How to navigate complicated family dynamics (w/ Emerson Whitney)

How do you bring up difficult topics—especially when it involves a loved one? In this episode, Emerson Whitney, author of the book O Mother, talks about the grief of losing his mom to suicide. Emerson shares delicate topics such as growing up neurodivergent with ADHD and autism and how he continues to show up as his authentic self. Then Emerson and Chris discuss finding community and how to cultivate more joyful friendships. Featured guest Follow Emerson Whitney on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emersonwhitney__/?hl=en and at https://emersonwhitney.com/Buy O Mother https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/o-mother Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDPods https://www.youtube.com/@TEDPodsFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksVote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Duffy?

  Hi there, Better Human listeners. Really quick, before we get to our episode, you would be doing me a huge favor and really helping out our show if you could take a moment to fill out our listener survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6. That's B-I-T dot L-Y slash B-H Survey 6. You can also find a link that you can just click directly on, which is in our show description. Wherever you're listening to this, look at the episode description and at the bottom, there's a link that you can click directly. Please tell us what is resonating with you, what you want more of, what you'd like to see changed, topics you would like to see covered. Your honest feedback means the world to us. It just takes a few seconds of your time, and it would really help us to improve the show and have future seasons be even better.

• 0:43Chris Duffy?

  Thank you. It means a lot to me and to the team that makes this show. Thanks for listening, and thanks for taking a few seconds to do the listener survey. Now, on to the episode.

• 0:53Chris Duffy?

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's guest is Emerson Whitney, the author of the new book, Oh, Mother. And before we dive in, I want to just give you a quick heads up that today's episode is going to discuss suicide. So if that is not a topic for you right now, totally understand. We will see you back here next week. Now, Oh, Mother is a very personal book. It is a book about Emerson's complicated relationship with his mother, about moving back home to an island in Maine to be closer to her, and how that decision does not go at all how Emerson had planned, ultimately ending in tragedy. But as specific as Emerson's story is, the themes in this book are incredibly universal. This

• 1:33Chris Duffy?

  is a book that asks questions like, what do we owe our family members? What about if our relationships are really, really, really hard? How do we handle the difficult things that we inherit from our families, both biologically and emotionally? It also asks questions like, what makes a life livable? And can we accept it if someone decides that their life is not livable? To me, these are the kinds of questions that get at the heart of what it means to be human. These are questions that everyone ends up wrestling with at some point in their lives, but we often wrestle with them all on our own. And maybe that's because we're ashamed, or scared, or maybe we just think that you're not supposed to talk about these things publicly. Well, today's guest, Emerson Whitney, talks about them publicly, and writes about them,

• 2:18Chris Duffy?

  and thinks about them really deeply. And I'm so glad that we are going to get a chance to hear from Emerson today on the episode. To get us started, here is Emerson reading a passage from Oh, Mother. And the book is all written in second person, so it's all directed towards his mother. Here's Emerson reading that passage now.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Since you're dying, I am completely changed. I used to want success or something, but now all I want is calm, a pervading calm. Roland Barth's writes about this in his morning diary, a book of notes compiled after the death of his mom. He writes about how he notices a totally different feeling after she's died. He no longer cares about posterity, and writes of a complete acceptance of vanishing utterly, no desire for a monument. He goes on to write that he can no longer bear traveling. Why is it that I keep trying like a lost child to get back home, though Mama is no longer there? I relate to this so much. Before this, I was working toward being interesting and cool, at least in my mind I was. I thought so much more about what people thought of me. The approval I was seeking in others was maybe

• 3:23Speaker 01

  your approval, which I guess is a standard thing. You'd warned me forever about not staying in the house like Grammy, the value of trying to have friends and being out. I'd been letting go of this performance for a while in little ways, leaving the city, being more honest with myself about what this body needs, but your death gave it that final push out the door. Everything was leading to this. I've put up a cattle gate a few yards from my house, and I want to stay inside it with the dogs and your ashes.

• 3:53Chris Duffy?

  That was the author Emerson Whitney, reading a passage from his new book, Oh, Mother. And we are going to talk a lot more with Emerson in just a moment, but first, we are going to take a quick ad break. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

• 4:17Speaker 02

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• 4:54Chris Duffy?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket, to let you in on all the little-known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:40Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. In today's episode, we are talking about inheritance. We're talking about health, and we're talking about complicated family relationships with the author Emerson Whitney.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Emerson Whitney, and I'm an autobiographical writer. My most recent book is Oh, Mother, out with Mick Sweeney's.

• 5:57Chris Duffy?

  Well, Emerson, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so excited to talk to you. I loved your new book, Oh, Mother. I think it is like, just beautifully written, but also so moving and thought-provoking. And it's about so many different things. So as a person who's had to talk about this book and think about how to explain it to people who haven't yet read it, how do you explain what Oh, Mother is about?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I'm really grateful to use the term immersive memoir. It's about the last two years of my mom and my time together. So really, it's the story of our time together. It's also the story of our shared disability, our shared chronic pain, and our shared life experiences, which have a lot to do with this island where we lived.

• 6:46Chris Duffy?

