Ep #284: Party of One: An Interview with Meghan Keane

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 284, Party of One: An Interview with Meghan Keane.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. So, a couple of things before we get into the interview today, which I think you’re going to really like, it’s good. One, I want to remind you, Happier Holidays for widows who aren’t done living is coming soon. We start on November 11th. It is totally free. You can register, coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent.

This is important to me because holidays are a hard time for a lot of widows, not completely hard, I’m not saying that it’s all hard, but sometimes it’s really hard. And there are some tools that I can teach you that will help, help make you have an easier experience of the holidays and I want that for you. And so Happier Holidays is my free gift to you. We’re doing it again this year. There’s no VIP option this year. You can’t buy anything. It’s just for free. So, if you want to participate, go to coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent.

And I’m going to go live four different times and I’m going to teach you four different things. We’re going to record all the calls. If you can’t make it live, no big deal, you can catch the recording and participate. We’re going to have a Facebook group. I think it’s really helpful to connect with other widows and share tips and stand in solidarity together.

So, we’re going to have a little pop up Facebook group that’s private. And we’re going to give away some prizes and try to bring a little bit of lightness and levity to something that’s sometimes so hard. So go get registered before it gets here, Happier Holidays coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent.

The other thing I wanted to say before we get started with Meghan is that I just had the most wonderful call with a woman named Stephanie. Stephanie, if you’re listening, which I think you are, thank you. It’s just such a cool thing that I get to do this particular work in the world. That I get to talk to people who may never be in a paid container of mine, but who I get to have quality conversations with, learn more about what’s going on for them. And I’m so grateful when I find out that me talking into this microphone helps you.

And so, Stephanie, I enjoyed our conversation and I just want to say thank you for your candidness and for telling people about the podcast. And I’m thinking of you, and you know who you are and you made my day. So, I just want to say that.

Okay, Meghan Keane, let’s talk about her. Meghan Keane, she’s kind of got an impressive bio. She’s the founder and the managing producer for NPR’s Life Kit, which is a podcast and radio show that brings listeners, advice and actionable information about personal finances, health, parenting, relationships and more. You’ve heard of this, NPR’s Life Kit. It’s a good podcast, if you haven’t listened, you should. Prior to founding Life Kit, she was a producer for NPR’s award-winning podcast, Invisibilia and a founding producer of NPR’s Ted Radio Hour. I know you have heard of both of those things, because they are top NPR podcasts.

She currently lives with Margot her mini dachshund in Washington, DC, and she was just a joy to talk to. One of the things I loved about Meghan is not just all of the insights that she’s going to share with you from her book, Party of One and all of the research and life that has gone into that body of work. But is also the fact that she knows what it’s like to be a kid who lost her dad. So, her dad died when she was 16 and she talks a little bit about that in our interview. But I think there are a lot of actionable things that she offers in this podcast that I think will make it valuable for you.

I would love to hear what you get out of it. And I’m so grateful that she was willing to come on the podcast. Highly recommend Party of One: Be Your Own Best Life Partner, her book. And with that, we’re going to jump into my interview with Meghan. I hope you enjoy.

Krista: Alright, welcome, Meghan to the podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for making time for us.

Meghan: Of course. Thank you, Krista, for having me.

Krista: Yeah. So, my listeners just heard this long, beautiful bio, but it would probably be much better if you introduced yourself and told them a little bit about yourself.

Meghan: Yes. So, my name is Meghan Keane. I am a journalist. My whole career has been at NPR where I’ve been mostly focusing on podcasts. I helped start Ted Radio Hour. I was on the staff of Invisibilia, that wonderful show. And then I was asked to start NPR’s service journalism brand, which is called Life Kit. So, it gives actionable advice to listeners, for money, wellness, parenting, relationships and everything in between.

So, my main day-to-day life is an editor and showrunner for Life Kit. But what that really means is, I’m always thinking about how I can be helpful to the public. That’s the big service journalism mission of NPR in general. But I get to do it really specifically within Life Kit and say, “Think about refinance and mortgage? Well, we have your back.” Or, “you’re having trouble talking to your kid about sex. We have your back there too.” So, my main goal in all of my work is to be helpful.

Krista: Yeah. What got you into that line of work in the first place?

Meghan: I’ve never been a person who loves a five year, a ten year plan because life just is so fluid and changes. I just always knew I wanted to do journalism so I was like, “Let me start there.” And I loved the intimacy of radio. I fell in love with it at college. I went to Emerson in Boston, which has a wonderful public radio station there that the whole community and into Massachusetts hears. And I just really fell in love with the medium and that type of writing.

And I realized as I was doing production work at weekend at All Things Considered, really early in my career, that my main goal and value was just to inform and help. And so, I was pretty flexible about how that happened. And so, with Ted Radio Hour, it was to inspire people and that helps people kind of situate how they think about big topics or Invisibilia was a lot about emotional stuff and thinking through complex problems and then life, again, it’s the most direct version of being helpful.

Krista: It’s incredibly helpful.

