Transcript, E182: Jessi Hempel on coming out

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Network ID: LinkedIn News.

Jessi Hempel:

From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. In March of 2020 when quarantine descended, I was living in Brooklyn, New York, with my wife, Frances, and our baby. We packed up our car and drove 18 hours south to her parents' home in Mississippi where we took up residence in an upstairs bedroom. For those first couple weeks, I was really social, Zoom cocktail hours and Zoom yoga. But as I grew more depressed, tired, all that socializing went away. The only people I talked to every day were my family, my mom, my dad, my sister, Katje, and my brother, Evan. Quarantining in five different homes in four different states, really, I think we talked every single day.

This closeness isn't something I would've anticipated for most of my life. Growing up, my family was tough. Everyone struggled in all kinds of ways. Then 20 years ago, like a chain reaction that can't stop once it's begun, we all came out. I was first. I came out as gay. Three years later, my dad did too. Then, my sister announced she was bisexual. My brother told us he was transgender. And my mom, she came out as a survivor of a series of heinous crimes. In the quiet hours of the pandemic, with time to reflect, I began to wonder, what did coming out do for us? So, I asked if I could interview everyone, Mom, Dad, Katje, and Evan, talk to everyone about coming out and try to tell our story.

Mom was first to say yes. Dad and Evan followed. Katje took her time to think about it, about what it might be like to have her story told through my perspective for all of you. But eventually, she said yes too. This week, our story finally comes out, pun entirely intended. It's called The Family Outing and it's published by HarperOne, a division of Harper Collins. And today, I'm gonna flip the script for our show. I'm gonna sit in the guest chair. My colleague and my friend, Leah Smart, she's the power voice behind our sister podcast, In the Arena. She's gonna host the rest of this episode, and I'm so grateful. So, hey, Leah.

Leah Smart:

Hey, Jessi. It's so good to be here and I love that I get to get you on the other side of the mic, finally. (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs) It's pretty awesome, and I'm just gonna say, a tiny bit uncomfortable.

Leah Smart:

(laughs) Okay, first and foremost, I think I've seen you multiple times this week and just told you, "I'm obsessed with your book." And I was like, "It's getting a little creepy." But (laughs)-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughing)

Leah Smart:

... I did close the book, and when I closed the book, I think I said, "Wow," like 10 times.

Jessi Hempel:

Thank you. That means, I mean, it means so much to me, Leah. It really, it means so much to me.

Leah Smart:

Yeah, it was, it was, uh... And, we're gonna talk all about the book today. It was beautifully written. You know, it's funny, we're both sitting here and I'm holding my version (laughs), and you're holding your version.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Leah Smart:

Mine looks like I've owned it for 45 years and there are so many pages folded, and notes, and yours is the gorgeous hard cover. Um, I wanna ask you like, I- I didn't even really realize what the book was about, and then I got it, and I, of course, laughed once I, once you told me what it was about. How'd you come up with The Family Outing?

Jessi Hempel:

I love that you think that I came up with the title. (laughs)

Leah Smart:

(laughing)

Jessi Hempel:

No, you know, this book told me what it was and I- I mean that. It kind of came out in full form, starting with the title. I have this really wonderful commercial literary agent and I depend on her. And truthfully, I'm a little scared of her because-

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

... when she rolls up her sleeves, you just kind of have to get out of her way. And she has a golden gut. And, she was the one who, the first time I went to talk to her, I really wanted to write a book about tech. It- It is not an exaggeration to say that I love thinking and talking about tech, and humanity, and the way the two play together. And, I went on and on about all of my ideas, and I sat back, and she said, "Oh, I think you should write a story about your family and I think it should be called The Family Outing." Um-

Leah Smart:

Wow.

Jessi Hempel:

... and I said, "Well, that wasn't on my list. I think that sounds terrifying to write a memoir. No one wants to know that much about my family, anyways." It was probably four years ago now, Leah. Um, but here we are.

Leah Smart:

Here we are. Uh, this is the second time you and I have sat down together, and I've interviewed you. And, the last interview was two years ago, almost to the date. Um, and you had just started writing your book in June. And so, you were talking about how you had just started this project of writing this book that was a memoir. And, I've sort of been able to follow you through this process of doing what every writer wants to do, like just go away in the middle of nowhere and hope that you get your book written, and it just comes out. (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Leah Smart:

And then, you have this romantic night by the fire where you feel like you've completed it, which we all know none of this is- is true. Uh, but you've been through the multiple iterations of writing your book, of editing your book, of going through this process as a writer writing your first book and having it be a memoir that is not connected to what you said you focus on, tech and humanity.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Leah Smart:

What's that like?

Jessi Hempel:

I wanna go back and say that writing to me is like bricklaying, in that it is, it is work. And, some people are talented at it, but talent alone doesn't get you anything. And, no matter who you are, you can get better at it if you practice. And, you can't short change it. And so, you know, this book actually starts 20 years ago when I decided I wanted to become a writer and if you had read anything that I wrote 20 years ago, you would doubt that I would ever be capable of writing anything like this. But I practiced as a magazine writer. I practiced structure and character development, and how you think about big topics, and then how you convey your ideas to others. And, for the writing of the book itself, there were a couple of like, wonderful moments. Like, there was this one moment when my wife stayed home with our then two year old and brand new baby, and I went off to a, the equivalent of a cabin in the woods for five days. Wonderfully romantic.

