.340 always been this way. Maybe it's my time. Perhaps I'll get through. We have to. It's all it's life is

00:09:15.580 weird, but it's also great and fun. And just having that perspective at such a young age is it's

00:09:22.340 invaluable. It's I don't my biggest issue with the culture and where I feel the most disconnected

00:09:27.620 is where does a lot of the you know, there's this idea in recovery of playing the tape forward.

00:09:35.500 Where does the kind of victimhood mentality of assuming to always be offended, assuming

00:09:41.540 that you're a victim, where does that get you ultimately? The pride, the pride in claiming it.

00:09:48.540 Hmm. Right. I mean, they do it. They do it even when it's not true, because they think there's a

00:09:54.740 social status attached to victimhood. And they're right, sadly, with a with a certain contingent.

00:10:01.020 Of course. And that is true, except on, I guess, a more philosophical or spiritual level or just an

00:10:10.820 internal level. It would be the same as saying, oh, money's going to fix your problems or money will fix

00:10:17.160 your depression or go if you, you know, any kind of outward searching for status, I feel leaves us

00:10:25.660 empty on the inside. Ultimately, this is and this is I can only speak for myself, but this has been

00:10:30.400 my experience, whether I'm reaching for a substance or a person or a status of being perpetually offended

00:10:41.040 or a victim. It's still not grounded in self-esteem, resilience, knowing that I'm capable of taking

00:10:48.740 care of myself. Those have been some getting out of entitlement. These have been lessons that I've

00:10:54.200 had to learn very, very much the hard way. And I just don't see where telling people that they're

00:11:00.820 victims or telling people that this is a place where you can get status. Ultimately, they'll probably

00:11:06.280 end up in the same places if you are going to tell them that they are, you know, finding wealth will

00:11:11.060 be the answer to all their problems. Right. And it really just makes you an annoying whiner. I mean,

00:11:16.720 that's like no one gives a damn. We all have problems. We could all paint ourselves as victims

00:11:22.460 if we wanted to. Some of us, even despite massive life challenges, have picked ourselves up, moved

00:11:27.880 ourselves along and things have been fine. Look at Oprah, right? The number of childhood sexual

00:11:33.220 abuse incidents that she suffered, among other issues, very, very poor, black in the South at

00:11:39.120 a time when that was not a great status to have. There were open discrimination on the streets.

00:11:44.240 It wound up OK for her. She had a can-do attitude. Even if you don't like Oprah, you got to love that

00:11:49.440 about her. I love Oprah. And, you know, I want to talk about Oprah because I have some thoughts. But

00:11:53.220 I was just watching. First, we watched the King's speech with our with our oldest child. And then

00:12:00.240 we parlayed that into the one about Winston Churchill, our darkest hour, darkest hour.

00:12:06.260 So it had World War II in the brain. And I wound up those two films thinking,

00:12:14.140 we really need more conflict in our lives. We need more real conflict. Like there's a speech

00:12:21.480 with Winston Churchill. Like, would you would you want to fight or would you want to surrender to

00:12:26.120 Churchill or to Hitler? And the people are like, I'd rather die on the streets. And he's out there

00:12:31.740 like, we will die choking on our own blood in the streets before we surrender to this. And like now

00:12:37.060 we're like a microaggression. I need it. I need to save space to discuss it. Like stop it up for the

00:12:44.140 love of God and focus on something other than yourself. Yeah, it does feel very self-absorbed.

00:12:50.700 I'm reading. Have you ever read Alone in Berlin? No, it is. It's a novel written by Hans

00:12:56.560 Volata and he wrote it in 1947 and died short. He didn't even live to see it published. But it takes

00:13:04.120 place in 1940 in Berlin. And it's about the working class in Berlin who weren't on board with the party

00:13:12.380 and they were trying to it's based on a true story of this couple who were putting postcards all over

00:13:19.240 Berlin and basically resisting Hitler in whatever way they could. And there's this insane line in

00:13:24.640 the novel where the wife is talking to the husband when he's telling her about this idea. And she says,

00:13:29.560 isn't this so small? Isn't this enough? And he said, whether it's small or large, it will still cost

00:13:35.600 us our life if we if anyone finds out. And it was just so moving to me to think about what it was like

00:13:44.060 to live in this time and under Nazi Germany. And, you know, I recently wrote a piece of satire after

00:13:51.660 the election. It was the weekend after and I was reading through Twitter, which is never a great

00:13:58.200 but I, you know, I spent the weekend reading my grandfather's letters and then also reading Twitter

00:14:04.020 and people were literally acting like they just got back from the beaches of Normandy. I'm like,

00:14:09.500 you guys, what, what are you talking? The disconnect is so crazy. I can't. It was just,

00:14:15.720 um, I it's mind boggling to me. And then even reading this novel to think that people really

00:14:22.400 think now that they're living in those same conditions where people were disappearing, where

00:14:28.720 you could not speak out against the, the Nazi party. You could not say anything. It would,

00:14:35.780 you would be disappeared that to think that people think that this is what they're living in right

00:14:41.840 now. It we've done such a massively horrible job educating our children. I don't know what.

00:14:49.380 I've got to, I've, I've read it when you, when you published it and I, I pulled it for today because

00:14:55.720 I wanted to bring it up and just so the audience understands, okay, here's your, your satire about,

00:15:01.260 you know, those who made it through the Trump era. Um, here's an excerpt. It's not enough to

00:15:06.740 be racist. Mom and dad, you have to be anti-racist and anti-racist means hating white people. Not a

00:15:13.300 single day has gone by since the bad orange man brutally ripped our safe spaces away from us

00:15:17.340 that I haven't looked in the mirror and hated myself. So I've spent the last four years being

00:15:22.240 the best ally I can be posting truth bombs on Twitter, making resistance stories on Instagram,

00:15:28.220 screenshotting people's tweets for commander AOC. And then here's the last part. Not, not everyone

00:15:34.820 made it. The PTSD was too much. They'd jump at the sight of red hats, constantly bombarded by

00:15:40.880 violent speech, like only women get periods and symbols of colonial oppression, like the American

00:15:46.820 flag and math. It's just so smart, Bridget. You do a great reading of that, actually. It's really,

00:15:54.860 that's my interpretation. You read it in the tone that it was very much in my head when I was writing

00:16:00.240 it. I feel like another person takes over when I, when I write those like the, it's the part,

00:16:06.080 the parody of the people I imagine. But we did see that we saw it with journalists and with people on

00:16:12.120 the left who were like, I'm so exhausted from my battle. Yeah. Yeah. For you. I, I saw some tweets and

00:16:19.520 was like, after I, after I smoked this cigar, my wife had one more thing for me to do. And then it's

00:16:25.100 a picture of them hanging up, you know, hanging the American flag. I was like, you guys are, you are a

00:16:30.680 parody of yourselves. I can't, how am I supposed to take this seriously? And I just, it's been a, it's been

00:16:38.300 a really revealing five years for me. Somebody who by all accounts is, has become an accidental

00:16:47.060 pundit. It's not something I ever aspired to be. I find this space to be horrible. I don't know how

00:16:53.240 any of you have done this as long as you have and not aspirational at all. It seems, it seems cynical

00:17:01.640 and toxic to me. Some most day on good days, I'm like how people have managed in this space. It's so

00:17:08.200 hard. Um, and, and I somehow kind of tweeted my way into the crossfire of the culture wars and it's

00:17:18.700 been no matter what, I'm grateful for all that I've learned about myself in the process. I've really

00:17:28.640 been forced to ask myself, what are my values? Which is always a huge opportunity. That's true. If you spend

00:17:36.040 time in the political arena or this weird social media arena, which is pretty much one in the same,

00:17:41.260 you are forced to think about that. And I mean, it's no mystery to me why you've found yourself

00:17:47.680 succeeding here and you found yourself gravitating to it because you, you are smart, you're funny and

00:17:54.520 you're fearless. And that's the other requirement. You know, it may not be inspirational every day,

00:18:00.840 like the figures who are in this battle. Most of them are not, some of them are, but I, but

00:18:05.640 I feel like people who are out there like you and I, I, I would like to believe like me have our

00:18:10.960 armor on. We've got our armor on and we get our swords out and we're fighting, you know, we're

00:18:14.840 doing it. Like we're trying to do something to fight back. And, and that in and of itself is worth

00:18:20.380 something in these crazy culture wars. But I mean, maybe I'm the hypocrite because I feel like fighting

00:18:28.120 for the first amendment, fighting for the rights that are embodied in our bill of rights is worth

00:18:32.920 something. And that's not the same as I got somebody fired for a tweet today. Yay, me. I just, I don't

00:18:40.360 see the two things as equivalent at all. You know, they're in this fake moral battle to save us all

00:18:47.920 from the bad people we are so that they can emerge victorious atop and righteous. And I feel like then

00:18:55.500 there are those of us down here who are like, we're all good. We're all bad. We all have the right

00:18:58.820 to say and believe what we want. Get off of our backs. It's, it's, it's a very, this is what I've

00:19:06.860 pushed back against on the left. And it always, you know, I, it winds, I, I hear the, but Trump,

00:19:13.080 but we don't hear you pushing back. First of all, I came from the left. So it's almost like I see it as

00:19:19.320 my family more than I, I was not raised in a conservative household at all. In many ways I was

00:19:25.940 part of the liberal bubble. I didn't even, I think the best example of me realizing what a bubble I

00:19:32.560 was in. And I joke about this a lot is when I went on Glenn Beck's podcast and he was interviewing me

00:19:38.180 and I was sitting there like, did you know that the left has double standards? And Glenn's looking at

00:19:44.880 me like, yeah, I've heard, I'm aware of Bridget. Exactly. It's like an adorable, naive person who got

00:19:53.720 stumped, who it really, I am the kind of that classic person on the left who really just repeated

00:20:01.380 what I heard from CNN for all. I mean, there's really not a great word for it, but I would say

00:20:07.960 I was a quintessential libtard and I definitely didn't really do any research. I just parroted what

00:20:16.920 I heard and thought I was, because it is so much, uh, Michael Malice does a great job of kind of

00:20:25.220 explaining this idea of the cathedral, which isn't even his concept. I always forget whose concept it

00:20:30.080 is of the media, academia, entertainment, and me being so lost in this or, or kind of it's the water

00:20:39.640 that I swam. And I didn't really even realize that it existed and coming out of that being, I guess for

00:20:46.780 all lack of a great term here, either that it's being called red pill to a certain extent for me,

00:20:53.840 it was just being exposed to the whole entire spectrum of media and seeing how much I didn't

00:21:04.640 know about anything that was, that's been the most humbling part of the last five years.

00:21:10.580 And it started really when I was a playboy and I was tweeting about, um, something about,

00:21:16.520 there was a mass shooting and I was tweeting about guns and then I was getting pushed back from my

00:21:20.420 audience. And some of the critique was fair and accurate because I sat back and realized I know

00:21:26.380 nothing about guns. I don't even know how to shoot a gun. I don't know anything about the gun laws in

00:21:30.820 California. And I'm 100% just reacting emotionally to this, which fair enough, it's a horrible

00:21:36.400 tragedy, tragedy, but I don't know. And I don't know what I'm talking about. And so I had, I solicited

00:21:42.840 emails from my audience to tell me what they thought about what this gun debate is and what should be

00:21:48.720 done. And, and I got so many interesting, thoughtful essays from people all over America. And I sat back

00:21:56.580 and it really was a big moment for me of recognizing my limitations in the space, recognizing how little

00:22:05.040 I know about mostly everything. And from there, I really just started. It was a completely new

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00:23:27.180 dot com. You mentioned writing for Playboy, not necessarily being red pilled, but maybe purple

00:23:36.800 pilled. You sat back, you thought about it, you read, you started educating yourself, and then you came

00:23:42.060 to the very fun, if somewhat puzzling realization, and I quote, that boobs could save the world.

00:23:51.660 I really do think they can. I do. They're just they're they're the universal there. It's funny.

00:23:58.940 If you say boobs in a diner, men will pop up like meerkats. It's just like you can just say the word

00:24:06.360 anywhere and men's heads will just pop up. I think that it's there's something just a softening about

00:24:12.140 it. And I've been joking about this is I I was very provocative and very much an exhibitionist.

00:24:19.340 Some of this I'm again, I've been on just a very public learning about myself journey. Some some of

00:24:27.260 this has come about because I got sober in 2013, and then stumbled into this space. And now looking

00:24:34.720 back, I'm even looking at how I just how so much of my trauma played out publicly really without me

00:24:46.680 even realizing it things that I totally buried have come up and things. So I think that reclaiming my

00:24:56.400 sexuality, reclaiming my body. And, you know, this is a conversation that I don't even really know how

00:25:05.580 to get into. I've been trying to write about this for years, but there there has been this awareness of

00:25:13.360 how I feel that I regret being a slut, which I don't necessarily like saying because I I really

00:25:20.400 don't like slut shaming. But I also think that I was kind of lied to and I'm not saying this as some

00:25:28.960 victim, just that the culture was very much that if you use your sexuality, it is empowering. And I

00:25:38.680 have found that to be the opposite. And it's been a long road of healing and self-esteem and in some

00:25:46.220 cases, abstinence and lots of dirt bags in my life before I came to realize that I really had no

00:25:57.240 self-esteem. And if if you're coming from that place and weaponizing or using your sexuality, and again,

00:26:03.360 it's kind of like trying to find status or fill that hole. Stop it. Yeah. Sorry. No pun intended. With

00:26:14.240 something else. First, you're talking about the men popping up in diners at boobs. And now you're

00:26:18.200 talking about filling the hole. This is a good thing we had the explicit warning on this podcast.

