How to Love Our People Bigger & Better with Bozoma Saint John
February 23, 2023
Abby Wambach:
We’re here.
Glennon Doyle:
We are here. Welcome.
Bozoma Saint John:
We’re here.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things. I don’t think we’ve ever had an episode that was based on a love story, and this is a love story today. This is a love story about a woman and her husband, about a woman and her daughters, about a woman and life. As Boz knows, because I read The Urgent Life for the first time months ago, and just texted her immediately and said, “Holy shit. I learned so much.” I couldn’t wait to have Boz on the pod to talk to our Pod Squad because I feel like what we try to talk about constantly is just how to love and live deep. How do we just suck the marrow out of life? This is what Boz shows us.
Glennon Doyle:
We hear all the time that the harder, and deeper, and truer you stay close to truth, we’re scared of that because it hurts so bad, but that is what it takes in order to experience the highs of life and Boz does both.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Why don’t you introduce Boz, Abby?
Abby Wambach:
Bozoma Saint John is a Hall of Fame-inducted marketing executive, author, entrepreneur, and in our opinion, just a general badass. Bozoma’s brilliant career has included roles like Global CMO of Netflix, CMO of Endeavor, CBO of Uber, head of marketing of Apple Music and iTunes, and head of music and entertainment marketing at PepsiCo, crowned as the world’s most influential CMO by Forbes. By far, her greatest achievement is raising her 13-year-old daughter, Lael. Her highly anticipated memoir, The Urgent Life, is available now. Your life is one big love story.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, it is.
Abby Wambach:
And partly about you and Peter. I loved your book, and this part made me giggle so loud. You first met Peter at work. Okay?
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
You were hungry, and he was a bit of a smart-ass. Eventually, he asked you out and you said, “If you read my favorite book, I’ll go out with you.”
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Tell us about your first meeting, your first date, and the first real gift he gave you.
Bozoma Saint John:
Ooh, yes. Okay. Can I also just say that it was really hard to write this book? Can I say that? It was really, really hard. I love the fact that you said that some of it made you giggle because that’s really what life is. There’s the hard parts, and the loss and the trauma, but there’s also the giggles. Even today, as I sit here and I, every once in a while, sporadically, I’ll think of him or something will remind me or Lael will say something, and it will make me giggle, so it’s not everything that is like deep, and dark, and heavy. You know what I’m saying?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. Meeting him was one of those. It was so ridiculous. The fact that I married this man is like, somebody should question me. You know what I mean? There should be some real questions about my opinions and my way of evaluating people. Okay? Because when I saw him, he just looked utterly, ridiculous is the right word. First of all, I was working for Spike Lee at a company that was his agency inside of an agency. One of those big, old agencies. Actually, remember the show Mad Men?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
Mad Men was based on DDB.
Abby Wambach:
No way.
Bozoma Saint John:
Imagine that Spike has this little group of people inside of a company like that.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Bozoma Saint John:
It’s all Black people in there. You know what I’m saying? Inside of this very white place. The only time we interacted with the other white people was when we went to the cafeteria, or to the mail room, or some other place where there were other people. Otherwise, we were on an island by ourselves. I went down to the cafeteria to get my breakfast, which is a very standard thing that I did. I ordered the same thing. I’m a creature of habit.
Glennon Doyle:
What was it?
Bozoma Saint John:
It was a darkly-toasted cinnamon raisin bagel, two fried eggs over hard, very hard, not runny at all, and two pieces of crispy bacon.
Abby Wambach:
Crispy bacon. I love that part.
Bozoma Saint John:
That’s correct. Don’t forget the butter. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
That is my order. This man was standing in line, a few people behind me. Tall, white guy. Like 6’5″, reddish-blond hair, wearing a button-down shirt that was open a few buttons down, and had this heavy gold chain. He just looked ridiculous, and he was basically yelling ahead of people to me, that I should hurry up with my order. Yeah, that’s what happened. I had the same attitude then I have right now. You know what I mean?
Bozoma Saint John:
I literally turned around, like, “Who the fuck is talking to me like that?” That was my attitude, and when he eventually simmered down because he realized he really couldn’t mess with me, he tried to come and sweet talk. He was like, “Well, you look like a queen, but it doesn’t mean that you’re royal.” I was like, “That’s a fuck kind of line.” You know what I mean? The whole thing was ridiculous. That’s not the beginning of a love story. That’s not the way it should start. That’s the way ours started. Yeah, when he realized how fine I was … You know what I’m saying?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Bozoma Saint John:
And he wanted to go out, I absolutely was not letting him get an easy yes. First of all, I wasn’t planning to say yes at all. My suggestion, that if he wanted to get to know me, he should read my favorite book, which is Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Heavy book. That’s like, yo, if you want to read about the African American experience and you’ve got to rise up to the level, Toni Morrison is who you read. She doesn’t dumb down anything.
Bozoma Saint John:
I thought, “Well, that will get rid of him because he’s never going to read that,” but no. About a week later, here he comes to Spike’s floor, all the Black people. You know what I’m saying? Here he comes, big white man. The receptionist is like, “Oh, there’s a white guy here to see you.” I’m like, “Who?” I said, “Who? Not me. I don’t know any white people.” Sorry. I don’t know. What do you mean? I didn’t invite any white people here. I have no idea. That was not me.”
