From Family Trauma to Advocacy: An Intimate Portrait of Living with Mental Illness: Meg Kissinger

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Welcome to what you why? What you why is brought to you by Wyoming humanities. And I am your host, Emy Digrappa. In this podcast, we take you on a journey with nationally and internationally renowned humanists, authors, journalists, philosophers, artists and scientists. We’d venture into conversation about where they’ve been, what makes them tick, and how their history relates to the greater world and to you.         

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Get inspired, gain perspective and reflect on what’s your why today. My special guest is Meg Kissinger. Meg Kissinger spent more than two decades traveling across the country writing about America’s mental health system for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She has won dozens of accolades, including two George Polk Awards, the robbery of F.         

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Kennedy Ward, and many others. Plus, she teaches investigative reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School. Meg is the author of the book while you were out, a memoir of a family besieged by mental illness. It is also an exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them. Welcome.         

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Meg. Thanks, Emy. I’m so happy to be here. Oh, I’m so happy to have you. I was so intrigued by your story.         

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And so just to start at the beginning, tell me about your family and how you got into journalism. Sure. So I am the fourth of eight kids. We were born in twelve years. So a moment of silence in gratitude for my mother, who cranked him out, as one did back in the baby boom years.         

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And we grew up just outside of Chicago in a town called Wilmette. And we were, we had a lot of fun, Emy. I mean, it was a blast. I mean, we had all kinds of adventures and misadventures, and I have many happy memories of my childhood. At the same time, there was also a lot of heartache and sorrow.         

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So, you know, we, it was, it was very clear from not too long, you know, in my family story when it became apparent that people were suffering from words that were from illnesses that we didn’t know how to talk about, so namely mental illness and in our family’s case, bipolar. So we didn’t ever say those words and we didn’t know what that meant. You know, all of a sudden, I would go downstairs one morning, my mother wouldn’t be there. I learned that she was in the hospital. I didn’t know what for.         

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My grandmother would say, say, she’s got pneumonia. I knew it wasn’t pneumonia, but we just didn’t talk about that. You know, it was, as the title of the book says, it’s an intimate family portrait of mental illness and an era of silence. So I’m a nosy kid. What can I tell you?         

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As the fourth of eight kids, I had a lot of good material to pay attention to. And I just took note, you know, as I was growing up, about how there were certain things that we didn’t talk about, and the more we didn’t talk about it, the more curious I was. So it only made sense then that I would go on to become a newspaper reporter and actually get paid to ask people questions. The story that was near and dearest to my heart was, why don’t we treat people with mental illness better, and why don’t we talk about what’s troubling them in the same way that we discuss other illnesses? So that’s why spent most of my career doing so.         

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That is so interesting. So I’m from a family of seven. I’m a middle child. Okay. So I get it.         

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Yep. We rock. Yeah. So either as a middle child, you’re either the peacemaker or the instigator. Right?         

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Yeah, I might have been a little both, depending on the situation. Right, right. And so it’s truly interesting how you address this. And is this common in large families, or is this just across the board, where people kind of keep secrecy in their families even though they know something’s wrong, something’s not right, but at the same time, it’s like this is life, and life’s happening and nothing’s really wrong. Because, you know, yeah, we’re getting better at it now.         

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But, you know, growing up, as I did in the 1960s and seventies, the shame of mental illness was very real. And so. And we didn’t have the resources that people have today. So, you know, this was obviously before the Internet. So if your sister is lying in bed and can’t, won’t get up to go to school and is, you know, crying or creating a stir, you’re confused, bugged, you don’t like it, but you don’t have any really kind of resources to figure out what the heck’s going on, you know?         

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Again, no Internet. No. It was maybe like you could go to the library or something, but we just didn’t talk about that stuff, you know? So we turned away from those who were struggling. Or I still.         

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I steered well clear. But, you know, as we learn in the most sorrowful way, the consequences of ignoring that, of ignoring the illness among us and not having the clarity or ways to talk about it led to nothing good. So, really, this mostly my book is about how shame is toxic and what the consequences of shame was in our family. And in the case of our family, my sister Nancy, who was the second oldest, so I was four years younger than her. And she was a beautiful person.         

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She was smart and very pretty and played the piano beautifully, you know, all the things. But she was also very seriously mentally ill. And again, we just didn’t, we didn’t talk about that. So as she grew sicker and sicker, you know, it became more of a, more confusing, and she ended up taking her own life. She died by suicide in 1978 after many, many attempts.         