00:26:24.080 Everyone I go on always gets the explicit. Yeah, it's it's it's definitely been a journey for me to

00:26:32.600 to really see the those. That's that's the weird thing is reclaiming my power as a woman,

00:26:41.540 but actually coming from a place of self-esteem and confidence and not coming from a place of

00:26:48.600 desperation or. No, I know exactly what you mean. You get sometimes women will look at other women's

00:26:56.260 behavior. You know, if it's promiscuous behavior and they go from man to man and you as a woman can

00:27:02.120 see there's an issue there, like not in every case, but in a particular case, you can see a woman's

00:27:06.520 looking for love in all the wrong places. Right. Like she thinks it's going to be fulfilling and

00:27:10.400 you can say, like, I don't I don't like it. I wish you would make a different choice. And the response

00:27:15.320 to that cannot be your slut shaming. No, it isn't. It like I'm trying to figure out why she's doing

00:27:21.680 that and whether it's well motivated. If you're just somebody who loves sex and you love multiple

00:27:25.560 partners and you go in and out of it with a clear head right on that, that's none of anybody's

00:27:30.900 business. But I like you have seen a lot of girls, younger women in particular, late teens, early

00:27:37.600 twenties play this game where they mistake physical affection for love. It's somehow in the moment,

00:27:45.680 an ego booster. And then after the fact, anything, but, and like a drug, they keep doing it over and

00:27:52.600 expecting a different result, you know, like a drug and a crazy person. All right. If you go to

00:27:57.040 the old definition and it's damaging, it's unhealthy. That's not judgment. That's keeping

00:28:03.880 it real. Like, yeah, that's not a good choice. It's certainly not a choice I want to see my daughter

00:28:07.780 make. Yeah. And it's definitely, there's so many mixed messages that you get. And I, it's interesting

00:28:15.340 just seeing the, you know, the numbers now with the kids, it seems like there is less sex than ever

00:28:21.260 before. So we've weirdly, I feel like there was an overcorrection and then there now seems to be

00:28:29.660 another strange pivot where there's, um, uh, again, it seems there's a moral, um, it seems strange,

00:28:42.960 but it's, it's strangely coming from the left. There's a lot of weirdness around sex, which is

00:28:47.760 something I wouldn't have necessarily expected. And wait, but what I don't follow. Cause I don't,

00:28:54.240 I don't read the playboy magazine that, and nor do I, I don't have my finger on the pulse here. What,

00:28:59.820 what is the weirdness coming from the left? There, there seems to be a lot of, I think it's more the

00:29:07.140 confusion around sexuality and gender and, and the, the conversations around this are so confusing.

00:29:16.180 And I think because of the me too movement, which is absolutely something that we needed

00:29:21.800 there again, feels like there's an overcorrection. And now we're having, um, just having to walk

00:29:29.940 through every step of, for instance, a sexual interaction and getting affirmation every step

00:29:37.380 of the way and having these, what are normally awkward situations that we all have to go through

00:29:45.500 and navigate? I feel like we're trying to hack our way out of it. And there's no way to avoid that

00:29:52.960 awkwardness in sexuality. You will have to go through that, whether you go through it when you're 13 or

00:29:58.500 14, or whether you go through it when you're in your twenties, there's no way around that awkward

00:30:03.840 learning about yourself. And I feel like now it's, it, there, there is this very strange, um,

00:30:12.840 kind of trying to micromanage this process and it's not possible. It just seems like now kids are,

00:30:22.840 are not having sex at all. You know, the numbers are, I think it's the first time in a generation

00:30:28.020 that the generation below Gen X, millennials, and then Gen Z are having less sex than ever before.

00:30:36.060 I would attribute a lot of this to just being kind of addicted to their phones and perhaps they're

00:30:40.460 doing it in a more virtual way with sexting and whatever other ways they might be getting that fixed.

00:30:48.060 But it still seems like there's less in real life interactions happening.

00:30:53.360 Well, it's interesting. So it's virtual and not virtuous. Um, Abigail Schreier was saying

00:30:58.980 something along these lines. She wasn't like, yeah, let's get all of our kids sexually active.

00:31:03.240 But she was saying, um, that one of the things you want to do in a young girl who, and you know,

00:31:10.800 her, her theory based on a lot of research is that there's what's happening with our young teenage

00:31:17.080 girls right now is, is a social contagion of transgender issues. And, and so in talking about,

00:31:22.780 how can we prevent that in our daughters? She was saying, you should encourage your daughter

00:31:28.740 to explore her own body, to be comfortable with her own body. And she, again, she wasn't saying

00:31:34.240 like, yeah, have her lose her virginity at age 15. But she was just saying there like watch the

00:31:39.760 shaming and things like that. It's, it's normal for you to be curious about your body for you.

00:31:44.300 Most, most women are straight. Most men are straight to be attracted to the person of the opposite

00:31:48.820 sex and to want to like figure that out a bit. And if you have too puritanical an approach,

00:31:54.560 it can backfire in severe ways. And so you got to figure out how to thread that needle. So your kid

00:32:00.160 treats themselves with respect, but doesn't get a complex.

00:32:05.980 Yeah. It's so, I, I can't imagine being a parent right now, teens or young, even young kids coming up.

00:32:12.040 There's so, there seems to be so much confusion. And even just from the younger generation,

00:32:18.120 the kids that I'm talking to, it just seems like there's a lot of fear, you know, they're

00:32:24.620 an abnormal amount of fear. And I remember, I remember my, we all remember our first kiss. I hope

00:32:33.280 most of us have the benefit of that first kiss. I remember mine, it was at a dare dance.

00:32:39.600 And I remember going to the anti-drug thing. Yeah. You found another vice.

00:32:47.920 Yeah. It's ironic. And they, then I remember going to second base and I didn't lose my virginity until

00:32:58.320 I was 17, which was actually pretty late for most of the girls in my high school had serious boyfriends

00:33:04.780 and we're already sexually active just with one partner. And so it was pretty, I'm 40. I just turned

00:33:12.500 42. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Yeah. So I, I was of that, um, younger, I guess I'm an exennial. Technically

00:33:23.660 I'm like the younger end of Gen X and, but I feel much more aligned with Gen X and I just remember

00:33:33.400 all of the awkwardness. And I wonder, this is why I'm not too judgmental of any of the kids in these

00:33:39.860 positions is if I was a teenage girl, I hated being a woman. I hated it. I've had the worst penis envy

00:33:48.140 my whole life. My, so much of my life has been defined by this, this just feeling like men had

00:33:54.760 it easier writing for playboy was eyeopening, really hearing men's struggles around things like

00:34:01.400 erectile dysfunction, balding, being short. I had no idea men suffered as much as women did. It was

00:34:08.320 eyeopening for me because I always thought they just had it easier period. And, and so that was just,

00:34:16.220 um, I don't know if I lived in a culture where I could just all of a sudden decide that I could be

00:34:22.720 another gender or not any gender when I was feeling awkward and my boobs were coming in and,

00:34:28.540 and I was just the awkwardness of puberty. If I could have found some way to short circuit that or to,

00:34:37.360 to change, I, I might've been all for it. Yeah. Yeah. I can't create a whole host of new problems in

00:34:44.620 your life. Um, no, but I, I think you have a, a, a great point and, and also, you know,

00:34:52.160 the number of layers now that we want to put between young men and women about to have sex for

00:34:56.440 the first time, thanks to, you know, all of the awful incidents of assault and misunderstanding and

00:35:03.460 actual rape and date rape and all of it. Um, it's scary, you know, and I, in addition to having a girl,

00:35:10.040 I have two boys and the last thing I want is for them to find themselves in a situation where

00:35:14.820 they've had what they fully believe is a consensual sexual encounter only to find out the next day,

00:35:20.700 the woman feels or, or is claiming she feels like she did not consent. And now they're being looked at

00:35:26.580 as criminals. And that's why you have things like sign this piece of paper before I get on top of you.

00:35:32.620 It's like insane. But on the other hand, you're like, shit, it's a really litigious society.

00:35:37.260 We are seeing women have what we used to call Sunday morning regrets, you know, which is not

00:35:41.700 the withdrawal of consent. It's just, you're sorry, you did it. Now you want to blame somebody.

00:35:46.820 And, um, it terrifies me, you know what I mean? Back in my day, Bridget, I'm, you know, I'm 50 now.

00:35:54.000 We like my first experiences, I remember being like, no, no, no, but I did mean yes. And my no actually

00:36:01.060 did mean yes. And I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not saying it does in every case, but like, I was just trying

00:36:05.760 to be a good Catholic girl and protest when I didn't really protest. And now everything's on top.

00:36:10.680 The world's on top, you know, it's upside down. It's, it's something I've really learned a lot from

00:36:17.040 the younger women that I, when I was writing particularly about relationships and I, I

00:36:22.580 definitely understand, you know, I was waiting tables up to three years ago and I worked with a

00:36:29.560 lot of younger women and they were so funny with the men who would, you know, touch their butt or

00:36:34.840 all the guys who were in the restaurant industry. It's like, if I fought every one of those battles,

00:36:38.800 I would, I would be fighting all day long. But these girls were like, don't touch me. Don't touch

00:36:43.640 my calf. Don't do that. They had language for it and they would stick up for themselves. And I was

00:36:48.640 so impressed with them. And they, and I was like, wow, I never even thought to push back. I just kind

00:36:54.220 of took it. And they're like, well, just because you old ladies took it doesn't mean we need to.

00:36:57.860 And they're not completely wrong about that. They definitely grew up in a, I'm happy for the

00:37:05.860 younger women that they grew up in a culture where they, it wasn't, it's not acceptable that

00:37:11.220 their manager is cruelly touching their leg when he's holding her while she's standing on a crate to

00:37:17.340 get some coffee down. Like the, the little, those little things that happen, happen all the time.

00:37:22.280 And it was great seeing these 19, 20 year old women being like, don't touch my calf. You're making me

00:37:27.060 uncomfortable. And yeah, no, that's, that's the good part of the meat. Yeah. That's the good stuff

00:37:34.340 that came out. Yeah. There's so much. And this is, I've written a lot about this because I don't want

00:37:39.240 to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And, and then there's the other side where I, I just,

00:37:45.180 they're just questions I have where I don't understand why too, if you're at college, you go get

00:37:51.160 drunk, you both sleep together. Now men are reporting women and I don't have any numbers on

00:37:57.840 this. I've just read a couple of stories about how there's a race to almost report because the first

00:38:04.820 person who reports is it's the victim. Exactly. And so there, there's this fear. And generally I don't

00:38:14.860 understand why if a man and a woman are both intoxicated and they're, they're the same level

00:38:19.020 of intoxication, you know, not a man who's slightly buzzed in a woman who's completely blacked out.

00:38:25.120 Why a woman, why she is kind of automatically deemed the victim in that situation.

00:38:31.000 She shouldn't be, she shouldn't be. I mean, true equality means no, she doesn't get some

00:38:35.560 special consideration just because she happens to be female and you can have female harassers and you

00:38:41.820 actually can have female rapists. Um, and I don't, I, if I were a man who thought a woman who was going

00:38:47.340 to do that to me unfairly, I'd have, I'd have to seriously consider that too, because some women

00:38:51.500 do use it and it, and that, and that undermines all the real victims. It does. And, and this was

00:38:57.680 kind of my, I'm, I say this as a woman, just so your audience isn't thinking I'm this, you know,

00:39:04.600 heartless person. I say this as a woman who is, who is drugged and raped when I was 18. So I had,

00:39:12.100 and this was a situation where it was, I was clearly the victim in a situation like this. And,

00:39:18.040 and it's a lot of, you know, me too, all of this stuff that's come up, all the Kavanaugh hearings

00:39:26.180 were really hard. It, all of this is, has forced me to do a lot of work around that trauma that

00:39:35.200 happened to me, but then seeing I'm a woman who believes in, in due process. And even if a bunch

00:39:43.820 of women came forward, I would about the person who did it to me because I never said anything

00:39:49.400 because I was so young and I felt bad and I felt ashamed and I felt like it was my fault and all

00:39:53.920 this other crap that wasn't true. Um, I, and I thought that he was, you know, I had, I really had an

00:40:00.660 interesting realization. This was the summer of Monica Lewinsky. And I remembered being,

00:40:07.160 I remembered looking at what was happening with her or around the same time as Monica Lewinsky's

00:40:13.400 stuff was going, you know, very public. And I obviously thought I didn't stand a chance.

00:40:21.000 I was looking at this poor woman who is 21 years old and seeing what, what was happening to her on a

00:40:26.480 public level. I'm like, yeah, I'm not saying anything. And I wonder how many women who came

00:40:30.800 around that era kind of was looking at this and feeling very similarly. So I just decided not to

00:40:37.920 say anything. And, and, um, if somebody came forward now and accused him, I would definitely

00:40:44.460 be right behind them. But I would also feel like he deserves his day in court. You know, I wouldn't,

00:40:52.320 it wouldn't be like, Hey, let's go to Twitter and ruin his life. I would want to have him go through

00:40:59.860 the process that everybody deserves. Well, so, so yes, the, the, the me too movement was largely good,

00:41:10.640 largely good just because it wound up, I think dying as a political movement. It got hijacked by

00:41:16.720 political people and used as a weapon, um, which was always the fear. Yeah. And so that's, that's

00:41:24.280 when I said, you know, I, I don't want to associate with that term or these people, Alyssa Milano. No,

00:41:31.200 she doesn't, she and I have nothing to do with one another. Um, I believe in the noble effort to

00:41:37.000 protect women in the workplace and women who are sexual assault victims and women who are placed in

00:41:41.700 these impossible situations from the really severe to the one you mentioned of the waitresses. That's

00:41:46.720 it's not okay. And it's right for women to stand up against it. Something not just when you were

00:41:52.440 younger, we'd never been doing. We really, as a, as a gender had never been doing. I too was raised

00:41:59.220 to think you just got to suck it up. And it's only very recently that I think women in this country

00:42:05.300 have started to think, no, I don't actually, I don't, but to round back on the, your larger point.

00:42:12.400 Um, it's interesting to hear you say, if, if someone came forward against your rapist,

00:42:18.980 you would stand and say me too, but is this somebody you've never named? Was there never

00:42:26.000 any accountability even after those Monica Lewinsky years? Yeah, no, but I, what made me think about

00:42:32.640 this was the whole Bill Cosby thing. And I wrote an essay, um, just on medium Bill Cosby rate me kind

00:42:39.560 of it. It's a, obviously not true, but it was me reacting to all of these women coming forward.