Bozoma Saint John:
I go out to the reception area, and sure enough, it’s that man. He was standing there and he’s like, “I read the book. Let’s go out.” I was like, “There is no way. There’s absolutely no way you read the book in like a week. There’s no way.” I decided to call his bluff and said, “All right. Let’s go. Let’s go to dinner.” The thing is, see, what I knew that he didn’t know at the time was that I was an African American Studies major at Wesleyan University. I’d read everybody, all of the enormous Black talent. The James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, the Zora Neale Hurston. Everybody, and I wrote papers on it. I knew it deeply, and so I was like, “Yeah, let’s go out. I’m going to embarrass the hell out of you.” That’s what I was thinking in my head.
Bozoma Saint John:
We got to dinner and he knew what he was talking about. He had read the book. That was probably the first shock, that this man who just didn’t look the part, and maybe that was part of the lesson. He just didn’t look like what I assumed he was, and he just showed up in a different way. By the time we were done with dinner, I like to say, and I will say that by the end of the dinner, I was in love. Imagine that 180. You know what I’m saying? From sitting there looking like, “I’m going to finish this appetizer and then I’m going to sop him up with the rest of it.” You know what I’m saying? “I’m going to destroy him.”
Bozoma Saint John:
Then by the end, I’m like, “Oh my god. I think I love him.” You know what I mean? I’m like, “Oh my god.” We were inseparable, inseparable. That was the end of November in 2000. Yeah, in 2000. My birthday’s in January, and we were just inseparable. We were deeply in love. It only took us a couple months to get there, and as a present … I was like, I really love my birthday, and I was hoping for some jewelry or something shiny. You know what I’m saying.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, I do.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah, mm-hmm. We get to his apartment and there was no tiny box. There was nothing that looks like it could have jewelry in it. There was only something draped in the corner with a sheet. I was looking at it like, it’s not even wrapping paper. You know what I mean? It’s literally like a sheet. Again, I’m thinking like, “Ah, man. I love this person, so I’m going to give him some grace, but damn, I’m going to have to teach him how to gift me.” You know what I’m saying?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
Went through my head. Isn’t that so interesting though, that how much we want to teach other people how to love us?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Bozoma Saint John:
You know what I’m saying? Like teaching some other person to love you. You know what I mean?
Glennon Doyle:
God, I do.
Bozoma Saint John:
In any case, I got maybe one of the best gifts I’ve ever received in my life under that wrinkled blanket that was thrown over something. Because when I took it off, it was Peter’s painting and interpretation of the Song of Solomon. The man had never picked up a paintbrush before in his life, and he painted what his interpretation was. It is one of the most thoughtful, beautiful gifts I’ve ever received. It currently is hanging up in Lael’s bedroom.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, god. That’s the kind of love we’re dealing with here, people. You and Peter fall in love, a Black woman and a white man.
Bozoma Saint John:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
A white man who wears, big, long, gold chains.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
As you begin to share your relationship with the world, things get tricky.
Bozoma Saint John:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
You said it felt, sometimes, like there is no peace to be found anywhere for you two. Talk to us about what you mean by that, how our culture reacts and responds to a Black woman and a white man in love.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. Because we were in New York City, you would think, maybe yeah, you would assume that it should have been peaceful. It’s a multicultural city, cosmopolitan, lots of people living together all over the city. It’s not like you could just be by yourself in one area. Maybe there’s certain parts of the city, but for the most part, you got people everywhere, and it’s like we’re living in Manhattan, so it should be everybody kumbaya, but that’s not what it was.
Bozoma Saint John:
I found out very quickly that love doesn’t mask everything. It’s like, yes, you’re in a cocoon to some degree, but you have to live in love outside also. You don’t just love inside. The outside is what then started to crack us, even in those early days, because we were confronted with other people’s opinions. Look, we can sit here and now and say like, “Ah, but who cares? Who cares what they think?” All of us have been in that position, every single one of us. You love somebody. You enter a situation where you know you’re probably not welcome, and maybe you start to back up out of the space, or you look for the safe exits, or you look for a friendly face. You know what I mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
The two of you by yourselves sometimes is not enough. Sometimes, you need a community around you to uphold you, to tell you that like, “Look, your love is good. Your love is okay. Feel free to do that,” and that wasn’t the case for us. It came from everywhere. Not just my family, by the way, or his, which was hard enough, but from strangers. It came from white women. It came from Black men. It came from even Black women who were like, “Girl, you better get your swirl on.” You know what I mean? It came from them too. That’s pressure too.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. Everybody feels that they can have an opinion on your relationship. You know what I mean? Even when you don’t ask for it. Like as if you needed their approval to do what you’re doing. You know what I’m saying?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
Good or bad is what I mean. Yes, of course, the times when Black women would see me and they’d be like, “Ooh, girl. Tell me about that swirl.” It was funny, but at the same time, it still put a spotlight on us. Even in praise, it can be harsh.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
Even in celebration, it can feel like, “Ah, but do you have to look at me? Just let me be in peace,” and that’s what was difficult.
Glennon Doyle:
What is the white woman response? I loved how you wrote about that in the book. What is beneath it? Because it’s not just that people are interested in you. It’s that, “What you’re doing is threatening something in me.”
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Which is always very curious to me. I’m sure a lot of us also ask that question. It’s like, “Why is it that what I’m doing bothers you so much?”
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
Like, “What’s it got to do with you?” You know what I’m saying?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, white women were particularly interesting because they were less vocal but meaner. I have found that to be the truth for me-
Glennon Doyle:
All across the board.