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And the night that she died, she died on a Friday night. And my dad called us all into the living room, and he said in no uncertain terms, if anybody asks, this was an accident. And he wasn’t trying to be mean, but he was scared and he was ashamed. And he was also worried that we wouldn’t be able to have a funeral. We’re catholic, and so in the eyes of the Catholic Church at that time, you know, suicide is a sin.         

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So, no, you know, it was a very real possibility that we wouldn’t be allowed to have a funeral mass for her and that she wouldn’t be able to be buried in our family burial plot. And so the consequences of that, you know, downstream, led to more trouble for our family. You know, as other kids came along and they started to show signs of their mental illness, they didn’t have a way to process that. So that’s that. And that all seemed to me like a terrible scandal, you know, that, you know, again, no knock against my mom and dad, who were really trying their best, but where was the safety net for us?         

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And where were. Why couldn’t we talk about that? I was, I was fascinated by that. And so that’s, that’s what gave me ripe fodder for my journalism career for many years. What did your mom and dad do for a living?         

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Yeah, my dad. Well, so we call my dad Homer. His name was Bill, but anyway, just a goofy nickname for him. He was a lawyer by training, although he was so charming, and so just had a, just had a way winning people over that he became, ironically, a pharmaceutical advertising salesman. So he was out there pushing for medications like Milltown and Valium and, you know, all the medication that my mother was gobbling right, left between, you know, sips of her martini because, again, you know, raising all those kids.         

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So my mom was a stay at home mom, you know, right out of, like, you know, leave it to beaver or whatever. And my dad had a good job. So it was, we were fortunate to have a lot of the trappings of, you know, a good, solid family, lots of fun vacation ski trips and, you know, vacations up to northern Wisconsin and lots of adventure. You know, I always. I found that to be just so ironic that my dad was.         

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Was pushing these medications that ultimately many people in my family end up taking. Oh, wow. That’s interesting to think about, especially now. Like you said, we didn’t have the resources we have now. And I think in that time, there was, like, no harm, you know, just, that’s what you did.         

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And it was acceptable in society. Right. Or anything like that. Like, no red flags. There was no way for people to know, that’s really bad, that’s addictive.         

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That’s all those behaviors that, like you said, we have learned so much today. It’s interesting because, I don’t know, have you studied and gone back into history to see how people dealt with mental illness? Sure. Yeah. What did you learn about that?         

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Yeah, well, horrifying stories, you know, so, you know, in the old days, I’m talking about, like, in, you know, early, like the 16 hundreds and earlier, you know, people were considered to be possessed of. There were all kinds of crazy exorcisms and bloodletting and leeches therapy. And, you know, the big, most common way to handle people. This is, of course, before any medication was to lock them up and put them far away in asylums that were built on the outskirts of town. You know, the history of witchcraft and how women were vilified and believed to be possessed by devils.         

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So it’s gruesome, you know, the history of how people were cared for when they had serious mental illness is gruesome. The drug thorazine came along in the 1940s, and that was a game changer. So that meant that people who were acting out with delusions and hallucinations. I’m talking about people with very serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar, that you could become so ill as to be in a psychotic state. And so when Thorazine came along, that was a breakthrough in that you no longer had to contain people so you could give them thorazine.         

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Of course, they were walking around like zombies, and that wasn’t really a great answer to that. And then ultimately, next generation medications like Prozac and others that. That address more serious illnesses, again, like paranoia and delusions. But those carry with them also bad side effects, you know, dry mouth damage to liver and kidney function, and tardive dyskinesia. So this, you know, very stilted walking.         

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And so medications have come a ways, but they’re not. They’re still not where people would like them to be. Can you treat mental illness in a healthy way without medication, or is that just a required thing you have to do? Because that’s the part I don’t understand. Sure.         

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So I think, you know, everybody’s different. And in full disclosure, I am not a mental health provider. I’m not a medical person. I’m a newspaper reporter and I’m a yemenite, and I’m a family member of some, you know, so I’ve witnessed a lot of mistreatment of people with mental illness. So that, you know, depends.         

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Medications can go. Certain medications can do a lot for people who are struggling, but then there’s the whole matter of people being over medicated, which happens quite a lot. So it’s not uncommon for somebody with a serious mental illness to be on multiple kinds of drugs. And I did a story one time on a woman who was on five different antipsychotics at once, and these have very serious side effects. And the assault to that poor woman’s body is just horrific.         