00:42:46.400 And my initial reaction was, Oh, isn't it a little late ladies? Don't you think? And I was

00:42:53.100 shocked at my own reaction to it because what happened to these women once I actually read about

00:42:58.520 it is pretty much exactly what happened to me almost identically. And I really had to look at

00:43:05.980 how much of the internalized shame still lived in me because I asked myself if a bunch of women

00:43:11.400 from the, that, that time and place came forward and they said, this is, this happened to this,

00:43:18.160 to me with this person. Um, I would, I would definitely back them up. You know, I would definitely,

00:43:25.260 um, but what would you go first? Um, that's a great question. I guess because it's been so long,

00:43:39.320 I, and I, that's a good question. I, I never even thought to, I never, even until this moment,

00:43:49.720 you know, I've told men and they're like, I'll go kill him. And then you end up kind of taking care

00:43:54.400 of them emotionally when you're telling them this horrible thing, guys, don't do this. Um,

00:43:59.120 and, and so I guess there's been moments, but it's never really even occurred to me. I think it just

00:44:06.220 seems like, um, something that I don't want to put myself through just because I've done,

00:44:17.200 I respect that. I respect you because I've done so much. Yeah. I mean, maybe I don't know that it's

00:44:23.400 happened to anybody else. You know, I don't, I don't, I only know that it happened to me and I

00:44:29.980 feel that I guess it never even occurred to me to do that because I've, I've done so much work

00:44:39.260 around it myself. And I just feel like it was something, God, it was like over 20 years ago.

00:44:45.640 Now it's like, do what I want to relive that all over again for, I don't think so. I don't, I don't.

00:44:54.080 That's, that's a very valid concern. I, I in no way think you are obligated to do anything there.

00:45:01.640 I think you're obligated to do what's right for you. And that's why I hate when women who find

00:45:06.960 themselves victim number nine, um, somehow feel the need in the press. It's never victims one

00:45:13.840 through eight, um, or rather victims 10 through whatever the ones who came after don't blame

00:45:20.020 them. But the press is constantly asking questions like, well, why didn't you, you know, like as if

00:45:25.400 it's your fault, anything happened after you and that's bullshit. You, every person has to do what's

00:45:32.520 right for her. And this is not an, an area in which every woman is wants to be Joan of Arc and

00:45:40.580 totally understandable. These are deep wounds that are deeply affecting, especially when you're 18

00:45:47.780 Bridget. It changed my life. I, Oh God. I mean, I, uh, yeah, I wish I could go back and,

00:45:56.580 and give that woman or girl. I felt so old. Like there, there had been so much stuff in my own family

00:46:07.740 life that I already felt so old, but I wish that I could have given her the kind of compassion and,

00:46:17.360 and, and just, I don't know. I didn't, I didn't have the support that I think you should give

00:46:27.220 somebody in those circumstances. And it ended up, it changed the way I felt about, I mean, I felt

00:46:34.680 dirty for years, years and dated men who didn't deserve me. And, um,

00:46:41.260 yeah, I was in rehab for a heroin addiction a year later. It was not, you know, my drug use

00:46:49.480 escalated drastically there. If there are moments in my life that are pivotal where you can put

00:46:55.400 markers down as to my behavior, going from one way to another, one would be my parents divorce.

00:47:02.100 The other would be this. It was like, I was, I was kind of already slipping. I had been doing

00:47:09.000 drinking and smoking pot all through high school. And then everything just escalated. I could not

00:47:14.880 get out of my brain fast enough. And then you put yourself in situations doing that, that,

00:47:22.380 that pile onto that shame and pile onto the feelings you're already feeling, which is why I think if

00:47:28.700 you're a woman who's struggling with any of this, or has had any abuse or, um, any assault in their

00:47:35.560 background and then they're like, Oh, I'm just going to try and sleep my way through this, which I

00:47:39.820 really did try to do. Like if I'm, I'll just try and weaponize sexuality and use, use it as a powerful

00:47:48.860 tool. Um, it was like a lie. I told myself for a really, a really long time, like a very, a very,

00:47:57.700 very, very long time. And it didn't really start healing until I got sober. And I mean, for the past

00:48:03.980 seven years, it's just been weeding through so much of all of that, uh, confusion and self-loathing

00:48:12.260 and shame. And, and so, yeah, I guess it just never even occurred to me because I was really on just

00:48:17.940 like a 20 year bender afterwards. And, and also just, um, you know, your character, again, I, I refer

00:48:25.520 back to what I saw even someone like poor Monica go through, your character just gets so assassinated,

00:48:32.980 even if you, even if I went on trial now for something like that, do I, I asked myself, do I

00:48:38.380 want to put myself through what their lawyers are going to put me through? Here's everything we know

00:48:43.240 about this girl from the past 20 years. And knowing my, my reaction to, um, you know, I was basically

00:48:51.580 rehab right after that. So I, you'd get dragged through the mud, even if you didn't go criminally

00:48:57.640 file, even if you just came out publicly, uh, there's very little question you'd get,

00:49:02.780 you'd get attacked as well. It's, that's why it's like, it's totally personal and it's not

00:49:08.380 uncommon at all to, after a sexual assault or a rape, go from man to man, looking for a different

00:49:15.020 result, looking to feel empowered, you know, looking aimlessly for just something, something

00:49:22.320 better than what, what came. I see your reminders when you, when you reach your anniversary, your

00:49:29.380 sobriety anniversary on Twitter, and you're, you never make them about yourself. You always make

00:49:34.040 them about all the people who are out there struggling and how you're thinking about them

00:49:37.860 and how you know how hard it is. And just hearing you sort of fill out the story makes it more

00:49:45.440 meaningful and also selfless of you. I mean, I knew that you'd been addicted to drugs, um,

00:49:52.540 including heroin. I mean, not that it's great to be addicted to cocaine, but heroin is so special.

00:49:58.380 It's a special lane. Um, but you're very, you're very giving to, to others, even in a form in which

00:50:06.240 you're bullied mercilessly, right? In which people are nasty. I know you've called Twitter the high

00:50:10.820 school. It's like a public high school again for adults. Um, so is that scary for you to be on there

00:50:17.780 talking about things as deeply personal as this, uh, in a place that really is not safe, um, and not

00:50:25.460 necessarily rooting for you? Um, it's another great question. I, I think I have to take breaks

00:50:34.260 and make sure that I'm okay. And that, um, I really, you know, I had a great experience. Um,

00:50:47.320 there's this kind of idea that in recovery, no matter how far down the scale you've gone,

00:50:52.860 you'll see that your experience can benefit others. And I never really understood how this can apply to

00:50:59.280 all things. And I was in, um, a meeting one day and a girl walked in, this is pre-lockdown

00:51:07.360 and she was really young and she had this look on her face and I, I knew it right away. I was like,

00:51:14.700 she looked like she'd been crying. And I was like, this girl is traumatized. This is not like I'm

00:51:19.940 having a bad day in sobriety, something happened. So I just sat next to her because I didn't want some,

00:51:25.560 like her, you know, there's often like weird, creepy guys in those rooms and whatever. Um,

00:51:30.700 they're, they're just weird or like a busy body. They're, they're just all kinds of personalities

00:51:35.340 and, and I love them all, but I, I've been around long enough to know that, you know, I,

00:51:41.600 I felt protective of her immediately and she couldn't really stay, uh, present. And she,

00:51:48.440 I was like, do you want to go outside and talk? And she went outside and her, she just kind of

00:51:53.040 started confessing to me about what happened to her the night before. And it was exactly my story

00:52:00.100 with variations, but very similar thing. And, um, I looked at her, she was the same age as me

00:52:08.600 as when it happened to me, 18, 19. And I looked at her and I said, the same thing happened to me.

00:52:15.080 And I'll never forget her looking at me and being like, really? Like that relief that somebody kind

00:52:21.440 of understood. And she said, what do I do? And I said, I, I don't know what to do, but I know

00:52:26.180 what not to do. And it's everything I did. And so I said, you know, let's go to, uh, uh, like a,

00:52:34.000 a rape sent, you know, one of the, there's so many great resources in California in particular.

00:52:39.860 And so we went, we did everything I didn't do. I, I, we went, she got a kid that she had counseling.

00:52:46.380 They were amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. I would donate all my money to the work that these

00:52:52.440 people do. It is unbelievable just the way they treated her and they gave her so many resources.

00:52:59.320 And, you know, she ended up, um, she was scared to tell her family. She ended up telling her mom

00:53:05.360 things that I just didn't do. And now it's like amazing. She's, she's, you know, been

00:53:11.080 sober. I, it was just like, if I went through that to be it for that one moment in my life,

00:53:18.900 it was worth it. It was 100% worth it. And I think that's kind of how to answer your larger

00:53:25.800 question. I think that's how I look at, um, the, the dealing with the kind of being open and then

00:53:34.980 dealing with the Thunderdome and the negativity to me, if I can reach through the darkness and reach

00:53:42.840 out to one person who's depressed or anxious or has been sexually assaulted or feels crazy because

00:53:49.300 they feel like they're politically homeless and no, you know, I hear this all the time is like,

00:53:53.100 thank you. I just don't feel crazy. Any, any of those, that connection is worth it to me ultimately,

00:54:00.080 because what else is all the crap that I went through for if not to try and lift other people

00:54:06.720 up? It, it, it just, um, I don't feel like a, you know, you said earlier that it's fearless and I

00:54:14.080 don't, I don't feel like I'm fearless. That's one area where I might feel like I'm funny, but I don't

00:54:20.340 feel like I'm fearless. That's something I feel like I'm just speaking. Um, it seems like pretty

00:54:27.740 unremarkable kind of common sense things. I don't feel like I'm saying anything that's like

00:54:35.160 radically, but knowing what's going to come your way. I mean, like that's, that is what you do,

00:54:40.680 but then you're very well aware of what's, what's going to come back. I know you've talked about,

00:54:46.000 you know, the messages back to you, aren't you? You're wrong. You're stupid. It's you're a hack.

00:54:51.120 You're worthless. You're garbage. I mean, it's like the worst, the worst shit on there. I mean,

00:54:56.520 Twitter is vitriolic and toxic. And so it is brave to be out there fighting on nonetheless,

00:55:03.540 trying to create a soft landing space for people who are also hurting. And I just, I,

00:55:08.260 I do have to tell the audience, I hope you don't mind. Um, that's how you and I first connected.

00:55:14.760 I was, I was seeing you get retweeted by people I knew. And then I followed you and it was literally,

00:55:25.560 I mean, gosh, it was like almost to the day. Um, I think three months after I left NBC

00:55:32.720 and I was still reeling and in a rough place mentally, just upset and sad and very teary and

00:55:42.320 not totally understanding what had just happened to me. And you DM'd me, you direct messaged me on

00:55:49.840 Twitter. And I, I hope you don't mind. I'm going to read what you wrote. You wrote,

00:55:54.800 I wanted to say, I wanted to say, I love you. I'm so sorry what happened to you. And I know you'll

00:56:03.460 land on your feet because you're strong and brilliant. You inspire me. And I wrote back,

00:56:10.720 thank you so much. You are so sweet. Just when I occasionally start to veer toward the place of

00:56:17.160 do people get it? Do they see the truth? I get a message like yours and it shores me up.

00:56:22.820 I'm doing well, enjoying some time with my family and deeply grateful for people like you.

00:56:28.480 Oh, I, it's funny. I, you know, I think I underestimate how much something like that can

00:56:34.380 mean from even just somebody, a random person. And I know now, but from my perspective, just seeing,

00:56:43.300 you know, you're in a different position, completely much more public, uh, obviously a

00:56:48.980 household name. It's a, it's like what I go through times a million. And so on days when I'm

00:56:55.400 getting it, I, I do look to people like you or Oprah or people who are, who have kind of carved

00:57:02.920 their way. And I guess I felt really compelled to reach out because it had happened to me, but I

00:57:09.900 don't, I guess I didn't think it was something that would even mean anything. You know, I'm like,

00:57:16.080 I've got tons of people around her. It meant so much to me. And I do have people around me, but

00:57:23.100 I, I, the fact that we didn't know each other made it all the more meaningful in a way, you know,

00:57:29.660 that you had no reason to try to shore me up. You had no reason to say what you said.

00:57:34.040 My good opinion of you wasn't relevant in your life. So it was sincere. That's how it felt. And

00:57:41.940 it was just like one of those thank God moments, because when you're getting attacked and that the

00:57:47.500 mob is coming for you, one of the things you do wonder is, can I still be seen? Is the real me

00:57:54.560 still, still visible? Yeah. You know, I know who I am, but I'm, I don't know if they've succeeded in

00:58:00.980 just painting me as this vile person and whether I can still be seen and messages like that, or

00:58:08.240 I don't know, you know, I'll be sitting on the streets in New York and somebody will come over

00:58:11.420 and say something lovely and, you know, like, yeah, good for you for standing strong, you know,

00:58:16.880 this bullshit or that stuff. That's amazing. Right. And, and you, I know you're a big writer about

00:58:23.060 grit, resilience for better, for worse. That's the kind of stuff that gives you grit and resilience.

00:58:30.340 If you don't fall down into a puddle and knock it back up, you emerge from those kinds of

00:58:34.520 experiences, grittier and more resilient and, and better able to fight the next one.

00:58:40.280 It's though. And it is those random things that I can't tell you how every time I felt

00:58:45.600 like giving up or just, I'm not even giving up, just ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I

00:58:52.500 that feels masochistic at this point? Why am I putting myself out there? And every single time

00:58:58.940 I've had that thought, I've received an email or a DM or a random message from someone just

00:59:06.080 out of the blue saying, I just want to thank you. And, you know, Glenn Beck gave me great advice.

