How to Find 5 Seconds of Peace with Morgan Harper Nichols

July 9, 2023

Glennon Doyle:

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we have, oh, such a treat, someone I’ve been following for a long time to… As she sometimes says, “Help me cope with existing.” Which I love. Morgan Harper Nichols, she is an artist, poet, musician, and bestselling author of Peace Is a Practice and All Along You Were Blooming. Morgan has also performed as a vocalist on several Grammy-nominated projects and written for various artists. She’s passionate about art making as a way to connect with others, and her latest book, You Are Only Just Beginning, it’s on my bedside, is available now. Morgan currently resides in Atlanta with her family. Welcome, Morgan.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Well, thank you. Thank you for the warm welcome. I’m so glad to be here, so honored. Thank you so much.

Glennon Doyle:

I’m so glad that you decided to come. I have… I wouldn’t even just say just read, I don’t think read is the right word. I have been experiencing your work for a very long time. I appreciate very much that it doesn’t feel like just reading to me. It feels like…

Morgan Harper Nichols:

You got it. That’s exactly what I’m going for. That’s my whole thing. I get words. They’re a big thing. We have them, we use them all day long, but I’m just like, “There’s all these spaces beyond words, where it’s just trying to figure out how to even communicate what we’re experiencing.” I’m just like, “I don’t know, maybe it’s color this time. Maybe it’s a rugged mountain scape, that explains it better.” For you to say that experience, I’m like, “That’s exactly it.”

Glennon Doyle:

Oh, good.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

That’s what I’m going for, because I feel like I actually struggle with words a lot. It’s through the art that I’m able to say, “Oh, maybe there’s still room for me to feel and share what I’m feeling, even when I don’t have the perfect sentences.” If you will.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, because the words that we’re all using are not the thing. The words are just arrows, we’re trying to point to something else.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

What I do think about what you’re doing is, it feels like you’re just doing this something else often. You’re not even bothering with all the arrows that we’re all using. We get to go straight to this something else.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes, you get it. That’s exactly what it is, because it comes from this really shadowy place. Just growing up, I struggled a lot with speech, literally, and I stuttered a lot. I would have to practice speaking before I could just have a conversation with someone. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing growing up in the ’90s, but I feel like there were so many ’90s movies, where all the cool kids in the movies had the fastest, quick comebacks.

Glennon Doyle:

Oh, yeah. Comebacks.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

And I was the opposite of that. Oh, I’m just now thinking of comebacks 20 years ago.

Glennon Doyle:

From the ’90s.

Abby Wambach:

Same.

Amanda Doyle:

I remember practicing comebacks.

Abby Wambach:

You did?

Glennon Doyle:

Oh, that’s awful. It was like Dawson’s Creek and that shit. It was like constant dialogue back and forth, back and forth.

Amanda Doyle:

It was the currency. The teenage currency.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

That’s the word. Currency.

Amanda Doyle:

It was the quickness and just the searing nature of your comebacks.

Abby Wambach:

Man, I had no money growing up, if we’re going by that standard. I never came back to any… I had no comebacks. Zero.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Same. These kids are fast. I was surrounded, and my sister was a quick comeback kid. She still has… She’s two years younger, I don’t even try. She’ll just dis me and I’m like, “Okay, you win.” I’ve got nothing. She’s still like that. I just wasn’t that and I just struggled so much to just even find friendships just because I couldn’t do the banter, the back and forth. I missed so much of it. I thought poetry was going to be a safe space for me because I gravitated for that my pre-teen years. And then one day at summer camp, which a story that starts with that. It’s probably [inaudible 00:04:47].

Glennon Doyle:

Oh, I can’t wait.

Abby Wambach:

I want it, I want this story,

Morgan Harper Nichols:

50-50 chance of being a happy story. Just for whatever reason, I decided to bring my poetry composition notebook to the YMCA.

Amanda Doyle:

That’s some sexy currency, your poetry book.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I’m like, “That’s how I’m going to spend my summer. I’m just going to bring my poetry when I can’t keep up with everyone else.” Yeah, it just went so south. It was like snack time, this one kid got ahold of it and started sending it around and reading all my poetry out loud and actually actually rating it. Like the ring leader, he was just like, “Oh, this one’s kind of good, but you should have…” I just sat there just totally helpless. What do I do? Do I go run and tell the counselor like, “Hey, they’re reading through my poetry.” They’re going to be like, “Why’d you bring poetry here in the first place?” I got into this really interesting spot with words so early. I really do feel like it was the arts where it was through photography or music or whatever it was.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I was like, “I can hide here more. This is not a place where people can pick it up in the journal and run it around the summer camp.” Yeah, when I see what I do today, I really feel like it is this part of this healing journey of like, “I’m still learning how to take up space with this thing. I’m still learning how to put the words on there, let people pick it up and take it with them. It’s going to be okay.” That’s what the path has been like. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself for at least figuring that out because now it’s something I can work on. I still hold back and I’m still like, “Oh, I don’t know.” People can take this and do anything they want with it, which is terrifying.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah, I say to the bullies at the YMCA, “How do you like Morgan now, huh?”

Glennon Doyle:

Everybody is walking around with Morgan’s journal and it’s saving their damn lives.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

You want to know something even funnier? The guy who did it doesn’t remember me.

Glennon Doyle:

Sure, he doesn’t.

Amanda Doyle:

They never remember.