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

Most of it was not like that. Most of this book happened for two reasons. One is I hired a coach. And I am such a believer in coaches, particularly when you yourself set the goal and know what you're looking for in your relationship with the coach. And, I knew that I needed somebody else to help me set deadlines and then stay on them. And then, the second thing, uh, that made this book turn from an idea in my head into the thing that you are holding right now is that I just put the time against it. I woke up every morning at five and I wrote from five to seven. I did that five days a week, uh, and I didn't miss it. And, just sitting down at the table and putting the time against it with somebody else who's giving you light direction as to what to produce, that- that's like 85% of the battle of writing a book.

Leah Smart:

Hmm. So, let's talk about the book. When I finished, I started, uh, writing down the emergent themes. And, as you know because you've known me, I am, uh, deeply connected to how we become more authentic versions of ourselves. I love story. And I was, I was kind of struck in a way by something subtle that was in your book, which was the amount of times you noted that as you were interviewing every member of your family who were recounting their own stories of, essentially the same situation, and then you recounted your own, you over and over again said, "I could be wrong." And, there was something so powerful about allowing your own fallibility while you're also exposing that five different people are five different narrators of the same story.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Leah Smart:

Um, and I'm just curious like, was that obvious to you that that would happen when you started this- this project? Was it obvious that there would be different things that came out that you had no idea about and that you could even doubt yourself in what you remembered?

Jessi Hempel:

Um, what I tried to do with this book is not simply to recount my story of growing up in this family, but to aspire, at least, to recount this family story, to come up with one cohesive narrative that somehow represented everybody's thoughts and opinions. And, Leah, now it sounds kind of small to say this or simplistic, but I thought that was possible. And of course that's not possible, because we all grew up with five different perspectives and points of view on the world, and five different sets of biases, and five different personalities, and at five different moments in the same family. And, what I set out to do, the way that I set out to accomplish this, is I spent the first six months or so of this process just interviewing everybody in my family, these people that I thought that I knew really well-

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

... like I would interview journalistic sources. Just open-ended questions, often questions that I figured that I knew the answer to, but I didn't know the answer at all. And, what I learned when I asked an open-ended question and then truly shut up, and just listened for an hour or two hours, is how many times I was actually wrong about things that I had taken for granted, had thought forever about. One very small example of that is a road trip that I took with my sister. Now, I'm the oldest, and if you are an oldest child listening, you- you might have some ideas then about what that means about my personality, and you're right about all those ideas.

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

And my sister, she's a middle child. And, we were very close, but also it was a fraught relationship, lots of turbulence, lots of fights, lots of both of us wanting to be right about things. And we planned this road trip. And, the night before this road trip across the country, I was about 24 and she was about 20, uh, we had this huge fight. I didn't remember what the fight was about, I didn't think it was important. And I wanted to tell the story of this road trip, so I get on the phone with my sister, Katje, and ask her to tell me everything she remembers. And by the way, it was a great, it was great fun this road trip, we just, we really had a very good time. We learned a lot about each other.

Jessi Hempel:

And, I thought about all the things that we had done. We had visited my friend so and so, we had gone to this place I had wanted to go, we had like, climbed this mountain I wanted to climb. And then I asked her, "Do you remember what that fight was about? Like, I don't even remember it. You probably don't even remember it." And she was like, "Oh, no, I remember it." And it became clear to me that she had actually been holding the source of that anger for like, the past two decades.

Leah Smart:

Yeah, it was like burned in her brain.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. She knew it. She knew right from the beginning we were having that fight. And the fight, of course, was over the fact that I had created the entire itinerary. I decided what we were gonna do and where we were gonna go, and how we were gonna do it. And by the way, it was a great trip and I knew it because I had decided it. And it was in that moment that I realized, um, I had never actually let her express herself or share her opinion on the road trip, but then also otherwise. And, that was a confusing thing to figure out how to let the reader see me change my perspective on that in real time.

Leah Smart:

Hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Which I tried to do.

Leah Smart:

What struck me, and I wrote, "Whoa," in the book was, um, at the end of that chapter as you close out this amazing road trip that you- you two have together, she says to you, "It was a conversation in which I was asking myself, 'Looking back now, would I be able to be in relationship with you and still be me?'"

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

And that just really, that touched me. When I think about authenticity, about how we become ourselves, so much of- of what we do and what we don't do is because of expectations. And, you recently said, "In writing the story, I shifted my own definition of what it means to come out of a closet. I had thought of this only in relationship to my sexuality coming out as a gay woman. But the more I listen to my family members tell me their own stories, the more I began to understand that we are all born into a set of expectations about who we will become. We all must contend with the ways in which these expectations run counter to our most authentic selves. Coming out is the process of letting go of those expectations." Talk to me about that.