Bozoma Saint John:
… in various places. Yeah, not just in this case, but in the corporate spaces, in lots of spaces. Sometimes, it’s like you rather that somebody just yell in your face. When Black men saw us and would try to grab my arm or be like, “Sis, what you doing with him?” that was one kind of aggression, but white women who would scoff, or would look at me up and down, or I could see them whispering amongst themselves, that was a different type of aggression. Quieter but meaner because I could tell their disapproval in a way that I felt was more dangerous because I wasn’t sure what they were going to do.
Bozoma Saint John:
To me, it’s like that response and all those types of responses, I had to navigate carefully. Just wasn’t sure when it was going to be a safe space or a safe environment for us to be exactly who we were, and so we found ourselves very quickly adapting to certain environments, behaving differently. That was not a conscious change. Perhaps, again, maybe that’s a universal thing where you find that in some spaces, you behave one way as a couple and in other spaces, you behave a different way as a couple. It’s all with the intention of, yeah, sometimes just being safe.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You were together in that, but one of the things I can’t stop thinking about is that you were also alone in that because as the Black woman in the relationship, you had always had to be on the lookout for all of those microaggressions, whereas so you would notice them and Peter wouldn’t even notice them. Right? Did that make you feel alone?
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, yes. It made me feel so angry. I was pissed off because I think part of it also was that, it was almost like he could no right in that. You know what I mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
If I called it out and he tried to dismiss it like, “That’s no big deal” … There was this one time, I remember we were in a fancy shop. I don’t remember what designer it was, but we were shopping, and he was so excited. He was pulling things for me and like, “Ooh, you should try this on. This is going to look great for you.” I saw a bunch of white girls over there just snickering and I just knew. I was like, “Ah, man. I don’t even want to go into the dressing room because he’s going to make me come out and then they’re still going to be standing there and judging me with their eyes, and I just don’t want the thing.” You know?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
When I told him about it later, I got pissed off in the moment, and we left, and we didn’t buy anything. Later on, he was just like, “Why were you so mad?” I’m like, “Well, because of the white girls.” He’s like, “Who cares? Who cares about that?” I’m like, “What do you mean, who cares? I care.”
Bozoma Saint John:
It’s like I wanted a partner who would be as outraged as me, or if it went the other way where it was like, “Hey, this thing is happening over here,” and then if he wants to overreact, or the time a Black man tried to pull me from him, physically pull me from him, and I knew that, well, all of us were about to be in a fight. It’s like then I’m playing peacekeeper and I’m trying to be like, “Hey, simmer down. Calm down, calm down, man. Bring all that manly testosterone, bring it down.” A lot of times, I felt very alone.
Bozoma Saint John:
There was a time when we went to Ghana together. It was his first time there. I was really excited for him to come because, of course, Ghana’s so important to me. It’s where my parents are from. It’s where my family’s from. It’s the base of everything in my life. We had talked about it so much, so his first visit, he was thrilled. The running joke was that every morning, we would wake up, and Peter would be gone. Nobody could find him. He’d just be out in the street.
Bozoma Saint John:
Then later on, we’d go find him and he’d have made friends. He’s over here holding people’s hands. He was just adventurous, but it pissed me off because there was just no win because I was just like, “How is it possible that you’re able to be anywhere on this planet and have the freedom to do anything you want, yet I don’t feel safe at home? I can’t walk around at home by myself, go make some friends with random strangers, yet you are in a foreign land. You don’t speak the language. You don’t eat the food. You can’t even pronounce the people’s names right, yet here you are all alone, by yourself having a good-ass time.”
Bozoma Saint John:
We came back and friends were like, “How was Ghana?” He’s like, “Oh, it was fantastic. It was amazing. I had a fantastic time.” I’m sitting there like, “This motherfucker here.” You know what I mean? Like, “How are you allowed to have such a good time?” At the same time, can you imagine if he came back and he was just like, “It was terrible. It stank. I hated all the people. I hated the food”?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, but you probably were hoping that you would have a moment of understanding because he would go and be uncomfortable there, and then he would understand how you felt, but instead, you said, “I should have been ecstatic that Peter was embracing Ghana. Instead, I was pissed at his white man’s arrogance.”
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Abby Wambach:
Well, you wrote it. That was you. That was a quote from you.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, yes, exactly. That’s what I’m saying. That’s exactly it. That’s how I felt. I wanted him to understand what it was like for me to be in the world. I thought if I put him in a world that is not his, he will finally understand what it’s like for me to be in his, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he was king there too. How is that possible? Yet here I am, scared everywhere. There was no understanding between us of the cultures and it was a fracture.
Glennon Doyle:
Your description of that is mind-blowing and world-changing, by the way, in the book. You’re in this cocoon and there’s all this shit on the outside, but it wasn’t just out of the cocoon. It was in the cocoon.
Bozoma Saint John:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Tell us about when you out to dinner with Leander and Ray.
Bozoma Saint John:
Oh, yes. Oh my goodness. By the way, Leander and Ray both have read the book. They read an early draft of it. Leander remembered it. Ray didn’t.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah, which is also so interesting to me as the writer of a memoir, that our memories … Some memories are just so sharp. Sometimes, they create trauma in the way that somebody who’s in the exact same place just doesn’t even affect them at all-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s amazing.
Bozoma Saint John:
… at all. It’s incredible. You know what I mean? That’s also why, sometimes, I feel like even in our own lives, we have to have more grace in our experiences because, yes, two people can be in the same experience at the same time, and it can affect one and not affect the other one. In that moment, when Ray was telling me that he couldn’t remember that time, I was just like, “Wow. Isn’t that so fascinating?” You know?