Glennon Doyle:

Sure, he doesn’t.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s the most pivotal moment of your entire life and it didn’t even register in their memory.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I know. I was like, “You don’t…” I was like, “That changed the courts of my life.” Yeah, it’s funny. But yes, I am proud of myself. I literally live 15 minutes away from that YMCA right now, and I’m just like, “I think I made it through.”

Amanda Doyle:

Is the painting and the photography… I’ve never heard it described that way. Is that somehow more armored or less vulnerable because it’s not susceptible to a direct interpretation like word is?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this because I’ve just noticed with language in particular, especially just a little bit of family history, just being Black, being a descendant of enslaved people in America. I’ve done the math and I’ve realized, you know what? My family actually doesn’t go back that far when it comes to speaking English. There were other languages, other ways of communicating, not that many generations back. It’s sometimes like, “Oh, that was 100 years ago.” Actually it wasn’t that many generations ago. And I realized, I’m like, “Yeah, maybe there’s something within me that’s just craving these other ways of sharing.” In one hand I access through it through this very armored approach of just like, “This makes me feel safe.” But now I’m like, “No, I’m going to own that.” I’m just like, “No, I’m going to communicate this through a few words, spread out on a page the way that I hear it and see it and feel it.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Sometimes it might fall into a sentence, but a lot of times it’s not. Yeah, it started from this very armored space, but then the more I dug into it, I’m like, “Actually no, I’m going to own that more and I’m not going to keep pressuring myself to communicate how everyone else thinks that I should. Yeah, it’s like this really mixed intertangled thing now, but I feel like the shift has been like, “But I’m learning to be proud of it.” And I’m learning to be like, “Yeah, this is just me and this is the way that I communicate.” Hopefully, that gives other people permission to see like, “Yeah, I can do this my own way too.”

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. I find it frustrating that I have to use words to tell you why your work is important. Maybe I could draw you something to tell you, because it’s so frustrating that even words that we have to use that they’re not… When I was, Morgan, beginning to work on a TV show, the script writer was trying to teach me about how the dialogue was the least important thing. What she was explaining to me is the movements that they make, their eyes, every way they embody things is way truer. You can say whatever words you want, that’s the least important.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

And I thought, “Words are the least true thing we have?” That is bad news for a writer.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

That is real, and that’s a lot to take in because so much in our world is measured by words. That’s something that I wasn’t consciously thinking about that all these years, but I think I was maybe wrestling with it. Toni Morrison has that famous thing where she talks about the definer and the words belonging to the definer. It’s like, “Wow.” When you think about just the sheer amount of definitions, maybe we’re just getting started. Maybe there’s just so many other ways of communicating. I had a moment. I was pretty proud of myself. I thought of it was some time ago, and I was like, “I’m going to hold this for the perfect moment.” Which I’m terrible at. I cannot hold a lot. I’m just like, “I got to say it right away.” I held onto this for so long, I didn’t tell anybody. It was my mom’s birthday about a month ago now. You know how there’s… What do you call it? I don’t even know what they’re called. Not cheers. What do you call it when you’re having like a…

Amanda Doyle:

Toast?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Toast. Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

Yeah. I could tell you were moving your arms back and forth.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah. I’m like, “This is so not my thing.” I don’t even know what it’s called. I don’t think I’ve ever done a toast. It was just this moment where everybody had eaten and we were all just sitting. I was like, “I feel like we should do something like toasty, kind of, but not that.” And I remembered, I was like, “Oh, that thing I thought of. This is the moment.” I asked everybody, I said, “Instead of toasting my mom.” My mom’s name is Mona. I said, “What if we all went around and did what we think a dance would be if it was called the Mona.” Everybody went around and did their version of the Mona. We just laughed and it was the funniest thing. There were so few words involved, and the fancy word of it is embodied, more embodied experiences.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It was a few minutes and it was funny, but it brought me just so much hope of just like, “Wow, maybe there’s all these other ways that we can connect with each other.” Sometimes the words will be there to help us get to a place, but then we just go beyond that.

Glennon Doyle:

It offers so many more people into experience because words and language are just one way… Don’t they say it’s like 10% of all communication with what we’re understanding about each other is done through what people say.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

Actually there’s a huge danger in valuing speech so much because people can say, “Whatever the hell they want to say.” Do something opposite…

Amanda Doyle:

All the time. I’m constantly going, “I’m fine.” Is everything okay with you, babe? “I’m fine.” Guess what? I’m decidedly not fine.

Glennon Doyle:

And no one believes you’re fine, right?

Amanda Doyle:

No. No one.

Glennon Doyle:

Because your body is saying something else. I think the way you’re expressing yourself beyond and under and above and in between words is just helping people who have a hard time connecting with words. For example, I just said to my therapist recently, “I just feel like no one’s saying anything that’s true enough. And I’m not either. It’s not that people are lying, there’s just something that’s truer than words.” Thank you for that.