Jessi Hempel:

I thought so much about what it means to come out, right? And coming out, there's a relational aspect to it. Um, that phrase you wrote about that my- my sister, her question, "Can I know you and also be me," in some ways, I think all people ask that of their family members constantly, in little and big ways, that it's the animating question to family systems. How do I find my way to that? And there's something about what it means to come out that allows us to begin to answer that question. Coming out, narrowly, like coming out of the closet, like waving the flag, like four out of the five of us, like fully came out as LGBTQI-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:13:04]

Jessi Hempel:

... four out of the five of us, like, fully came out as LGBTQIA+ people. But when you think about it, like, what that means is that we found a way to say, "Hey, you thought this thing was true about me, and you always treated me as if that was true. And I'm here to tell you definitively that thing isn't true about me. I am not a straight woman. I do not want to marry a man. This other thing is more true about me right now, and that is that I am, right now, a queer woman and that I think about my life this way."

Jessi Hempel:

But you can apply that so far beyond what it means to be queer, because I think for all of us, we are born into families who have dreams and ideas about who we will be, religious communities perhaps, society, culture, like, all of these narratives and ideas about who we hopefully will become.

Jessi Hempel:

And I think if you really push people to question where their narrative and ideas come from, often, at least in the nor-, in North America, they'll, they'll come back to this idea, like, "Well, what I really want for my daughter is to be happy," right? But here's how I think about happiness based on how I was raised and what I know about the world."

Leah Smart:

I know what will make her happy (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. Oh-

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

Control. Yeah.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

"I know what will make my little sister happy."

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Um, and the beauty in coming out is that moment where you say definitively, "No, you, no, those things, they don't fit me. This identity fits me more." And by the way, I also have come to realize that coming out is not a static thing. It's not that moment in the back seat of a car where you say, "Mom, Dad, I think I might be, I could be a l, maybe a lesbian." It's not that moment, right?

Jessi Hempel:

Coming out is a process of living. It's the way you live your life. And in just the moment where you think you've stumbled upon it and you're like, "No, this is who I am," you find new things about yourself, new ways to express yourself that cause you to continue to be in conversation with yourself and others about who you are becoming. And that, I think, is what it means to live authentically.

Leah Smart:

Wow. So a process of living, I haven't heard it said that way, and I, I really appreciate that.

Leah Smart:

Um, as you're talking about coming out and, you know, the story, like you said, is about four of your family members fully coming out, your brother Evan coming out as trans and the story of him and his ch, children, [inaudible 00:15:18], um, it was, was incredible, I mean, everyone's story. as you close the book and start to just reflect on the process your family had to go through to get to where you are, which, by the way, I loved. You didn't end it with like, "This is a happy ending. We put a bow on it." We're still in process.

Leah Smart:

Um, but one thing I did note was two of the moments you share about coming out was first your moment, which is you in the back of the car, telling your parents, "I'm pretty sure I'm gay." And your mom starts to cry. Your dad just stares ahead and continues driving and later tells you, you know, he thought he was once gay as well. And you said, "Well, what'd you do?" And he said, "I married your mom."

Leah Smart:

Um, and then the point when Evan calls you and comes out as trans, it was, it, the way you wrote it was, like, fast, almost uneventful in the moment that it happened. And even as you describe it, it sounds simple. And yet, of course we know these moments aren't simple.

Leah Smart:

So for people who might be listening today who are feeling like they do have a process or an area in their life, whatever it is, in which they need to come out, what does it take for us to do that?

Jessi Hempel:

That is the best question. First of all, it takes such a high degree of self-compassion. Not everybody should come out. Not everybody can come out about whatever it is that you need to come out about. And sometimes, coming out is, is a slow process, right?

Jessi Hempel:

Um, you referenced those two moments, um, one moment in which I am telling, "Hey, guys. I think I might be [inaudible 00:16:53] gay."

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

Right? And that's, that's sort of how it sounded in the moment. Like, it was still a bit of a whisper. Like, the process of telling was also me asking like, "What happens if I say this?"

Jessi Hempel:

And but then you, you pair that with the moment where my brother comes out to me, and I'm on the other side of the table and I'm listening. And what I remember most about that moment is that my first reaction to that, I didn't even write this as clearly in the book as I'm about to say it. My first reaction to that was, "No." It was, and I didn't say it out loud this way-

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

... but it certainly did it in my head. It was to immediately minimize that, to think back over the last six interactions I had had with my brother, one of which, and I wrote about it in the book, w, one of which he was wearing a dress and he curled his hair for the holiday. And to think, "Oh, no. I'm more right about your identity than you are," I can't tolerate the question, right?

Jessi Hempel:

Um, and, you know, you cannot talk about coming out without talking about both sides of the coin, about what it means to speak your truth and finally to feel like you are heard and also what it means to listen to other people's truths and own how complicated it feels when their truths collide with your own truths and they feel like they're at odds with each other.

Jessi Hempel:

It's a complicated situation and one that we, with our closest people in particular, we live through every day.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. The process of telling was also the process of asking. I, you, you made me think about my own. Uh, a few years ago, I started saying, "I'm coming out spiritually." And it was because I had, for so long, pushed that away. I didn't know how to share it with others. You know, you and I both live in New York City where kind of anything goes. But depending on your group, some people are kind of open to it. Other people might shy away depending upon their own experience of it.