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So medical management of mental illness is, when it’s done well, I think it can be helpful, but there’s still so much that’s not known. You know, we’re still in infancy days in really understanding mental illness. And I think because of its grim history, you know, again, people perceived as being possessed by demons or locked up and put away for life, we just didn’t deal with them. So just a quick little history lesson. So in 1963, the federal government passed.         

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It was that kind Congress passed the Mental Health act, which was meant to federalize mental health care, and so taking it from individual states into an overarching federal approach. And the promise was that every area the country would be divided into what they call catchment areas, like congressional districts. And each of those catchment areas would have a variety of mental health services available, everything from inpatient care for the sickest down to just community support, like medication dispensing or lectures on maternal health. Anyway, great idea. The problem was that they never delivered on it.         

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And, you know, more than half of those facilities were never built. And so what happened was then people were ushered out of these asylums, which was a good thing. Any of your listeners who are familiar with one, flew over the cuckoo’s nest, you know, these horrific accounts of the way that people lived in those asylums, nobody would wish that fate on somebody that they love. So, you know, it was perceived as a good thing that they were emptying out these asylums. But the problem is there was nothing, no support for them in the community.         

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So we’re seeing the consequences of that now that jails and prisons are loaded with people who are really in there because of acts they committed. While Florida mentally ill or look on the streets of any town, there are growing burgeoning populations of homeless people. Not to say that every homeless person is mentally ill, but I. There’s quite a big percent who are. So it’s a hot mess, Emy.         

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And it can be overwhelming to think about just how we look away and don’t regard people with mental illness in the same way that we would if they had cancer or heart disease. I agree. I think because those diseases are physical, right. You can detect them. You can see someone who has cancer.         

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You can go through all the treatments. The doctors can assess. You have this kind of cancer or that kind of cancer. And there’s specific treatments for cancer, but in terms of mental illness, it’s more unseen. Right?         

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Yeah. It’s a cluster of symptoms that you describe to a doctor who tries to make sense of it. And, yeah, no blood test or no x ray. So there’s a little art to those diagnoses, and they’re not always accurate, and they kind of blend into one another. What looks like schizophrenia might just be bipolar and with psychotic features.         

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So there’s all kinds of misinterpretations for people who are struggling. How is medicine researching? Yeah, that’s the other issue is there’s not a lot of money in this. So because we’ve been silent for so long about people in our family or us, you know, struggling with mental illness, there’s not a lot of agitation for improvement of care. And in some respects, some illnesses would be regarded as, like, orphan illnesses.         

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You know, it’s not. The pharmaceutical companies don’t make a lot of money honing certain medications or making them more efficacious, you know, better. So there’s, there is more effective. So there’s. There’s kind of like, going along to get along.         

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And therefore, you know, again, a lot of medications have not really improved over 40 years or more. You know, since the new waves of psych meds have come onto the market, there’s not a lot of incentive for pharmaceutical companies to improve those formulas. Well, going back to how, how it happens, is it nurture or nature? I mean, is it genetically passed on? Is it your upbringing?         

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What, what is it that, you know, I think that’s part of the problem is that. Where do you start? Right. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite quotes, and I mentioned this in my book, is from Thomas Insel, who is the, was the director of the National Institute on Mental Health, and he said there’s two kinds of families, those with mental illness and those who don’t have mental illness yet.         

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So in other words, it really affects all of us. If you look at my family, the Kissinger family, I would say our issue is bipolar. So that is, you know, the people who have bipolar have wide mood swings that can be manic one day, you know, loving life on top of the world, doing kind of crazy stuff, and then the next, crashing and being very depressed and unable to get out of bed. So many people in my family have, that have been diagnosed with that and are being treated for that. You look at other families.         

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So there was a fascinating book that came out of a couple years ago by an excellent journalist by the name of Robert Kolker. It’s called Hidden Valley Road, and that was about a family of twelve children. So making the Kissingers look like a bunch of pikers. But anyway, in that family of twelve, there were ten boys and two girls, and six of the ten boys had schizophrenia. And just.         

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Yeah, very jarring. So we’re learning more and more about the children genetic components to these serious mental illnesses, which would strip away a lot of the shame, because historically, how we’ve treated people with mental illness as if it’s their fault. Well, Emy, you know and I know that nobody wants to be depressed and nobody wants to hear voices or be confused, so. But this is how society often treats them. I’m thinking what is so interesting and kind of how you related it to homelessness, not that every homeless person has mental illness, but the fact that in homeless populations, there is a lot of addiction.         