Amanda Doyle:

Something you said earlier, can we go back to it about the difference between the writing and making of the art and how one was armored but became the most true thing about you really in reclaiming it. I feel like we are living in a moment right now where there’s this kind of ultimate valor associated with vulnerability that it’s like, “That is the gold standard. You are only humaning as well as you are being vulnerable. It’s almost like there’s vulnerability police calling us out for any kind of armoring up. I feel like you’ve thought beyond that with the way that you’re thinking, because you just said that, yes, it was initially an armoring up to go to the photography and the art, but then you found that because of your history, because of who you are, that was actually more truly you than just laying it as bare as possible. Can you tell us more about that?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes. I have thought very deeply about this, and I think it does come from the past few years of really feeling like there are certain ways that people expect you to be vulnerable. When people hear these things, Black autistic woman, there are a possibility of bullet point things that they think I should be vulnerable about in a certain way. “Oh, well, let’s talk about race first and then talk about…” And I’m like, “It’s not like that.” I run into situations where with words where I’m like, “I’m going to try to do it their way. I’m going to try to put this in a nice Instagram caption for you and lay it all out and end with a happy note that leads to a well-rounded comment section and whatever.” I try to do that.

Amanda Doyle:

While maximizing engagement.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Exactly. I try to do that. I’m like, “I’ll make it shareable.” And every time I do it, I’m just like, “No.” It just doesn’t come out that way. I don’t have a Google Sheet on my computer of like, “Okay, here’s all the Black stuff. Here’s all the autistic stuff. Here’s all the…” I’m like, “No, it’s this constant chaotic, really human experience.” Every now and then I’m brushing up against words. And every now and then it might turn into a cohesive paragraph that can fit into a comment section. A lot of times it’s something way more wide and expansive and mysterious than that. Honestly, it’s been these past few years that I’ve really had to put my foot down in the sense of like, “No, I’m not going to give more than I can give in this space in this way. One specific moment that I had was after I shared my autism diagnosis, I do get Dms, emails occasionally.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s not as many as I expected actually, but I do get comments or people saying like, “Oh, your diagnosis isn’t real. Here’s how I know.” And all that kind of thing. And I just had to, after letting somebody have it, like in one comment, maybe more than once, but a few times I’ve realized, I was like, “You know what? I have such little energy already. I want to preserve it for the people who are not questioning me. And for the people who are seeing themselves and hearing themselves in my story.” Those other people are going to be there, but I’m just not going to answer you. I’ve had moments like that where I’ve literally responded as, “I’m not answering you.” And I’ve just had to really put my foot down on that because I do think that when it comes to vulnerability, there’s also being in a vulnerable state on the internet.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

And I’m like, “I have to be very mindful about that. I have to be very mindful about this person’s saying something that angers me and it’s addressing a real thing that people wonder about or have questions about, but it doesn’t mean it’s my responsibility every time it comes at me that I have to then open myself up to all of that.” I’ve just become very aware of it. There has been some unlearning in that because I thought I was being mean at first. I thought I was not serving my community if I’m not addressing every single question and concern. And it’s like, “That’s not my job. I can’t just sign myself up for endless labor of just constant explaining myself.” And it’s hard because it does make me mad.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

But it’s like I have to be mindful of my energy too.

Abby Wambach:

Of course. 

Glennon Doyle:

It sounds to me like that is one way that you have learned to create or protect peace because it is an interesting thing being a feeling notice-y person who’s making art on the internet because your job is to expose yourself while also creating enough boundaries to stay soft enough to make your art, because you talk so much about peace. I would love to talk to you a little bit about what that means to you, because when you talk about it, I believe you. But usually when people talk about it, I don’t believe them, like the 10 top ways to find peace. Can you talk to us about what peace means to you?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes, it’s something that I do have to think about all the time before I do anything even outside of the internet. For me, peace is a practice of breathing deep. I mean that in the most literal sense. I think, for me, just growing up with a lot of stuff going on health wise and not knowing what it was, I was having to literally find a way to inhale and exhale, to just move through life. To just move through conversation. To just move through the checkout line at the grocery store without sensory overload.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Just the day to day moving, from minute to minute at times, depending on where I am, what I’m doing, how stressful life is, it requires so much of cycling back into just taking an inhale and an exhale, and then what that next thing is after that exhale. That is usually the space where I’m like, “This is a rhythm that I’m seeking.” I’m seeking that, like, “Okay.” Sometimes it’s just that, it’s okay. All of this is going on. Okay, we got this going on over here, got this going on globally, nationwide, community in the house, in my body, all these layers, like, “Okay, all of this.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Okay, what’s next in the next three seconds? What’s the next 30 seconds? The next 60 seconds? I have been living my life that way out of necessity for a long time. It wasn’t until my late ’20s and ’30s that I started to find out like, “Oh, hold on. There’s other stuff going on that’s making this so apparent to you.” That this is where the poetry has been coming from. This is where the art has been coming from. It’s been coming from the fact that you’ve had to live this out of necessity. That’s the space that I try to write from when I’m writing about peace. If I put the word peace or exhale or breathe deep into anything that I make, I try to imagine at least a few spaces where someone else might be having that similar experience. There’s a few visuals that I go back to before I even start sharing about peace.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Because I mean it in this very simple way. I think about it in the simple way of, I’ll think of someone sitting in a receptionist area of a doctor’s appointment and they’re just scrolling through their phone. There’s probably 0.5 seconds that they might land on something of mine. What makes sense to say in that space, because I don’t know what’s going to happen for that person when they go on the other side of that door and they follow the nurse to their waiting room. I don’t know what’s going to happen when they have to sit on that awkward little table with that little paper that rolls up. All of that just… But I know that stuff makes me more stressed. All those little things make me anxious and whatever I came there for, I’m not even thinking about that yet. I’m just trying to sit on the little table and navigate all of that.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s just odd, so much. I’m thinking about it in the most basic sense. I’m like, “In that moment.” Just the permission like, “You are allowed to take a deep breath here.” I don’t know what’s next. That is where a lot of my work falls. There have been times where I have been like, “Oh, I think it’s too simple.” But then I just remember all of those little moments that are happening all around the world at any given moment where that stress, that anxiety is just compounding and compounding and compounding. And I’m like, “If I can just help remind myself and anybody else for these next five seconds, if there’s just an ounce of release, you’re allowed to take that space.” And that’s something we can continue to practice expanding.