Leah Smart:

And so I felt for a long time, and sometimes even now, like I'm asking, not telling. But I know... And I'll say it as a side point. I was, like, meditating in the audio room over here. I was like, "If someone walked in, would I lose it? Would I freak? What would I say?"

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Leah Smart:

Like, I'm in the dark (laughs), on the floor, humming to my chakra meditation. But it was the first time I, I've done that in a while and I really felt like I, I wouldn't care. But this was a process, and it continues to be a process. As new people come into your life, even for someone like Evan, who's been through this transition and Evan is met now as Evan, even though prior, you, we knew Evan as someone else, everybody's in process as we met new people. We're constantly sort of asking for... is it permission? Is it belonging? Is it love? Like, what is it you think we're asking?

Jessi Hempel:

Leah, I'll answer that with a question to you. So some years ago, you started coming out as a spiritual person. What's different about the way that you talk about it right now? Somebody walks into the room, they see you on the floor. What happens for you in that moment?

Leah Smart:

I'm like, "Oh yeah. I'm in here." (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

"I'm in here with Deepak Chopra playing the background, taking care of business. What are you doing?" (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

That's... I mean, it's, it's calmer.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

Um, it, as you said, because this is a process of living, I'm much more comfortable in it.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Leah Smart:

And so it was secret for a while. It was like, "Should I tell this person or should I not tell this person? Like, will they get it or won't they get it?" And now, it's more, uh, I am absolutely not p, where I want to be.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

Um, but it's more of, "Yeah, this is what I do."

Jessi Hempel:

Well, it's funny about secrets and things that begin as secrets, and then you, you become more confident about sharing them. Um, my guess is that you still have that moment when somebody walks into the room before you're, before you just own what's going on. Uh, and it might even be m, a micro moment, but you still have that moment where you blush, where you think, "Oh, hey."

Leah Smart:

It's happened.

Jessi Hempel:

"Oh, okay," right? And I think that it's that way a, about coming out. I mean, I have been out of the closet now. I like to call myself the boring gay in the family. You know, I'm cis gender. I'm a gay woman. That has been fairly uncomplicated for me. I'm very happily partnered. I live in a place where I feel like I'm accepted by my community.

Jessi Hempel:

And still, there are audiences of people or contexts in which I'm just a bit shy about-

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

... leading with that still, right?

Leah Smart:

Shy is different than not accepting yourself.

Jessi Hempel:

Completely.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

Completely.

Leah Smart:

I would, I would agree. I'd say it, there would be a micro moment, but, and I would be shy and I may have a moment of like, "Oh gosh. I hope they still accept me." But at this point, a few years out, I'm like, "If they don't..."

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. We'll be okay.

Leah Smart:

I'm not changed by it.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with your Hello Monday host Jessi Hempel.

Leah Smart:

And we're back. I'm Leah Smart, host of In the Arena and guest host of this episode of the Hello Monday podcast. And I'm joined today by the one and only Jessi Hempel.

Jessi Hempel:

Hello.

Leah Smart:

So we are deep in conversation about Jessi's experience coming out and her brand new memoir The Family Outing, which was fantastic. So let's jump back in.

Leah Smart:

I want to talk about you, because I know you don't get on the other side of the mic often. Um, and specifically, there is this really beautiful moment towards the end of the book where you talk about Frances, um, and meeting Frances. And you, you had this moment with Frances where you had essentially decided that for any number of reasons, it was time for you to break up. And you explained to her-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

... why it had to happen. (laughs). Uh, and you know I'm obsessed with the Enneagram, and I, I knew Frances was a nine as soon as you said this. But you said, "For all these reasons," and you can explain them in a second, "it's time for us to be, to be done."

Leah Smart:

And she looks at you and she says, "You go this." This is me, doing, like, a big wave. And she's like, "I go like this," in sort of like a slow climbing, like a slow grade. And she said, "If you stick with me, you're going to have something interesting happen," I think was the essence of it.

Leah Smart:

Talk to me about you and talk to me about Frances. That was such a powerful moment in the book, and I don't even know if you realized it. But it was a really beautiful way to think about a partnership, relationship, and how we support and understand each other when we're different.

Jessi Hempel:

Relationships and partnerships are so mysterious, Leah. And why they work and why they don't work is sort of life's work. But often, a lot of what we learn about love feels like and what it's supposed to feel is what is modeled for us in our youngest years.

Jessi Hempel:

And if you grew up as I did, um, in a family where adults were working really hard to keep secrets, my dad about his sexuality, my mother about some crimes to which she had been adjacent witness in her youth, the product of that in my family was that my parents, by the time I was an adolescent, they were very distant from each other. They were both very, very unhappy. And their unhappiness felt contagious.

Jessi Hempel:

And to be a kid in that family, you didn't even know what was wrong, but you knew something was wrong. And my mom was very, very hot and cold. She would go through depressive episodes, and then she would turn up and be very angry about something, but her anger would be displaced and it would come out toward us.

