Redux: Should I Intervene?
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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick. The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears. I'm Steve Allman. I'm Cheryl Strayed. This is Dear Sugars. Oh dear song, won't you please Share some little sweet days with me I check my bell box

Oh, and the sugar you send my way. Hi, Steve. Hi, Cheryl. We are going to talk about something that I think almost everyone grapples with in some fashion over the course of their lives and usually many times.

How and when and if to intervene. You know, somebody you love or know is going down the wrong path or in a relationship with somebody who may be dangerous or not doing what he or she should be doing. Do you talk to them? Do you say something? Do you intervene? Do you try to change the course of things?

I can say that I've intervened in small ways, but I usually am pretty cautious about it. But I have a father, you know, Dr. Rick, and he's not a serial intervener. He chooses his spots. But man, when he intervenes, I really listen and it really has a deep impact.

And he took me aside at the end of the vacation. He basically said, you know, I know you've had some therapy in your life and I think you need more. And he said, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

And it was what I call blunt dad syndrome. I've written about it. He's like this blunt dad who isn't going to couch it and be careful. He's just going to say, like, you're sick and you need this medicine. And I was furious at him, furious at him for weeks. What was fascinating is that he sensed that I was angry and he sent me a note. And it was really the moment that I took action and got the medicine. He basically said, look, Steve, I can tell that my saying that in the way that I did was hurtful. But...

I see you as in pain and I want the best for you because I love you. Only the best for those I love, he wrote. And that's why I'm giving, that's why I intervene. That's why I offered that advice. I think he was paying careful attention to my life and he had my interests in mind. Yeah. Now I know you're an intervener or at least I sense you're an intervener. No, you know, actually, thank you. I'm going to be not insulted by that, that you think I'm an intervener. But

You know, I, too, understand how complicated it is to intervene because so often it doesn't have the result we wish for. I've had relationships with women who are in bad relationships with men. A couple of cases where the woman in question was actually being physically abused. In other cases, I knew that the man was cheating on a friend of mine. And, you know, in all of those times that I did step in and say, hey, you know, this is not OK and this is happening.

You know, never did those women say, okay, I'm going to leave the guy, you know. But I do think sometimes even when we intervene, even if that person doesn't immediately act on the information we give them or the support or the encouragement or the advice, you know, that it does plant a seed that maybe will blossom, you know, down the road. And I know from myself, you know, I had a pretty dramatic experience when other people intervened on my behalf in my life.

When I was in my mid-20s and I was really suffering enormously and I was really in the midst of this deep spiral downward in my life, very much getting into self-destructive things. And I'd come to Portland when...

I was like 25 and I met this guy who was using heroin and he was like, do you want to try heroin? It was the mid-90s. Everyone cool was listening to grunge music and Nirvana. It was all that sort of stuff. And there was this real glorification of heroin as this recreational drug. And I was in the midst of really, you know, setting about kind of ruining my life. And so I began using heroin. Yeah.

And I was out of my mind. You know, one of the things that gets misinterpreted a lot, even though I said very explicitly in Wild when I wrote about this time, you know, I wasn't a heroin addict. I didn't go all the way down the path to addiction. But I was using heroin and really that led to the darkest moments of my life. And it was destructive and unhealthy and awful. And thankfully, I had a friend who

who was in Portland and who saw what was happening. And she also saw my denial.

And I remember distinctly these rational arguments with each other where I would actually be trying to convince her that she was being ridiculous, that she was worried about me. And I was like, you are basically being so silly. I'm in command here. This is fun and interesting. And I'm a crazy wild woman in my 20s and it's the 90s and get hip, sister. And she was like, no, you're absolutely insane.

insane and you need to stop because it's going to ruin your life. And so she called. I mean, I remember just being so furious with her and I thinking she was such a tattletale because I was still married at the time to my first husband. We were broken up, but we were still technically married. And she called my then husband who was living in Minneapolis and he borrowed a friend's car and