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And so in having mental illness, does that drive you more towards, let’s say, alcohol or drug addiction? Sure. You know, they refer to it in the medical community as, like, treating your symptoms. So it feels awful to be anxious or depressed, and taking drugs or drinking is a way to kind of blunt that it doesn’t cure it, but it will maybe numb the feeling for time. And, yeah, there’s a lot of overlap there.         

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They call it co occurring. And in the old days, the federal government wouldn’t allow treatment for people who were both addicted to drugs or alcohol and struggling with some mental illness, which is silly because clearly they’re connected. So we’ve gotten better on that score. But I think it goes so much to how we regard people with mental illness and the way that we look at them. And that’s what my book is meant to do.         

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It’s meant to put a human face and, you know, to talk about my family as a way to bear witness to what we went through with the hope that that would help people understand and move towards helping these poor souls instead of just ignoring them or vilifying them. It must have been devastating because you said you lost your older sister, then you lost another sibling to suicide. Was he younger than you? Yeah, my brother Danny was the youngest boy. So, yeah, Nancy died in 1978, and then Danny died 19 years later.         

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And when he died, we just. The whole family was just flattened. You know, it was just like, how could this have happened? You know, knowing what we know, how did we not get that guy help before something so tragic happened? We tried, you know, but like a lot of people with serious mental illness, Danny wasn’t willing to acknowledge his own illness.         

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So, in fact, you get pretty hostile when you suggested that he had it. But I think the seed was sown way back on that night that Nancy died, when my dad told us to say it was an accident. So I think when Dan, this is all conjecture on my part, but I think it’s a pretty good guess that, you know, just as Danny’s symptoms were beginning to present themselves and he was starting to feel very lousy and confused himself and not in control of his emotions, he was too afraid to acknowledge that because, you know, it was considered to be shameful. And maybe part of him, too, was afraid that if he acknowledged having bipolar, then he might end up, as Nancy did, in taking his. His own life, which is exactly what happened.         

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Oh, my gosh, that is so tragic. Yeah. I’m just thinking through lots of families, and I do believe people hide it and they don’t know how to deal with it, and they. And their families don’t know how to deal with it and they don’t know what to do. I wouldn’t know what to do.         

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But I can see that it does exist everywhere, even in my family. I would say that there has been mental illness. Sure. And you just don’t know how you feel about it. Sure.         

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And, you know, I get asked all the time, what can I do? Because it does seem so overwhelming. You know, it’s just like, you know, you could just throw your hands up and just say it’s too big of a problem. But I believe I’m an optimistic person anyway. Maybe it’s because I’m the middle kid, but I do believe that there is a lot that we can do.         

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And it starts to. With acknowledging it. It starts with just stripping away all that again, shame and just to say, just as we have crooked pinky fingers and freckles and brown eyes, that’s just our genetic makeup, and that’s how we were made. So let’s deal with that. And we don’t have to feel badly about it.         

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We don’t have to apologize for it. This is the way that we are and go from there and just be accepting of it and find ways to accept it in other people, too. It sounds pretty woo woo. But, you know, right before Danny died, he wrote me a letter. And that guy never had written me a letter ever in his life.         

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Like, not a thank you note for any gift I gave him or happy birthday or congratulations on the new baby. So when this letter arrived in the mail, I was like, oh, my God, what’s going on here? And in it, Danny was really soulful. He had just gotten out of jail. As a matter of fact, he had been in jail in Chicago for punching a cop.         

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Not a good idea. Anywho, he had finally gotten on some medication, which I think gave him some clarity. And he was looking around and taken inventory of his life, and he was apologizing. He was acknowledging that he struggled with mental illness. And he said to me in the letter, it’s an awful disease, and it causes you to do awkward things, and I’ve hurt a lot of people.         

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As I was reading, and I thought, oh, my God, this is a suicide note. Anyway, he ended the letter by saying, only love and understanding can conquer this. I thought that was so cheesy at the time that I read it. And again, I was scared to death that it was a suicide note. And I remember calling my dad and saying, you know, we got to get this.         

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We got to get Danny back into the hospital. And so when he died the next week, I wrote those words down on an index card, and I taped him to the side of my computer in the newsroom. And that became my battle cry, you know, when I spent the next 25 years going all over the country writing about, you know, why is it that we don’t. We can’t treat people with mental illness better, and what do we need to do? So I love it when people ask me, you know, what can we do?         