Jessi Hempel:

And, uh, it was a lot of that line you drew that goes up and down and up and down and up and down. And it didn't feel great or bad. It just felt like, I guess that's what love feels like.

Jessi Hempel:

And so I came out of the closet, but I still continued to look for that feeling when I partnered. And I had lots of girlfriends. Leah, I had lots of great girlfriends. Like, I've looked back at the people that I dated, and they are lovely, lovely people. Many of them, I, I get to still know and have in my life.

Jessi Hempel:

But they were often at the moment in their lives where they were in similar turbulent places, and they were never great relationships.

Leah Smart:

Hm.

Jessi Hempel:

I was, like, a queen of the three month crash and burn.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

And I didn't know why they weren't working. I just got to a point in my mid 30s where I thought, "Well, look. Um, I have a bigger life than my romantic relationships, and I'm really happy with that life. And I am just going to resign myself to the fact that I don't seem to be getting this one."

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Uh, so then I meet Frances and we're set up, and I go out with her. And Leah, my wife, she's so awesome.

Leah Smart:

Hm.

Jessi Hempel:

And, uh, I was not the popular kid in high school, which is a surprise to absolutely no one.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

Um, I was the opposite of that. And I was like-

Leah Smart:

You know, my, my family always says, "Don't peak in high school." So-

Jessi Hempel:

Well-

Leah Smart:

It's a good sign you peaked now.

Jessi Hempel:

... you know, uh, I, I own that. And I was not hugely socially accepted by my peers as a closeted gay girl who didn't know what the heck was going on. So I meet Frances, and Frances is easy in her skin and easy in her body. We're set up on a first date. We go to the Modern Museum of Art. And she's super pretty, and I see her and I'm like, "Well, this is not going to work. We're not the s-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]

Jessi Hempel:

She's super pretty. And I see her and I'm like, well, this is not gonna work. We're not the same kind of people. But it'll be fun to spend the afternoon with her. And we do, uh, have a wonderful first date. And lo and behold, she wants to continue to hang out and I'm- I'm like, sure. And we continue to hang out. And I am continually bowled over. She is the most compassionate person I have met. But I- I still think, like it is mysterious to me that somebody like this would wanna spend all this time with me. But this does not feel like what relationships feel like to me, so I must not be in love with her. I don't have moments of like panic that I will lose her. I just kind of trust that she'll be there. I don't have moments of like extreme infatuation. I just consistently like her.

Jessi Hempel:

And maybe four, five months in, I decide, well, this must mean that we're not in love. What else could it mean? It must mean we're not in love. But I happen to believe that Frances is the most amazing person. And so, the kindest thing I can do is just break up with her right away-

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

... so that she can go out and find love, because that lady deserves to find love, because she is amazing. And that is where I was in the moment that I basically found the courage to break up with her, in my mind, to set her free, so that she could find somebody who did a better job of loving her than I was c... than I was doing. And that was when she set me straight and said, "Oh, no, no, no. You're just pattern-matching to totally the wrong pattern." And I never even thought to break up with her again, because it just made so much intellectual sense.

Leah Smart:

I... The pattern-matching, we don't have to get too deep into that, but, um, wow. That is so real. Um, you had a childhood where it was going up and down, up and down, up and down. And so, I often find for a lot of us, we draw in, in relationships, at work, I mean, in all areas of our life, we draw in situations that then reflect the patterns we had, and we look at those patterns and we go, "This is comfort."

Jessi Hempel:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

"This is home."

Jessi Hempel:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

And then we see something different or feel something different and go, "This is wrong." But in reality, if we step back, we go, "No, that is the thing, the pattern that will keep me in this painful experience. This is the opportunity to make the shift." Um, and I think oftentimes when you're somebody who has the experience of pattern-matching, when we are matching to patterns that are unhealthy, it's hard for us to envision that somebody who was, quote-unquote, healthy, I wanna use a healthy, unhealthy, as loosely-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

Um, when we are thinking about drawing in someone that's, quote-unquote, healthy, we almost believe that we don't deserve it in some way, somewhere in ourselves. And so, I'm wondering, like, did you ever find out, what did Frances see... I mean, I know you're amazing.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Leah Smart:

But what did Frances see in you that, in that moment, you didn't see in yourself?

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, I think that Frances recognized that she was having fun in our relationship too. And I think we did a great job of listening to each other. Um, but maybe, uh, now I can say this more certainly, I think it is also true that Frances grew up in a very consistent family, where that was perhaps something that she was used to and comfortable seeing. And, you know, she had her own issues in her own- her own family. Her family wasn't perfect, but her patterns were different than mine, and I think perhaps modeled in a more sustainable way for a lot of her childhood. And I- And I wanna add something to that, Leah, which is if you are lucky enough to name the patterns that aren't serving you, which in and of itself may take a lot of your life, and then if you are then lucky enough to figure out how to make another choice, that's not a choice you make once. And it is... It has always felt really clear to me that being in a relationship with Frances is a wonderful thing.

Jessi Hempel:

But it's not easy still, because still, I am set to look for the conflict.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

And so, we have very different love languages. And it took us years and therapy, and I'm such a proponent of therapy-

Leah Smart:

Oh, me too.