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
In any case, yes, we were celebrating Leander’s birthday, and we had gone to a casino in Connecticut. It was the four of us celebrating. Ray and Leander are Black. Leander’s one of my best friends. We met in college. Ray went to college with us as well, so I’ve known them forever. The four of us were great friends together, two couples having a great time. We’d gone to this casino. We went to the restaurant to have a great dinner together, and the hostess at the front, she was like one of those who was just like, “Oh, yeah. We’ll seat you as soon as something opens up.” Meanwhile, there’s like three tables open that we can see. You know what I mean?
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
Then we’re standing there for like 15 minutes and it’s like, “Can we sit? What’s happening?” Almost immediately, I think the three of us, Ray, Leander, and myself knew what was going on. Peter, on the other hand, was just like, “Oh, man. I can see a table over there.” We’re like, “Do you not see that she don’t want to sit …” Eventually, of course, that scene blew up, and we knew it was some racist shit happening, and we sit down. It, of course, then dawned Peter what was going on, and he felt so terrible in that moment, which I think in hindsight, I understand how he felt so terrible.
Bozoma Saint John:
He was identifying with this white person who was treating his Black wife and his Black friends terribly, and he felt responsible. He wanted to right the wrong. Meanwhile, I’m thinking in my head, “You’re not one of them. You’re one of us. You’re with us, so when they treat me badly, they’re treating you badly.” In that moment, I realized that he wasn’t one of us.
Bozoma Saint John:
He didn’t see it that way. He saw himself as part of them. That, for me, was another chasm that started opening in our differences, because I realized that he would never be part of us. If something was to wrong me, he would not feel it. He would never feel it. He would always take the side of somebody else, or try and right the wrong that they did because he felt responsible in their care and not pain with my experience.
Glennon Doyle:
Ah. He’s identifying with that person, which is why he’s trying to fix it, because if he was identified with you, he wouldn’t be trying to fix it. He would be in pain, or rage-
Abby Wambach:
In rage, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
… with you.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, correct, correct, correct.
Glennon Doyle:
Ah.
Bozoma Saint John:
I saw this a million times. I wrote about it in the book as well, just like our current climate and everything that’s been happening like with George Floyd. I think the day after George Floyd was murdered, I was on one of these big panels, a Zoom panel. I think it was Adweek, or something big. There was a bunch of CMOs. I think it was like the top 20 CMOs on. We’re supposed to this.
Bozoma Saint John:
The topic was to share the thoughts of how we, as an industry, should behave and how to best market to consumers in this changing climate. I’m sitting there, I can’t think of anything else but George Floyd. You know what I’m saying? I think I was one of two Black people amongst the 20 or 25. It got to my turn to give my insights, and I literally could not say the words that I had written only a week before. By the way, they were brilliant insights.
Glennon Doyle:
I know they were.
Bozoma Saint John:
That’s besides the point.
Glennon Doyle:
I know they were.
Bozoma Saint John:
Thank you very much. All I could think of was like, “I want you to be enraged,” and that’s all I said. I said, “I have three points. Be enraged, be enraged, be enraged. That’s it. If you don’t feel that rage that I feel, then I don’t understand why am I here.” It is that feeling, a part of that feeling that was, back then, too with him. I was just like, “Why don’t you feel the rage? Why don’t you feel the shame? Why don’t you feel the hurt?”
Bozoma Saint John:
“You’re identifying with them and feeling sorry for me. That’s not the feeling I want. If you’re going to be in this fight with me, if you’re truly going to be authentic in this, in our relationship, or even, let’s bring it into the present. If you are an ally of some sort and you want to be in this with me, you have to feel the pain. You don’t feel sorry for me.” That’s what pissed me off because I was just like, “Man, this man is feeling sorry for us instead of feeling mad,” and that was shocking to me.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Bozoma Saint John:
Mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
I’m just going to let that settle in because that was really important for me to hear. Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
So a few years in your marriage, you became pregnant with Eve. I want to ask, what do you want to say about that time, about loving Eve and losing her?
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. Ah, man. What a lesson. Oh. Peter really wanted kids. He wanted kids immediately. I was the one who was just like, “Look, I’m young and beautiful.” You know what I’m saying? “I don’t want to mess this up.” You know what I mean? And so I resisted for like five years in our marriage, which I know doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re in a marriage and somebody wants a kid, five years is a long time, where I’m just like, “Let’s go on vacation.”
Glennon Doyle:
Distractions.
Bozoma Saint John:
Or he’d be like, “Well, what about this fall?” I’m like, “Ooh, that’s Fashion Week. I don’t think I want to …” You know what I mean? “I got to be cute. I got to be in these outfits.” I was real religious with my birth control and the whole thing. When I was late, I was literally like, “Am I sick? Is there an illness? Because there’s no way I’m pregnant.”
Bozoma Saint John:
I am honest in my storytelling that look, I was not happy to be pregnant. I cried. I cried for a long time. I cried for days. I don’t think I even told my mom for like a week after I knew I was pregnant, but Peter was elated. He was so excited. I think, for me, it was the realization, there was so many things happening at the time. All of these different experiences I’ve been talking about with our cultural differences, and some other difference we were having was making me question whether or not this was actually the partnership and the relationship I wanted.
Bozoma Saint John:
I loved him very much, but I wasn’t sure that our relationship was actually going to last forever, and I was scared of that. Hadn’t voiced it at all to anybody, and then I got pregnant and I was like, “Oh, shit. Now I’m trapped. Now I’m stuck here.” Those were the thoughts that were going through my mind, but by the time it was unavoidable for me to tell people … Because I was hiding for a long time. That first trimester, I wasn’t telling a soul. I told maybe my close friends and my sisters, but that was it. Then it was obvious in the second trimester, and I had to tell my colleagues, and so it was like a slow build for me in terms of coming to terms with the fact I was going to become a mother.