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And, you know, as I said, it starts with just acknowledging it.         

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How does your family feel about your book? Yeah, that’s a great question. Imagine. I mean, like, so, first of all, why in hell would I think it was a good idea to sit down and write about, like, the most painful and humiliating episodes in our family life? The only thing I think that could be worse than that is if your sister did it.         

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So when I went to each of my brothers and sisters and said, what do you think? I’m going to write this book? But I was very motivated because I’d seen over the years, over my 25 plus years as a journalist writing about our nation’s crappy mental health system that we need to make improvements. And I thought, you know, our family had a compelling story to tell. My brothers and sisters are very entertaining people, and they’re adorable and they’re a lot of fun, and they’re smart, and they’re also good, good hearted people.         

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So I knew that they would want to share my enthusiasm for telling our story with the hopes that could help other people. But anyway. But I was still scared to death to tell it because there’s some hair raising stuff in that book. But bless their hearts, each of them said yes. And I thought, why did they do that?         

00:27:33
             

But one reason is that we’re old. We’re in our sixties now, and my older sister’s in her seventies. So we’ve lived a life, and we have some wisdom and some comfort that we can offer people. So why not? You know, I think.         

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I think you get to a stage in your life and you’re just like, I’m not going to fake it anymore. I’m not going to pretend. I’m just going to let it all hang out and be who I am. And again, hoping that that’ll help somebody. Well, how do your parents feel about it?         

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Are they both still alive? No. Long gone. I don’t know. So I think my mother would like it.         

00:28:11
             

So they were both. They both struggled with alcoholism, and they ended up becoming sober through their hard work at AA. So they knew the power of storytelling and how telling our story can help heal. So I think my mother would give the thumbs up. I don’t know about my dad.         

00:28:30
             

I think that guy might be mad at me and. But whatever. Too bad he’s dead. He doesn’t get a vote. Well, I think it’s admirable that you actually reached out to your siblings and said, hey, I’m going to write this book.         

00:28:43
             

What do you think about this? And they supported you because that. That’s truly important, especially when it sounds like you have a close family, you have close relationships with them, and you don’t want anyone to be hurt. No, it was very. It was very brave of them.         

00:28:58
             

A lot of the motivation, too, was that we have these stereotypes, too, about people with serious mental illness that they are, you know, bad people. Or unloved or scary. I mean, they can be scary, don’t get me wrong. They can do some wacky things or some menacing things, but I also know them. Some of the people that I love the most in the world have serious mental illness, and they can be adorable and funny and kind and generous.         

00:29:28
             

So I wanted to paint a fuller picture, a more realistic picture than the one you often get when you hear about these crazies living in an asylum. Yes, and I appreciate that. That is the stereotype, that people put this picture about mental illness, that they are a crazy person walking the streets. And, yes, there are some very dangerous people out there who hurt other people that are mentally ill. Because sometimes you read about, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer, and then you apply it to everybody.         

00:30:11
             

Sure, no doubt. But more often, I mean, statistically speaking, more often, a person with mental illness is likely to be a victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator. It’s just too cheap to vilify people who are suffering, because what mental illness is, is an illness. It’s not a character flaw, and it’s not a mean-spirited act. It’s.         

00:30:34
             

It’s an illness. And until we really regard that, I don’t think we’re going to have any significant change. One of the better books I’ve read in a long time was called the Anatomy of a plague, and it was about the AIDS epidemic. And in the 1980s, as AIDS was coming on, no one was paying attention. The federal government was not funding research into cures or ways to treat people who are dying of AIDS.         

00:31:01
             

The New York Times would not publish obits that mentioned that a person had died by AIDS. So they were invisible, and they were dying right and left. And it was really only when people in the arts community in San Francisco and New York and elsewhere began to really advocate and agitate and come up with, like, plays and music and pride parades and ways to force those discussions into the public eye. And it was then, you know, it was only after that political pressure was brought to bear. So I believe that’s what people with serious mental illness need to do.         

00:31:43
             

They need to borrow a page from that playbook and demand change and demand improvements to care. Well, I think. I think that’s true. And I still go back to the fact that it is so invisible in so many ways that I believe we have mental illness in our family and we know it’s there. But addressing it is a different situation, especially when you have someone who is older, they can go out on their own.         