Jessi Hempel:

... um, to figure out that often when I was feeling disconnected and unloved, what I was looking for was just to have a big fight-

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

... so that I could have the moment of intensity, so that I could feel the thing that I was familiar with.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

Whereas when Frances lives in our relationship and in our lives, she doesn't need those moments of intense... like, intense intensity.

Leah Smart:

Jarring emotions. Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

No. She... Like, when we're gardening together, side by side, which never happens-

Leah Smart:

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

... because I'm not very good at doing anything as like quiet and meditative as gardening all day on a Saturday-

Leah Smart:

You're like, when I'm standing there, waiting for her to be done. (laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs) That is what it means for her to feel at home in our relationship.

Leah Smart:

Wow. And that's modeling something that's really powerful for you. So, in- in many ways, she is, I'm sure, a teacher for you, and I'm sure f... you for her.

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, all of our best relationships work that way.

Leah Smart:

That's right.

Jessi Hempel:

And then hopefully, us for our children.

Leah Smart:

That's right. I'm curious. As you think about stories, I noticed two points that stuck out to me, um, that were the places where people in your family wanted the stories to be different than they were. And so, when you think about the, you know, writing out your own story or discovering your own story, the process of coming out, uh, it's not linear. And you start and then you go, "Am I doing the right thing?" And then you go a little further. And then maybe go even further. And then you go snap all the way back.

Leah Smart:

And the two moments in the book, uh, one which made me laugh out loud was, uh, every year, Lucky, the dog, your family dog, wrote a Christmas letter. And they were written by your dad. And they talked about what was happening and what the family was doing. And the year for your family, you know, when, over time, things were happening, but the year that kind of all hell broke loose, Lucky is still trying to, like, cleverly say (laughs) the family is, like, doing pretty good, just thinking about living life in different ways, there are some big changes, and it's been and eventful year.

Leah Smart:

And the second one was when your dad finally does come out, and your parents are living in the same house, and your dad is dating someone named Steve, and he has a photo of Steve in, uh, the room that he's staying in. Your mom goes in, sees the photo, is like, "When the heck does he go on hikes?", cuts out a picture of herself and puts her face over his boyfriend's photo in that- in that moment. It... And then she- she kind of turned it into a joke. She's like, "You can't take a joke." What do you think happens in this process of trying to get ourselves to where we wanna go, where we can really understand and own our stories, and how do we keep ourselves going in those moments where we're like, "I just want it to go back to the, quote-unquote, normalcy that I had before"?

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. Uh, yeah. I think when big change is afoot, and you're gonna have a full on identity shift, even if the outcome of that is freedom, even if it's amazing for you, the process of that means letting go of the identity to which you have hung on for a good, long time. And that is so challenging to do. And so, I look at that letter that the dog sent every year. "Jessi is having great fun playing her French horn, and Katje's riding horses, and Evan started ballet this year," right? And... So, then you get this year where my dad gets caught in a web of infidelity, and my parents, uh, totally melt down, and my mother has a depression crisis, and my brother gets left at camp over the summer. And everybody starts therapy. And my parents are having this artificially, like, constructed vacations to try to rediscover their connection. And Lucky's just like, "Oh, [inaudible 00:33:42]. Big year here."

Jessi Hempel:

Um, and what that really is, is my parents saying, "Okay, everything is totally different, but nothing has to be different." And that's what we really want at first when we're in the process of coming out.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. It took them a long time to even decide they're getting divorced or moving out, right?

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, I thought it took them forever. In retrospect though, is three years a long time?

Leah Smart:

I wrote that down. You said, "I don't know."

Jessi Hempel:

In the moment, it felt interminable.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

It felt like I couldn't imagine a different future.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

But that is also a thing about change. You know, when my father needed to decide what to do about his marriage and he was... It was his 50th birthday. All hell had just broken loose. He had been caught by my sister having an affair, um, caught sort of his computer messages came out. My mom had just discovered this. Everything he thought about, when he thought about his life, was suddenly in question. And he drove to visit his sister who was six years older. And his sister sat with him on the back porch and said to him, "You're gonna be sitting on this back porch in 20 years, retired, hopefully, like, living out your glory days. When you're sitting on this porch, just think about who's sitting next to you. Is it a man or is it a woman? And use that to guide your actions now."

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

And I thought that was actually a really helpful tool. It's helpful for anybody. Like, okay, in this moment when everything is changing, sometimes that change happens, often coming out, whether it's coming out under your sexuality or coming out, in your case, as a spiritual person, often, like, the pain and confusion of what that might mean in the moment clouds our ability to actually act in a, like, thoughtful way. But if you jump forward to the vision you have for your life, it gets simpler.

Leah Smart:

That was the moment that I felt the gravity of the choice to live your life as yourself. And it's something that a lot of motivational speakers do. They say, you know, "When you're in your rocking chair, when you're at the end of your life, what is it that you refuse to not have done in your life?" When we think about coming out in whatever way, do you think everybody has a desire to do something big that they're not doing or to make a huge change that would alter the course of their life forever? Or is this a little bit of grandeur and most people are feeling pretty good about what's going on?