Bozoma Saint John:
Every appointment that we had to hear the baby’s heartbeat or to do the checkup was another one where I was like, “Okay, all right. I’m getting closer and closer. Now I’m starting to understand this.” By the way, can I pause and say that I wish that women who decide to become mothers, or who are pregnant, or who go through that experience, or any partner, I guess, anybody who becomes a parent … There’s probably a better way to put it. I wish we would talk about that more.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
Be more honest about that, because it’s not always rainbows and sunshine when you figure out that you’re pregnant. Even if you’re in a quote, unquote, traditional situation where you should feel happy, it’s like what does that even mean? It’s like, look, you as an individual, sometimes you have to acclimate to a situation that you’re in, and we don’t talk about the misery of that, where we’re like, “What happens?”
Bozoma Saint John:
I for one, I think everybody on the outside would have been like, “You’re in a five-year marriage. You got a great husband. You’ve got a great job. You live in Manhattan. You can afford whatever you want. Why wouldn’t you be happy to be pregnant? There’s nothing wrong with you,” but I didn’t want to be. Yeah, but I felt trapped, and I felt like I had to be.
Bozoma Saint John:
Every appointment did get me closer and closer to feeling like I could do it. The turning point for me … This is, I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. The turning point for me was when we went to an appointment, I was almost six months pregnant, where they check the amniotic fluid.
Bozoma Saint John:
Our obstetrician said that the fluid was a little low and that our baby wasn’t the size that it was supposed to be. Just a little smaller, but it wasn’t cause for concern. When I heard that, I became protective. It was a turning point for me, where I was just like, “Oh, wait. Hold on now. Hold on. Okay. Now, this is not just like some foreign object that I’m fighting against. Oh, no. Now my body might be betraying us.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like, “I can talk shit about my family, but don’t you talk shit about my family.”
Bozoma Saint John:
That’s exactly right. I could be pissed off but, “Don’t you dare mess this up.” You know what I mean? If anybody’s going to mess it up, it’s going to be me. You know what I mean? It was just a turning point where I was like, “Oh, wait. Hold on. Oh, okay. No, no, no. Let me figure this out.” By the time my illness was diagnosed, I had severe preeclampsia, early onset preeclampsia and had to be rushed into the delivery room. I had to be given the pitocin and all the drugs to induce labor.
Bozoma Saint John:
Oh, man. That was me and her, Eve, fighting against what was happening to us. I felt like it bonded us in that way. Whereas, Peter, on the other hand, we had switched roles. Because unbeknownst to me at the time, the doctor had told him that he had to choose one. He had to choose one. He was either going to lose me or he was going to lose Eve, and which one was it going to be? I now can understand the impossible situation that he was in, but at the time, all I knew was the decision and I was livid.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s right.
Bozoma Saint John:
Not just mad that he had chosen me over her, but that I didn’t have a voice in the decision. The fact that he made it on his own and then informed me. I thought, “Well, what would I do now?” Even as we have a lot of discussions these days about choice, and it’s like, what do you do in that situation? If you have choice, what do you do? Which one do you make? Of course, there was no guarantees that if he had chosen the baby that she would live either, so he chose his wife, and it was so devastating to me.
Bozoma Saint John:
I think in that moment, all I could think of was the fact that I was maybe being punished by God. Because I was like, “Well, maybe if I had better appreciated the tremendous gift of motherhood, of having a child, that I wouldn’t be in the position to lose it.” Maybe somebody thinks that’s irrational, but it was the only way that I could make sense of a situation that didn’t make any sense to me.
Bozoma Saint John:
I said, “Well, everybody has babies, right?” My mom had four. My sister had a couple. My aunt had like nine. Everybody had babies. Nobody ever talks about the challenge. Nobody ever talks about things that go wrong. I didn’t even know about preeclampsia. Then all of a sudden, here I was being forced to give birth when I didn’t want to, so all I could think of was, it’s got to be God. It’s got to be God who said, “You don’t deserve this. You didn’t want this, and now I’m taking it.” That’s all I could think.
Bozoma Saint John:
In that moment, I prayed. I prayed and I begged. I did all of the things. I cried, I railed. Oh, I was holding myself. I can still feel it in my body, her kicking and fighting, and me trying to hold contractions. Eventually, when she was born, she only took a breath. All I could think about was the fact that God failed me. I thought I was asking for help. Isn’t that what God wants us to do? Be vulnerable, lay our burdens at the throne of God and ask for help, ask for forgiveness. Then you’ll be saved. That’s what we’re taught in Christianity anyway. I thought I was a good Christian, but God didn’t listen to me. In that moment, my relationship with God also changed.
Glennon Doyle:
Hmm. How? How do you feel differently about God now than you did then, and how does Lael work into all of that?
Bozoma Saint John:
Ooh. Here’s the thing. God and I are really homies, okay?
Glennon Doyle:
I know. I know.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah, we’re homies, we’re homies. Yeah, we’re homies in that I can be mad at God. I don’t always have to like God. Maybe that sounds blasphemous to some people, but I feel like that’s my homie. Sometimes, you’re mad at your friends. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them, but you get mad at them and you don’t want to speak to them for a while. Sometimes, that’s how I feel. Even at that point, I was so angry. I was angry at everything. I was angry at God. I was angry at my obstetrician. I was angry at Peter. I was angry at my body. I was angry at everybody.