00:59:11.860 He said, keep all of those things in a file for the days that you feel like when you're asking

00:59:19.020 yourself, why am I doing this? I want to disappear because that's where I go to is I just want to

00:59:24.660 disappear into the woods and have no wifi and become a writer or something, you know, or like

00:59:32.680 a, or a Unabomber. I don't know. I don't know what would happen to me alone with my thoughts.

00:59:38.160 Potato, tomato. Yeah. He wanted to be a writer. I feel like

00:59:42.920 that's really what we're wrong. We figured it out more with Bridget in just one second. But first

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01:01:11.640 scoremaster.com slash MK that's scoremaster.com slash MK. Uh, and now before we get back to Bridget,

01:01:19.400 I want to bring to you a feature we call real talk here on the Megan Kelly program, where we just talk

01:01:24.320 about something in the news or something on my mind, or, you know, something interesting and relevant

01:01:27.800 and it being almost the new year. I want to just take a minute and talk about 2020 and the coming

01:01:34.640 end to 2020. What a year, right? I do not agree that it was the worst year ever. Um, you know,

01:01:43.200 I think some folks who lived during the great depression or during world war two, um, or some

01:01:48.880 other terrible times in our country's history, like slavery, um, might, might disagree that this

01:01:54.640 is the worst year ever, but it, it wasn't a great one in many ways either. Just looking back and I

01:02:00.700 hate to ever mention names because you, uh, you always invariably leave one out, but some, some

01:02:07.000 people who we loved very much in the public eye died. The year began, don't forget with the death

01:02:12.560 of Kobe Bryant. It seems like so long ago, the country's been through so much that was so painful

01:02:18.800 for everyone. And then we lost some greats like Chadwick Boseman, Herman Cain died. That was

01:02:25.380 personally sad. Regis Philbin, Alex Trebek, people who have brought a lot of joy into a lot of homes.

01:02:31.820 Um, and of course, COVID-19, COVID-19, that is what this year is going to be remembered for

01:02:38.620 and the hell that it unleashed on the world. You know, the number of deaths, not just in our country,

01:02:47.680 but in so many countries and the pain, the financial pain caused by the pandemic and the

01:02:53.420 quarantine and the shutdowns, the anger caused to business owners who just wanted a chance to

01:02:59.660 make ends meet. And we're told no, the death of George Floyd, the black lives matter protests in

01:03:05.180 the street, the anger, we saw the craziness in places like Seattle where all hell seemed to be

01:03:10.720 breaking loose. The divisions that were sown in our country, both on cultural issues and political

01:03:16.960 as the election geared up, Joe Biden emerged as the victor over Bernie over Bloomberg, um, to take

01:03:24.260 on Donald Trump. The doubts Trump sowed about the election results and the ongoing anger over whether

01:03:31.940 he got a fair shake, you know, the country suffered the wildfires out in California. We're still not

01:03:38.900 healed from all of it. Definitely not healed, but we will be, we'll be okay. That's just the nature of

01:03:45.600 America and Americans. You know, I saw one of those, um, little memes online that had the number 13

01:03:52.740 saying I'm the worst number and the number six, six, six saying, no, I'm the worst number. And the

01:03:58.400 number 2020 saying, bitches, please made me laugh. I don't know. It's not all bad. It wasn't all bad.

01:04:08.180 I don't know about you, but I had time with my kids. I never dreamed I'd have, you know, and,

01:04:13.980 and part of it was stressful for sure. Distance learning and all of it. Part of it was totally

01:04:19.480 magical. Part of it was magical. And as I held my son, whose teacher died, Mr. Sorrell, who we all

01:04:28.100 loved, I didn't know him, but I loved him through Yates. I loved him through my son who loved him so

01:04:33.380 much and talked about him all the time. And he got COVID-19 and died too young. But in the midst of

01:04:39.480 all that I was with him, I was there to hold him. We were together as a family and we had stolen

01:04:46.500 moments that just otherwise wouldn't have come. One of those videos that was shared, um, there were

01:04:52.140 so many funny ones, weren't there during COVID. My, my favorite was of the woman, the blonde woman

01:04:56.200 drinking the huge glass of wine outside going, you okay? Yeah. Right. You need help. You're running.

01:05:02.580 Oh, you're, you're running by choice, right? Anyway, it was great. And she was seven in the

01:05:08.560 morning. What are you doing? She does it better than I did it, but it was a great one. But there

01:05:13.760 were really good ones that helped bring us together too. There was one that talked about

01:05:19.960 sort of the, a bedtime story being read to children about COVID-19 and the quarantine. And it was about

01:05:25.800 how despite all the awfulness, all the lives lost and the pain people felt real tears fallen.

01:05:35.140 There were these moments of togetherness and reevaluation and new perspective where the earth

01:05:42.320 had a chance to heal in some ways. We gave it a break, you know, we let it breathe where overworked

01:05:49.760 parents got some time to take a breath as well, where kids who normally are run from one activity

01:05:56.560 to another, and then to a sport, and then to a challenge after school or a club instead had to

01:06:02.100 sit at home with family and talk, right? Um, you can't spend every hour of the day on electronics.

01:06:10.400 You know, there was more talking, there was more eating together as families or as partners.

01:06:15.440 And when you saw your friends, it was so joyful, right? It was so joyful. When you got to see your

01:06:20.840 friends, you got to see your mom for the first time in a long time. My friends and I did a, um,

01:06:26.160 beer pong, you know, flip cup, uh, via zoom, which was hilarious. I'm like things like that. That's

01:06:31.480 what I'll remember. And then reuniting with them after so long. And the, the way it made me feel

01:06:36.280 right. The way we're starting to feel now, we're not out of it, but we're almost out of it.

01:06:41.340 The vaccines are coming. They're being distributed. They're being taken.

01:06:45.880 And we're right around the corner, right around it from normalcy.

01:06:50.340 One final piece of advice and thinking as we go into the new year, whenever I start the new year,

01:06:55.080 I try to say, before I say happy new year, the one word or motivation that I want to channel this year.

01:07:02.400 99% of the time it's love. And I just make that my own first word privately that I say,

01:07:07.660 just as soon as the clock turns, uh, to the next year. Um, but it's something to consider doing.

01:07:14.000 Um, and after that, I actually think there's much more value in just taking it day by day,

01:07:20.620 just taking it day by day and looking for little things to be grateful for in a day by day basis.

01:07:26.280 As you know, I'm, I'm not big into the meditation though. If it helps you, I'm all for it. Um,

01:07:30.520 I kind of do live my life in the moment and I think it's the key to health and wellbeing.

01:07:35.540 Just look around you and figure out what makes you happy. Put some flowers up, you know,

01:07:40.720 look out the window. If you don't like your view, try to improve it. Call a friend,

01:07:45.160 do something small. You don't have to go for the home run, right? Just go for the single

01:07:49.620 on a day to day basis though, and see how it makes you feel, but try to choose wellness.

01:07:55.360 That's for sure. Try to choose wellness. You know, the things that aren't good for you

01:07:58.460 and little steps like that will get us out of 2020 into 2021. Hopefully a little happier

01:08:06.800 and a little wiser for the wear. Now back to our guest.

01:08:15.260 I really loved what you said about, um, do people see me because we all, you know,

01:08:20.820 there are parts of me there. We all become a little bit of a two dimensional version of ourselves,

01:08:25.900 particularly on social media. And then the world tends to kind of flatten the personality down to

01:08:33.860 our worst moments or the worst tweets we've had in those moments when you might be going viral.

01:08:40.480 And it is, I'm not even kidding when I say some of my favorite moments are when I'm cleaning up my

01:08:47.520 dog's poop in my backyard alone, because I'm, I'm like, okay, you're Bridget. You're cleaning up

01:08:54.320 your dog's poop. You know, you're just a, you're just a little human trying to get through just like

01:09:00.080 everyone else. There's lots of other people cleaning up their dog's poop right now. You're

01:09:04.400 connected to them. You're, you're in the, in the, it's just that grounding. I need to,

01:09:10.620 I need to be grounded. And a lot of the people who reach out, and I will say this to the people who

01:09:15.740 have, who listen to people and have fans and, and I, I consider them less fans and more just

01:09:22.640 friends reach. You never know, reach out, reach out to those people that you see. And also just like

01:09:29.080 people in your life who are, who are going through it because you don't know when that is the right

01:09:35.620 timed, exactly right time message that somebody needed. You know, I'm getting more and more to

01:09:41.240 the place in my life where I think I was just saying this to Abby the other day that, that where I think

01:09:46.600 that my assistant and like my little sister, um, I, I think when tough times come, I'm putting more and

01:09:56.440 more value into getting yourself out of that place mentally, even when it's happening. Like it's

01:10:01.380 cognitive behavioral therapy, but I used to be much more like, you've got to feel the pain in order

01:10:06.300 to get through the pain. Otherwise it'll all be bottled up inside of you. And then it'll spill out

01:10:10.480 in some negative way. I'm not sure I believe that anymore. I having been through quite a few of these,

01:10:16.560 you know, public things that are painful personally, I really kind of think, do what you need to do to

01:10:22.280 keep your mind off of the awfulness as it's happening. And then when your mind eventually

01:10:27.180 does have to go back to the awfulness, hopefully it's not so bad. That's, that's kind of been my

01:10:31.720 experience for me. Can I tell you the things that I did that like really helped me over the past

01:10:37.140 couple of years? Um, number one, crossword puzzles. The New York times crossword puzzle is a son of a

01:10:44.220 bitch. Monday's wonderful. Tuesday's great. Wednesday's still doable. Thursday's an M effort. Friday is

01:10:51.920 okay. Saturday. I don't want to talk about, um, anyway, it, it really does keep your mind off of

01:10:57.420 problems because you must think it's not even just mindless work, almost like a crossword puzzle. I

01:11:02.640 mean, uh, an actual puzzle, you know, where you could still think as you're looking for the piece

01:11:06.520 crossword puzzle, you have to be thinking using your head. So I really recommend that. Um, I'm going to

01:11:11.600 confess that my other vice that really helped keep my mind off my troubles was dateline podcasts

01:11:19.360 all about murder. Yeah. Women, women and their murder, their murder. They're funny. I get it.

01:11:30.100 Now I, I used to think we were just sick for me. It really takes your mind off of it. I think most

01:11:35.220 women are obsessed with crime because let's face it. We're usually the murder victims. Yeah. And we grow

01:11:40.760 up knowing that we get exposed to the news. And I do think most women have terrible, not fantasies,

01:11:45.520 but like nightmares about nightmares. Yeah. Being killed. Yeah. It's my worst nightmare. Yeah.

01:11:50.940 In a way it's taking an awful thing and turning it into a slight positive for yourself mentally

01:11:56.020 only that you're not that you're reveling in somebody's murder, but it just gets your mind

01:12:00.260 off of things. If these are compelling, intriguing stories that you fear one day may have personal

01:12:05.520 relevance, but you know, logically likely will not. And it's just, it's, it's jarring enough to get

01:12:11.800 your mind off of it. Like if it were something like, I'm going to watch an old episode, a little

01:12:15.000 house on the prairie, your mind would wander back. But you're talking about like a serious crime.

01:12:19.460 No, it works. And the third thing I will confess, cause I've never been a big, well, I used to teach

01:12:24.920 aerobics, but since I became a lawyer and like kind of gave up all things to working at the office,

01:12:31.020 including working out, I haven't been a big exerciser, but I got into exercise. I started taking this

01:12:36.820 thing called the class here in New York city. And it really helped, really helped getting in shape

01:12:41.660 physically and group exercise with other people's before COVID. Uh, I loved it. And just for what it's

01:12:49.140 worth for people who are out there struggling, I think some sort of group exercise where it's not

01:12:52.540 like a personal trainer. It's not like something where you, you could think, but stuff where you can't

01:12:55.960 think. And before you know it, you're across the bridge and the water's less stormy.

01:12:59.900 It's so true. We started doing these in my little community that I have in lockdown. I, I definitely

01:13:07.080 need to sweat in order to stay sane. That's just been a huge part of even sobriety for me, but also

01:13:13.740 just, I know that a 20 minute sweat can completely shift my brain chemistry and my entire perspective

01:13:20.560 and mood. And then I started doing just these group workouts where I would stream the workout on

01:13:27.120 zoom with, um, people in my fantasy.com community, the women. And it's been amazing. It kept me so

01:13:33.580 grounded. We were accountable to each other. It's been something to just take our minds off being,

01:13:39.220 um, a lot of this stuff going, it's a half an hour, 45 minutes where we just get to focus on

01:13:44.360 sweating. And, and there's a really big feeling of sisterhood. I definitely have to lean into that.

01:13:51.460 I love the, the crossword puzzle is a good idea. I, I think that meditation has been life-changing

01:13:58.620 for me just from, uh, looking at noticing my thoughts instead of identifying with every single

01:14:06.720 one that has been just so helpful to me. I love pretty much any and all meditation apps, but I, I do,

01:14:15.460 I do listen to Sam Harris's a lot because his is a lot more, um, you know, science scientific in many

01:14:21.720 ways. And see, I can't do meditation. I, when I sit there, it's the same as me getting a massage

01:14:27.520 where I'm like, ah, I'm drifting my problems, problems, problems, problems. That's why I need it

01:14:32.300 though. That's why I need it. Come out, but I can't, it's still there. The problem. Yeah. I'm like,

01:14:38.580 that's why I need something more demanding. I started with three minutes and now I can,

01:14:43.780 now it's now I law it's just, but it's, it's been the, it's a challenge. There are days.