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, I can't speak for most people. I think that-

Leah Smart:

Yeah, there's only two of us in here.

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, yeah. You and me. But, you know, the- the beauty of the book is that I only try to speak very specifically about these people that I know.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

And that are closest to me. And I discover similarities in their experience. But one thing that is true for everybody in the book, myself included, is that often, when you're thinking about coming out and what it means to live in the closest, the most work that you will ever need to do is coming out to yourself. But mostly when we're living in the closet, we don't know. We don't know what could be better in our lives. Before, Leah, you tripped into your- your journey as a spiritual person, did you know that you were missing it?

Leah Smart:

No, but I knew something was wrong.

Jessi Hempel:

Mmm.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

I think a lot of people feel like that.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

I think a lot of people feel like there's- there's a thing.

Leah Smart:

There's a thing.

Jessi Hempel:

I don't know what the thing is.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

Or maybe I know a little bit about what the thing is or maybe I think I know, but I- I could be wrong about the thing.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

But you know what? I'm 60% happy. And 60% happy feels pretty good most of the time. Like, what is my motivation for chasing the thing?

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. Well-

Jessi Hempel:

I think that's a pretty common experience.

Leah Smart:

Interestingly, you know, and- and I don't know how this relates back to your story, but in my experience, you and I both had grandfathers who were preachers.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Leah Smart:

My grandfather was a Methodist minister. My grandmother is still alive and she is, um, she's Christian. And, you know, I grew up in a Christian household. And so, um, I sort of did what a lot of probably millennial kids did. You know, like, and a lot of kids do in general. You start in that world and then you stray. You start asking questions. You maybe push it away. And so, the thing I ended up coming back to is the place where I started. (laughs) And that made it even harder to really accept that I was coming back to it in some ways. It was like, there's something wrong, but I can't pin it. And then once I came back to it, um, what I recognized was that it could still be my life, but I had to redefine it. And for me, that was the process of coming out was the decision to say, "Where I started is not far off from where I ended up, but it's got my stamp and my signature on it instead of my parents', my family's."

Jessi Hempel:

I love that. And I grew up very religious, um, also. Baptized Methodist. Methodist minister's my grandfather. Um, church was very important to my family growing up and was a huge part of the structure of my days and weeks. I left that when my family had its massive coming out, but remained spiritual and searching in many ways. And at some point in my early 20s, it's not in the book, but I- I went to India and I went to a two-week program with the Dalai Lama. And we had a moment-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:39:04]

Jessi Hempel:

Program with the Dalai Lama, and we had a moment where, uh, like I got to ask a question, and I remember that my question was something along the lines of, I mean, I'm embarrassed to tell you because it's like the exact question that a 22 year old kid from outside Boston would ask, right?

Leah Smart:

In India? (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

With the Dalai Lama?

Jessi Hempel:

Yep. Exactly. You know, should I be Buddhist? And the Dalai Lama like starts laughing, and he was like, "What were you born?" And I was like, "I am Methodist." He said, "Be that." And I was like, "What?" And he was like, "Eh, just be that." And he, he then made some metaphor about the grocery store, and we-

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

We think we can just go shopping through the aisles and just choose one and put it in out basket and go out, and he ... You know, if you've ever heard from or talked to the Dalai Lama, or, you know, he, he, sometimes he rambles and laughs in ways that feel kind of confusing, but like what it call comes back to is like you are asking the wrong question kid.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

The, the focus is not on the definition. The focus is on the process. What does it mean for you to be in pursuit of truth.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Call it Buddhism. Call it Methodist. Like, be in search of truth.

Leah Smart:

Be in search of truth. Finishing this book, you closing it up, you now holding the hard copy, what do you know is true now, and, and I think of this as, you know, for someone who's writing a memoir, does anything change lager?

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

Like, do you expect there to be a truth that comes out in three years. It's like, oh the Family Outing is now debunked. Time to write a Family Outing Part Two.

Jessi Hempel:

Um, wouldn't that be funny.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

If I just realize in the next five years that I was wrong about everything I wrote. The beauty of this book is that it happened mostly during the pandemic, which was a very quiet time in my life. I couldn't write it again in this way. Um, but no. I mean, these are the things I figured out along the way as I've tried to figure out what it means to be human. That's really what this book is, and I presume I will continue to figure out more things, and I found a joy in writing about it that I never expected, but it also, this book feels done to me.

Leah Smart:

Hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

If I were to sit down and write the same book with the same title today, two years after our conversation about me starting it, it'd probably be a different book.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. This chapter is complete.

Jessi Hempel:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

I saw you a few days ago, and I told you I loved the book, and you said to me, you said, "Honestly, I, I think I channeled this." And I was like, "Yeah, you clearly did." Was this book like cathartic for you? And I, I ask this because I'm curious when, um, there's only a couple books that I've closed in my life and gone, "Wow, wow, wow." Or gone, "Yep." Um, and you wrote it, so you probably won't have the same experience.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

But when you finished writing it, what was clear for you about your search for truth?

Jessi Hempel:

That I had permission to be in it. That when you come out in front of your closest family, and strangers, and that weird middle tier of people you know, but not quite well enough that you would ever in person tell them all the things that you're about to tell them in a book.