Meghan: Yeah, exactly. And so, I love the quick feedback loop of, hey, you told me how to fix my medical debt. I saved $2000. So, it’s kind of shortened the feedback loop of help. And yeah, I got very lucky at NPR to kind of brush up against the right folks and also a dash of hard work, I suppose. But I just stayed really open to how my career would look and I think it’s been beneficial.

Krista: Yeah. Well, as a listener, and I know that my listeners are like, “Wow, that’s an impressive list of podcasts.” Thank you, because your podcasts have helped me. So, thank you for the role that you have played in that, yeah.

Meghan: Thank you. Yeah. And what I also love about podcasts and NPR in particular, it’s a bigger production. It’s a team, a really smart team that always helps each other. I love the Life Kit team. They are always so kind and lovely, thinking about making really good journalism and take it really seriously, so I play a small role.

Krista: Not surprising. Well, okay, humble. Okay, so besides your world in podcasting, you wrote a book, Party of One: Be Your Own Best Life Partner. Tell us how you came to that book and then we’re going to talk about some of the things my listeners will want to know about what’s in that book.

Meghan: Yes. So, I did a Life Kit episode about singleness. About what does it mean to be single and how to basically decenter romantic relationships and the feeling of shame and stigma that can surround singleness. And live a life that feels good and authentic to you. I had a comic that my colleague, LA Johnson did, who also works at NPR. She’s a beautiful artist and illustrator, and she did a comic version of it. And there was some interest and then all of a sudden we were writing a book.

And so that part of the process kind of fell into my lap, embarrassingly. But once she said, “Hey, do you want to write a book?” I was like, “Yes.” And it felt so right in my spirit because I’d been joking that this is kind of my capstone on everything I’ve had to think and say about singleness. And it comes from a place, no surprise, a personal experience. I have spent most of my adult life single, and I’m a millennial, I’m 35. I thought I was free of the pressures of needing to partner up.

I thought I was somehow, I knew that, that wasn’t actually bothering me. But what I found was, compounding with, for me personally, the rise of online dating, the cycle of rejection became so much faster and more frequent. And I was feeling really frustrated with myself that I knew it was really great and amazing to be single and not settle. But in my body and my soul I was like, “It still feels really bad.” Some of those messages have still seeped in, whether I like it or not, and I didn’t like it.

So, the book was really my way forward of looking at research backed tools and evidence based tricks for how could you bridge that gap between being single and on your own. Or just when I say on your own, I just mean without a romantic partner, no one’s ever really alone, with your body and spirit that just maybe needs a little bit of a helping hand.

Because I was seeing a lot, there are people who love being single and that’s always what they’ve wanted to be. And I think that’s amazing. And I think we can really learn from those people. But I was like, “Wow, I still have a little ways to go.” So, the book was me figuring out how to bridge those two parts of myself.

Krista: I love it. I feel there’s probably a spectrum there and I think about where some of my listeners might be on that spectrum. For some it can be hard to imagine even contemplating life without having a romantic partner and being your own best partner. What does that even mean? And really, is that advisable? And then others might be in a place where, no, they’re actually really looking forward to that and actively trying to figure it out. It’s amazing how, from my perspective anyway, and I’m 48, the socialization is strong.

At least there’s the get an education part in there now too, as opposed to just go straight to marriage. But yeah, so much pressure being put on getting married and being partnered. And then what I see in the grief world because all of my clients are obviously widows is, that then that judgment that we have received from the outside becomes internalized. And then we put pressure on ourselves to create the next relationship or worry that we’re damaged goods, and then we better get out there. The clocks are ticking. People aren’t going to want us as though that’s the only path to happiness.

So, I’m glad that you’ve undertaken this topic and it sounds like, investigated it quite thoroughly, both personally and in all the places.

Meghan: And I just want to say too that this book is not to say you should only ever be single and always be happy with that or forget about marriage. I’m just saying, take a beat. Think about what your values are. Think about how you can love the life you have now because it’s just going to add so much more ease rather than always feeling like something is subtracted or missing just because you don’t have a certain role filled. And something I’ve learned by doing a lot of this research is that the key to self-regulation is not eternal Zen. It is maintaining choices and feeling the feelings.

Krista: [Crosstalk], Meghan.

Meghan: I know, I know. I’m here to spread the word. But I do think there is this misconception that if you are living your #bestlife that you are always at that happy level. And especially if you are someone going through grief, of course you’re going to feel upset. It feels quite normal to me. And so, it’s not about saying, “Hey, you don’t have a partner, forget it, just be happy.” It’s about how can you be your own best partner in regulating your emotions, thinking about your anxiety, using tools like mindfulness to really strip away the judgment of those thoughts and feelings and just be kinder to yourself because it just feels so much easier.

Krista: Yeah, I’m so glad you said that. I agree with you. For me, it’s about how can you live a rich, full human life knowing that a human life is all the feelings and all the things. And as much as we have been sold the idea that we’re supposed to want only happiness, it’s not really what we actually want. But I get it. I get it, especially after such a significant loss in that we’ve had so much intense emotion and maybe didn’t come to it with skills about how to support ourselves or regulate our nervous system. So, it kind of makes sense why it’s the last thing you’d want more of and you’d want to be pursuing ‘happiness’, but no, I am with you.