Glennon Doyle:

It works.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

It works.

Amanda Doyle:

How many times a day do you think that you remind yourself of that as in terms of practice? Is that a constant thread throughout every day of your life that you’re doing that?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It is, but I usually catch myself in it after I’ve already started doing it. About an hour before this, I was just like, “I need an ice cube.” It was just random. It was just so specific, not a cup of ice. I was like, “I just need one ice cube.” And I just darted out of the office and ran to the kitchen and got an ice cube. And then I came back in here where I record and I just laid on the floor for 10 minutes and it was halfway through, I was like, “Oh, when I woke up today, I didn’t do any kind of stretching. I had so much going on.” I was like, “Oh, my body told me before my mind even caught up with it.” A lot of it is that, and the difference now is I’m just catching up to it.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I used to be in music full-time and I would be on these shows. Sometimes I was a performing artist, sometimes I was doing background vocals, lots and lots of random different things. I would have these moments where like this darting to the ice cube where I would just say, “I need fresh air.” I remember one time specifically, we were in Lubbock, Texas, which is West Texas, high winds. They could probably blow you away. And they were like, “Don’t go outside.” There’s some kind of winded advisory or whatever. And I was like, “I have to.” Because the sensory overload of the venue that we were in, there was no escape. I was feeling it in every part of my body. And I just remember running out of the loading dock and I was like, an 18 wheeler.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

My body physically just couldn’t stay in that space. I had to get out. I was like, “I will deal with the wind advisory theme because it’s at least a break from the sound.” This is happening for me every day and I’m just now becoming more aware of it like, “Oh, my body’s telling me stuff even before I’ve caught up to what’s actually going on.”

Glennon Doyle:

So Morgan, is there a part of this where you have learned, because the deep breath, the okay. In the okay, do we notice signals from our body because usually when we don’t breathe, when we’re just next, next, next, next, we are overriding, overriding, overriding signals from our body. Then is our peace and self-acceptance tied together? Because I’m hearing you say is I needed a piece of ice, so I got one. I needed to lay down on the floor, so I laid down on the floor. I needed to stop the musical… I was going to say ceremony. We’re having a great words day. The musical ceremony…

Amanda Doyle:

The concert

Abby Wambach:

Concert.

Glennon Doyle:

And leave, so I did. See these things that you’re saying seem simple, but in fact, they’re revolutionary because none of us need a thing and do it. Is part of peace, the self-acceptance of, “I will listen to what I need and do it even if it’s inconvenient for my moment, for other people, for capitalism, for all of the things.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

Do you do that all day? Do you hear messages from your body and do what is needed?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes, and going back to the word peace, one thing that I found in researching was it was fascinating, how oftentimes peace might be associated with something in nature as a definition. One of the most accessible ones that I had that helped me wake up to like, “Oh, wait a minute, maybe peace isn’t like this bullet point thing that I got to work through every day.” People may be familiar with it, it’s a song called, It is Well With My Soul, where it says peace is a river. And I took that as a little kid, as a very literal thing. I was like, “Oh, peace is a river. Okay, cool.” And I just left it at that. Then I as I grew up, I complicated it more. For me, it’s going back to that of like, “Well, what does a river do?”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Well, a river is this flow of water that can sometimes be a very wide stream. Sometimes it’s more narrow. Sometimes it curves in ways that are unexpected through the landscape. And I’m like, “Maybe the human experience is like that.” I know I’m not an actual river, but I’m like, “Maybe I don’t have to become a breath expert to know that it’s in the landscape.” It’s in the actual world that I can look out and see. That going back to the whole beyond words thing. One thing I recommend, look for something in nature that makes you feel more serene and consider how you might connect to that. When I think about these moments, and like you said about acceptance and all of that. It’s like, “I feel accepted by a river.” I don’t know why. I don’t have words for it, but it could be the most mundane, non-picturesque little flow of water.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

But when I see it, I see it, I feel it. I want to be near that. I’m after that. And I just want to keep looking for that. That’s how I saw the practices I did today even, I might not go run and get an ice cube tomorrow. I might not lie on the floor for 10 minutes an hour before a conversation tomorrow. I probably won’t even remember it that way tomorrow. It’ll be something else. But it’s like when you think about every little droplet in a river, it’s like that. Every drop of water… Yes, there’s this flow, but there’s all of these different ways through that flow.

Abby Wambach:

It’s fascinating to me because so many of us are not in active pursuit of peace through these questions that we need to ask ourselves. What do I want? What do I need? That feels like self-care and secondary and something that we’re going to a lot into a specific period of our day. What you’re saying is revolutionary to me because it’s like, “Oh, we have access to that every second.”

Glennon Doyle:

Inside of us.

Abby Wambach:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

Because we’re like, “Just give me an app.” The nature thing, I just… Our son invited us to hike the other day and we were up in this mountain, so high and it was like nobody had ever hiked there before. I’m sure I felt like I was in the wilderness that no one had seen.