  Just so that people know the kind of like, plot pieces of, it's a real story, but the plot pieces of what happened here, so that we can have this conversation. I think you just brought up a bunch of the things that led to it. So it's, you have this kind of troubled childhood with your mom. Sometimes you're extremely close. Sometimes she and you can butt heads and not understand each other. In some ways, you write in the book that you and your grandmother feel more like a mother and child relationship.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:16Chris Duffy?

  And then, you want to have a closer relationship as an adult with your mom. You move back to the island in Maine. It seems like it's going to be perfect. Then there's this real distance.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:27Chris Duffy?

  You and your mom actually aren't seeing each other as much as you thought. And then, the end of the book is, your mother has done really well, and then kind of has some sort of backslide into depression and suicidality, but also maybe drinking.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 7:43Chris Duffy?

  There's this moment where she is arrested for stealing from Walmart, and knows that that's going to go into the paper. And that is what you believe is the driving force for her to take her own life.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:55Chris Duffy?

  The book is obviously about that story, but it's about so many different things as well. You know, in the book, you talk about, before your mother passes away, there's this, there's a lot of things that you and your family share: chronic pain, neurodivergence, relationship to the outside world, to socioeconomic background. But you never really get the opportunity to fully talk about these things. And a lot of the book is a conversation. It's written in the second person. It's a conversation with your mother. What kinds of things you wish you could have shared with each other?

• 8:34Speaker 03

  While you actually were both in the same place, I wonder if the book brought up new ideas of things that you wish you could have talked about.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  I think of this question all the time. My mom and I had a really interesting and complicated relationship. We both struggled with so many of the same things that it often was hard to connect because we were both kind of in a way on our own islands. You know, the metaphor maybe of the island, not necessarily the material reality of the island and weren't always, they weren't always bridged in our lifetime. So, most of what we got to experience that was, that was about sort of neurodivergence or shared pain was often in kind of this family joking or like the, the largesse of a family hangout where we got to make fun of each other for all the things that were hard or laugh with each other about what

• 9:24Speaker 01

  was going on. And now, when I look back, I feel like the, the book itself was absolutely a way that I got to process so much of that. My grandma, I hang out with my grandma quite a bit and she just has so many memories of hanging out with mom and I and not, I guess she didn't have the same process. So, she often talks with a tremendous amount of, of regret. And I feel similarly, I wish my mom and I, I mean, every day, I'm like, I wish we could have gone to this random new restaurant. So, like, we could have gone to this, like, weird thing together. We could have talked more about class. I think that would have

• 10:03Speaker 01

  been nice. My mom was a housekeeper for one of the wealthier estates here and it was really hard on her for many reasons and I wish we could have had a chat about that. Definitely more about what it meant to be people who have autism and ADHD and to live on that spectrum, I think is, would have been really fun to talk about with her and we, we didn't get to do that.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  I mean, there's so many moving scenes in the book about all sorts of different things, but there's so much joy when you and your mom and your grandma are hanging out together, just laughing around a table about things that no one else can understand, but even things that everyone can understand, just in sharing these small moments. I think you capture that feeling of laughing with people who know you so well and have known you for your whole life in, in such a real vivid way. I haven't really seen that in many other books captured so accurately.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  I really appreciate that. That's absolutely what I was trying to do because I really wanted it to be kind of glorious. In the book, I talk about wishing my mom could have had a parade. One of the saddest parts of this, I feel like I got these headphones like a few minutes ago or before this and I went to the Walmart where my mom, because that's our one kind of electronics store nearby, where my mom was arrested for shoplifting. I feel like one of the most powerful aspects of this was, was shame that she was really so scared of being seen as not totally capable. And I wish in the book that we could have like had a parade for her even in her, even in her death because, you know, she had a

• 11:40Speaker 01

  self-completed death or a suicide and it was in direct response to being arrested at Walmart. And it was obviously devastating to learn that, but it also did something to my, to, I guess, our community expression of gratitude for her in her passing. There was so much shame. There was family shame that came up, like, why would she do that? What, what happened there? But I'm grateful to have very little of that confusion because she and I were so similar. So, I just wanted, I wanted this book to be that parade to some extent.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  I, I think it really is. I mean, it's such a beautiful parade of scenes and portraits and feelings and stories. It, I think parade isn't necessarily the first word that I would have come up with, but now that you say it, I think that really actually is an accurate description of the book. I think when you're telling a story that involves suicide, there's this tendency to not want to talk about it openly. There's this, like, we get awkward about speaking about it. And I think a lot of the book is about that too, especially the second half of the book is about why do we feel like we can't talk about this? On page 171, you talk about this idea that scholars have talked about that when you

• 12:56Speaker 03

  have someone you love who dies through suicide, that you're called a survivor. And it's the idea that you survived another person's suicide like a car crash. And you said that you write about a scholar saying that that's reductionist. The quote is, "It's focused on blaming the suicidal person and ignoring interlocking systems of oppression that lead to a life being unlivable."