Meghan: Feeling bad feels bad, I get it.

Krista: Simply stated, it does, yeah. So, before the show, and I have lots of questions for you about the singleness and all of that part. But since you did mention that you also are the daughter of a widowed mom and that your dad died when you were 16 years old. Yeah, I would love for my audience to learn a little bit about your experience. Maybe you have some wisdom and some nuggets. So, what was that like for you? How did it affect the trajectory of your world?

Meghan: Totally. So, my father, Jim Keane, was 60 years old when he died and he had non-small cell lung cancer, meaning he would have gotten this type of lung cancer even if he never smoked a day in his life. And anyone who’s familiar with cancer knows that lung cancer is particularly nasty in terms of life expectancy. So, I was a sophomore in high school when he went through treatment. And I turned 16 on June 3rd, 2005, and then the next day I was helping him down the stairs with my mom to take him to the hospital and he never came out after a week later.

Krista: Wow, that’s fast.

Meghan: Yeah. So, from a diagnosis to death, it was about nine months we had. And it was pretty harrowing, as you might imagine. And I give my mom so much credit, I don’t have any siblings, so it’s just us all of a sudden in the house together. And also say that we also had and have a strong family dynamic and healthy dynamic, but it was still really hard. I felt really lucky that with my dad I didn’t have anything technically unresolved. There wasn’t any resentment. There weren’t things I wish he could have apologized for, but it still impacted the rest of my life. It’s just a huge loss.

And my mom, I felt she really handled it really well and I think was open about how the grief was. And there were stumbling blocks for both of us about, she had to call me out on it and be like, “You haven’t talked about him in a year.” I would really clam up because I was in high school and everyone around me has all these alive parents and I was in my own loneliness bubble and didn’t know how to help her.

But something I was really proud of my mom is that she really found ways to try out this new life of being a widow. And so, she was going to a lot of different clubs, organizations, volunteer efforts, and a lot of stuff did not stick. She found a lot of people who did not want to be friends were not ready to invest in friendship anew in this way for her and her life. But the things that stuck really stuck. She became a bereavement caller essentially at NIH. So, she would call people for those who had loved ones who had died within NIH care and would check up on them within certain time increments.

And she did that for over a decade and really got a lot out of it. And she just became more involved in her community in ways that I thought were really impressive. And really invested in me and made sure that I was okay. And so, I know you were saying earlier to me before we got on, people think, your listeners think about how our kids are going through this. And the answer is, they feel lonely, probably like you do, just in a different way. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I think for me, I’m 20 years out now. It came in some really profound stages of going into college, I was very much the person being really resentful of a lot of my friends who had dads or had bad dads that were alive. Dads that were not less than stellar examples. And here I had my awesome dad, who wasn’t here anymore, but I found ways, my mom was also really instrumental in getting me a grief therapist when I was 19.

Krista: Did you want one?

Meghan: No, I didn’t want one. I did not want one. And she was like, “I think you should do this and just go for four, even just four sessions.” She really made, what’s the word I’m looking for? Kind of a small offering of this is what we’re going to start with. And that was kind of a gateway for me thinking about therapy. And it kind of healed the wound, the big wound that was bleeding. And then I think I spent the rest of my life thinking about how it fits into my life. And we try to talk about my dad as often as we can and recognize it.

And my mom will just mention to me on the phone still, “It’s his birthday,” the anniversaries, things like that. And so, it’s very complicated because I feel I am also the person I am today because of that profound loss. And I don’t know who I would be without it, but I still wish I had had my dad. It’s a very tricky feeling to hold.

Krista: Yeah, that makes so much sense, though, because it is. When we’ve just kind of got to make space for that, I think, those two conflicting things are there.

Meghan: I’m a journalist and usually you would think that journalists want to get to the bottom of everything and be like, “I’m going to investigate my whole father’s life now.” And I have actually kind of, how do I say this? I have let some things be a mystery and keep him alive in these ways that feel good to me. And then I like to rediscover new things as things emerge. I don’t like, for me, the digging can sometimes be too painful to be like, “I have all these things I missed out on with him.” But it’s really beautiful when I learn something new about my dad, even 20 years after he died.

Krista: Yeah, it’s continual gifts that kind of keep coming. That’s beautiful. So, thinking about, most of the women that listen to my podcast are in a position that’s similar to where your mother was. What words of wisdom would you give them from someone who’s been through it from the child’s perspective?

Meghan: I mean, I think from the research that I did in this book, a really powerful group is transitioners, is what friendship expert Marisa Franco told me about. And I love this idea because I think when you’re going through a big life change, you feel lonely. And so, some of your friends that are around you, all of a sudden maybe some people can rise to the occasion and be really great and other people pull away. They’re like, “I don’t even want to think about how a death in my family would work.” So, they just pull back.

Krista: Yeah.

Meghan: And so yeah, exactly. So, what Marisa Franco talks about is this idea of transitioners, just basically people who are in life transitions. And those are people who are usually a little bit more open to connect. They usually have similar-ish values as you or at least going through something similar. So, I mean now what’s kind of great about the internet is that you can find super niche groups. You could find a widow knitter group. Women who bike and also have had a profound loss. I don’t know, there’s ways you can.