Abby Wambach:

It was a well-worn path.

Glennon Doyle:

Whatever. Morgan, I kept noticing these flowers that were so freaking beautiful and bright. I kept thinking, “These flowers are just blooming and being this bright, not for anyone to see them.” Nobody ever sees them. They’re just being and blooming for themselves.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

They’re not pursuing vibrancy.

Glennon Doyle:

And they’re not doing it for anybody else. They’re not like, “I’m the reddest red that ever red because somebody’s going to come and see me and pick me.” They don’t give a shit. They’re just like…

Morgan Harper Nichols:

No, that’s so true. There’s no little miniature flower billboards scattered amongst them that was like, “Here’s how to have the best bloom of the season.” It’s just like, “No, they don’t have little magazine stands.” They don’t have like…

Amanda Doyle:

Have you attended to your roots today? 

Glennon Doyle:

The little blue flower that honestly is not as cute as the tall red one that I’m looking at doesn’t look up at the red flower and is like, “Oh, shit. That flower’s blooming so much. I’m not even going to bother.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

What’s see the ROI of my bloom this season?

Glennon Doyle:

I’m not even going to bother.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Clearly, it’s not where the red flower’s at. Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

Right. 

Amanda Doyle:

The red flower’s like the Kardashians.

Glennon Doyle:

They’re just all blooming themselves.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

You’re little blue flowers I’m me and this is what I have for this season and this is what I’m going to do. Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

Because the next person that walks by, prefers the blue flower.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. That blue flower was a little rough.

Amanda Doyle:

Who knows? Everybody has their own taste on stuff.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

No, that is the real thing, because where I live, we just moved back to Georgia. We had been on the West Coast for some time and moved back to Georgia. I just feel like Georgia has sticks everywhere. Sticks, just all over the place. I just started noticing little sticks and feeling like little sticks had little personalities and stuff. I was just like, “Go outside.” I’ll just collect some sticks. When I tell people I have a four-year-old, they’re like, “Oh, this is for your son?” I’m like, “No, he actually doesn’t care about sticks at all. It’s just me.” I like to go and collect things. I’ll just bring them inside. I’ll just look at them and I’m like, “I might be the only human who ever cared about these sticks.” Yeah, they’ve had a whole life and they didn’t actually need me like, “Oof.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I just happened to be someone who’s experiencing them and seeing them, but they didn’t need me to live. They do need me to take care of the earth. The sticks are like, “Hey, be kind out there.”

Amanda Doyle:

Can’t do shit together.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s our environment. Yeah, please be kind. It’s like they didn’t need me to write the quote to help them move through their day thing. I think the word that comes up for me there a lot is just presence. Just being present to the most seemingly mundane things. And that has actually just been teaching me a lot because there is a pressure even in nature. You mentioned climbing a mountain where it’s like, “Okay, well, what’s the view?” Clearly people have been making a big deal about this trail or whatever it is like, “What’s the view? Where’s the water flowing?”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

All those things are amazing. At the same time, there’s all these little other things that we’re encountering along the way that we can be present to that someone else might not be present to. That’s actually why I do draw a lot of little things in my artwork as well. I have some pieces where I’ve taken photos of sticks and then I will trace over that stick inside of the piece. Nobody knows that but me. Well, I’ve shared it here now, but I don’t. Everyone, just so you know, there’s a stick in there that I just put, a random stick on the sidewalk. Nobody has to know that.

Amanda Doyle:

His name is George.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah, his name is George. Nobody has to know that intimately for it to matter. I know it’s there. When I look at this piece later, it is a reminder that I was present to this life in the most seemingly insignificant small way. And that’s something that I can grow and I can expand. It’s certainly something I want to pass on as a parent now too. I think there’s so much happening. One thing I hear a lot of people asking me all the time like, “Well, I don’t know what to do with my life.” I’m just like, “I don’t like that question. I’m more of a what can I do within my life?” Just expand it a little bit more like, “What can we do within?” We can collect sticks within this life. We can love. We can be angry about stuff. We can lie on the floor. There’s so many things that we can do within life. I’m trying to just expand that a little bit more

Glennon Doyle:

Within. Noticing within what’s here, what’s already here. What I hear you saying is what keeps us from peace is the pursuit of peace? Just noticing what’s right here. I go for walks all the time. That’s my thing. Our middle daughter is purple and I don’t know how else to describe that. She is just purple. I collected a bunch of purple rocks for her and brought them to her bedroom… Morgan, your child is how old?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Four.

Glennon Doyle:

Okay, four. Your child would be excited about a bunch of purple rocks. My child is 17. She was in her room and was like, “Thanks. Awesome.” Then I left like, “Oh. She didn’t understand.” What I’m telling you is when I think about when I’m long gone, I feel like that’s something that I am going to want her to remember that time that my mom brought me all those purple rocks because there’s something that’s so human, it’s a resistance of what the world tells us matters. It’s proof of nonsense in the best way. Proof of all that does not make us productive or worthy. Just so, “Oh, my mom noticed those purple rocks for me.” You having the sticks is so tender and beautiful to me. I love that about you.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Thanks for sharing that, because I had a somewhat similar moment, even though my son is four, where I went and collected some sticks and leaves and I laid them out on this big piece of paper and I sat them there and he just looked at it and just totally unimpressed. He was just like, “Oh, sticks and leaves.” And just went on. I’m like, “This was supposed to be a beautiful moment. Look at these leaves. You weren’t expecting them. They were on the table.” Barely batted an eye and just kept on going. It just makes me think, yeah, maybe the moment that was supposed to be, it was supposed to be a bookmark that they can come back to later.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Maybe it’s just a bookmark, a placeholder of a memory that can be unpacked later on. I feel like that takes so much patience with this.