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  That was a line that just stopped me in my tracks and I underlined multiple times. That idea of what is it that makes someone's life unlivable and how that is so much broader than any one story feels like a really different way of thinking about it and a really important way of thinking about it.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  It was a turning point for me. I was, I was really struggling, obviously, in, in my own blame. I lived 15 minutes from my mom and like, as you were saying in your intro of the, of the full scope of the book, she and I had been close and not close, but when I moved back here, it was with the intention of ideally building a space that she was going to occupy too. She was always really tired. I mean, me too. I just today, I was like, my God, like, how much more work can be in my life because I'm so tired. Like, and I feel like most of us feel that way that have jobs and maybe I've struggled to have also, I guess, whatever the word is self, the phrase is self-care, but all of

• 14:17Speaker 01

  those things compound. I feel like when those of us need to work, have to work, whatever. And my mom certainly was somebody who worked way too much and really struggled to fill her cup back up when she wasn't working. So, I had hoped that I would help with that. So, it was, it was really extreme to return and then to be literally working so hard to build something for her and I. And then, right as I could put the key in the door and open the door of this physical house for the first time, within a couple of weeks, she, she had passed. And it was because, you know, I, I knew because sheriffs came to my house to tell me, which was really the worst, one of the worst parts of the,

• 15:00Speaker 01

  of the whole thing, just because I don't think I got over the shock for probably, I didn't get to grieving for probably a year or so because I was still in shock. And me engaging with this kind of theory or with Braille's theory around, around this was my attempt to sort of calm my system enough to really understand that I didn't, I didn't, I didn't cause this. But of course, the mind goes, well, if I'd have just gone over there, why didn't I text her when I was thinking about her two days ago? Why didn't I, I could have just, there was a million things in my mind that I could have done to break this

• 15:39Speaker 01

  chain of, of either errors or horrors that led to this and I didn't do it. I was actually trying to not do it. And if anyone in the world both wanted me to be a hero and I wanted to be her hero, it was my mom. And at the same time, what I, what I really hung on to in, when I was engaging with some of this scholarship around suicide and, and self-completed death was that part of what happens in, in our culture is that there's, there's no talk of, if somebody is feeling suicidal, they're usually not allowed to speak of it because

• 16:19Speaker 01

  institutionalization is what results from that. And my mom and I shared so much, but we never shared this. There, the only reason I ever knew that she was having thoughts of, of killing herself was because she had a few bouts of being in the hospital prior to this. But, you know, my family definitely struggles with, with alcoholism and I've learned a lot about what it means to, I want to say, be at the bedside of someone struggling at this level. I'm emotionally at the bedside, but I'm not necessarily physically there because there's nothing I can do. So, I have, I've had a bit of a detached with love thing around family members like, like my mom. And I think because I didn't really know

• 17:04Speaker 01

  the extent of what was going on, I wish I'd have been able to just, just love her out in the open and not try to change her. And if this is what she wanted to do, I and my grandma and, and even my grandpa say that we would have supported her. If, if she didn't want to live here anymore, we would, we would support her in that. Because, I mean, in some ways, like, how incredible to have that. I don't want to make this sound like I'm condoning anything in particular, but I don't know that I'm as brave as her to have been able to make that kind of decision. I don't think I'm that brave. But if, if our family

• 17:46Speaker 01

  had known that that's what she wanted to do, we would have supported her. We just wish we could have told her we love her beforehand and to have said goodbye. And the worst part to me is that she lived with both so much shame for the actions that she felt like she was taking that led her here and also shame for having these thoughts. I wish she didn't. And the only reason I know that is because I inherited all of her journals and her notebooks and what have you. And so, I was able to sort of see what, more of what her thinking was at the time. And yeah, I know she was scared and ashamed.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  I had this thought, which I think is like very pervasive, that is like, you don't want to give the person the idea.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  So, you can't talk about suicide because like, then if you say the word, all of a sudden they go, hey, hold on, that's an idea. And it's like, of course, they know, like, the whole point is that they know that. And if you like, don't talk about, if there's this shame and this darkness and this stigma, you can't, you can't share how you're feeling. And when you can't share how you're feeling, you can get stuck in a place where you feel like there's only one way out.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  And so, that I think is like, one of the biggest things that I learned is that if you have, if you know someone who is suffering, like, talk to them about, don't dodge it. Don't say like, ah, it's kind of tough lately. It's like, hey, are you thinking about hurting yourself? What, what are you feeling? Are you feeling trapped? Like, you can say anything to me and it'll be okay. But then the other part is, and I think this goes to so much of what I think is so beautiful about our mother is, you know, even in just you and I talking about it, you said like, I don't want to condone, like, it's, it's hard to not fall into the idea of like, good or bad, like crime or, and punishment.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  As opposed to thinking about like, there may not be.

• 19:31Chris Duffy?

  As simple a situation as a person who is suffering thinks there is.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:35Chris Duffy?

  Right. It's easy when we're suffering to think like, there's nothing could solve this. The only solution is for me to die.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:42Chris Duffy?