Bozoma Saint John:
The only way that I felt like I could rectify any of it, because I want to take things into my own hands and control everything, was to get pregnant again because I was like, “Aha. That is the solution.” Again, everybody said no. My obstetrician was like, “What the hell are you doing?” Peter was like, “Oh, absolutely not.” I was like, “You better lay down, brother. We’ve got to get pregnant. Okay? That’s what we’re going to do. Okay? Because I’m ovulating, and that’s what’s happening.” Even my mom, everybody was just like, “Don’t you think you should take some time?” da, da, da.
Bozoma Saint John:
I was like, “No, no, no. I’m going to get pregnant right now,” and so three months after Eve died, I was pregnant with Lael. Almost as soon as I found out that I was pregnant again, I was like, “Oh, shit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, no. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it right now. I don’t. No. I was kidding.” You know what I mean? Because it was so scary.
Glennon Doyle:
Of course.
Bozoma Saint John:
I was like, “Oh my god, man. I got to live nine months with this thing? What if something happens? What if I get sick? How am I going to know? What if I lose this one?” The fear of that was as intense as the grieving, loss of Eve. Those two things living inside of me, and then also living within Peter created an impossible situation in our home. We’re supposedly in this thing together, protecting each other, helping each other, grieving together, celebrating together.
Bozoma Saint John:
We found ourselves in opposite corners because here I was feeling like my body betrayed us, my body betrayed Eve. It was my fault. Then I was like, “Well, God, you had something to with this too, so you make sure that this baby lives.” Then at seven months pregnant with Lael, here I go again, more preeclampsia. At that point, I was like, “Hey, look here you.” This is me to God. “Don’t do this again. I promise you that you … Don’t do this to me. I will not survive this.”
Bozoma Saint John:
I made God a deal. I said if he gave me this baby, I would name her for him, and that everywhere I went, I would tell people that God is the reason that she lived. When she was born, we named her Lael, or Lael in Hebrew, meaning belonging to God. For me, it was my contract. I was like, “Okay. I will do this if you give her to me, if you protect her in the world.” Honestly, it has been somewhat freeing also of the fear of her life. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it does.
Bozoma Saint John:
I think as parents, you’re always worried about your kid. Like they’re outside. Oh my god. Are they safe? Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. That’s God’s kid that’s walking around outside. I dare you to mess with her. That’s not even mine. That’s God’s kid outside, named after God, that’s God junior. Okay? So you-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s God junior.
Bozoma Saint John:
God junior. That’s who’s walking around. Okay? You want to mess around with her, that’s on you. That’s between you and … I don’t know. I’m out of it. That’s not me.
Glennon Doyle:
Then when she gets in trouble at school, you can be like, “God, that is your child who did that in school today.”
Bozoma Saint John:
That’s right. Yes, when she does something, I’m like, “Lord, what you going to do? Because this one right here, she’s grounded. I don’t know what you want me to do.” It’s just like-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, so freeing.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. It’s so freeing, so freeing.
Abby Wambach:
After so much beauty, and love, and pain, and loss, you decided it was time to separate.
Glennon Doyle:
From Peter.
Abby Wambach:
From Peter.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
How did you know it was time, and how did you know that separating was the right kind of hard?
Glennon Doyle:
Boz, this is the question we get so much from people. How do you know? Because it’s hard to stay. It’s hard to leave. How do you know which one is the right thing?
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. I battled it for so long. It was not like overnight where I was just like, “You know, I’m out of here.” I thought about it for a long time. Lael was just over a year old when I told him that I wanted to separate, and it was terrible. It was awful.
Bozoma Saint John:
God, I don’t even know how to describe it because even in that conversation, there was a point of clarity for me that was just like, “Oh, yeah. No, this is the right thing to do” because our understandings of what we wanted in marriage were so different, and there were so many things that I still didn’t know about him. You know what I mean? We were in the conversation about separating and he was basically saying, “Why do we have to? There’s so many married couples who are miserable. Let’s stay together.”
Glennon Doyle:
I remember that part.
Bozoma Saint John:
I literally was just like, “Who am I talking to?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Bozoma Saint John:
I’m like, “What do you mean? I don’t want to be miserable. I don’t. You can say that it’s a fantasy to be in a relationship where you’re happy all the time. I know that’s not realistic, but I also don’t want to feel like this forever.” For me, that was the breaking point. There was actually, one day, I was looking at Lael and thinking like, “She will never know me as the happy person. She’ll never know me as the person who’s carefree, and loose, and playful,” because that’s not what I was in our relationship. At that point, I’d become more closed, angry. I was resentful, holding onto things.
Bozoma Saint John:
Look, I’m not going to just blame him for it. It was me. It was me also. I couldn’t let go of certain things in our relationship, and there were chasms that I also let spread. By that point, I was just like, “Man, for her and for me, I got to get out, because I want her to know me as the effervescent, bubbly, fun person that her dad fell in love with.” She would never know me as that if I stayed.
Bozoma Saint John:
In that conversation, I knew that it was time to go. It was difficult, and the thing is that I also wanted to, at the same time, I wanted to protect his heart so I didn’t say I wanted a divorce, even though that’s what I knew I wanted. I wanted him to come that realization, which was so stupid of me because, seriously, again, why do we think that we can control other people’s feelings?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. You’re just going to set him up to have it be his own idea.