Got into it, drove straight through without stopping to sleep from Minneapolis to Portland and met me at this friend's house and insisted that I talk to him. And we got in this rageful fight here again. I thought, how dare you? How dare you intervene in my life? I know what I'm doing. And what's so funny is I look back now. I mean, it's not funny. It's sad and informative. And I think I hope that those of you who need interventions will hear this with all of your ears and hearts.

is that a lot of times when we're in a bad spot, you know, denial is a mighty force. And I really thought they were in the wrong. I thought that I was in the right and they were in the wrong, even though it's absolutely apparent to everyone, you know, and now me fully, that I was in trouble. And my husband, now ex-husband, I remember we had this huge fight. He honestly ripped his own shirt off in the course of this. I mean, ripped his shirt from him into shreds. He was so mad at me. And he said...

Just get in the car with me, please.

And I did. I trusted him enough that he was seeing something about me that I couldn't see clearly. And by the time I got to Minneapolis, I knew that I wasn't thinking clearly. And he just said, live in the corner of my apartment, which I did. I slept on a futon in the corner of his room. My own husband and I in the same bedroom in different beds. And I just cried and cried and cried and cried and cried.

And I didn't know where to begin. But that intervention allowed me to. It allowed me to find my way back to myself. And, you know, I really don't know if I would be here today without

If those two people, those two people hadn't intervened. Yeah. And I, and I, and it wasn't an easy intervention and I wasn't, I mean, I thanked them both for it later, but I didn't, I wasn't appreciative in the moment. Right. They saved me. They saved me in a moment that allowed me to ultimately save myself. Okay. Yeah.

A year later, I was walking on the Pacific Crest Trail. I had found my way back. And what enabled me to find my way back was that intervention of people who truly knew me and truly cared for me and could see what I could not see. Right. And it's, I think, it's safe to say why you do the sort of work you do.

Now, as a writer and even on the podcast, that trouble is invisible to itself. We can't see it. Denial just comes in and protects us, especially as things get uglier and uglier. But when I think about this question of when to intervene, kind of the archetypal figure in literature is Emma Woodhouse, right? Handsome, clever, and rich. Jane Austen's wonderful novel. She's the archetypal Budinsky.

She is constantly inserting herself into other people's lives. And then she finally realizes with the help of Mr. Knightley, her, you know, the romantic lead that she has been doing intervening for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. And Jane Austen writes, because, you know, I can't resist quoting her.

With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody's feelings with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody's destiny, she was proved to have been universally mistaken and she had not quite done nothing for she had done mischief. So there is a positive power to intervention, but there's also a negative power. Now what people don't think about when they think about Emma, they think about, oh, she learns not to butt in and not to intervene wrongly.

and arrogantly,

But, in fact, the story of Emma is the story of Mr. Knightley intervening in Emma's life in order to show her that she has been sheltered and spoiled and, you know, reckless in intervening. His intervention, in fact, is the positive kind of intervention. And that's what we want to steer people towards in the show today, to talk about letters where it's not clear what should happen and you want to intervene but in the right way. So let's hear the first letter. All right.

Dear Sugars, Last night at an annual work party, I was repeatedly groped by a co-worker's boyfriend. I didn't realize that it was happening until he was full-on squeezing my ass during a conversation that the groper, his girlfriend, and I were having. I was absolutely stunned. After the conversation was finished, he whispered, Sorry I was inappropriate with you. We've all been drinking. It was only then that it hit me that his touching was intentional and not in my head.

I'd been making excuses for him all night long, thinking he was accidentally brushing up against me over and over again. I was irate, but couldn't find any words in the moment. Sugars, I feel a responsibility to tell his girlfriend that he touched me inappropriately. If my partner were groping women without their consent, I'd want to know. I'm scared that this occurrence was not unusual for him, especially given how casual his apology was.

My fear is that he thinks it's okay to do things like this, and he'll continue to do them. I don't want his girlfriend to get hurt. I also want to tell the groper how angry I am and how offensive his actions were. I was sexually assaulted recently, and I'm still recovering. I already feel small, and him touching me in this way made me feel so powerless and stupid.