  And I think one of the really incredible parts of time, but also talking, is to realize like, that thing that I thought was black or white is actually much more gray. There are other ways through this.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I'm not, I'm actually borrowing a phrase from Alexandra Braille. I wanna, let me see if I can pronounce. Yeah. It might be Alexandra Braille. I don't know. Alexandra Braille. In Undoing Suicideism, the framework that he's working through is really that, the one that you named, which is about reducing the blame on the person who's died. Because the, the framework of suicide is, is within the jurisdiction of like, obviously where it's like homicide, all the sides that have to do with specific kinds of killing. Different cultural groups have different responses to suicide. There, it's, it's been criminalized in various ways across cultures. It's also been not. I think

• 20:39Speaker 01

  there's examples in, I'm forgetting the timeframe, in England where if your person, if, if your family member had killed themselves, you paid a penance and they didn't get a burial and they, their body was like dragged through the street, if I'm remembering correctly. Simon Critchley writes about this to some extent in his book, Notes on Suicide. But the idea is that the person did something wrong. They murdered. They murdered themselves. And in the case of my mom, and again, linking back to this scholarship, I really felt as if this was compounded by all these interlocking systems that affected my mom and that affect

• 21:21Speaker 01

  so many other people, which of course, like we were, we were naming earlier, neurodivergence, disability, and especially in her case, a tremendous amount of shame. She worked again for, as a housekeeper. And I think there was a part of her that just felt like she spent a lot of her time comparing herself. Like, why didn't she get to have these like high bush, blueberry sod paths? Like, that she didn't get to have a really cute little shed that was nice and the doors opened fully and you could put a cool lawnmower inside? She would have loved any of that kind of stuff. And I, I think she took it in a way

• 22:02Speaker 01

  as a personal failing that she didn't have that. That plus being totally and sweetly and amazingly oddy HD, as am I, she, I think, just didn't feel like she fit at any point. And it just really worked against her for her whole life. So I really do think her life could have been more livable, given totally different circumstances.

• 22:35Chris Duffy?

  We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be right back with more from Emerson.

• 22:47Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. There are plenty of reasons that we put off getting support. And for a lot of people, cost is one of them. With BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. And while we're reconsidering old assumptions, maybe there are a few others worth questioning, too. I think there's lots of rules that are so familiar, maybe we don't even notice that we're following them. Like, always being there for everyone else, but not making time for yourself. You know, I'm just talking about things that I myself work on in therapy. It's worth asking, who taught me that? And would I actually expect that from someone that I care about? Maybe these are rules that you have made up in your own head and you can process with a therapist and figure it out. If you have been waiting

• 23:31Chris Duffy?

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• 23:56Chris Duffy?

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• 24:40Chris Duffy?

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• 25:01Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Planet Visionaries is the podcast celebrating the people creating practical, hopeful solutions for our planet's urgent conservation challenges. Season six launches this fall with bold, real solutions. Hear from Anna Rathman of the Jane Goodall Institute on protecting wildlife, Tom Pachak on his epic 396 day journey documenting the entire Amazon, and Lydia Oshie, a Guatemalan leader, opening doors for indigenous girls to access global education. Hosted by legendary climber and advocate Alex Honnold, each episode goes beyond the headlines to show what's actually working and who's making it happen. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative,

• 25:47Chris Duffy?

  this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:54Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Here is Emerson Whitney, reading another passage from his book, Oh Mother.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I was standing with Shar and our group of friends in the lemonade line when someone with a bleached blonde ponytail, tortoiseshell glasses and a pink flannel passed by in front of me. The person caught my breath. I could feel you. I don't know how else to say it. The sense I have of you was there, warm and funny and kind, a pink feeling. As I was experiencing the lightness of seeing almost you, I was struck suddenly by the idea that I had been thinking of things all wrong. If I believed your death was caused by ableism, which I did, seeing myself as overly responsible or capable of saving you was a way for this same ableism to thrive. It was living in me as a motherload of shame. What if you were

• 26:41Speaker 01

  wanting me to just be your child? Maybe you didn't want me to build you a house and fix it all or keep you alive. I wanted to more than anything at all ever, but believing I could is harmful to us both. The person resembling you disappeared into the throng of people going into the Charlotte's Web exhibit, which was perfect because you love Charlotte's Web. Shar brought me my lemonade and leaned against me for a second.

• 27:06Chris Duffy?

  You, in addition to being an author, are also a teacher. In one part of the book, related to what we're talking about here, you talk about teaching classes at LACC, LA Community College. You talk about teaching the book Laura Goddard Steiner's A Dream Foreclosed, alongside Dreams Deferred: Recession, Struggle, and the Quest for a Better World by Dallas author Brandalyn Barnett. And both books are about the housing crisis in 2008. And you talk about how there are dozens of interviews in those books that have been done with people who had been targeted for predatory loans. And then they had eventually lost everything. And you say, all of these people had something in common. Nearly every single person who'd been targeted blamed themselves. But the loans were predatory,

• 27:51Chris Duffy?

  my students would yell. They were trying to trick people. So why did everyone think it was their fault? I'd get chills in the classroom when this kind of thing would happen because it's so clear that my students were all at once recognizing the violence of bootstraps culture. That even when companies target vulnerable populations and actively trick loan borrowers, it is still seen as our fault.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:10Chris Duffy?