Bozoma Saint John:
Can you imagine? Exactly. I was like, “You know what I’ll do? I’ll make it his idea.” Like, “How? How are you going to do that?” I should have just said it, but I didn’t. I just said, “Oh, I think we should separate for a while, and figure things out and see,” but all that did was drag this thing out for a long time. Then there were other challenging issues that come as a result of that, even though we became great co-parents. I ended up moving. We were living in Edgewater at the time and I ended up moving back into Manhattan, and he stayed in Edgewater.
Bozoma Saint John:
Lael’s daycare was in Edgewater, so I would go and drop her off, and then go to work, and then we’d figure it out. We ended up figuring how to do life as a separated couple. It almost felt like we were still married, just living in two places. Maybe some sort of like romantic 1950s movie or something like that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it’s kind of a dream. You’re on to something, Boz.
Abby Wambach:
Hey, I’m sitting right here.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, no, no, no, babe. Not you. I’m thinking of other marriages.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, other marriages.
Glennon Doyle:
Other marriages.
Bozoma Saint John:
Other marriages.
Glennon Doyle:
For sure.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was not going to work. Obviously, it’s like when I wanted to see other people, here I was hiding and sneaking around like I was cheating on him. That’s not healthy either. There were several times when we had to confront that, and it was not a great situation. Yes, I knew I had to go because I needed to be the best version of myself and I was not the best version of myself in that marriage at that time.
Glennon Doyle:
Then what people listening to this might not know, which they will when they read The Urgent Life is that there is a moment where Peter is diagnosed, and when it became clear that things were bad.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yeah. Well, he was diagnosed in May of 2013. It was just before Lael’s fourth birthday. At that point, yeah, we were separated. He was seeing somebody that I was actually very happy that he was seeing because I was like, “Good. You have a girlfriend. You can leave me the hell alone.” You know what I mean? I felt like, oh, we’re-
Glennon Doyle:
“We’re getting there.”
Bozoma Saint John:
I liked her. We were sister wives. This is going to be perfect because he’s going to come to the realization that we need to get divorced so he can go off with her into the sunset. This is wonderful. Work is going great. I did a major deal with Pepsi and the NFL for a Super Bowl halftime show. Beyoncé had been on the halftime show stage. Things were golden. Everything was great, and then Peter has this lump on his neck. Again, we were in enough of a partnership that I could go over to his house and see that thing and be like, “What the hell is that?”
Bozoma Saint John:
When we found out that it was cancer, we didn’t panic. It might sound strange. We didn’t panic because both of our mothers had had cancer. My mother was in her second bout at the time when we found out that Peter was sick, so she was getting treatments. She was on chemo, and radiation, and the whole thing. She had had surgery, so we just thought like, “Okay. There’s got to be a plan.” Get the doctor. Figure out what the surgery and the plan was, but a few months into the treatment, his oncologist had said there was going to be no solution, that the treatment wasn’t going to work, that nothing was helping and that it was going to be terminal, and it was such a …
Bozoma Saint John:
I don’t even know how to describe what that moment was like because I was sitting at the office when his mother called me from the hospital. You know when somebody calls you and they have something terrible to say but they won’t tell you?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. I hate that.
Bozoma Saint John:
I was like, “I hate that.” Again, I think of it, I’m just like, “Well, what else should she have done?”
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. She needed to-
Abby Wambach:
Had to be in person.
Bozoma Saint John:
She probably couldn’t say the words herself either, but she told me to come to the hospital. I came down from Purchase, New York, to Manhattan, Memorial Sloan Kettering. Peter was in there, and I soon as I walked in, I knew. I just knew it. I knew it. All I could think of was like, gosh, it’s like the years ahead of us that we wouldn’t have. The loss, not just to us as a family but to Lael, what he wouldn’t be able to do with her. Such a great dad. That they would be so robbed of that. In my book, I talk about my relationship with my father, which is complicated.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful too. It’s beautiful.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, yes. Very protective. I love that guy. He’s been such a rock in my life in many different ways, and all I could think about, the fact that Lael would never have that. That that would be taken from her, stolen from her. As I sat there it was, I also thought about the time we had wasted in anger and misunderstanding, and how terrible it would be to not confront any of those things or resolve them. In his list of things that he wanted to do … Not even a bucket list, really, because it was more like a to-do list-
Glennon Doyle:
Right, right.
Bozoma Saint John:
… one of them was to cancel the divorce because at that point, we had begun the process. We had our lawyers. We’d come to that realization, but he wanted to cancel it. It was maybe an easier yes than even the first time when he asked me out.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Bozoma Saint John:
It was an easier yes. I think because of all the things that I’ve said, it’s like that realization that if you’re faced in that moment where you don’t have the choice anymore, this is going to end. What do you decide to do? Maybe I should have asked myself that question when I decided to separate. Maybe that’s the question I should have asked myself, but I didn’t, and I wish I had.
Glennon Doyle:
You should know that when we were planning this interview, I tried it all through the lens of you and your dad first. You could do this interview 50 different ways because the book has so many love stories in it, but next time I see you, we’re talking about you and your dad.
Bozoma Saint John:
Ooh, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So much there. So much there.
Bozoma Saint John:
So much. So much.
Glennon Doyle:
Just the way that through your family of origin or your relationship with Peter, and Eve, and Lael, your commitment to showing up for the people that you love-
Abby Wambach:
Relentless.
Glennon Doyle:
… in the hardest, most relentless. There’s a moment … Unfortunately, we’re almost out of time, but I do want you to talk about this because it made me think about the beginning of the story, of your love story when you begged Peter to write letters to Lael-
Bozoma Saint John:
Oh, god. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
… and he couldn’t do it. That made me think of earlier when you’re noticing the hard things and he’s not. Is there something about being the arrogant, entitled white man? Really, is there something about, yes, there is a privilege of walking around like that, but are you, because of that sort of pampering, not able to do the grittiest, most important things, which is real, true love, which is what you do and you did throughout your life?