So, I also too, I did, it was called The Dinner party. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. It’s this organization that basically groups of people who have had a loss in their life and they have dinner together and it’s great. And I had a group here in DC for a while. I loved it. And it was at a time where, it was only a few years ago, but I was like, “Man, I think I need a little extra support again,” and it was great. So that one obviously is some people thinking about the topic itself of grief and death and loss.

But I think it’s good to remember that there are other values that you can also explore and things that feel good to you and look for people who are really excited about those too. Because it just feels that, for me, new input is always good for me creatively, spiritually, whether that’s just going to a game night that I see only these friends once a month. I did this last night and I left so refreshed because I was like, “Oh, yeah, these are fun people, I haven’t seen them in a while.” And it just felt great and I just got out of my normal routine.

So, if you’re looking for community, I would like Marisa Franco told me, look for transitioners, look for groups, interest groups that feel interesting and that align with your values and your identities. And then look for novelty. I think that’s a really good way to just bring more creativity into your life, new ways of thinking. Because I think, what I read in the book is, how rumination and the story you tell yourself can really box you in about your own self-perception or how your life is going.

And sometimes it takes that stepping back and being like, “Oh, these other people are handling this in a different way.” Or it just gets you outside of yourself a little bit more. So yeah, I would say look for transitioners and look for novelty to kind of help you step out of yourself.

Krista: I love that advice. Thank you. That is not what I expected you to say and it’s refreshing, thank you.

Meghan: Okay, good.

Krista: Yeah, okay. So, I want to talk about the whole idea of being your own best life partner. So, I’ll just say for me personally, pretty shortly after Hugo died, I did not want to date again. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be in another relationship again. That was my second marriage. The first one had not ended well, and it was kind of, damn it. I could do all this work and find this person I’m so happy with and then they could be taken away from. me so quickly. Do I even ever want to do this again? Gosh, I don’t know. Will there even be anybody out there that I can be happy with?

But regardless of that and, I guess in part because of it, I did decide I don’t want to get involved with anyone else again, for me personally, until I feel really good about being with me. And so, what I see is some women who are in that place where they feel that way too. Some women who never want to date again ever, and have just decided that they don’t want to be in another relationship? Also, okay. And then women who really can’t imagine that it’s possible to be happy without dating again.

So how does your idea of being your own best life partner fit into those various ways of seeing romantic relationships?

Meghan: What I’ve been finding is that the more we all just turn down the pressure to partner, I just think that the nicer we are to ourselves and each other. A lot of pressure or frustration that single people have is with their married friends. The way their married friends talk to them about their dating lives, they treat it as entertainment or they see them as less than for not having a romantic partner. But then at the other side of that, sometimes people are in these marriages and they feel profoundly lonely and they can’t tell anyone because they think they’re supposed to be happy.

And the idea, too, is that maybe you don’t get out of this marriage because then you’ll be single and oh my God, isn’t that terrible. And, well, isn’t being with someone that you can’t stand, worse? That feels very inauthentic to me. So, reducing the stigma around singleness, I think just helps everyone. Now, in terms of the people you mentioned who struggle with the idea of being single and being happy or seeing those things happening for them that they need this romantic partner.

I write about some techniques that are basically ways to increase positive emotion in your life. So, one of them is, well, one first of all, even before we get to that, is this idea of radical acceptance. Because the thing that is making people upset sometimes about a situation, I felt this too, with my singleness, is the resistance. And the more you push, the harder it’s going to feel to be comfortable. So radical acceptance is this technique from dialectical behavior therapy.

And it’s not saying, “I’m accepting things that are abusive or harmful.” It’s just taking a beat and you’re saying to yourself, “How does it feel to resist? I notice I’m resisting, how does it feel to resist? I’m also going to acknowledge that these are the way things are supposed to be right now or the things are the way they are right now.” And you’re just admitting that this is the reality. You don’t have to like the reality, but then you can at least catch your breath and then move forward.

And then another technique I learned from dialectical behavior therapy is the ABCs, which is accumulating positives, building mastery and coping ahead. So, these are just ways to help you build the muscle of making your life just feel more overall positive and that you’re less reactive to negative stimuli. So accumulating positives, simple as, I jokingly call it, the little treat philosophy where you’re like, “I’m just going to help myself to a little treat today.” That could be a chocolate scone on the way to work or something. Or it could be a beautiful bouquet of roses that you treat yourself to.

Doesn’t have to be something monetary, it could just be, wow, I had extra time in my day so I could sit down and read a book. Isn’t that wonderful? Really noticing those positive things in your day-to-day, those build up over time. And then you have building mastery, that’s just feeling good about doing something well, or if you’re working on something. I’m not a very good tennis player, I like playing tennis. When I hit a really good forehand, which is one out of every 20 times, I’m like, “God, that felt good.”

Or it could be you paid your taxes early or you helped your kid with their homework and it went well. Noticing when you do those things well and acknowledging it. And then coping ahead is an interesting trick where you think about a situation that gives you stress or anxiety. And you think about yourself doing really well in that situation. It’s not about, what am I going to say in a situation or perfecting your script. It’s about just imagining yourself doing really well at that activity or that hard situation. It almost gives you the sense of wow, I already did this.