  I feel like...

• 28:13Speaker 03

  That idea that even when we are the victims of targeting, even when it is a giant system that is actively doing something that is harming us, it's still somehow our fault for getting caught up in the scam.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  That has so much to do with how your mom felt, but that also has so much to do with how all of us feel.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  When like things go wrong, it's our fault.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. I spend a lot of time trying to undo that in myself.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  How do you undo that? I mean, obviously, your students are asking you that, too. That's a whole class, but how do you undo that at all?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Well, I do feel like disability justice work speaks a lot about interdependence versus independence. And I do think that works together in that way. Like, if I don't believe that I'm supposed to independently succeed, I also don't feel so tied up when I'm independently, quote unquote, failing. So I feel as if my, my network, hopefully, is, is larger because I am thinking about this idea of interdependence. So there are things that I am not good at at all. I can't do math to save my life. That is not my thing. My brain just like went this whole other direction. It feels like soupy when I'm trying to do math. I'm never gonna be able to do it.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Ideally, I would go ask someone for help who is more capable if I need that or whatever. And obviously, that's like a maybe mundane, seeming example, but it's bigger, too. It's like, there are so many things that people in my very small community love to do, and I don't love to do it. And it's great when we can come together and make kind of wholeness in that way. If I'm really imagining myself as other, as not worthy, as trying but failing, I'm, I'm stuck not even being able to ask or show up or be part of

• 30:06Speaker 01

  because I'm so lost in the, the, that kind of back and forth of I'm not enough, I'm, you know, I'm embarrassed, all of that. And I know that, at least for me, I, I think becoming more honest with myself about what neurodivergence has looked like in my life, which is also in this book quite a bit, because I've also had meltdowns, like I believe my mom had when she passed or when she was feeling like she needed to die. And they're embarrassing. It's been so embarrassing to be an adult and be like, wow, I just fully, my system just exploded and now I'm like running down my driveway,

• 30:48Speaker 01

  like in, in a moment of like body panic for no real identifiable reason. And, you know, maybe my neighbors saw that or whatever. It's embarrassing. I guess part of what we could name here, too, is that I didn't necessarily know that my mom was self-diagnosing or thinking about the fact that she had autism. I knew she had ADHD. She and I were both diagnosed with ADHD at like the same year. Many years ago, when I was in middle school, she, she had had a rehab at that time. I think this was like in the, in the mid 90s in Dallas, tell her that she had ADHD. And I was sort of like, at the time, as a kid, I was like, that is insane. Like, this person has a problem with drinking, so like, why are we even worrying about that?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  But now I'm so appreciative that there were people trying to help her in that way. I know that my mom didn't identify with it very much because I think it didn't mean much to her, especially because women often have a different relationship to neurodivergence that doesn't look like what, you know, all men seem to show up as in terms of neurodivergence. So I think she downplayed her own experience of that. But when she passed, I was going through her stuff and I found just a sticky note sort of flitted off of her, her photo I was looking at. And it said, like, do I have autism? Is that what's going on? And I found more of her writing about it, too.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  And it just, it, it, it tracks tremendously with who she is and who I am and who our family is. And I was, I was at the same time curious about that in myself. And when she passed, I was able to sort of revisit my childhood diagnosis of, of autism and ADHD that I had ignored for my whole adult life, or my whole life, pretty much, because I just didn't think that was, I didn't think it really fit. But I've been really grateful for the work of Devon Price and others who talk about, you know, his book, Unmasking Autism, was extremely helpful to me and I know to so many.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So, so, yeah, I feel like it was really cool to understand that part of what, what I get to do, instead of feeling that I'm, instead of feeling that tremendous embarrassment, I really do get to, get to know myself a bit better and get to know my patterns and how it work, how my, how my body mind works. And then it's not so embarrassing. And, and then how cool I get to, I get to ask for a very, a very honest kind of support. And it isn't about me being terrible person or in lack. Actually, it's that I have really cool things, the things that I like to do that other people would love for me to do.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And so, in a way, I get to give a gift when I ask for help like that, too. But I didn't know that for, for, so.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  One of your incredible abilities as a writer is to take a moment and make it so many things at once. So the moment that you just talked about where you're, you're kind of in full-blown crisis, you're sprinting down the path of your driveway, you have this ability where you make that in the book. It is both sad and overwhelming and emotionally moving, but it's also really funny. You're talking about how you're simultaneously sprinting and your pants are falling down and you're holding your pants up while running at full speed.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  And you also have the ability to do this thing that, where you can quote, you know, theorists and writers, but then you also are talking about reality TV. And you talk about how there's this incredibly powerful scene in an episode of Survivor.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Where someone with autism says, hey, if I get overwhelmed, they, they're saying this to another contestant who happens to be a firefighter. If I get overwhelmed, I might need you to hold my hands and squeeze my hands and bring me back down to earth if I'm having a panic attack. And in that moment, you say to your wife, like, I need you to do that for me.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  I need you to be my person. And I, and in a way that I thought was really interesting, your wife says, like, sometimes both of us are the one who needs our hands to be squeezed at the same moment. So I'll do it if I can, but we might both need to figure out how to give ourselves the squeeze when we need that, too.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  That's right. And I, I'm so grateful for my wife. She's, she's so amazing in these ways and such a teacher for me. And I, I love that that came through in the book because what's fun, too, about speaking with you and to be in this framework of, I guess, the thinking around this kind of book as, as maybe an offering to folks who might want to think more about how they could get support or what it looks like for them to be in relationship to these themes. Like, I, I think there is not one size fits all at all. And I, I think the minute that I think I know how something's supposed to go or like how I'm supposed to deal with neurodivergence or how I'm supposed to deal with disability, it does change. It changes.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  And what was really cool, I guess, is the, the plasticity of that. Like, I, you know, Ellers Danlos is something that my family, lives with my mom had, I have, my grandma has.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Can you just give us a quick, like, for people who haven't heard that, can you just tell us really quickly what that is?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  For sure. I feel like if I'm on the internet for too long, there's like a million theories right now. But essentially, what it means is, is that something about the collagen is in the body and the connective tissue is made differently. So there's different types and there is a varying severity, but a lot of people or most people that have it right, at least at the moment, are being diagnosed with it, often have hypermobile EDS. And it just means that there's a lot of dislocations, subluxations and pain, as well as some internal weirdness. At least that's what my family has. I have. I have a hiatal hernia and like weird things like that, that, or it's not weird, I guess, but, but like esophagus stuff, like, it's just I'm too flexible, really.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And it just means I'm loose and in a lot of pain and that's what it is.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Um, as far as support systems and things that work, I'd love for you to talk about how you can find some of those. Because another thing that comes up a lot in the book is you talk about how your grandparents and your mom don't have many friends, but you have a lot of really beautiful friendships and relationships who hold you in the ways that you need to be held, right? You talk about how after your mom's death, you're at the state fair and your friends are with you and they don't care what you're wearing and they don't care that you have a thing of slime in your pocket that you can play with. And they don't care about the fact that you're gonna cry and then laugh. And, and that, that is such a beautiful feeling to be with people who just accept you exactly as you are.