I have notes drafted to both of them, but when I actually think about sending them, I get nauseous. Groper and his girlfriend have moved in together and are most likely getting engaged soon. They're moving across the country together in a few months. She seems so happy, and I was excited for the two of them until last night. Do I hope this was a one-time bizarre occurrence and let it slide? I'm scared to stir things up even though I know what Groper did was wrong.

I would love to know what you two think is the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure the right thing to do is to tell the groper's girlfriend about the incident. But I'm scared that I'm blowing things out of proportion and that I'm going to ultimately bring more harm than good to all three of us. Thank you for any light you can shed on the matter. Signed, Groped. Groped.

Well, Groped, I think you're worried about doing mischief, to put it in Austenian terms. My advice is to tell the girlfriend exactly what happened. The reason I think you know somewhere inside of yourself that you have to do that is it's not just that the girlfriend could get hurt. It's that you were hurt and that other women could get hurt.

What I think you need to be very clear about, and I think you should meet in person, not in a note, not on the phone. You need to be very clear about exactly what you can remember. Everybody was drinking. It was a party. All you owe her is the truth.

Be as clear in your own mind about what happened to the extent you can recall and why you reacted to it in the way that you did. As you say, maybe you're exaggerating or maybe your feelings were affected. You can tell the girlfriend that. She just needs to know this guy was touching you in a way that was not okay repeatedly.

Grupt, I think you should tell them both. Together? In whatever way feels comfortable to you, whether that be an email, a letter, together, separately. And I don't think it's really about intervening in their relationship. I think it's about your...

to speak your truth, to say, you touched me inappropriately, you grabbed my ass, it's not okay. And, you know, I think that that's a very clear thing. And, you know, I think you should really stop feeling kind of...

weird about like, you know, not saying something in the moment. This is, we see this over and over and over again. It's come to the point where the question shouldn't be, well, why didn't you say anything? But rather, of course you didn't say anything because, you know, most of the time when we're in situations like this,

We don't say anything. We're stunned. We're uncomfortable. If you're female, you have years and years of social conditioning that tell you to be polite, to be nice, to not disturb the peace. And also, you know, that people won't believe you. Right. That people won't believe you if you say, that guy just grabbed my ass. Because all that guy has to say is,

I didn't grab her ass. She's crazy. Yeah. I was just trying to get by. Historically, we have believed men in that situation instead of women. And so, you know, I think it's not, you don't need to be like, I need to rescue this woman from her relationship with the terrible groper guy. I think that she gets to do with that information, whatever she wants to do, at least to set this experience right in your life and in your mind.

You need to speak the truth about it. That's why you wrote to us. Right. So write to them. I disagree about this. I don't think you have to sit down with them and have some big... If that makes you feel uncomfortable to have to look them in the eye and say it, then just send an email. Grop, what I think is important is that you know, because of your experience having been assaulted, that the culture of consent is one of silence, of not saying things, and that if this guy would do this really in front of... It sounds like in front of his girlfriend...

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And I'll just say, you know, any kind of accidental brushing that can be explained away is very different than, as she says, full-on squeezing my ass. I've never accidentally full-on squeezed anyone's ass. Right. And I think that that's an intentional act, and this man knew it, which is why he apologized to you. Right. Exactly. So call him to task. Intervene. And you know who you're intervening on behalf of, Groped? Yourself. Right.

And sometimes we all need to do that. So I wish you luck. Absolutely.

There's also this whole category of questions that we encounter when we really do want to not play Emma Woodhouse, but we do want to affect the course of somebody else's life because we feel like they're on the wrong path. And when it gets really complicated is when it's a parent-child and when it's an adult-child in particular, and the stakes are pretty high. So before we read the letter, let's call our good friend Megan down because...

She is, I think, a world-class writer and thinker. We will ask her about her history as an intervener, but I think she will be really sharp on these questions. She will. And Megan is the author of four books, most recently the collection of essays, The Unspeakable, which I just absolutely loved. That book, Blanket.