01:14:49.080 It's absolutely a practice. Just noticing my mind and how different it is and where it's at every

01:14:55.700 single day is fascinating. It's just fascinating. How about massage? Are you, when you get a massage,

01:15:00.980 can you quiet your mind? I mean, it's tough. I'm pretty chatty a lot of the time, but I,

01:15:06.520 I'm like the girl that gets a massage and just wants to know everything about the masseuse the

01:15:10.940 entire time. So you're the one who ruins it for the rest of us. I try to relax. Yes. I try to relax

01:15:19.060 and it's, I do think that massage body work in general, acupuncture, there's something about

01:15:25.700 acupuncture where you put that needle right between my eyes and I, my brain is like, like it just goes

01:15:33.300 flat line. It's silent. It's just, there's something about acupuncture that is, has been

01:15:38.820 helpful. I've, I've joked that it takes a village to keep me sober being the other thing that really

01:15:44.380 helped me is, um, being a service. I will say there's a difference I think too, between, I mean,

01:15:51.900 I don't know, maybe not. I think because one of the things I've noticed is grief behaves in a very

01:15:58.020 different way than, you know, I think what you and I are talking about challenges in our life or,

01:16:02.940 or picking ourself back up or overcoming hardship. And then there's grief, which is like a completely

01:16:09.620 other animal where you'll be standing in the grocery store and you'll start, you'll be fine

01:16:14.460 cruising along and then you'll be crying. Grief is weird. I completely agree. Although I will say I was

01:16:22.180 recently looking for this quote, um, by Ethel Kennedy, you know, the, the matriarch of the

01:16:27.440 Kennedy family, who's obviously she had two sons assassinated. There was so much tragedy in that

01:16:32.780 family. And so much, I could, I couldn't find the quote. I'm going to have to look it up, but it was,

01:16:37.720 somebody was asking her, how did you deal with all of this? You know, good God, how could you

01:16:42.120 possibly, and her eldest son was killed in like world war two and a plane crash. And how did you,

01:16:47.500 her answer was essentially, I just got through it. I just like, she didn't, she tried not to stay

01:16:55.640 wallowed in it. You know, she was like onto the next thing. And that's so much easier said than

01:16:59.760 done. And I wish I had gotten to ask her those questions. Cause I would have been like, well,

01:17:03.260 but how, but what exactly? Like, what about when your mind got overwhelmed with sadness, then,

01:17:08.360 you know, how did you avoid that if you did? Or, you know, there's so much more to know because

01:17:12.640 you're right. Grief is in a special category, but when you mentioned it, when, when you mentioned

01:17:18.180 the word, I go right to the loss of my father. When you talk about grief, what, what are you going

01:17:25.980 to? Um, I lost a lot of friends young. So I, I mean, by the time I was 21 years old, there were just,

01:17:34.380 I had been to so many young people's funerals that I was like, I cannot ever watch a parent bury their

01:17:41.620 kid again. I, I just, it was ridiculous. And I don't know if it was because I moved a lot. So

01:17:47.380 I had a lot of different friends all over the place because I ran with them more. Um, it was a

01:17:53.040 lot of just young teenagers drunk, getting killed by drivers, driving, um, really tragic, amazing

01:18:01.060 lights. And, um, I think about them still, still, still to this day. And so my mind goes to there and

01:18:11.140 then my grandparents were really hard. Um, I feel like there's just been a lot of loss and a lot,

01:18:20.680 a lot of loss around me, but I agree that there is something to be said for just, I also recommend

01:18:27.740 therapy. You know, my therapist has a great technique where when I'm in that kind of, if it's

01:18:33.200 grief or even if I'm feeling sorry for myself, you know, she says self-pity is totally normal.

01:18:39.100 It's not something you, you indulge in, but give yourself, if you're feeling, um, grief or,

01:18:47.140 or loss, or you're feeling sorry for yourself, give yourself a time. She's like close the blinds for

01:18:52.320 two hours, feel sorry for yourself. Or maybe it's a day if it's something really bad and eat your ice

01:18:58.080 cream and cry. But then you open the blinds and you, you basically put, you know, guardrails around it.

01:19:04.860 Like, here's the time you're allowing yourself to feel this and allow yourself to feel all those

01:19:10.120 feelings. Don't judge them, let them come and then open the blinds and start your day again.

01:19:15.200 And I, I like that. That is how I used to, I see it by the way, I was talking about Rose Kennedy,

01:19:19.560 not Ethel, but, um, that is how I used to see it. But I am telling you, I morphed away from that.

01:19:25.760 I'm not sure you even need the couple of days. I, I might be becoming a true Irish woman and

01:19:34.100 advising you to swallow all your feelings. I'm with you because I'm definitely the tough,

01:19:41.600 I I'm not the friend people. They're like, Oh, you're my friend. I come to when I need my butt

01:19:46.020 kicked. So I'm definitely not the, the friend that's going to coddle you. I'm the tough love

01:19:51.420 friend. I mean, I'm just like, bury that shit deep, like the greatest generation and get back

01:19:57.700 out there. I think we're onto something. I think there's a reason they handled as much as they did

01:20:03.200 without whining, you know, like my Nana, my Nana, she died in 2000, um, 2016, right after president

01:20:11.620 Trump, right before president Trump was elected, she, she died, but she was born in 1915. So she's

01:20:16.420 101 when she died. And, uh, this is a woman who, you know, she went through the great depression.

01:20:22.020 She went through world war. She went through the civil rights movement. She went through like

01:20:25.860 all the stuff that she saw, the Vietnam war. And she had to drop out of high school to help support

01:20:30.740 her family. And their money was tight. They had no dough, blah, blah, blah. She never complained about

01:20:35.180 that stuff. She complained about like, she, she wanted to make sure she got the right table at the

01:20:40.600 diner. She wanted her free bread. She wanted her senior citizens discount. It was that shit. You

01:20:45.820 don't worry about all this other nonsense, but wait, so I want to, I want to, I want to back up

01:20:51.220 to a couple of things. Uh, number one, let's not, let's not move on without spending a minute on

01:20:55.480 Oprah because I've had evolving feelings on Oprah. And I, I heard you, you said you loved her.

01:21:00.960 I used to be obsessed with Oprah obsessed. I wanted to be just like her. I, I loved her show.

01:21:06.540 I want to tell my Oprah show. She was so helpful to me, you know, just, I didn't know her. I just

01:21:12.920 mean her show. I, I found it so inspirational. Um, she was just in my head, like her advice over

01:21:19.960 the years, whether it was about physical safety or mental wellbeing or dealing with tragedy,

01:21:24.900 blah, blah, blah. But I didn't like it when she got political, even though I'm an independent,

01:21:30.800 you know, it wasn't like, Oh, how could she support Barack Obama? I was like, okay. Then she seemed to

01:21:34.920 get more and more political. And I, I started to feel a distance from her, which is why they say you

01:21:40.360 shouldn't go political. Cause you're going to create a distance between you and at least half

01:21:43.720 your audience. I felt that. And then she started, started to sign on to some of the victimization

01:21:50.180 talk that we're hearing now, which she had never, ever done before. And this is a country that's

01:21:54.400 made her a billionaire a couple of times over. She literally lives in a ranch called the promised

01:21:58.220 land. I don't think a lot of people want to hear about how hard she's had it as a black woman

01:22:03.440 in America. I really don't. I think it's like Meghan Markle, like you married a prince,

01:22:07.740 live in a castle, boo, fucking who knowing, no one feel sorry for you. Uh, and so she started

01:22:13.620 to lose me cause she just started to sound more leftist in her narrative and less inclusive.

01:22:20.840 And I, I just sort of felt myself like separating from her, like in the long hallway in the movie

01:22:25.760 theater where you get pulled up, pulled apart and you're reaching out for the other person.

01:22:29.580 Of course she wasn't reaching out for me at all, but I was reaching out for her. And then before I

01:22:33.040 knew it, I could no longer see her. Here's, here's my theory on this. And it's based

01:22:37.620 on a tweet. I was tweeting about somebody who was going off on billionaires and they were

01:22:43.580 talking. I think it was when, um, the Howard, whatever the guy who started a Starbucks, what's

01:22:50.560 his name? Schwartz. Is that his name? Um, Schultz. Thank you. He, when he was running for president,

01:22:57.900 they were all like, Oh, a billionaire, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, Oh, so you guys are

01:23:01.760 going to be mad if Oprah ran for president. And I was schooled by all of the blue check

01:23:09.420 leftists who thought, Oh, you thought you were funny and dunking. And they were like, yeah,

01:23:12.780 we would, this is, we do think that she's, that it would be bad. And that it's bad that

01:23:17.980 she's a billionaire because a billionaire is a failed policy. This is like that, that kind

01:23:22.080 of rhetoric. And I was shocked. I was, I was really surprised to hear this because I hear,

01:23:27.960 here to me, Oprah is the epitome of the American dream. Somebody who picked herself up, overcame

01:23:36.340 her own internal demons, started an empire, helped millions and billions of people and

01:23:43.800 made her own way and made billions of dollars. You would think this is somebody that they would

01:23:49.300 say, Hey, look, this is my theory is that Oprah sees that, that this is actually a class

01:23:56.940 war and that there is some resentment towards her because she's a billionaire. And so she's

01:24:02.640 pivoting into that place that you are talking about to try and maintain a connection to who

01:24:12.840 she thinks is her audience. This is only my theory. Now I went to the taping of Ellen and

01:24:19.840 Oprah that happened recently in the past couple of years. Say what you will about Oprah or Ellen.

01:24:25.260 They were dancing with this woman who I came to find out was had a couple of months. Her husband

01:24:31.120 was sitting there crying. I'm like, these people, they move people, you know, they, Oprah has been

01:24:36.800 in people's lives and hearts and minds, but then they sat down and had the most unrelatable

01:24:43.560 conversation that I've ever heard in my life. Because here you have a lesbian woman and a black woman

01:24:51.300 who are basically, I mean, billionaires. I don't know that Ellen is yet, but I'm sure she's on her

01:24:56.040 way. And they're talking about, joking about how they wanted to buy all the property. I don't know if

01:25:01.440 this ever aired. I hope I don't get in trouble for telling you the story. I think, I don't know.

01:25:06.140 So they're talking about how they were joking about how they were, were neighbors at one point

01:25:10.300 and then they weren't. And then they're like, we should just buy all the property in between

01:25:13.560 our new houses. And I was laughing, but I'm like, this is probably not the most relatable story to

01:25:19.640 be telling. Well, that's, that's one of the problems. I mean, listen, I, I hate wealth shaming

01:25:24.260 because it's part of the American dream. Um, but it definitely, I, I think for Oprah to sort of

01:25:29.580 pretend that she's still a woman of the people while she's out there every other weekend on David

01:25:33.480 Geffen's yacht. Um, maybe it's time to admit that's been like about 50 years since he really

01:25:39.880 understood how anybody lives in America and that'd be fine. You know, like you've got to own that.

01:25:44.900 But Ellen does have something like, I don't even know how many houses, dozens and dozens of houses.

01:25:49.300 And yet she's supposed to be America's sweetheart. And then all these reports come out about how nasty

01:25:54.320 she is. People do do that to you when you're well-known, but I will say in the case of Ellen,

01:25:58.860 I know somebody whose sister worked for her, who just had the most awful things to say.

01:26:05.400 So I've heard the opposite though, from people who have worked for her who say she's lovely. So it's,

01:26:10.480 I, I mean, that's all that seems to me. Like it, I don't necessarily want to litigate whether

01:26:16.440 Ellen is a horrible person or not. I do. I just don't. It's funny to me that I feel like so much of

01:26:23.660 the divide that's happening in America is a class war. It's much easier to keep us divided by race.

01:26:29.600 This is something I've been talking a lot about and by victimhood and by this oppression Olympics

01:26:34.560 and dividing us all up into groups then because the American working class, if we were all not

01:26:41.300 divided like we are, we'd be enormously powerful block of people. And it's much, I just think that

01:26:50.340 these, there is a lack of, this is the funny thing about once you are wealthy, you do just lose touch.

01:27:00.580 You saw this. We saw this recently with Cardi B tweeting about her $88,000 person, whether or not

01:27:05.520 she should buy it. And her audience came for her. And you know, this is, and I was joking on Twitter,

01:27:11.360 like this is a woman who promoted Bernie and like you fed this beast. You fed, there is absolutely

01:27:18.020 a resentment towards wealth. And I would say that Ellen and Oprah for all of their personal flaws,

01:27:25.980 like whatever they might be, they have touched millions of people and they've brought joy into

01:27:32.180 the hearts of millions of people and help people get through struggles. And they are massive because

01:27:38.300 that's what they've done. You know, that they built their empires on truly connecting to people.

01:27:45.240 And that is, but, but I don't begrudge them any of that money, but don't you see it? Like I don't

01:27:51.520 begrudge them at any one ounce of their success. It's all earned. But the problem is in both cases,

01:27:57.480 really, they got very political. I mean, Oprah got very political and alienated half of her base.

01:28:02.660 You know, I mean, I, I don't know a lot of Republicans who still love Oprah and same with

01:28:06.980 Ellen who said, you know, she would never let Trump come on her show. She got shamed after that

01:28:11.580 picture with George W. Bush. And then it was just like coming for it. That's a hundred percent when

01:28:16.820 they started coming from her. And instead of, you know, that being like a moment of kumbaya,

01:28:20.080 it was a moment of Ellen sucks. I mean, that's our country right now. But I do think if you're,

01:28:24.700 if you want that universal love and you want to be that transformative figure,

01:28:28.180 you've got to stay a political as hard as it may be, you got to do it. You got to be a Dolly

01:28:33.600 Parton, you know, or a Betty White who never touches it. Cause it's just, yeah, as you well

01:28:39.140 know, when you get political, people get angry, they get angry with you. How do you think they do

01:28:45.760 that though? In so a, I would never, I, if they feel that it's there, this is where it's, I feel

01:28:54.460 really conflicted about these things because if, if somebody has that kind of platform and wealth,

01:28:59.680 I feel like it's well within their rights to say whatever they want to say. And if they feel

01:29:04.380 like they need to get political at the risk of alienating their audience, I think JK Rowling is

01:29:08.760 a perfect example of someone who might be doing exactly this. Oh, I don't think there's anything

01:29:12.820 wrong with it. I just think be prepared, be prepared for what's coming because you will like

01:29:18.300 Ellen's learning, you will no longer be America's sweetheart, you know, and like you can't hold both

01:29:24.760 roles. I do. I do. Because I think most public people need that affirmation.