• 37:28Chris Duffy?

  And yet, there's a lot of people in your life who you love really deeply, who didn't or don't have that as much. So how do you consciously think about community and isolation?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I think about it all the time. I love that I do have people in my life that I feel that way about. And then I'll go home and I'll worry that I don't. You know, that's, I think it's part of the way that I've always processed, I guess, these feelings of difference. My grandma describes herself as a hermit. She comes from a family of immigrants. She is Hungarian Slovak, Romney. And she tells me this story all the time that her mother and her mother's mother, they only wanted to talk to the people through, only want to talk to people through the mail slot. And they just never wanted to see anyone. And she's that way. Like, they just, my grandparents don't like to see anyone. And I've never in my life seen them with a friend, like, ever.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And my grandma, when she goes to the grocery or whatever, she'll say, "Her friend." She'll be like, "My friend, this person who works at the grocery." And for forever, I was like dismissing those as, or like both dismissing those kinds of relationships that she has is sort of like, obviously kind of sad, because in my mind, that's not enough. But actually, in recent years, or in the last year or so, I've been really grateful to be like, "No, that's actually beautiful. Like, that gets to be friendship. Why is that not friendship?" That's what fulfills her, is to have, she has a lady that walks her dog by. That's her friend. Great, you know? I think what happens for me is I just get to comparing. And that doesn't work.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  If I'm comparing my friend experience to whatever I believe is a cultural ideal, I'm lost. For me, it does mean that there, like, I don't know, I've gone through a lot of fears around what I thought it might mean to be an adult, living here, not in a city, to be maybe further from communities that I'm involved with. Often, I guess I notice more and more that I am somebody who really feels fulfilled by my relationships with nature, you know? And like trees, like, I literally, I'm in relationship to trees. I'm in relationship to the sea. I'm in relationship to people and animals and plants.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And I have a smile while I'm talking about that, because I think my maybe teenage self, maybe 20-year-old self, would have felt that that was really an embarrassing thing to say in some ways. But yeah, I've just been really on a journey of understanding that I've prioritized people a lot in terms of what a friendship or relationship is. And actually, I get to have relationships with all, with all kinds of loving entities and aspects of our world that aren't necessarily people. And I mean, obviously, we have four dogs. We wish we had 40 dogs, like, you know? There's a lot of love in my life.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  And the more that I expand what that means, the more fulfilled and more content I am. But certainly, I've been really afraid to be like my mom was, which was somewhere between my grandma and I. I think she was really uncomfortable with her own version of isolation. And yet, she didn't have the, like, as we would say, maybe the spoons to make friends. And I watched her being so ashamed of that. And she even asked me many times, like, when I'd lived back here, like, "How do you even have friends?" And I told her, "It's because I'm trans." And I think she was like, huh, you know? And it sort of ended there.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  But I wish I've maybe done a little more caring for her in what I said, which is that I think I'm part of maybe a community of people that are a little more willing to

• 41:24Speaker 01

  to kind of find each other because of sometimes the difficulty of being in the world and being trans. So, yeah, I have that on my side to be queer. But yeah, it's not easy out here.