Krista: Getting into the feeling state of it.

Meghan: Exactly. It’s the feeling state versus the thinking state. And I know these tools sound very simple. They’re not meant to upend your life, and then you’re 100% happy all the time. But what they do is, they build up this reserve of resilience and dealing with stress. So, I think that’s just also, helpful information for anyone to know. But I find it especially helpful if you are someone struggling with this idea that you absolutely need a romantic partner.

Krista: Yeah. Okay, so earlier you were talking about how you kind of intellectually knew, but your body didn’t know. Is that how you kind of communicated that message to your body? Was there something else that was really helpful for you?

Meghan: Yes. So, a lot of it too was managing emotions and actually understanding what I was upset about. Or not even what I was upset about, but acknowledging it’s okay to be upset just because you’re upset, not putting shame on it. So, I did some reading about secondary emotions. And secondary emotions are essentially the way you color the feeling you have about those emotions. So, let’s say a date went horribly and I thought it was going to be great. And I’m like, “Man, I feel awful that that didn’t go well. I feel I can’t believe I’m still single. This is still happening to me.”

I’m putting a lot of blame and negativity on it. The primary emotion there is frustration, sadness but the secondary emotion is shame and it’s my feeling about feeling frustrated. And once I could start to see how poorly I was talking to myself and the judgment I was putting on it, I was like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s not really helpful. It’s okay that that happened. I can pull back and say I’m just sad because I’m sad and I’m going to feel this and then I’m going to give myself a choice, a healthy choice to distract myself to feel better.”

And acknowledge that sometimes everyone feels sad and just, yeah, stripping away the non-judgmental part. Because there’s so many people I know who feel I am broken, I’m unlovable. And I know for me that a lot of that frustration came from feeling like I had to wait for a partner for a long time and then I got one for a very short amount of time. And then I got dumped and I can laugh about it now, and it was, well, something’s wrong with me. And all I had to step back and think was, this is just how relationships go sometimes. This is not a character flaw.

Krista: Yeah, for sure. I like to think about it sometimes, just reminding myself that pain is part of the human experience but I don’t have to add suffering on top of it. I don’t have to make myself wrong for my pain and then create suffering. Or sometimes I picture pancakes. I call it pancaking. We have this emotion and that’s hard enough as it is but humans. And then we’re like, “And I’ll just shame myself for having that emotion.” Yeah, super fun, that’s a good time, yeah.

Meghan: Yeah, the pancakes sound too delicious to me. I’m like, “Oh, I want more pancakes, though.” But you’re right, it’s just extra sludge on top and it’s just, yeah, it’s a lot of extra weight to carry.

Krista: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so in your book you talk about prioritizing other kinds of love besides romantic love. Can you talk about that?

Meghan: Yeah. So, I came across this concept that has a fancy name. It was developed by a philosopher, Elizabeth Brake at Rice University and it’s called amatonormativity. And it’s basically this idea that our society holds romantic relationships as the be all end all and then anything else is less than. And what she points out is, that really discounts all these other types of love and connections that are very important.

And there’s also this really interesting research, I read about the Harvard Study of Adult Development. And it was over several decades, hundreds of men were studied for their whole lives. And one of the biggest findings that came out of it was, all types of relationships are key to health and happiness. They didn’t say only married people and romantic relationships. The director of the study was very clear to say, all types of relationships, friends, acquaintances, the casual ties, the mentors. All of these play an incredibly important role in health and happiness in the long term.

And I just don’t want people to think of friendship as a bonus relationship. It is necessary, it’s vital. And it’s interesting because we’re really good at knowing how different types of friends satisfy different needs or interests. I have friends I love talking about Bravo and Housewives with. I have friends who I only talk about novels we’re reading or friends I can go really deep on emotional stuff. And other friends that we’re just going to have a good time and keep it really light.

But we’re really good at breaking down those friendships, but we’re not good about that with romantic relationships, I find. We’re like, “Well, no, that person has to be everything.”

Krista: Everything, yes.

Meghan: Yes. So, I think it’s actually helpful to tap into, you already know this, that a diversity of connection is helpful. And so, leaning into that and making it more intentional. And so, it’s interesting to me too, because I think about even just coming to the office two days a week for me. I’m like, “Yeah, had a lovely conversation with a colleague I collaborated with months ago.” And I learned something interesting about him and that boosted my mood just to have that short connection and I think we all know this.

And so, if you’re interested in developing it, the concept I talk about in the book is the idea of being a starter. So, make those connections and make the invite because a lot of people are thinking, well, I don’t want to bother them. And so instead, people are actually relieved when you make the invitation and oftentimes are really flattered. And so, if there’s someone in your life that you want to get to know better, tell them that. I think most people will not be weirded out by that. I think they’ll actually be refreshed by that.

And I’m a big fan too of just making rituals as well around connections and being like, “Hey, we’re going to do this thing once a month.” And keeping it on a calendar because then you have less chance of people falling out. So much of adult social life is about calendaring, it’s so annoying. And so sometimes just having an automatic, “Hey, this is on the calendar.” I have a monthly meditation group.