Glennon Doyle:

It does.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Because I’m like, “This is supposed to be a moment.”

Glennon Doyle:

It’s like we’re always trying to make our kids happy by the extraordinary. We’ll make it awesome and we’ll do Disneyland and we’ll do blah, blah, blah and then we create this addiction to thinking that what is not good enough. I think sometimes the best thing we can do is to teach our children to see the beauty in the ordinary because they don’t have to hustle for that if they have that skill.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah, one thing I think a lot about that too is that when it comes to seeing the beauty in the ordinary is that I think we would live in a better world if more people paid attention to what had been deemed ordinary. I think about a lot of the suffering that we see happening in the world. It’s like, “Well, it takes somebody paying attention to the details.” It takes someone saying like, “Wait, don’t forget about these people over here. Don’t forget about the actual conversations we have to have. Don’t forget about the things that, to you, it might be a small thing, but to this person, it’s a really big thing, the way you said that.” It’s a really big thing, the way that impacted them. Maybe there is no small thing. Maybe there is, it’s just small to us. I will say that there’s been a theme of me allowing myself to be a little bit more angry, I guess, if you could say, because I did grow up feeling like, “Don’t be mean to people.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

That was like, “Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean. Don’t be mean.” I’ve just realized this is like an argument for a way to live. It’s like, “No, I am going to be very unapologetic about, no, we have to spend a lot more time paying attention to the details.” It doesn’t matter if you are sending a rocket somewhere to space or if you’re trying to organize meals that people can have free access to. It’s like we need people who are in the details, who are noticing the small things and it makes a difference. Yeah, it’s a multi-layered thing that I just try to spend a lot of time with because there are times where I do feel like, “Oh, but am I doing enough?” If I’m outside collecting sticks, I’m just like, “What does this even mean?” I’m practicing going deeper and this is something I can take in other.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s right. 

c

I have a question about that because you just said, I wonder if I’m doing enough because I’m collecting these sticks and is that enough? But I’m sitting here as a person heavily socialized and invested in hustle-culture, and I recognize that completely. I feel like sometimes I think about peace and the lack of it in my life, and I’m just like, “Well, put it in the column of things I’m fucking up.” I don’t have enough peace. I don’t have enough exercise. I don’t have enough quality time with my family. All of the things that I’m screwing up and I’m hearing you picking up sticks and Glennon, picking up purple stones, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m not doing enough.” Because I would never in a million years go out and be like… Unless I was doing an actual program and I had a journal, that was like, “Your activity today is pick up sticks.” Then I would do it.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

The tyranny of being like, “You should be having more peace and you should be having more presence.” What is the inroad? If you’re on one side of the spectrum thinking, I’m not doing enough because I’m picking up sticks and I’m over here thinking I’m not doing enough because I’m missing all of life because I’ve never looked at a purple rock and thought to pick it up. Where is the entree in for someone like me that doesn’t feel like this tyrannical, you’re not vulnerable enough, you’re not peaceful enough to get there a little bit?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah. I love that you said entree, because that is an example in my mind, I’ll go with food. For instance, I’m not a good host person, hosting a meal of something. I can maybe order a pizza and make sure it gets here on time. That’s about as far as I can go. However, I remember moments from childhood where someone who was really good at preparing a meal and they just thought about the smallest thing. If someone in the group had an allergy and they went out of their way to create a whole separate thing for that person. I think that’s the same as picking up rocks. I think the person who sends emails and they backspace a few words because they’re like, “I think that might come across the way and I want to be sensitive to this person.” They think about that and they change that up.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I think that’s the same thing as going outside and looking at the sky. I think the people who are listening, they can hear tone and voice, and I’m conscious of this because I’m being autistic, I cannot hear tone and voice very well. And there are people who can tell by the slightest shift in tone that something has changed in that person and they’re going to be the one who’s able to ask in a way that I can’t about how are you really doing? And help that person find peace. I think as many as our stars in the sky, there’s so many different ways that we are accessing that and we can nurture that. I think some people, like you said, they may never think to… I don’t even really think about the stick things. Sometimes I just open the door and I just go outside and I start doing it.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

But I’m also the same person who, if you ask me to prepare a meal for a group of people, there is no peace in that for me. No. I am angry. I’m like, “Who signed me up for this?” That somebody guilts me into this. It is exact opposite. No, no, no. I know a lot of people, that is how they can help one find room to breathe in their life. There’s people who have sensibilities around like spices. They can smell different aroma and spices and they connect them to different memories and it helps them calm down. I’ve heard people say like, “Oh yeah, I smell this certain scent, it makes me think about this.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I don’t have that. For me, it’s a lot of touch and going outside and touching and holding things like that. I hope that those examples could at least be just little dots that people can maybe grasp that, because I think there’s a lot of different ways of doing it. I think some ways get more popular because they just seem absurd or just random. There’s just so much that humans do that is so needed for themselves and others.