It blew me away. Every essay. It was unspeakably good. Yes. It won the 2015 Penn Center USA Award for Creative Nonfiction. She's also the editor of the New York Times bestseller Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed, 16 writers on the decision not to have kids. Her other books include My Misspent Youth, which is how I first came to Megan on the Page. That book, loved it. The novel The Quality of Life Report and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, which is a memoir. Yeah.

So let's give her a call. Let's do it. Hello? Hi, Megan. It's Cheryl Strayed. How are you? Hi, Cheryl. Fine. Thank you. So nice to talk to you. I have Steve Alvind here with me as well. Hi, Megan. Hi, Steve. So, Megan, we're talking about today how to intervene or should you intervene or what happens when you intervene. I'm curious, do you have any tips?

in your own life being on either end of this, you know, intervening in somebody else's life or being intervened upon? I think I have probably average to below average experience in that area. It's so funny that you asked me to talk

to talk about this topic because I actually think I tend to be very hands-off when it comes to other people's business. And, you know, sometimes I actually wonder if it's some lack of empathy or something or if I'm just not interested enough in people to intervene. I mean, I certainly have, but I think my rule of thumb pretty much is...

leave people alone and if they ask for advice then that's one thing but sort of just offering it unsolicited is another right so just generally keep to talking about them behind their backs I'm all for that I am all for that that's the Megan Dom line yeah with them not being there you know with your friends over drinks exactly

On Twitter, if possible.

Otherwise, we would be constantly stepping on each other when it came to that husband of your friend that you don't really like or didn't like the way that she treated him. I mean, nobody wants to always be

Right. It's better to just walk around stabbing people in the back. I totally agree with that. It's hard to make an analysis in a vacuum. It's very useful to sit with some people and kind of think.

get everyone's viewpoint and sort of hash it out. I mean, that was the thing. I mean, I know you already talked about the letter from Groped, but I had a lot of questions about that one. And one of them was whether or not she had talked to other coworkers, for instance, because that's the kind of situation where I would be curious if other people had experiences and it was, that would be one way to kind of put some of this in perspective. But that's, that's another topic. Yeah. I,

To answer your question, Cheryl, there was one situation with somebody where I did intervene, and it was somebody who had a substance abuse problem. This was a close friend, and I was really worried, and I was really nervous about it. I went to her house, and I'm like,

sat down and I wasn't really sure how it went. And then later I found out that she had really appreciated it like years later. But, you know, it's funny because I got a little, a little, not to mix metaphors, a little high on my own supply because then I had a situation sort of similar another time. And I intervened kind of thinking, well, well, I was so effective the first time. I'm

And it was totally the wrong thing to do. You really have to be maybe less is more when it comes to this kind of thing. And obviously everything is a case-by-case basis. And you can't make it about you. I mean, that goes without saying, but it probably also bears worth repeating. It's really you have to ask yourself, how am I helping this person? How much of this is about them and how much of this is about me? Yeah. And how are you going to feel about the outcome? Because I think...

What you said is a really key point. I mentioned it earlier as well, that this idea that sometimes an intervention is not going to mean that your friend or the person you're intervening with is going to say, you know, you're right, I'm going to change my life. But rather, it plants a seed that later, you know, your friend could say to you,

Okay, you know, I didn't stop, you know, with the substance when you said I should, but it was one voice along the way that contributed to me realizing I needed to. Right. Right?

And maybe it doesn't sink in for 10 years, for 20 years. And then they'll somehow, hopefully, maybe, if you're lucky, they'll come back to you and say, you know, that thing you said, it stayed with me. And I didn't appreciate it until later, but it was there. So it's really a long game sometimes. I really did need to quit writing. And I'm so grateful that you told me that two decades ago, Megan Don. You said you just really suck. So, Steve, why don't you read this letter? We have a letter, Megan, that we'd love for you to help us answer.

Okay.

More than three years ago, my daughter told me how much she wanted to get married and have a child before she turned 30. I encouraged her to discuss this with her boyfriend honestly. She did and said he talks about getting married all the time, but no plans are in place. When she talks with him about having children, he has some existential crisis about, quote, bringing children into a broken world. But she says he's coming around to the idea and would like a child, quote, in a few years.