• 41:39Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human, and your gift will be matched five times.

• 42:26Speaker 04

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• 43:25Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vale Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional. It's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vale Smart Toilet is sleek, with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceed expectations.

• 44:05Chris Duffy?

  It's all about elevating those ordinary, daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at kohler.com. Being trans makes you part of the community, but also, you as a person are open to being part of community. You're open to, like, letting people know you and spend time with you and, you know,

• 44:50Chris Duffy?

  have meals together or take walks or do the things that let you get closer and more intimate with each other. So I'm curious about that part of it, too. Like, the mechanics of how you've let yourself have community and not be isolated. Because certainly, you know, being trans gives you an in, but you still are, you still are doing things actively to make that happen.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  The thing is, at my core, I'm friendly. Like, I'm so friendly. Like, if a person comes up, I am so excited. Like, I feel like I'm one of, you know, some of our dogs really like to see people, some of our dogs don't. I'm the one that's like, "Yay, there's a person." And like, I'm so excited. And it's really hard to turn that off. Like, there have been times in my life where I'm like, "Oh, I should..." I remember when I first moved to New York, when I was like 19, and somebody I cared a lot about, a friend, was like, "You can't act like that here. You know, you need to put on some kind of emotional bubble when you get on the train." I was having people following me home and trying to chat for longer and whatever. And she was just like, "You cannot do that." But at the same time, my core is just to be friendly.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  So that metaphor of like peeling the layers of the onion is so apt in my life, where it's like, you know, I think I'm done with learning this about myself, and then there's a whole other layer. And what I've been realizing lately is that I did put up a lot of walls to block me from those, those sort of joy feelings about other people, just as a protection. But when I'm okay with not ruminating about what I said at every gathering, which I always, I have a tendency to do, I also, I also definitely was afraid to be hyper-verbal. I'm hyper, if you can't tell, I did talk for a really long time. And I don't always know when to stop. I definitely interrupt people.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I don't like sitting down, like, I'm ready to keep moving after we hang out a little bit. So like, I would, I would always be a little bit embarrassed about how I interacted. And it held me back from that, just pure joy at engaging with another person for a really long time. And in the last, again, like I'm saying, ever since my mom died, I've been really attending to that joy feeling and trying to cultivate it more. I always did try to cultivate friendships, but I don't think I worked as hard to cultivate authentically, authentically joyful ones, where it's like, I don't care if I am not being cute right now. Like, I just, I just want to hang out.

• 47:18Chris Duffy?

  But I feel like there's something that is a thread between like grief and mental health and sobriety and transness and all of the things that we're talking about, which is having to sometimes in a way that is, you know, challenging or against your will, having to get used to like cutting past the bullshit and just saying like, this is who I am.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:41Chris Duffy?

  This is who I am, and I'm not going to be ashamed of it, and I'm not going to try and lie or hide it. And I often have heard from trans friends that like, just being like, this is who I am. It allows them to have this huge weight lifted and this joy and a new sense of life. Like, sometimes trans friends talk about like, going through like a second puberty, not just because of hormonal, but because of like, finding who you are. In all of those, though, there's this idea of like, you have to get rid of the shame that forces you to like, pile lies and deflections on top of lies and deflections, so that there's all this weight of things you have to maintain versus just saying the thing that you actually feel.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that gets us right back to that concept of like, if only suicidality or the idea of the thoughts of killing oneself, if those were allowed, if those were allowed out to the extent that maybe folks had them, I want to say, I feel like people would live longer, but I know people would live, or at least my mom would have lived more joyfully. Because as Grammy and I say a lot, we would have laughed with her about the Walmart thing. My grandma and I were joking about how now, Michael's, my mom was an avid crafter, as is most of her side of the family, and Michael's has a self-checkout. And so, one of the jokes

• 49:04Speaker 01

  that my grandma made after my mom died was like, she really would have loved that, you know? And it's, I agree, she would have loved that. And it's funny. And the fact that, because we're making a shoplifting joke, like, we would have laughed with her. We would have been like, are you serious? Like, what did you even take? Like, it was 60 bucks worth of stuff? Like, what were you even doing? We wouldn't have condemned her. We would not have given more weight to her own shame. There's no way we would have done that. And that, to your point, that's exactly how it works in 12-step world and AA, where, yeah, suddenly, everyone's laughing about all of those stories of using and drinking that were, you know, maybe all of the, all of the embarrassing things, all of the, all of

• 49:49Speaker 01

  the nightmarish, all of the happy things. Everyone's laughing. And everybody says, yeah, I did that, too. And it's the same with, with, I agree, a lot of that was the same with, with me understanding more about what gender looked like for me. Just being like, oh, yeah, okay, it's not funny. Hello. Here we are.

• 50:06Chris Duffy?

  There's this line that I thought, I know I'm going to think about from the book a lot, which comes from the writer Lea Lakshmi Piyapna Samarasinha, which is, care is not automatically a burden, and it is not automatically beautiful.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:19Chris Duffy?