01:29:29.300 I do. I think it's a life. Interesting. I mean, I wonder, that's, what's so interesting

01:29:34.100 is that you become kind of disconnected. I think by, by the sake I dated a very wealthy

01:29:40.120 man who's in that level of wealth and it was, I call it the zoo of the 0.01%. I'm like, this

01:29:46.460 is another week entirely when you're that wealthy. It's also sort of finished my Oprah story. I

01:29:53.340 was, she's after she does her whole little talk, she's standing kind of right in front of

01:29:58.600 me. And the crowd is, is waving and she basically puts her hand up like a queen and is just letting

01:30:08.620 people kind of touch her hand. Like she's royalty. You hated yourself for wanting to do it, didn't

01:30:14.920 you? She wouldn't even, oh no, I absolutely, it was funny because I was like, I'm touching

01:30:19.320 her hand. And I was like, I hope I get Oprah's pneumonia because she just talked about how she

01:30:23.480 had pneumonia. And it was just a funny, it was a really, it was really interesting because

01:30:29.200 I have, I think there's what we view these people as, then you see them as people. But

01:30:35.260 like I said, her, I mean, I was at a show at Coachella and VIP once and Beyonce and Jay-Z.

01:30:41.840 I felt them walking towards me from behind before I turned around. You could feel their, their star

01:30:49.440 power is just that level of star power is so crazy. Rihanna, I was at a restaurant once and Rihanna

01:30:56.140 came in and their level of star power is it's like something I've never seen in my life. And that has

01:31:04.620 got to alter you, like your brain chemistry. When you have everyone around you, I don't even know how

01:31:11.940 you, how can you possibly stay normal in those conditions?

01:31:14.940 Yeah. That's like Rosie O'Donnell when she used to be a nice and be famous. Um, she, she openly

01:31:23.440 guys love her too. Boy, oh boy, did she change. But, um, she talked openly about how she, when she got

01:31:30.720 really famous, you know, she had that talk show by herself as long before the view and she was a

01:31:36.020 famous actress and she had a magazine just like Oprah's like Rosie. Um, she literally started to

01:31:42.880 believe that the laws and the rules did not apply to her. Like she talked about how she thought she

01:31:47.220 could go through the red light without, you know, like that she was entitled. So it can be, you see

01:31:53.340 this with celebrities like Tom Cruise or whatever, they morph into otherness because that, that level

01:31:59.680 of fame and money, I don't think it's good. I definitely don't aspire to it so long. I mean,

01:32:05.300 and this is the question, do you, so do you aspire to be not political?

01:32:14.680 No, I don't. I have no aspirations. I don't, I don't, I want to be a good mom. Uh, and I am,

01:32:22.400 you know, it's like, I, I wasn't. And then, and then I changed my life and now I am, I wasn't like

01:32:26.460 a bad mom. I just wasn't a present mom. Um, but honestly, other than that, I want to do right by

01:32:32.700 others while I'm here. I don't care. I never, even now. Okay. Now I have dough in the bank and I am

01:32:38.200 well known, but I don't really give a damn. And it was, that was never the goal. My, my goal was

01:32:43.140 to do well. I love to be excellent at something, but it wasn't even to be relevant. It certainly

01:32:48.980 wasn't to have power. It was just the, the, the joy of a job well done. That is a pleasure. And I'd

01:32:57.080 like to continue having that feeling. And I, you know, I can, I, one of the things I love about

01:33:00.820 journalism is each day, you know, it's, it's a show and you have the chance of doing, if not

01:33:07.080 the perfect show, then close to it, you know, close to it. And if you don't, tomorrow's another

01:33:11.720 day, you could try it again. Whereas like the law was incredibly frustrating because it never went

01:33:17.620 away. It was just this mountain of paper that continued to build increasing acrimony, nuclear

01:33:22.140 war style, you know, fighting. And you could, you could say hand in the perfect brief, but there'd

01:33:28.100 just be no time to sit and enjoy the spiking of the ball. It was on to the next battle and

01:33:31.900 the never ending fight. So I don't know that that's one of the few things I can say that's

01:33:36.280 positive about journalism.

01:33:38.280 Is it, is it just, is it just that you, I guess my question is what I, I'm not surprised

01:33:46.160 by Oprah's kind of pivot to where she pivoted. I, I don't necessarily agree with everything

01:33:53.460 she's saying. And I guess I haven't really, um, yeah, I guess I haven't listened to her

01:34:00.200 as much. You know, I, I, I really don't, I, I think I understand what you're saying and

01:34:08.000 that it does cause a disconnect because I, but I, I don't know if that disconnect is because

01:34:16.100 she's just not, she just hasn't really been connected to the common person. And now she's

01:34:21.300 trying to reconnect through politics. And Oh, so my other question is, do you think that

01:34:27.340 they feel pressured? You know, there's an enormous amount of pressure for people all the time,

01:34:33.420 which I think is crazy. And I'm always saying this people during running up to the election,

01:34:37.660 when I was saying I wasn't voting for anyone, people were like, this is just shameful. You,

01:34:42.720 it's your, you need to speak out. You, people were bullying me basically into being a bully.

01:34:48.300 They want me, everyone, everyone who has a platform is supposed to speak their opinion

01:34:53.020 and tell people, other people what to do. And I'm, I'm not even, I feel no, I'm not really,

01:35:00.600 um, it's not my place to tell people what to do. It's, I have no desire to do that. That's not what

01:35:07.100 I'm here to do. And I, who am I to tell anybody what to do? I don't know anything. I know a little

01:35:12.220 bit about my life. And even that is questionable. And I think people would like Oprah and Ellen,

01:35:18.420 you know, this high whole idea of like silence is violence. That's kind of taken over our culture

01:35:23.700 is what are they supposed to do if they, if they're silent, sadly, sadly, all the people who

01:35:31.820 were telling you, you had to speak out, you had a responsibility work in the straight news roles

01:35:35.400 of CNN misunderstood what their role is as well. But no, I, um, I, you know, look, I'm a news person,

01:35:43.860 so I don't really have any obligation to tell people my opinion on, you know, how they should

01:35:47.680 vote. And I, I wouldn't, you know, I can help them understand the issues and I can certainly

01:35:51.420 try to separate nonsense from fact, but I've never been somebody who tells you who to vote for. And

01:35:56.520 I've never revealed who I voted for ever. And I, and I wouldn't, it's just, I agree for me,

01:36:00.860 it's not, it's not my place. And I know you're not a sort of straight news journalist,

01:36:04.000 you're a commentator, but you don't have to take that on us. Bullshit, somebody else putting

01:36:07.720 their shit onto you. You don't need to take that. Everybody else can figure it out. And I think

01:36:11.800 the big thing with Oprah was she was looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and here,

01:36:17.240 Oprah is the most famous black woman in America. And her audience was mostly women. And I think

01:36:23.820 people were wondering if it was somehow a betrayal, you know, that she went with the guy. Yes,

01:36:28.080 he's a black man, but she went with the guy instead of the woman. And, uh, you know,

01:36:32.700 there, she sort of had a choice to make and she, some of her audience felt abandoned. Some Republicans

01:36:37.460 felt abandoned. Some women who wanted Hillary felt abandoned. It's once you go political,

01:36:42.760 it's fraught. All right. Let me take a step back with you. Uh, because we did jump. We started at

01:36:49.020 the end. Well, not the end of your story. Let's certainly hope that's not the case. We started

01:36:53.100 current day after this podcast, Megan. And, um, only if Ellen and Oprah are listening.

01:37:02.760 Um, I love that. I love them, bud. We have to go back to not the very beginning, but, um,

01:37:09.240 I did in reading your story. Gosh, I, I felt for you because you talked about how all of your middle

01:37:18.280 school report cards said extremely bright that you were a model of discipline. You bet your cousin,

01:37:24.560 you were going to get into an Ivy league college. And all the while you had no idea what was coming

01:37:30.440 chaos and a life that would be upended very shortly. When I, when I learned that it was because of your

01:37:38.640 parents' divorce that I didn't understand since so many kids get divorced and it's hard, but it doesn't

01:37:45.520 normally lead to as much awfulness that came into your life. So what, what specifically do you think

01:37:52.980 changed your life? Hmm. Well, we moved away from my dad and my kind of whole family support system.

01:38:01.680 So that was one thing. Um, I would also say,

01:38:07.740 Oh gosh, it's so hard because I don't really love talking about like other people in my family

01:38:18.880 story. It feels like airing dirty laundry, but my, my, um,

01:38:25.640 my stepdad was kind of fraught with a lot of challenges. Uh, the, I don't know that my mom was

01:38:31.900 aware of when they got together. Although I mean, even as a 13 year old, I pretty much could have seen

01:38:37.640 that the writing on the wall was not great. Um, and it, he kind of dominated her attention from

01:38:46.740 thereafter and it caused a lot. It was, um, very, very, very dysfunctional and chaotic. And, um,

01:38:57.480 we never really knew what to expect. My younger brother moved out pretty, pretty early back to live

01:39:05.920 with my dad. And then there are, uh, four girls in my family. So we were there and it was, it was just,

01:39:14.020 uh, a lot of mental illness and, um, kind of in and out of mental words and uncertainty and,

01:39:22.000 and, uh, yeah, that, I think that just the, that chaos and trying to cope with that and then just

01:39:32.520 being isolated. Those two things combined really after a while. And this is why I have so much

01:39:39.860 compassion for even let's, you know, seeing these lockdowns and what's happening with the schools and

01:39:45.920 I'll see people and they'll say, Oh, the schools need to be locked down. I'm like, well, you must

01:39:49.600 come from a great family because for me, school was, uh, even though I didn't want to necessarily

01:39:55.440 be in school. It was, I never knew what I was coming home to. It was an escape from a lot of

01:40:00.460 the chaos. And at a certain point it becomes very hard to care about your grades. If your mom is in

01:40:09.940 a ball on the floor and your stepdad, you don't know where he is and if he's even dead or alive,

01:40:14.700 like those things become grades start seeming very adorable and simple. And, and it just,

01:40:22.960 all of a sudden you're taking on grownup problems and you're around very serious things. And I think

01:40:29.800 that I just really lost my way. I, I, I feel like I've lost myself many times in life and that was

01:40:36.680 the beginning of a long loss of myself and who I was and, and, and potential. I don't know.

01:40:45.140 Could you not go to live with your dad when things got like that?

01:40:48.460 I could, and I did my senior year. So I, I went, um, after my junior year, I went and lived with

01:40:55.480 him for half of a year, but then my little sisters were calling and crying. And I mean,

01:40:59.760 my mom and I were very connected and I felt like I, I was her kind of best friend in many respects

01:41:05.660 and her confidant, which I do not recommend if you're a child mother out there. Um, and you know,

01:41:13.740 we, I just, I couldn't live with myself. I felt like I was abandoning my younger siblings, whether

01:41:20.000 or not any of this was true, any of it, obviously looking back, none of this was my responsibility.

01:41:26.080 None of this fell on my shoulders. I couldn't have saved my mom. I didn't go to college where I wanted

01:41:30.820 to go because I thought I needed to be near my mom and my stepdad. One of the biggest mistakes of

01:41:35.780 my life when I did go to half of a year of college, uh, was doing that and being still so close.

01:41:43.120 It was a very dysfunctional codependent, you know, we protected her. My dad really didn't even know

01:41:49.760 my aunts and uncles have, have since come out and said, but like, we had no idea what was going on in

01:41:57.160 the house. And again, if you looked at our behavior, it wouldn't take a genius to figure out

01:42:02.300 something's going on. These kids are acting out. These were really well-behaved kids. And now

01:42:07.220 they're partying and doing all kinds of, of nonsensical things. But, uh, there, there wasn't

01:42:14.620 much, my dad was kind of, I think just wrapped up in his new relationship. And, um, we, I just always

01:42:24.140 joke, my, my siblings and I always joke, you know, we did a really horrible job raising our parents.

01:42:28.920 No, but you're right. Like that. I remember when I was a teenager, I was saying something to my mom

01:42:35.300 about, you know, being friends and, and it was a kind, lighthearted moment. It wasn't something

01:42:41.200 profound between the two of us, but she stopped me right then and there and said, I'm not your

01:42:44.880 friend, Megan. I have enough friends. So do you. I'm your mother. That's good. I mean, at the time I

01:42:50.900 was wounded at the time I was like, wow, harsh. Um, but now I look back and I'm like, you know what?

01:42:57.160 She was exactly right. And she was creating a boundary that was important. That's an important

01:43:02.160 boundary, a healthy boundary. Yeah. And I, I really, again, I have, I, I will, I will say that

01:43:09.820 my mom and I didn't talk for maybe six or seven years at certain points in my life. And we've been

01:43:17.380 through hell and back together and we have a loving, compassionate relationship now where I feel

01:43:27.160 it's, we're building more and there's a lot of forgiveness on both of our ends and, and just

01:43:34.460 healing. Um, and she's, I can't walk a mile in her shoes. She had five kids under the age of

01:43:47.140 basically seven. We were all like a year and a half apart. Yeah. All in diapers. We moved every

01:43:52.900 year and a half when we were with my dad. So she was, we weren't wealthy. So she was unpacking boxes,

01:43:58.460 getting us in different schools, getting us different piano teachers, doctors. I mean,

01:44:02.540 you know, what goes into having kids. And she was doing that with five of us every single

01:44:07.740 year and a half. And I don't know how, I don't know. I don't know how she stayed sane. It's not,

01:44:12.900 it's not, it's not, she, I don't know how she did it. And no, I look at women who are doing that.