While he's a seemingly sweet, good guy, he seems hyper-focused on his needs and wants. He's an only child from a very wealthy family and has lived on Easy Street. He spends a lot of money on himself and his hobbies. He buys her gifts, but very often they're expensive things that will augment his interests, camping gear, new skis, etc. My husband thinks he's selfish and immature, so I'm not alone in my ambivalence about him.

they're looking to buy a house in l a and he's insistent on living in the very desirable and hip sections of town even though they're priced out of the market his mother will lend him the down payment

She's told me that some of the fixer-uppers that they can afford are literally uninhabitable. My fear is they will buy themselves a project and my daughter's needs and wishes will once again be ignored. Bottom line, my perception is that he's calling all the shots in the relationship and she appears to be going along and giving into his plans and timetable for all these major life events.

Her desires to move things along with marriage or children or where to live don't appear to be taken to heart. I feel like he's used to getting his way, and while he's not abusive, he's manipulative and controlling, but in a hipster, nice guy kind of way. I love that. I just have to say that's like one of the most perfect descriptions. He makes amazing costs.

Exactly. We live on the East Coast, so we are not privy to their daily lives. When we're all together, he's funny and personable and treats her well, so we can only know what she chooses to share. This makes me believe things aren't necessarily what they seem.

Sugars, here's the big question. Do I say something or stay out of it? Do I risk becoming the enemy? I fear that no matter how gently I communicate my feelings based on what she tells me, I'll be stirring the pot and that never, ever ends well.

How much can or should one say to his or her independent adult children about their relationships when one sees potential landmines? So many of my friends wrestle with how forthright to be with their adult children, especially when it comes to potentially damaging relationships. I would be interested in hearing what adult children have to say. Do you want mom and dad to stay out of their personal lives and relationships? What are the boundaries here? Signed, Damned,

Either way. I love this letter. That's right. Megan damned either way. What do you think? Oh, yeah. What do you think, Megan? I think there's a lot of room between saying nothing and just...

unleashing an unrestrained opinion that feels like a judgment. So, yeah, she's damned either way, but there's, she's not damned in the middle there. And I sometimes think that when we're concerned about somebody's choices, we're

the thing to do is ask them questions. Think in terms of asking them questions rather than telling them things. I mean, maybe the mother should say, how do you feel about the way things are moving? What do you want your life to look like in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years? And that sort of opens up a conversation rather than a lecture, if you know what I mean.

One of the great parenting books is this book called How to Talk to Kids So They'll Listen and How to Listen to Kids So They'll Talk. And it's fascinating and it's a lot of clinical research. And this is exactly what you're saying, Megan, that what really gets people to talk about their lives is

whether they're three or 33, is asking them questions and then shutting your yap and listening to what they have to say. Because as we all know, you know when you're getting worked. You know when somebody's leaning on you. But in fact, one way of looking at this damned either way is you don't really know the deal. And you don't know how much these decisions are being made mutually and how much they are passive-aggressively enforced by this nice manipulative hipster guy that your daughter is...

been in a long relationship with and is going to move in to a house with. You need more information. And it's not even that you need it. You would like it because you want her to end up with the things she wants. The reason I said that I love this letter is basically, Damned, you're...

daughter's boyfriend is awesome. Okay? He's like a great guy. He has a full-time job. He has great benefits. He seems to love your daughter. They want to buy a house. I mean, anyone who knows... He's rich! He's rich! He's the only child of rich parents. He's everything that like... This is... I want

him to marry my daughter, right? You know, it's like, like, I will add, you know, and I know, Megan, you share my kind of fondness for, you know, real estate. It's like, he can also renovate the damn house. I mean, like, you know, they're going to do it. Well, landscape. He can do things. He can work with his hands. And yet, and yet, and yet. And yet. I completely...