Krista: Like every fourth Friday we do X, Y or Z?

Meghan: Exactly, yeah. So, I have a monthly meditation group that’s all on Zoom. And we don’t live in the same state, but it’s on the calendar. And we’re so much less likely to cancel because we’ve already put it on the calendar, it’s already there. And I’m also a really big fan too of just not having the big, okay, we’re going to have a big dinner or we’re going to go out for drinks or whatever it is. I love having those short spontaneous moments like, “Hey, I’m going to run some errands, do you want to come along?”

My mom’s really good at this. She loves doing errands with her friends or being like, “Hey, I’m going on a walk. Do you want to join?” Keeping it really low pressure, don’t worry if it’s day of, if you have, you probably will get, well not probably, you might get a no, that’s fine. But people always like, “Tell me next time.” Or they might reach out again. So, I often hear, “Oh God, it’s so hard to make friends because everyone’s so busy.” Yes, but you can be creative. And I think just making the offer, it’s a virtuous circle that comes back to you.

Krista: I love it. There’s so much goodness in what you just said. I’m also thinking about how for a lot of people who have been married for a long time or have kids or both. It is, even though we do know the value of friends, I mean if we answer that question intellectually, are friends valuable? Everybody says yes. But also, we don’t necessarily spend our time in alignment with what we know. And it’s pretty easy to find yourself not having invested in friendships and really having given so much of your attention to your romantic partner or your family.

And especially if you’ve maybe been in a long term caregiving situation or some sort of terminal situation where just all the energy was put into that. So yeah, I think your suggestions on how to make friendships and just to get out there and do it, sound really valuable. Also, I noticed my whole body relaxed when you said you had a monthly meditation. I realize that was an invitation for me.

But I can think about not only is it nice to have that monthly thing set up, to know that you don’t have to worry about the logistics of it. But there also seems to me to be just a peace in knowing that it’s there, that the possibility for connection is there in the end, that there’s something comforting about that.

Meghan: Yeah. Absolutely. These women, we don’t get into anything super personal. We met through an online meditation course. But it is, yeah, very calming. And it’s something that is around my values and something that is important to me. And it kind of acts as a little reset where I’m like, oh, crap, I fell off my meditation in the last two weeks, it didn’t feel good. And wow, that felt so good to do that, to share it and talk about it, even if it’s only for 30 minutes and then I reinvest in it.

And so yeah, I just think it’s a wonderful way to, also selfishly do what things you like to do, and then invite people into it. And that’s kind of my joke about hosting. I love hosting people for dinners. I love cooking, but I don’t have to leave my house and I get to cook what I want and it feels great.

Krista: Everybody come to me.

Meghan: Yes, you can selfishly use some of these techniques to just be able to do things you really like and find other people who like them and join you in them.

Krista: Brilliant ideas. Okay, I want to go back to the shame part. So, you talked about how society makes us feel shame about singleness. Where did that start? Can you, in the research that you’ve done, walk us through how we got here?

Meghan: Yeah, that’s such a big question. What I can tell you, no, it’s true though. It’s both a tale as old as time, but it also isn’t in a weird, funny way, what I have learned in that there’s this myth that marriage has always been for love. For so many decades and centuries, it was a tool for political power and gain. Even if you were lower class and had a farm, marriage was a way to acquire another farm and some more helpers on deck.

And something else I learned, this comes from historian, Stephanie Coontz. She wrote this incredible book about marriage. And I recommend it to anyone who’s just really interested in speaking out about this, about how the concept of romantic love actually was invented in the Victorian era, more or less. It’s hard to always put an exact pinpoint on these things, but the Victorian area was interesting because people, along with industrialization of America, were starting to be able to earn wages outside of their family.

And so, they were starting to live a little bit more on their own. You weren’t so dependent on your family to then need you to get married and then keep the family line going and rely on the family resources. You could actually start to kind of support yourself a little bit more. And then there was also the pop culture of the time. We were just coming out of the regency era of Pride and Prejudice, things like that, where we’re telling you, “You can love someone for their mind and themselves.” And favor that over money and resources.

And it was also a time, Victorian era in America was a time when the privatization of the home was becoming more pronounced. So, it was a little bit more of an insular time and the love marriages as they were kind of known, were a way to protect that home. And so, this is not to say that romantic love then, it was so enlightened of all of them. And everyone finally was like, “I can marry whoever I want now.” Not exactly, of course, it was pretty heterosexual norms of now this woman has managed to uphold the morality of this home.

So, you could marry someone that you love, but that love looked very different. And then so that was, I thought, very fascinating, this idea of love marriage was more or less invented and kind of in recent-ish human history. Obviously humans have always found each other and loved them in all different ways in and outside of the bonds of marriage. But then I was also really interested to see how we just seem really attached to this narrative of what it means to be married in a very specific way, this Leave It to Beaver style of, we have two people at home, they have kids, they have their own house, say it with me, the white picket fence.

And how I learned through Stephanie Coontz, this historian, that was actually such an anomaly in American history, the 1950s era of suburbia. Because it was a time when we had men coming home from World War 2 looking for stability. There were higher wages, there was a spike in wages. So, you could actually afford to only have one breadwinner at home.