01:44:21.080 I mean, then and now, and I'm not saying anything about your mom, but a lot of them develop substance

01:44:25.900 abuse problems and other ways of coping because it's really hard when you're, when you have no

01:44:33.500 help like that, especially no, no help from the father. Right. It's like start there. I mean,

01:44:38.660 just having a partner makes all the difference. And then if you don't have that, you don't have

01:44:42.200 help. You don't have a babysitter or a nanny or you're like a close family friend is going to help

01:44:45.440 you. And you have to put bread on the table. Like that would drive most people to drink. I mean,

01:44:51.580 it's, yeah. And she wasn't like a substance abuser. Um, no, I haven't gleaned that. I haven't

01:44:57.040 gleaned that from what you, you, you took on that role. Yeah, no, she, she was really kind of against

01:45:03.240 all that stuff, which was, it's my, there's a lot more of that on my father's side, just being

01:45:08.780 Irish Catholic. And, you know, just to kind of circle back and, and make one point I wanted to

01:45:14.440 make earlier to say we, I jokingly say, you know, bury it like the greatest generation, but I also did

01:45:20.080 see the effect that that had on my grandfather who was in war and never spoke about it and buried

01:45:26.160 a deep and it manifested and all kinds of, you know, substance abuse issues that, that, uh, had

01:45:33.300 a big effect on things and his life later. So I, I do think there's a balance that we have to find

01:45:39.440 in our lives. Uh, I'm a big proponent of, you know, dealing with that stuff and talking about it,

01:45:45.540 even if it's with a professional so that you aren't necessarily self-medicating through some

01:45:51.600 of that, uh, pain that the greatest generation buried, but, but you can't do the New York times

01:45:57.480 and listen to Dateline 24 seven. At some point you're going to have to reflect and hopefully

01:46:02.900 learn, but yeah. But so, so what happened with you? Cause you, so you started like, like a lot

01:46:08.180 of kids with drinking and then pot. I mean, I, I knew a lot. I, do you believe I've never tried

01:46:14.760 pot? Um, I, I think a lot of, I mean, I, I've been drinking sadly since my teenage years, but

01:46:23.340 I've never, I'm, I've just never gravitated toward it. I don't know. My, my mother really

01:46:28.420 did stigmatize it in my head. And I was like, at my school, it was like something out of a

01:46:32.660 movie. There were clicks. There were like, they call them the swelts, the dirties, the creamies,

01:46:37.940 the jocks. It truly was like a, like one of those movies and the dirties were the ones

01:46:43.280 who, who did drugs and pot was a drug. And I was like, well, I'm not a dirty, so I'm not

01:46:47.680 going to, you know, like I was the swelts drank. So I drank, which I wish I hadn't. I really,

01:46:53.580 if I could go back into my high school years, I really wish I hadn't started drinking. I wish

01:46:57.920 I had kept sort of that young, healthy body healthy for longer, you know, but I, I keep,

01:47:05.260 I always joke to Doug. Now my husband, I'm like, we have like two more years. My, our

01:47:09.860 oldest is 11. We had two more years and then we have to convert to Mormonism. I really,

01:47:13.680 I want, like, I love how like the Mormons, they don't drink and they don't do drugs and

01:47:18.960 they always stay a tight knit family. I'm like, this Catholicism Presbyterian thing, it doesn't

01:47:23.680 work out. People do drink and they leave their mommies and I don't, anyway, I digress.

01:47:27.540 But so you start by a little drinking and, and some pot and then how, how does it take the next

01:47:34.720 step? I mean, pot was my true love actually. And I just, I still, that if I was to say I miss

01:47:42.900 anything in sobriety, I, I still have moments of missing pot. It, it was from the minute I smoked it.

01:47:51.340 I was just, I, a daily smoker basically. And that was when I was 14 or 15, I started drinking.

01:47:57.980 I loved the oblivion that drinking brought me. I never drank to like fit in or maybe I,

01:48:04.100 I drank to fit in and that it's easy to move schools and find the party crew anywhere you go.

01:48:11.120 It's much easier than having to just be myself. And, but I didn't necessarily drink to be more

01:48:18.660 social. I'm pretty chatty and social anyway, but I really loved the just oblivion that came

01:48:24.660 with drinking and my mind kind of shutting off, which is why I inevitably think I found

01:48:32.800 heroin to be in my life. And then I did, you know, some psychedelics in high school. It was pretty

01:48:41.200 normal, not normal. Looking back, I was a fully functioning alcoholic probably by the time I was

01:48:46.300 16 and I think I knew it and pothead. And then I started doing harder drugs when that first,

01:48:55.000 right after that summer. And then that first year in college, um, I think the first real

01:49:02.280 like white powder I ever did was speed, which I hated. I hated it. I hated it. I hated it.

01:49:11.140 I couldn't, this is a dumb question from somebody who's never done a drug. Um, is speed the same

01:49:16.600 thing as cocaine? No. So this is more what we would think of like crystal meth now, I guess we

01:49:23.440 call it speed back then, but now I think it's pretty much just crystal meth. And so it was very,

01:49:29.640 it just made your brain race and no cocaine is, I, I had many years of that too. Uh, that went hand in

01:49:38.480 hand with the restaurant industry and drinking and just the entire restaurant that, that rut that I

01:49:45.540 was in, in a resort town. Those things are all, um, just part, part and parcel of the whole kind of

01:49:54.620 lifestyle that you live. And, um, so that's after this, I was later after rehab. So then I started,

01:50:01.720 um, then I got introduced, then I started doing, I think I tried cocaine around that time. Um,

01:50:10.620 I dabbled in things and then I ended up getting together with a guy who was, uh,

01:50:21.120 he had access to a lot of these other drugs and then started doing that. But it was, it was a very

01:50:27.440 quick bottom for me. I was pretty much in rehab a year after I started doing heavy drugs, any of

01:50:37.660 them. Like I started doing, sorry, go on. He's the one who introduced heroin to you. Yes. And other

01:50:46.000 drugs. I mean, we were doing all kinds of drugs, cocaine. Um, I think crack, there was some crack in

01:50:53.660 there. Uh, that was a, that was a very, uh, God, that, that it seems like another person. I, when I

01:51:02.420 think of that girl and that time in my life, I was so, and then going to rehab for seven months,

01:51:08.880 I was in a halfway house. I, I was just, and then getting out of rehab and what followed, which was

01:51:14.840 even crazier. Um, just in personal stuff, it was, and then I ended up moving here when I was 20.

01:51:23.660 I moved to LA and then I was back, um, doing drugs again. And, uh, then I would kind of rescue

01:51:33.640 myself and pull myself back from the brink and stop doing hard drugs and only smoke weed or stop

01:51:39.260 drinking for a while. And then I moved back East to try and repair things with my family. And I was

01:51:43.840 only going to stay there, but then I ended up marrying a Bella Russian. And I joked that I married

01:51:49.580 him in a year long blackout. It's not entirely false. And we were together for a while and both

01:51:56.100 in the restaurant industry. And so, yeah, it really, it really started that year right out of

01:52:02.700 high school, the, the harder drugs. And then it just escalated.

01:52:07.580 Cause I do wonder if, even though you've taken drugs before, is there a moment before you,

01:52:13.580 you take heroin that you stop even in that state and say, well, this is an escalation.

01:52:21.780 I remember I smoked it the first time. And I remember vividly knowing I was crossing

01:52:28.720 an invisible line that I had put down in the state, you know, it's like, uh, even doing math,

01:52:36.720 which I hated. I have a journal where I was always writing and I, I have a journal where I was just

01:52:41.660 trying basically to write myself down from the high, because I was, I felt like I was losing my

01:52:47.420 mind. Your mind just races. And I, I knew that that was an escalation. I remember vividly the first

01:52:55.040 time because you kind of chase that emptiness forever and things just got, I was just so,

01:53:05.120 I don't know why no one noticed. I don't, that's what's so crazy to me. I was so clearly,

01:53:17.020 I was 89 pounds, Megan, like ribs. I had a horrible cough because I primarily smoked it and, um, snorted

01:53:26.800 it. And I had a, but because I was chasing the dragon, you put like tar on a piece of tinfoil and

01:53:33.500 it's, uh, um, the whole process is very ritualized, like all drug use ends up being, but it was,

01:53:41.600 it, it just destroys your lungs. I mean, you're inhaling chemicals from the tinfoil, you're

01:53:46.200 inhaling and inhaling horrible black tar. So I had bronchitis and this was one of, you know,

01:53:52.060 there's a lot of shameful moments in my life. And my grandmother, who was, um, the greatest

01:53:58.640 generation Irish stoic woman, she, one day we were driving, she was driving me somewhere and she

01:54:05.400 had this pickup truck. She was just such a character. And she said, you need to watch out

01:54:10.160 Bridget because you have the gene. And she was kind of referring the gene that my grandfather had.

01:54:15.440 And she, she just saw it in me. She was probably the first and only person who really saw it.

01:54:20.820 And she said, you have to be careful. And I was like, whatever, maim.

01:54:23.540 I don't know. Okay. And I was, uh, I was on heroin at her funeral. I was, I was, um,

01:54:31.960 she died when I was like in the middle. Oh,

01:54:36.440 that time of my life was so dark. It was like, as I just remember feeling so alone and feeling so

01:54:49.780 lost. And then she went into the hospital and it was like, maim was invincible. She was like the

01:54:57.800 person I thought she'd still be alive. I never thought she'd die. I certainly didn't think she

01:55:03.020 would die before my grandfather who almost died in my childhood. They gave him his last rights.

01:55:08.020 They still have no idea how he even survived that. Um, he's now passed away as well, but,

01:55:13.640 um, we all thought grandpa would go before her. He had so many health problems. And, um,

01:55:21.480 she just went into the hospital with this lung thing and died. Like it just happened. It was a

01:55:29.620 rare lung disease. I can't remember the name of it. And I was kind of in the midst of it. And I re I

01:55:35.700 had just been home visiting and I was so sick. I had bronchitis and, um, I came back and then she died

01:55:42.920 like two days later. And then I had to fly back East. I was in Minnesota at the time. And, um,

01:55:49.660 I had to speak at her funeral. And I remember being high and like having to write this eulogy and being

01:55:56.960 so ashamed that she was a, the last time I saw her, I was just so messed up and be that she was,

01:56:05.300 um, right. I knew she was right. I knew while I was standing there at her funeral. And I, I mean,

01:56:10.980 I don't know how the, I think everyone around me was just so shocked and grief stricken that they

01:56:16.060 didn't notice that I was, you know, on the roof smoking heroin before I was going to her funeral.

01:56:23.740 And it was like, I, I, I, I don't, I don't think I've ever even talked about this publicly. I,

01:56:29.760 it took me three months to even talk about it and, and rehab because I felt like the guilt that I felt.

01:56:37.420 And then I ended up really, I mean, that was another thing that I just spiraled out. And I

01:56:44.960 think the week before I went into my, my, the only rehab I'd been in was that rehab then. Although

01:56:50.460 that's not when I got sober forever and finally, but I, I would jump in and ask you something about

01:56:56.840 that. Why, why did you feel guilty about that? Uh, I felt guilty that I was on drugs at her funeral.

01:57:04.180 Like I just felt horrible. This is, and she warned me that I was, that I had that gene and I just felt

01:57:11.440 guilty. Like it felt disrespectful to her to be in that state. It still feels disrespectful to her.

01:57:19.860 I still feel like I, you know, I think part of the thing that keeps me sober, I have, I am looking at

01:57:26.180 a picture of her right now on her wedding day. It, I stay sober for her, you know, part of, part of the,

01:57:33.720 the living amends that I make. And there are many, but one of the biggest ones is to her, to,

01:57:42.080 to just live every day sober in her honor because she was right. And I have to remember that. And I

01:57:50.520 have to remember that, um, on those days when I'm like, I don't want to be sober anymore. I don't

01:57:55.460 want to be in my head that, that it would, it's a way of honoring her life and honoring everything

01:58:02.300 that she so selflessly gave to all of us. She was just so giving and amazing by staying sober. And

01:58:09.960 that guilt, I mean, I lived in, in the shadow of that guilt for a long, long time. It's still upsetting

01:58:16.500 to me. It's so, it's, but it's so, when you think about it, but when you think about it,

01:58:23.080 it's, it is, it's so crazy, right? Because she loved you and she saw, and she tried to throw you

01:58:30.380 a lifeline, which you caught, you know, and you didn't use it immediately, but you did catch it

01:58:36.700 and you got yourself out. She, she wouldn't give a shit that you were high at her funeral. She

01:58:41.540 wouldn't have cared about that. You know, that in your head, right? Like she would have wanted what

01:58:47.900 was best for you. She would have wanted you to just get well. And not only have you gotten and

01:58:53.140 gotten well, you, you, you're living a well life. Yeah, I try. I mean, she's, I miss, I miss both of

01:59:01.420 them every day. I mean, they're, they were both just so they really did take care of us when we

01:59:06.620 would, because after my parents got divorced, we would go, we were with my, we barely saw my dad,

01:59:12.780 but we would go spend summers with him sometimes. And they would end up taking care of us basically.

01:59:18.240 And we were like these feral children who had no parents. We would be, you know, my aunts and

01:59:24.460 uncles joke, like we were these dirt, like grimy little teens who are totally underweight and we'd be

01:59:31.700 eating, you know, raw spaghetti, drinking pickle juice. And this was in Rhode Island,

01:59:39.380 which is where my grandparents were. So, and we moved to Minnesota. I was born in New York City

01:59:45.340 and then moved every year and a half. We were in Connecticut. We were in Minnesota. We were kind

01:59:49.000 of all over the United States. And then, but my family's from Rhode Island. And so that was really

01:59:56.500 just the home base. And it's where my dad ended up going back to after he, after my parents split up

02:00:01.520 and now most of my family is in the Northeast, but that was really the only real stability I had in

02:00:08.880 my life was them, was my grandparents. That can make all the difference. You know, I know a lot of

02:00:15.620 people who have parents who are not that great and, uh, but who have great grandparents who step up

02:00:22.900 and that, and that grandparent can save you. Yeah. I mean, I think they tried and, and my,

02:00:29.080 I really do believe I did. They did. And I do believe that my parents did. I do believe that

02:00:36.660 crap that people are doing the best that they can, even though I've had a hilarious conversations

02:00:41.920 with P I once had an Uber driver and he was talking about his brother and how he was on cocaine. And

02:00:47.560 I'm like, well, just try and remember he's doing the best he can with what he has. And he's like,

02:00:51.380 no, he's not. Oh my God. And I'll never forget that because I was like, okay, fair enough.