I understand this because, I mean, I'm just thinking about any number of my dear girlfriends who will go for a walk or go have a drink and then they start telling me, well, you know, we got in this conversation. They tell me about like their relationships or their marriages and like, and then he said this and I said this and I'll be like, he said that? That is so not okay. Like, why, you know, why is he thinking this or why would, you know, and where you can kind of gently critique the partner of your friend or in this case daughter without actually

As Megan said, just like casting judgment across the whole thing. Like, oh, he's a bad guy and he's never going to marry you and he's never going to consider your needs. Because even if it were true, that's not going to usually result in your daughter saying, you know, mom, you're right. I'm going to break up with him tomorrow. I mean, that just doesn't, it isn't the way the world works. But there are gentle ways that you can support that.

your daughter, damn, to maybe assert herself a little more in this relationship. As Megan said, ask her questions, give her a little feedback on that. Well, if you really do want to have a baby, maybe you should actually, you know, press the issue a bit, really talk to him, make a plan, you know, I mean, that you can give kind of gentle advice that isn't

Telling people how to live their lives or what to do in their relationships. There's something in the middle, as Megan said. Yeah. I think what you're picking up on, damned either way, is that you see him as spoiled and entitled and that he's going to try to enforce his way in the relationship and your daughter's going to wind up with a partner who's not attentive to her needs. But until such a time as he's, for instance, doesn't want to have kids and she really feels like it's becoming more and more urgent to her,

At that point, she can express that to you or not, but she's still going to have to make her own decisions because she's an adult. She's not a kid anymore. Yeah, I agree. She's 30, right? Yeah. The daughter is 30? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's very much...

an adult. And I think, you know, of these roster of concerns that the mother has, they don't all have the same weight. I mean, I'm a little bit worried about his sort of myopia and just doing the stuff he's interested in and buying the stuff he wants. But I do know something about real estate in Los Angeles. So I,

I can say with pretty good authority that it is very hard to buy a house right now unless you have a lot of cash for a down payment. A huge percentage of real estate transactions happen because people have money often from their parents and they have cash. And that's the only way you can compete. I think buying a fixer-upper, even if it's for an astonishing amount of money, actually...

is a step in the direction of starting a family maybe, or having some kind of nest egg and plan to move forward. I mean, I guess the question is, of all of these concerns, what's the worst thing that happens

Right. And I do think he's probably not the only 30-year-old hipster dude who's a little bit self-absorbed. I mean, I don't know. Have you met any of those guys? I mean, you know, pretty much...

All of everyone, right? But in seriousness, like, okay, she's picking up the fact he's an only child. He comes from wealth. Like there is something entitled in the way that he's moving through the world. What's interesting is the letter's entirely filled with information about him. And I'm like, okay, maybe start with who's your daughter? What's her story? What is she doing? Why did she get with this guy? What, you know, and if having a family is important, right?

You have to trust that your daughter is defending her own interests here, right? Yeah. You know, you ask at the end of your letter, which I think, Dan, it really is an important question. It's not one I've had to face often.

Quite yet as a mom, because my kids are younger, but I can I'm going to have opinions about their lives when I mean, I have opinions. Oh, yeah, you are. But, you know, I'm going to have opinions about them as grownups. And, you know, it can be tricky to navigate if you're not like super excited about about the partners they choose or the careers they choose or, you know, all of those things.

But what I hope I'll do as a parent is the same thing I do as a friend. And that is because I love that person, I want to communicate that even when I'm not super behind a decision, I'm on that person's side. And so as a mother, you sound like a good mother because you are so concerned about every nuance of your daughter's happiness. The best thing you can do is not be seeing yourself so much as somebody who will intervene, but someone who will support and boost

and nurture and be there when your daughter might need a sounding board in this relationship. I mean, your daughter isn't going to complain to you about her partner if she feels like you're against their union. And so, you know, trust her and also be worthy of her trust. Yeah, it's interesting. So really, damned either way, you have a long relationship with your daughter. She's been your daughter for 30 years and

You know, for the last 20, you've probably been having conversations and lots of feelings about what she the choices she's making and so forth. So look back to that. What was effective?