Krista: Yeah. It’s not how it is now.

Meghan: Exactly, it wasn’t that way previously and it wasn’t that way before. Women were actually getting married at an earlier age in that time period than they were even 60 years before, not by much, but technically, there was a drop, yeah. And also, these new technologies for women, not for women, but marketed towards women about, look, this dishwasher, you don’t have to work so hard.

Krista: Yeah, or a vacuum cleaner.

Meghan: Yeah, a vacuum cleaner, exactly. So, it’s this kind of perfect storm that made us think that this type of setup was how it’s always been when actually, as Stephanie Coontz told me, it was a speed bump. And then it started unraveling very quickly. We had women who wanted to get back into the workforce. We had women’s liberation and birth control., And since that time we have seen the age of a never married woman go up in age steadily, and it hasn’t dropped since 1960. So, we just seem enamored with this fiction of how marriage is supposed to go.

And I think that’s really helpful to know because then you can say, “It’s never been true for everyone throughout all of human history.” ‘This is not how it has to be’. Even if you do get married, you can still think of it in a way that feels good to you. Or it could be that you have step-kids or something. There’s all these other arrangements now. And so, this idea that it has to be this one specific way I have just found is just so untrue, but we’re so in love with it still.

Krista: Yeah, it’s interesting how we have made that into a fantasy. I’m always thinking when people talk about their grandparents and how they were married for 50 years. And I’m like, “Yeah, but did your grandmother have her own checking account?” I mean, do we know your grandmother wanted to stay in that marriage? Or how much of that was just because that was the way that it was? And to see this weird resurgence of the whole trad wife thing is wild to me, but that’s probably for another day.

Meghan: Well, it’s interesting that you said that about, my grandparents, this was the way. It’s also a good reminder that’s one generation of people. That’s not exactly how the generation before them also did it exactly. So, you’re right, it’s a fantasy that we seem very attached to.

Krista: Yeah. And now I want to think about it more, why are we so attached? I don’t know, I guess it’s almost like an existential thing.

Meghan: Well, there’s political factors and all these other economic incentives and other forces at play. But just at an interpersonal level, yeah, we do seem to be pretty, no pun intended, wedded to it.

Krista: Yeah. And there’s always, I have noticed in my brain, my brain is always trying to find that out. And I think that’s just a normal human thing where brains are trying to find some place where it would have been better if, but it should be like this. If it were like that, somehow life would be better. And that maybe seems to be one of those fantasies. I don’t know. Okay, I have so many more questions I want to ask and I’m running out of time, so I want to know about this. So, you talk about in your book wise mind. Yeah, tell my listeners more about that.

Meghan: Sure. So, when we talk about kind of coloring, I guess of our minds, we think of, there is the rational side of us and the emotional side of us, typically. And if you ask most people, they say, “Gosh, I wish I was just always in my rational brain. Life would be so much easier if I got rid of my emotions.” And something to remember is, no, wouldn’t be. And two, that you do need emotions to think about compassion and other people’s feelings. Being too rational has its downsides, but being too emotional also can have its downsides too.

It can kind of cloud your judgment about something and maybe not see something for what it really is. So, what the concept of wise mind does is it marries these two. And it’s basically a technique to help call upon both sides and have them integrate together. So, I find myself get really stuck sometimes when I am in a tricky situation. I don’t know what to do. I’m feeling really flustered. What you’re supposed to do in that instance is to pause and be like, “I’m going to call upon my wise mind. What would wise mind say?”

And the trick is to not try to think of the perfect answer. Just see what arises, just first thought. And oftentimes it is the thing that you probably should do. Or maybe the first thought is, I hate this, and then you can pause and be like, “What does wise mind think about this again?” And then wait to see what arises. And it’s just an interesting mindfulness and dialectical behavior therapy technique to really take a pause and then kind of integrate these two sides of yourself to give you an answer that likely has a lot of clarity and a lot of wisdom to it.

I like it too because this is just a personal approximation here, but you already know the answer usually, it’s just there’s all this other stuff kind of clouding it.

Krista: I so agree with you. What is it like for you when you do that exercise? Is it that you hear a voice? Do you have a knowing? Is there something you notice in your body? Is it a vision? What’s it like for you?

Meghan: Yeah. For me, it’s just my own voice coming. It’s interesting, if I think about it in a physical way, it almost comes from the center of my body, kind of into my head, truly taking the rational side of my brain and my emotional side of my heart and kind of having them talk to each other now that I think about it. Yeah, for me it almost feels like a drop of, here’s the answer. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, that is what it is.”

Krista: I love it. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, what else? Okay so another thing I was curious about is that you talk about the way to look at your emotions as data versus the weather, tell people what you mean.

Meghan: Yeah. So, it’s so easy to think of emotions as things that just happen to us. We think, I can’t help my emotions and it’s overcome me, the word overwhelmed, you feel you have no control over this. And I’m not saying that you need to have white knuckle control over emotions. That’s not really the goal here.