Glennon Doyle:

I see you in those pictures you send me on the sidelines of the basketball court. She’s a coach. She coaches eight-year olds girls in basketball. She sends me these pictures of her intently looking in these girls eyes. First, my sister doesn’t know shit about basketball. Is it even basketball? What are you playing?

Amanda Doyle:

I coach basketball.

Glennon Doyle:

Basketball, okay.

Amanda Doyle:

I don’t know anything about anything. I just scream, believe in yourself.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes, but the intensity and beauty that you are concentrating with these girls, and I can see these pictures of you with your eyes and they’re looking at you and that is collecting rocks and sticks. I think maybe you don’t need to do shit, you could just notice all the things you’re already doing that are picking up purple rocks.

Amanda Doyle:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s the little things. Those little girls are the little things.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s already there.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s already there.

Amanda Doyle:

Morgan, that just expanded my heart when you were saying that. You said you’re so sick of the find your purpose bullshit, which thank you for the love of God. You say focus on what energizes you and excites you.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah.

Amanda Doyle:

Sticks excite you. Little girls being a disaster on the basketball court, but beginning one hoop the entire season thrills me like nothing has to date. It’s just paying attention to that connectedness, right? You connected to the earth. Me connected to these little kids. That’s all the same bag is what I hear you say.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

It’s the same. It’s the same. It is absolutely the same.

Amanda Doyle:

Thank you.

Glennon Doyle:

Morgan, sister thought were going to make her go pick up sticks.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

No. And it’s so funny, I used to think that way. I used to think like, “Okay, we all got to get out in nature.” But it’s like, “You know what’s a huge part of nature? People.” People, like humans.

Amanda Doyle:

That’s right.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

We need other humans to be present to humans. Not everybody can go outside and pick up sticks off the crowds. That’s not going to be everyone. Of course, I love people, but I’m not as in that real time. I’d be a horrible coach of any kind. I can write them some poems and deliver them after the game.

Abby Wambach:

Halftime speech.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Well, there’s actually billions of different ways and we’re already doing it. And I do think it’s noticing and looking, because even a lot of the things that I’m so passionate about now, such as the arts and emphasizing art as communication and not prioritizing words, I didn’t even realize that till I look back on my life and realize I had already been doing it. Yes, it was incredibly awkward at summer camp when all that was happening and I felt like I was fighting for my life, but at the same time, it’s like, “No, you were living that out then too.” It was like you were saying, “No, I’m going to show up to this camp exactly I need to today.” That’s just going to be what it is. Of course, I didn’t have that confidence at that time, but I was practicing it. It was there. I look back on that now and I’m like, “Oh, that’s what I’m doing today.” I’m doing a different version of that. I’m literally putting stuff out there on the internet that people can take it and take it anywhere. They can do whatever they want with it. Now I’m aware, I’m noticing this is something that I’ve been doing all along. This is how I’ve been practicing courage all along. I’ve already been doing it and I’m just going to keep nurturing that.

Amanda Doyle:

I actually had a question about that because it does seem that you are uniquely courageous and brilliant and very special in the way of, you seem to be… I feel like accommodating has this negative connotation like it’s for a deficit of some sort. I don’t mean that, I mean it in the strongest, most powerful way of you were accommodating how you were made in your life, even when you were biddy coming up. I feel like most of us spend our whole lives just trying to kill that thing that’s calling for our own accommodation inside of us. But I’m wondering how your later in life diagnosis of autism, did that change your even self-perception of these accommodations that you had built into your life to be who you are? And if so, what was the shift there as a result of that?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Ooh, that is such a good question. Honestly, credit to my therapist because the specialist that I saw who helped me through the whole diagnosis process, very clearly said, “Morgan, you have grown up and moved through life thinking your needs don’t matter and thinking that you’re not someone who can be accommodated for. And now it’s time to open up and accommodate all that from childhood all the way till now. There’s space for you. No apologizing for it.” Having someone tell me that very, very directly, it really was a wake-up call because I don’t think anyone had told me that before. I don’t think I had ever really heard to my face like that, “No, your needs matter in a big way, not like I was always secondary. I had done that a lot of like, “Okay, yeah, my needs matter, but hold on, there’s real stuff going on.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

I was like, “No, this is front and center. We have to address this.” I’ll just give some very specific…. It started with the top layers of when I was just telling everything that I was doing and she’s like, “You’re going to have to take off half of the things that you’re doing in the day because you’re just doing too much.” And I was like, “But this is my job.” She’s like, “Well, what can we do to make your job less stressful? Do you need to move?” I did move to a more affordable state. I did a lot of things like that. Then it was working into the layers, as you were saying of like, “Oh, there’s versions of little Morgan that needed that too. What did little Morgan need off of her plate?”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

What did little Morgan need when she was sitting at the picnic table… Likes and followers has a bad connotation, but it’s like, “Yeah, maybe some likes and followers would’ve helped that summer, if I could have shared those poems online. But there was no social media yet. It’s like, “Maybe that would’ve helped.” Like, “You know what? These kids at camp don’t get it, but there’s some kid in South Africa who liked my poem, who gets it. Yeah, it’s like, “What did Morgan need then?” Yeah, I’m still working on it for sure. I have not figured it out, but I’m at least aware of, and I love that you said the word accommodation. I think that’s a good word to bring forth in something like this because it’s something I want to remember.