If you're a mom who's overly concerned and controlling and your daughter has picked up on that and you in the past have tried to sort of buzz manage your life a little too much, well, then it's time to interrogate that and say, I already have a rep. I need to change the way that I do that. But if you've been somebody who provides her reliable counsel, at least feedback or sounding board in

Yeah, that's a great point.

Because, I mean, I'm sure you guys know this. It's kind of an obvious point. But I think when people ask for advice, they're not always asking for advice as much as they're asking for confirmation. Like a lot of people, we already know what we're going to do, right? So we go to the person who's going to tell us what we want to hear. So if the mother establishes herself as somebody who, like Steve just said, is going to be on the daughter's side, I think that just gives, that puts them both in a much better position to have conversations about this.

and support each other and really have a fruitful dialogue about how to make decisions rather than just following some script and, you know, not really listening. Yeah. Have you ever, Megan, have you ever dated someone or been in a relationship with someone who family members or friends have

Oh, yes. Yes.

Which was kind of liberating because I wasn't looking for like marriage material or father material. Like I could kind of have these interesting boyfriends. And that's not, you know, they weren't like, you know, drug addicts or abusers or anything at all like that. But they just were not in my sort of cultural, you know, sociological orbit the way that more, you know.

appropriate quote unquote person might've been. So yeah, I'm sure that my friends did a lot of talking behind my back and there were some awkward social encounters, but I think mostly my friends knew me. They knew what interested me. They knew what sort of made me tick.

They knew I wasn't looking to get married. They weren't worried that I was going to marry these men. So I think they just kind of like, let me do my thing. And that was because they really understood me. They weren't imposing or projecting their own needs onto me. They weren't saying, well, I want to get married and have a baby. So what's she doing? And I'm going to, you know, tell her how to do what I want to do. They wouldn't do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

What about the parents? Well, my parents, they were pretty hands-off. It's interesting. I don't know. When I was a kid, my mother was pretty intervening. There were some boundary issues there. And just sort of family dynamics and circumstances changed in such a way that...

almost like immediately when I got to college, was pretty hands-off. So, yeah, I think I had this sort of little kid iteration where she was always out in my business. And then as an adult, no, neither of my parents have intervened. And I feel really lucky about that.

Yeah, thankfully. Yeah, I do. I mean, people sometimes think we have a kind of frosty family because we're not like, you know, warm and cozy family. But I actually see a huge upside to that. Yeah, well, it helps that both of our mothers are dead, Megan. So they really don't intervene. That's true. Now she intervenes all the time, you know. But when they're dead, they won't leave you alone. That's right.

All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. I'm honored. Thank you. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. I love that. People think of us as kind of frosty and actually that works. I also loved that she was like, you know, she tends to be hands off. And I do think my gut instinct, as vital as it is that we intervene when it comes to the big stuff, like you see somebody like that moment I was in,

back in the summer of 1994, when really my life was kind of on the line there. And the people who cared about me the most stepped in.

But most of the time, actually treading very lightly, not stepping at all, you know, giving a word of support and advice without getting in the middle of things. It's usually the best way. We have this, as we've had this discussion, we have this verb, intervene, and then the noun, intervention. And it's acquired this kind of, the alarms are going off, you know, the ambulance is in the background, and there's a mass of people huddled around, this kind of

urgency, this sense of, as you described, in many scenarios, that's the way we think of intervention. And in fact, what I like about the responses to these letters is neither one followed that model. And for Grope, it's a matter of, no, you need to speak about something disturbing that happened to you. And the other parties involved need to hear what you have to say. And what they do with it is not your concern. You're not trying to intervene in that way. You're trying to

bear witness to something and speak about it. And in the case of Damned Either Way, it's much more about saying, actually, you need to just be supporting your daughter, maybe asking questions if it comes up, but mostly listening and seeing where things go and just keeping an eye on her and if she's happy in this relationship. That's not intervention. That's something more like

observing and asking questions from time to time. It fits under that broader umbrella, but only if we expand, intervene, to mean something more like showing concern for ourselves and the people that we love. Amen. ♪

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