  That when we get into the idea of thinking that caring for someone has to be one of those two things, it can, it can trap us into feeling like, this is where the boundary has to be, rather than what our boundary actually works for us.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Totally. And I feel like boundaries as a, as a term is, is, feels complicated, because it seems as if, you know, whatever, I don't love the idea of something at all that's like a wall, or a, or a place of division that is maybe an imagined gate, or something that's locking off, I guess, a normal pattern of movement, or whatever. I mean, I think it's great to maybe have like, traffic cones or something, instead of like, a wall, like, I can like, move them around, and it's okay if for some reason, that someone responds harshly to it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to stay so rigid, I guess, at least in my heart and mind. I, I, I don't know.

• 51:12Chris Duffy?

  You know, related to boundaries, I think, is inheritance, right? Because it's like, what are our responsibilities, but also what do we get from the people we come from? So, what advice would you have for people who are wrestling with what you get from previous generations?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  It is larger than our family systems, for sure. It's like, the cultures that they occupied, it's the generational trauma that many of us have inherited from our cultural groups, or what has happened to our cultural groups. There's just so much there. And, and one of the gifts, I guess, of, of living in an intergenerational family, like, I'm so grateful that I got to grow up with my grandparents, very much like you said earlier, as my parents, and I got to grow up with my mom right there, too. It was really great, because they gave me so much perspective on who I am, because I got to see through them, what, you know, what their relationship to raising my mom was, and what her relationship to them was.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  But I guess I just, I just, I don't know, the word gratitude comes to mind. I'm so grateful to learn from my elders or previous generations about what life has meant for them. And I can, it's almost like I'm tracing my own hand when I'm talking to them. And at the same time, that's not all there is. There, I'm influenced by so many things and people around me now, that maybe they're, they weren't a part of. Like, I have trans ancestors, or, you know, transcestors, as some people say, or like, there are other, there are other influences on me that maybe they didn't have. So, I do find a lot of gratitude for learning about inheritance and what it's meant for me. And I do try to take it as loosely

• 52:52Speaker 01

  as, you know, as maybe as possible, because in some ways, obviously, I've inherited a genetic condition from these people. But I've also been raised by a stepparent and other people who I don't necessarily share genetics with, but have certainly influenced me in many, many ways. So, I just, I just kind of love the constellation of family that makes me up. And I'm kind of losing the, the language for what would be the opposite of gratitude in this way. But like, I guess resentment is the only thing that comes to mind. There, it was easy for me when I was younger to be resentful, and be like, oh, my God, like, these people were trying so hard to not be themselves, that they are

• 53:35Speaker 01

  isolated and locked away in this, in their weird houses, and they never brought me to any other kids' house. I never went to a party of any kind, like, I never, like, they were never like, in, they didn't know anyone. So, I, they didn't help me socialize. It was easy for me to be in blame. But my dad passed away that, last year, my biological dad. And my grandparents are aging. My grandpa is entering probably, you know, the final stage of his life. My grandma's 84, and, or 83, something like that, very close to 80, 83 or 84. And I'm just watching sort of the sunset on the people that knew me when

• 54:14Speaker 01

  I was a baby, and knew me when I was born. So, I'm standing here, kind of in a, in a really tremendous sort of quiet around that. It's amazing how quiet it's gotten in my, in my head and my heart, as they leave this place. And what I'm finding in that quiet is just a tremendous gratitude. There's kind of nothing else left. It's weird.

• 54:40Chris Duffy?

  I love that.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:41Chris Duffy?

  Well, Emerson Whitney, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for writing the book, Oh, Mother. It's such a fantastic and beautiful book. And thank you for making time to be here and talk with us.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for, for this and for you.

• 54:56Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. I would like to make sure that anyone who is out there struggling or loving someone who is struggling, knows that there are resources available. One of those resources in the United States is you can call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It is free, it's confidential, it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And there are similar resources available in many other countries as well. And wherever you are, know that you are cared about. Thank you so much to our guest, Emerson Whitney. Emerson's latest book is called Oh, Mother, and it is out now. It is beautiful and powerful, and I really, really recommend you read it. My name is Chris Duffy. I am your host, and I am also the author of a book called Humor

• 55:39Chris Duffy?

  Me, which is also out now. You can find out information about my book and all my other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. This episode of How to Be a Better Human was brought to you by what is known in Maine as a wicked good team. On the TED side, from inside a lobster trap in Penobscot Bay, we've got Daniella Balarezzo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney Lott, Tansuka Sungman-Evong, Antonio Lay, and Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash edited this video while drinking a frap, and Mateus Salas fact-checked this episode with the kind of careful attention to detail you normally only see inside an LL Bean. On the PRX side, they've got a bucket of fresh blueberries, and it's going kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk. Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please, share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it, someone who you would like to talk about it with. We will

• 56:24Chris Duffy?

  be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.

• 56:35Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vale Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional, it's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vale Smart Toilet is sleek, with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness

• 57:12Chris Duffy?

  that exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at Kohler.com.

• 57:48Speaker 05

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• 58:17Speaker 06

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• 58:45Speaker 07

  Hi there. It's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.