I think it’s, instead of feeling emotions are just happening to you, try to listen to them and be in relationship with them. And I learned about this from a therapist, Grace Hung, who described this idea of emotions as data. And I was like, “Wow, that is the perfect way to put it.” Your emotions are trying to tell you something. Your anxiety is trying to tell you something. Even if they don’t feel good, it’s a signal, usually, that something’s up. Give it some attention.

And I just think that’s a kinder way to think about how to deal with emotions rather than, oh, God, I am a victim of this bad feeling and I’m being punished. Again, bad things feel bad. And then you can kind of turn your attention to, well, what is this emotion trying to tell me? How can I do a healthy choice now to regulate and help myself? We talked about how self-regulation earlier is not eternal Zen. It’s giving yourself choice and maintaining choice.

And I talk about in the book, when emotions feel really big, it feels very physical, sweaty palms or your heart’s racing. It can be very uncomfortable. So, if you’re feeling a very extreme big emotion, getting your body to kind of come down is very helpful. And I know no one likes hearing this, but deep breathing, it does help. But also, another interesting shortcut I’ve learned from this work and my Life Kit work is the power of cold therapy, getting an ice pack.

If I’m feeling anxious sometimes I take an ice pack and I just sit with it for five minutes so my body can regulate. And then I put it on my chest or I also have, my best friend gave me an eye mask that I can put in the freezer that I love. It goes over my eyes. It’s so nice, but things like that or just moving your body a little bit, something to help you get out of your, oh my God, I have this big emotion, I don’t know how to fix it or feel it. Regulate your body.

Someone told me, “You don’t go to the house fire and say, “Why is this on fire?” You put out the fire and then you investigate.” So that’s one way to deal with them. So, then once you get from that heightened state down to a more regulated state, then you can look at the data. You can use the mindfulness techniques or your wise mind to be like, “I’m feeling sad, I just am feeling sad.” And approaching with curiosity and being like, “Well, why might that be?” And thinking through that.

And kind of moving through it and processing it and then maybe undercovering some interesting data, maybe it’s a secondary emotion like we talked about earlier. Maybe you realize, that’s actually shame I’m feeling that’s going along with this emotion. Maybe I’m just going to feel sad right now and let myself feel sad. And those are the times anecdotally, I feel I can move through the emotion in a safer way rather than the resistance.

Krista: Yeah, for sure. I love what you said earlier about being in relationship with your emotions. And I think what you described so well is that we really can’t do that with very much intention when we don’t feel safe in our bodies or when things are too intense. And so, tend to that first and then you can think about it, learn from it, see what you want to make of it. I love the way that you described that, yeah.

Meghan: I mean, I wrote a book on it so it feels helpful to me.

Krista: Was there anything that you wanted to touch on? I know I’ve kept you past what I said I would, but is there anything else we missed?

Meghan: I would love to talk about values work. I think that’s really helpful.

Krista: Yes.

Meghan: So yes, I would love to talk about values because I think it’s a really helpful tool for when you are at a crossroad or you’re resetting and thinking, what do I want my life to look like? What changes do I need to make? And so, for me a big help was to, instead of having a goal, a goal of  getting married, have a certain type of job or whatever. Those are, so pass/fail. You either have them or you don’t. And that just feels pretty cruel to yourself in my opinion about, if you don’t get those things, you’re somehow a failure.

And instead, if you focus on, well, what are my values? And am I expressing my values? Those can then open up a much more flexible set of options for you. Well, okay, maybe your alleged goal was you want to get married again or have a partner. Okay, well, why do you want that? Well, I want company. Okay, well, I value community. Actually I’m realizing and that can look different, that can look like being really involved in this environmental group that meets in my community, it could mean volunteering.

It could mean making sure I see certain friends more often. And then also dating on the side of that, but it’s not the center, I have to only do this one thing. So, I think getting really clear about what values you really want to hold close to yourself and the ones that actually guide your behavior, paying attention to those are really important. Because it’s easy to look at a list of values and go, “Well, all of that’s important to me. I love all those things.” But then when you start to think, how often is your behavior guided by those values, then you start to see what’s actually really important to you at this time.

And thinking about, what are you having more over-attention to, under-attention? This is a framework by Kelly Crace, he did the life values inventory. You can take it online free from the College of William and Mary. I highly recommend it. But I just think it opens up when you think about values, all the different ways you can express that. And you’ll just feel a lot more comfortable, rather than being, I have to have this one version of something.

Krista: Yes, I love it. Meghan, you’re my type of person.

Meghan: Oh, Krista, that’s really sweet.

Krista: You’re my type of person. Okay, listeners, so the book is called Party of One: Be Your own Best Life Partner. Where can people find you besides your book?

Meghan: Sure. So, you can listen to Life Kit wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me on Instagram @damekeane, Dame K-E-A-N-E, yeah, it looks like Keane but it’s pronounced Kane. And also meghanvkeane.com if you just want to follow my work.

Krista: Amazing. Thanks so much for coming on to the podcast, I really appreciate it. It was lovely to meet you.

Meghan: Krista, lovely to meet you, thank you so much. [Crosstalk].

Krista: Alright, keep in touch.

Meghan: Yes.

Krista: Okay, take care.

Meghan: Take care. Bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence. Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.