Bozoma Saint John:
Gosh, Glennon. Ooh. There is something in it, which is that I think, as a Black woman in this experience of life, I do always, by society’s standards and probably ingrained into my own because of that, serve other people first because I’m served last, always. In every situation, I find myself serving others first, and so in the opposite way, Peter has always been served. He’s always been the one who has received, and so to ask him to do something like that, which yes, I understood in that moment, I understand now, must have been feeling like the impossible thing to do.
Bozoma Saint John:
How do you write into the future when you know you won’t be there? How do you write to her on her 16th birthday? How do you write to her on her first date? How do you write to her for her wedding day? How do you write for her, maybe when she has her first child? How do you write for her when she graduates from high school? How do you write for her when she has a heartbreak? How do you write these things knowing that you’re not around? I can understand how that’d be painful, but it is the sacrifice. It is being in a position where you are serving someone ahead of yourself.
Bozoma Saint John:
To me, that was so painful because I thought, “Gosh, even in the last bits of life, show this immense love.” I knew that he had it because it was in there. I had felt it in so many different ways. He’s been thoughtful in so many different ways, and I was angry at him for that. Truthfully, in some ways, I still haven’t forgiven him for that because there are moments now where I wish I had a letter.
Bozoma Saint John:
I wish I had something to give her, to be like, “Your dad thought of you at this moment. He wanted you to have something of his, his words.” Because there are things that are happening now, which when he died, I would look at her and think, “Gosh, she doesn’t even know the magnitude of what she’s lost. She has no idea.” It will come to her, slowly, over time by the things that will happen that she will then say, “Oh, man. I wish I had my dad.”
Bozoma Saint John:
There was a moment about, gosh, maybe four or five months ago. She was at a girls’ school here in LA and she’s made some new friends. They’d gone to Six Flags or one of those parks, and her friend’s dad had taken them. They were standing in line waiting for the ride, and the friend’s dad said that he … Somewhere in the conversation, it came out that he’s from Boston, or grew up in Boston. Lael was just like, “Oh, my dad, it’s like he’s from Worcester, but he lived in Boston for a while.” I think she was trying to find the connection.
Bozoma Saint John:
He said to Lael, it’s like, “Oh, where in Boston?” She was looking at him like, “Hmm. I don’t know.” Because that moment, where she was just like, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.” I don’t think he meant to be insensitive, but he said, “Well, how do you not know where your dad is from or where he lived?” She came home. She was heartbroken, and we’re talking about it and talking through it, and she said, “I don’t remember his voice.” Just everything, I was just like, “Oh my god,” so here I go, I’m looking through videos. I’m trying to find something.
Bozoma Saint John:
In that moment, I was so pissed because I was just like, “Why don’t I have a letter? Why don’t I have something to give her from him so that she knows that he loved her, he cared about her? That’s all he thought about.” Even today, I struggle with that, to try and forgive him in the moment where he was reaching the end, and I’m sure all of the things that he was also contending with, and that he couldn’t do that bit. I still have to forgive him for that.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. I insist, Pod Squad, that you get this book, The Urgent Life. The way that you live, and love, and celebrate, it’s like Boz is proof to me that when you stay with the hard truth you get the sparkly stuff too in equal measures because no one has seen a woman celebrate like this woman celebrates. We need to do a whole interview on that at some point, please.
Bozoma Saint John:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Just what in the holy hell? Just go follow her on Instagram and you’ll see.
Abby Wambach:
Any birthday Boz has.
Glennon Doyle:
Happy late birthday, by the way.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Bozoma Saint John:
Yes, thank you. Thank you. Yes, yes.
Abby Wambach:
Very impressive.
Bozoma Saint John:
Celebrate.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you for the offering of this book. Thank you for teaching us how to love and live.
Abby Wambach:
Relentlessly in both.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, relentlessly and urgently. Yeah, yeah. You’re beautiful.
Bozoma Saint John:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I am so appreciative of this time to be able to talk to you about this and be able to connect in this way because I just feel that life is, in our human experience, it’s not just like you have to experience the same thing I experienced in order to feel the things. You know what I mean? When you talk about relationships and how it feels to be in it, we all have our things. There’s always that piece where it’s like, “Oh, yes. I’ve felt that before.” You know?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Bozoma Saint John:
You don’t have to have lost your spouse to cancer to understand what it feels like to be mad at somebody, and then something happens to them, and then still be angry at that person. It’s like I’m not frigging Mother Teresa out there. You know what I mean? I’m still pissed off, and there are some times when I have to sit there and be like, “Girl, you got to let that go.” I’m like, “No, I’m not letting it go. I’m not, I’m not. I’m still mad,” and knowing that I have to figure out how to continue to live my life and be celebratory of him with my child and make sure that she understands that he was human, and not just like this big saint that everyone has wrapped in rose-colored glasses, because that’s also what happens in death.
Bozoma Saint John:
All of us have experienced something in that vein, where we are trying to reconcile our feelings over something we lost or someone we lost, and so I’m really appreciative of the opportunity, not just to write this but to talk to you about it. Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Pod Squad, we will see you back next time, but there’s no way the next episode will be better than this one, so there. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Damn, Boz.
Bozoma Saint John:
Aw. I love you guys. I love you.
Glennon Doyle:
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Glennon Doyle:
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