Glennon Doyle:

I like the emphasis on accommodating as opposed to assimilating, because we tend to measure success… Successful, the more I can assimilate, the more I can do things the way the world wants me to do. I went to the party. I did all the work for eight hours. I did the thing, success. Is it? Or can I measure success based on how much I didn’t do the things that don’t serve me that I didn’t… Well, this week I said no to the party. I did way less work, success. I accommodated my own needs as opposed to success being out as much as I changed into what society needed me to be.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yes.

Amanda Doyle:

And for everyone and in every circumstance, it’s life, it’s relationships. I have just started to believe our marriage therapist for the first time, maybe she’s onto something, even though she said it 400 times, that when I don’t like something, put it in my head for 24 hours and decide if that’s reasonable. If your average person would find that not okay. If I’m just being a raging bitch that I just get to say, “I don’t like this.” Maybe it is crazy, and guess what? It doesn’t matter because this is who I am. There’s only two people in this relationship and one of them doesn’t like this. 

Glennon Doyle:

You can at least accommodate two people. 

Amanda Doyle:

But that is a monumental idea. I would sift it through, is this reasonable? Is this crazy? Before I would ever even say it out of my mouth. That’s accommodating yourself, right?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah. There’s so much more room for that, this conversation, even thinking, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m probably just getting started.” Even realizing like, “Oh, there’s probably a lot more in my life that I have felt like I’ve had to do or I’ve had to keep up.” Maybe there are more questions that I can ask myself and say, “No, how do I do this in a way that I know that is actually fruitful and helpful to me and can help me not even just grow, but to just rest more.” And to just have more time. I’m like, “Okay, I did what I did. Now I’m just going to go walk away now and not think about anything for the rest of the day in this area.” That’s something I’ve been trying to bring with my work too, because it has become harder. I now share things and art and poetry and I doing all these collaborations and things, it’s like, “Oh, what’s next?

Morgan Harper Nichols:

If you’re just like, “I don’t know.” All the time. Sometimes people are like, “What does that mean?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” I honestly don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out how I got to this point. It’s very interesting because I am feeling that. But at the same time, there is this journey that I’m going on right now of like, “Well, how do I invite other people into that?” How do I invite other people into… Yes, we can look at our lives as a story, but maybe it’s this non-linear story. The hero’s journey, I’ve been very interested in that. And I love the hero’s journey. However, what I’ve started to look at and I’m like, “You know what? So many representations of the hero’s journey is this perfect circle.” And I’m like, “This is great for a two and a half hour movie.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

This is great for a television show series. But when it comes to life, it’s a lot more moving through an actual landscape. It’s not this perfect circle. I was writing about different parts of a story when I was writing my book, You Are Only Just Beginning. Originally I plan on doing like, “Oh, I need to have perfect circles in the book, so everyone knows where they are in the journey of the book. And I’m like, “Actually, life isn’t like that.” In this space, it’s going to be, yes, it’s a story and it’s all over the place.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes, and also, story implies words. Journey implies one foot in front of the other. The hero’s journey implies that everything is geared towards the top of that mountain. The hero’s journey doesn’t emphasize the sticks along the way. All of that stuff is not the way that we are experiencing life. It’s the climax. It’s like everything is just keep down till you get to this top thing. I get so disappointed when I live that way. If I get to the top of the mountain and everyone’s oohing and aahing about the view, and I’m like, “Ugh.”

Morgan Harper Nichols:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

The way that you’re doing it is so different than maybe it’s not just a one foot in front of the other journey. Maybe it’s not a story made up of words. Maybe it’s the small sticks. I have two teenagers and sometimes words aren’t cutting it. If I just depend on words right now in this phase, we will miss each other forever. Sometimes I just have to be, Morgan, like I’m standing there and I’m like, “Okay, what I mean is just sitting here with you on the couch.” The truth is just, I guess, me just putting my hand on your leg for a second, not too long, because that’s too intimate at this moment.

Glennon Doyle:

The truth is just me not leaving the room and being quiet. This conversation is freeing to me because I feel like in this culture, we think if we don’t communicate it to each other with words and nail it, that we are not being real enough with each other. And if you’ve ever raised a teenager, you know that can’t be it. There are truths that can just be expressed to each other standing next to each other, or being in different rooms and loving each other huge from our hearts. The truth doesn’t always have to be communicated with words.

Morgan Harper Nichols:

That is so profound. The way you said that, I never thought about how, even in teenage years. It’s like a threshold because childhood is a lot more embodied, a lot more present in a lot of ways like you’re very present to big emotions, it just makes me have so much compassion for teenagers. It’s like you’re now at this threshold of like, “No, it’s time to cut all that out and get it into words. What are you going to do with your life? We’re going to go and how are you going to… It’s like, “Wow.” But you’re coming from a whole lifetime so far of like, “No emotions are actually really, really big. I feel them and now it’s growing up. You’re getting that message of like, “No, tone it down. Put it into a paragraph.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s a lot.” It’s making me think about my teenage years in different ways. Thanks for saying that. That’s really profound.

Glennon Doyle:

Morgan Harper Nichols, thank you for being you because you being you, please just keep accommodating constantly because it helps all of us and you being yourself is allowing us to be ourselves more, and thanks for somehow magically on pages and the interwebs creating a place that is beyond pages and interwebs. Not sure how you’re doing it, but I appreciate very much. Pod Squad, we love you. See you next time.

Glennon Doyle:

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