02:00:57.000 He's like, he's being lazy. How did you get that deep into conversation with the Uber driver? Was it

02:01:01.540 a very, very long ride? No, it's just, I mean, that's just me. I like, you're the one who talks

02:01:07.640 to the massage therapist. What am I saying? Again, the one who ruins it for all of us. I don't do not

02:01:14.380 want to chit chat while you were rubbing my behind. I'm the girl on the plane that will be

02:01:18.840 like, tell me your whole life story. Oh my God. You're my worst nightmare. I'm like, lady,

02:01:23.600 can't you see I have headphones on? That's a universal sign for I don't want to talk.

02:01:26.800 I'll leave people with headphones alone, but I have met some amazing people on planes that I'm still

02:01:32.080 friends with. Oh, you are. Oh, okay. Now wait, this is a great transition. Um, I was on a plane,

02:01:40.960 I don't know, 15 years ago, not even happened to be seated next to the man who had just bought

02:01:48.400 penthouse out of, um, bankruptcy from Bob Guccione. And it was a fascinating plane ride. I did not have

02:01:58.400 the headphones on on that ride. And he was a great conversationalist. He was telling me his wife was

02:02:03.980 a fan. So we wound up chatting. He asked me if I would talk to his wife before we took off. I said,

02:02:08.200 sure. He called her blah, blah, blah. So he, he's telling me all about, he was a real estate guy

02:02:13.320 from Ohio who wound up, you know, owning this pornography magazine. And, um, next thing,

02:02:19.880 and they also owned properties that, you know, had actual porn on them, you know, like live porn,

02:02:25.280 I guess just today porn on video, whatever. Um, and he, he would go to the porn Oscars every year,

02:02:31.880 you know, where like you, you'd win like best anal and Oh yeah. Yeah. The ABN. Right. And the girls

02:02:37.780 would be like, yeah, you know, I won. And I was thinking, Oh, it's confusing. Um, anyway,

02:02:43.740 we had a great airplane ride together and listening to his world was really interesting. So I get back

02:02:49.160 to Fox sitting in my office and the mailman comes in with this box that is like two feet by two and a

02:02:59.580 half feet and all over the box. I mean, every square inch of the box reads penthouse, penthouse,

02:03:05.880 penthouse, penthouse, penthouse, penthouse. And of course the mailman's got eyes as big as silver

02:03:11.500 dollars. He's like, Whoa, what's this? I'm like, Oh boy. I opened it up and it is a huge book that is

02:03:20.320 a retrospective to 30 years of penthouse covers. And it's on the, on the cover of the book is a very

02:03:28.520 ungroomed circa 1972 picture of Madonna, the singer, but in full, you know, full regga. So, and then I

02:03:38.280 opened it up. It's all penthouse's greatest center folds, but I'm thinking, Oh my God, like what, where

02:03:42.980 am I going to put this? Where does this go in somebody's house? And as it turns out, it's actually

02:03:47.820 right next to Doug's side of the bed, which is not, it's not there for the reasons you think, but

02:03:54.280 it makes a great conversation piece whenever we tour somebody through the house. Um, but all of

02:03:59.160 this is a long, long winded windup to you weren't with penthouse, but you were with playboy writing.

02:04:05.500 You're like the one girl who could both be in, in playboy and write for playboy. I mean, like that's

02:04:10.680 not the only one. I don't mean to diminish the others, but I'm just saying it's rare to have

02:04:14.620 both a rock and body like you do and the smarts to write an article that it could appear in there.

02:04:19.040 And, um, maybe Debra. So too, she's writing for them. She's also gorgeous. Um, but anyway,

02:04:24.740 so I know you're a writer and I get writing for playboy, but let's just rounding back to the

02:04:31.860 naked Bridget. Like, what do you get out of that? Cause I, I know you don't go like full frontal,

02:04:37.020 but you definitely post naked top pictures of yourself a lot. And I know you like it. Like you,

02:04:42.720 you're getting something out of it. What are you getting out of it?

02:04:45.080 Um, well, I mean, I don't do it as much anymore. Um, uh, because I'm married,

02:04:55.900 which no one knows. And I was going to tell you right now. Yeah, no, I just got married on, uh,

02:05:03.880 November 10th. Bridget. I know. Thank you. Thank you. Who'd you marry? Oh, I hope it was the rich guy.

02:05:11.200 No, no, he's the opposite of rich guy. Um, no, he's a, we met in recovery and, um, he is a therapist

02:05:23.560 and also works at a nautical themed grocery store. And, um, yeah, we, we met, it's a, it's a crazy

02:05:34.480 story. We met in recovery like a couple of years ago and had a whirlwind romance, but he was pretty

02:05:41.100 new in, in recovery and I never felt okay. I was like, I'm robbing you of this first year.

02:05:46.600 That's so important because I know what it's like to get sober. And I know you need that year to really

02:05:50.860 just be with yourself. And I could never get good with it and broke his heart. And then 15 months

02:05:56.960 later we got coffee and then, um, God, we've been through a lot actually in the last year, even then.

02:06:05.380 Um, and so, yeah, that's, I'm sure people have kind of noticed that it's dialed back,

02:06:11.840 but that's pretty much why. No, no, I haven't announced it or anything yet because I feel my

02:06:19.120 private life has always been really mine. You know, there's so, I put so much out there and

02:06:24.900 I've just, I've always, this is the most, um, public I've been about really anything. I don't really

02:06:33.140 like to talk about stuff that's happened with my family other than in a kind of writing controlled

02:06:38.320 environment, just because it feels like it's not my, only my story and other people are involved.

02:06:43.220 And I try to do right by everybody. I think everybody, you know, I don't consider myself

02:06:48.480 a victim. I think that, that, um, my mom and my stepdad and all the people involved, my dad,

02:06:54.980 uh, did, they did do the best I could at that time. And I'm sure they live with their own

02:07:01.140 regrets. And I know that, um, we still, you know, things are, I would say great now between

02:07:07.580 me and everybody. And so I try, I just have always been kind of fiercely protective of

02:07:15.120 the people in my life. They didn't ask for me to be out here publicly talking about things

02:07:20.680 and also just protective of my private life because it feels like one of the only things

02:07:26.300 that's mine. But now it's bordering on the point of feeling like I'm not lying, but it's

02:07:33.860 hiding. Yeah. Hiding. Yeah. Now it's bordering on the point of, okay. Um, it's a secret and

02:07:42.060 yeah, I don't want it to be a secret. I'm proud of, I love him. I'm happy for you. What's

02:07:47.620 his name? Cause what's his first name? Um, uh, Jaron. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Uh, so,

02:07:56.420 well, that's awesome. I'm so happy for you. I feel like a good relationship is such a good

02:08:03.140 deposit into one's emotional bank. Like I didn't know this Megan. I didn't know. I mean, it's

02:08:10.560 wonderful. So crazily, I really, you know, talk about, talk about the stories that we

02:08:17.360 tell ourselves. So much of my life has been, um, losing myself and finding myself over and

02:08:24.620 over again and hitting 15 different rock bottoms and kind of bouncing back up. And, and I really

02:08:31.840 thought of myself as that girl that was single forever and that I didn't need a man. And I had

02:08:38.800 so many, so much kind of damage and trauma around those relationships and, and being in what I feel

02:08:47.600 is it's the very healthy, loving, just, I didn't know how much of a difference it makes. I didn't,

02:08:58.180 I underestimated that because I didn't have very many models of it in my life. So I just was very

02:09:04.860 jaded and cynical about relationships. And when we first started dating the first time I cried every

02:09:11.340 day. I had no idea how to deal with intimacy. I ran from it. I did. I just did not know. I didn't

02:09:20.660 know how to give it. I didn't know how to receive it. I didn't know. I didn't trust it. I, and then

02:09:28.860 we took that break and he did a lot of, you know, his own work and time and it really did come down

02:09:36.820 to timing. And when, then when we got back together, it was really, we were just never apart again. And,

02:09:43.680 um, yeah, I mean, it's been, it's been, um, uh, uh, kind of a miracle really. I, I didn't,

02:09:53.440 weirdly one of the ways reasons that I trusted so much is because it's so not something I feel like

02:10:01.640 I'm manipulating in my, in my past, in many relationships, I felt like there was always

02:10:07.780 this power dynamic and I was trying to manipulate the situation or manipulate the man, or it, it felt

02:10:13.360 very insidious and kind of squirrely. You know, I felt, I, I don't know how to describe it. It's,

02:10:19.900 I've never talked about any of this stuff publicly ever. Um, I've talked about feeling like I, I was

02:10:26.620 manipulative as a woman, but I just, with him, it feels so pure. There's just no sketchiness.

02:10:34.980 You know, it's, I want, I want it to, I value that, um, the, that core of our relationship.

02:10:42.420 Well, I really feel like now this is when everything, everything grows because like, I,

02:10:49.240 I do think that having a healthy love relationship in your life, especially with a partner, but it

02:10:55.040 could be with a friend. It could be, you know, somebody else, but especially with a, with a

02:10:59.700 sexual romantic and life partner that just, it's like the rocket ship, you know, that it's like,

02:11:07.840 I won't say that it's not, it's that no one can hurt you because you can still be hurt,

02:11:12.160 but man, they can hurt you a lot less. It takes a lot more, a lot more to really ding you up,

02:11:18.520 you know, is it's like, I, I remember after many low moments over the past few years, looking around

02:11:23.740 and saying, you know, if, if this is my floor or my ceiling, right? Like that I'm with Doug and I've

02:11:30.760 got these three kids. Good. I'm good. That's just fine by me. And I felt that for years. I do think

02:11:36.800 we put too little time into nurturing relationships without, because we, we fail to realize how

02:11:41.800 important they are to overall happiness. So I'm thrilled for you, but he doesn't like the nudes,

02:11:47.320 I guess. Is that he wants you to just stick with what you put out there? No, it had nothing to do

02:11:50.980 with him. He actually didn't, he actually never said anything about it. He, it was all me just feeling

02:11:58.260 like I was evolving and changing and, uh, no, he never, he was, he was never, um, I'm sure he had his

02:12:06.520 own feel like this is the beauty of marrying a licensed marriage and family therapist is that

02:12:13.320 he knows how to do his own work. And he definitely, um, he just were very much about allowing us to

02:12:26.000 grow individually. And he never, I felt like I was kind of already pulling away from it because

02:12:31.260 it just felt like it served this time. And, and, and I just didn't, it wasn't like I ever needed to

02:12:38.660 do it. I wanted to do it. And then I just stopped wanting to do it, you know? And that, that was

02:12:45.320 really it. I've, I've always done what I wanted to do. I never wanted to feel like I had to do,

02:12:52.000 like had to post nudies or had to, I always, it was always on my own terms. A lot of it was just

02:12:58.700 taking, like I said, I wrote a whole piece about it and playboy that I actually think is still up.

02:13:03.300 And it's all the, what I learned from being, you know, sharing nudes online and being part of it was

02:13:10.860 also just taking control. I was very, this was at the dawn of being able to send a man a nudie.

02:13:17.000 And I knew that I wanted to be a writer. I didn't have any clue how this would all play out,

02:13:21.780 but I just wanted to take control of that. I didn't want anyone to be able to post nudies that

02:13:28.700 I didn't, I didn't want to live in fear of that. So part of me was like, I'm just going to take

02:13:33.160 control of this. Yeah. And I also just, it was, it's a lie. I mean, there's like 15 different

02:13:38.840 pieces. I could talk to you for two hours just about what I learned about myself, what I reclaimed,

02:13:44.720 what, um, all of it. And, and then just really, I think being in a loving, intimate relationship

02:13:53.960 has, I feel again, it's like going on, going back and saying, Oh, I didn't know that there

02:13:59.780 were double standards. This is like me be coming to this very naive realization of, Oh, a loving and

02:14:07.240 intimate relationship can give you, I can be very uplifting and stabilizing. I'm obviously very

02:14:16.440 hesitant about all of this. And the fact that I'm even talking about it is actually really good. But he,

02:14:22.200 I think that again, I, I default to, this is not about us. He has been through so much on his own.

02:14:31.840 He has grown and lifted it, uplifted himself out of stuff. And we are both very late bloomers.

02:14:40.020 And I think one of the, the lies that I've told myself and all of my rock bottoms is that I was too

02:14:46.940 old, whether I was 20 or 25 to really make something of myself. And if anything, I think

02:14:54.760 that he's just a really necessary voice for young men, just having somebody who's kind of a rational,

02:15:01.720 just pretty common sense. And he has a lot of streets smarts too. I don't know. I just, I feel

02:15:07.520 my personal and very biased opinion is that, um, the world could use his voice out there too.

02:15:15.120 So, um, listen, here's to late bloomers and second chances. I'm all for it. Great partnerships.

02:15:23.180 Good luck to both of you. It's gosh, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. This is the first

02:15:27.980 of many. I hope Bridget. I hope so too. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. This was really fun. And I, I really

02:15:35.540 appreciate, I, I don't know, there's something about, uh, you're an amazing interviewer just in

02:15:41.140 general. You're just amazing at what you do, but there's something to just as a woman, I'm so often

02:15:47.260 interviewed by men that I do. I mean, I cried twice and I never cry when I'm being interviewed.

02:15:53.040 So I, it, that's a testament to you allowing me to feel, um, safe and being kind of, there is

02:16:01.720 something about just that, you know, female bond, I think. Thank you for saying that. It means a lot

02:16:08.340 to me. And if I, if I did provide that space for you, it's, it's minuscule in comparison to the

02:16:13.540 feeling you gave me that day. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 26, 2022

Bridget Phetasy on Trauma and Recovery, Victimhood, and Marriage ｜ Summer Re-Release

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