00:32:19
             

They don’t have to take your advice. They don’t have to listen to anything you say, even though you can see something is tragically wrong. Right? Yeah, it is. It’s very hard, Emy, but I think the way I have approached it is to remind myself that those people, we love those people, and they’re hurting, and it’s.         

00:32:46
             

Yeah, it’s frustrating dealing with them, and the temptation is to just walk away. But what would we want? How would we want to be treated if we were suffering like that? And, you know, this expression about how hurt people hurt people, and that’s very true. And so, again, much easier said than done, but trying to find ways to see the humanity in those folks and offer them, you know, just a shoulder to cry on or somebody to talk to and just compassion and empathy.         

00:33:22
             

I agree, just from my experience. And sometimes that’s what you’re offering is a shoulder to cry on. That’s what you’re offering. But they don’t want to accept it because they don’t want to admit it. That’s the hard part, I think, is that there’s no place for people to go.         

00:33:41
             

There’s no place, you know, like you said, you’re not a medical practitioner, but it’s your lived experience. Sure. Yeah. And if we take away again that shame, then maybe they’ll be open. You know, I think back so much about what if we had just said to Danny, my brother who died, if we had said to him, there’s no shame in it.         

00:34:06
             

This is just how you are. And let’s look for ways to get you some help so you can feel better. The ending of his story might have been different. That’s true. That’s very true.         

00:34:17
             

Well, I hope you share with me some resources. I’m going to share your website and your book so that people can buy your book and read it, and any resources that people can read or resources you have or the other thing. You know, I think just as mental illness, I think there’s other things in our world that people don’t know what to watch for, whether child trafficking. They talk about human trafficking, and you could be in a rest stop and you can facing somebody who is being trafficked and you won’t even know it. Yeah.         

00:35:01
             

Know the signs, know what to look for. If you see something, say something. I mean, that’s good advice for a lot of, you know, things that are going on that are hurting people in our society is, you know, learn to be our brother’s keeper. And you can’t, you know, you can’t help everybody, but but you can help some. That’s right.         

00:35:20
             

And it is one person at a time. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of resources, you know, I am a fan of the National alliance on Mental Illness.         

00:35:31
             

Nami. Nami. And they have good education classes for families. Their website is chock full of good descriptors and good advice. There are, you know, lots of support, support groups for families who are going through the hell of living with somebody in their midst who was very demanding and having a hard time.         

00:35:56
             

And, yeah, there are plenty of organizations. A lot of communities now have mental health agencies that can offer help. There’s also now the 988, which is the suicide helpline. So if you’re feeling suicidal or. Which is.         

00:36:14
             

Which I’ve come to learn is a very human emotion. It’s something we don’t feel comfortable talking about, but we better, because a lot of people at one time or another in their life may feel that way. And so let’s find ways to talk to those people. So 988 is a good resource. And your doctor.         

00:36:33
             

Yeah, we have the Internet now. We’re luckier. We can look for those resources. Oh, my gosh. That is.         

00:36:40
             

That is so great. I’m glad you brought up 988, I think. And what you said, there’s no exceptions to the range of emotions that you feel even as a teenager. Right? Oh, my gosh.         

00:36:53
             

You know, hormones going crazy. You say that a teenager thought about killing themselves. Probably. Yeah. Oh, yeah.         

00:37:00
             

Well, the suicide rate is at historic, and it’s the second leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 18 and 24. So that’s just shocking, you know, second only to car accidents. So, yeah, let’s find ways to talk to people and take the temperature down in a room and let them feel comfortable saying how they feel and offering them help. Right. And get away from, you know, this perfect kid syndrome that we have going on.         

00:37:33
             

We have so much about the perfect kid, and, you know, kid’s going to be the best soccer player and basketball player, and they have to do this and they have to do that. What that does to kids. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it does. It really messes with them, and that’s what they’re finding now.         

00:37:52
             

You know, all this research, too, on how social media has impacted, especially teenage girls, it’s just horrific. Yeah. So pay attention, people. Pay attention.         

00:38:06
             

Thank you so much, Meg. Abby, thank you so much. I really appreciate. I’m coming to Jackson Hole. Yay.         

00:38:12
             

For the book festival. I know. That’s why I got your name. I was like, awesome. Yeah, I’ll be in conversation with a doctor who’s wonderful.         

00:38:22
             

So it’ll be a good conversation, and I’m excited to come out there.         

00:38:41
             

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