Leah Smart:

But you get their Lucky the dog Christmas card?

Jessi Hempel:

Yep.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs). That you somehow have given yourself permission to be in pursuit. Um, and it is a weird thing, you know, my wife is reading the book right now. God bless her. She, she read the chapters as I went, but she read them, of course, all out of order. Had lots of feedback. Like, kept up on everything, um, but then hadn't had the experience of just starting at the beginning and reading the book. And so every night when we go to bed, I look over, and there is reading the book.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

And, um, it's the strangest feeling. It is the strangest feeling to watch her absorb the narrative of our shared live together, and, uh, at least so far, she feels like it's mostly right as far as she can remember. So there's that.

Leah Smart:

You did a beautiful job of holding everybody's narratives, and again, as we started, allowing fallibility in your own narrative so that there's space for other truths to emerge. You have permission to be in it, others have permission to also be in it, and the truth changes because we are often unreliable narrators, as they say.

Jessi Hempel:

Uh, we are. We are, and you know, there's a whole generation of kids coming. I'm glad this book came right now because they're really little.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Right? They are, um, there are six grandkids between me and my two siblings. They are ages 6, 5, 3, 2, 2, and 1. And they will have their own ideas about how you live life, and it's my greatest hope, honestly, that we evolve so much as humanity that they read this in 20 years and think of me as small minded.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

Think, oh how little she understood about what it means to live authentically. Now we understand so much more.

Leah Smart:

Hmm, for anyone who picks this book up today or have someone buy it for them, um, with an inkling that they could use it for whatever reason, what do you hope for those people who read and hear your book?

Jessi Hempel:

I hope they see their own experience somehow reflected in it, and that it becomes a proof point for the fact that when you do the work of self exploration, there is freedom on the other side of it. That there's joy that you cannot expect, but you can trust that it is ahead.

Leah Smart:

I love that. I grabbed this quote, I believe this is also from your book that says, "After things fall apart, there's freedom. All of the expectations that have constrained us have been demolished," and there was something else that you said that I think is really apt for your book for the fact that you're about to go out into the world and share this, um, so bravely, and that your family has said, yes you can take our stories and you have, you have written our stories in a way that we're okay with you putting them out into the world. Um, which is that you said you can be good to others without betraying yourself.

Leah Smart:

And I think that, honestly, was one of the most salient points for me because as we go through this process of coming out, we play a vital role in everyone else's experience of coming out too. And what you shared earlier about being in process and asking the questions, is that we can't give what we don't have, and so if we haven't accepted parts of who we are, we have all had this experience, we are really hard of people who haven't accepted parts of who they are too. And so that, to me, was one of the most powerful things is to be able to sit and say, I've gone through the process of understanding myself, of coming out to myself, of coming out to others, of being good to them in that process, of receiving their good, and now I'm complete.

Jessi Hempel:

That's the hope right there. You say it better than I did.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs).

Leah Smart:

Tomato, tomato Jessi.

Jessi Hempel:

But that, Leah, and that is, I mean that is, that is why I wanted to have this conversation with you about this book because I, I think it's so front and center in your work. This idea that, um, to heal the world, we have to heal ourselves. To be good to others and to build with others, we have to first be good to ourselves and find our broken spots and attend to them. That's the work.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. To look at our wounds.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. And to have others witness our wounds.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Leah Smart:

Which is the hardest part. All right Jessi, I'm going to ask my final three questions. Better humans are?

Jessi Hempel:

Better humans are continually engaged in the process of coming out and toward their most authentic selves.

Leah Smart:

Wow, did you memorize that before?

Jessi Hempel:

No, it just felt-

Leah Smart:

(laughs). I can't, it channeled. Better work is?

Jessi Hempel:

Better work is work that reflects my values and that I feel like I'm contributing, um, broadly to others as I do.

Leah Smart:

And a better world has?

Jessi Hempel:

People who believe that repair is possible and that we can always be moving toward each other.

Leah Smart:

Wow. That was Jessi Hempel, the host of this podcast. You can find her book, The Family Outing, wherever books are sold, and now, it's time to join the community in conversation. What closet have you found yourself coming out of? What do you wonder about the process of coming out? Jessi and I will chat about it with you this Wednesday on Hello Monday Office Hours. You can find us on the LinkedIn News page at 3 PM eastern, or drop an email to [email protected], and we'll send you the link. If you like this show, please follow and review it wherever you get your podcasts and share it with a friend. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News.

Leah Smart:

Sarah Storm produces our show with mixing by Joe DiGiorgi. Florencia Iriondo is Head of Original Audio and Video. Dave Pond is Head of News Production. Michaela Greer and Victoria Taylor accept us for all of who we are, thanks to you both. Our music was composed just for us by the mysterious Brake Master Cylinder. Dan Roth is the Editor and Chief of LinkedIn, and I'm Leah Smart, the host of In the Arena. Loved being here with you Jessi and talking about the book.

Jessi Hempel:

It was an honor to be interviewed by you. And folks, y'all know that I am Jessi Hempel.

Leah Smart:

(laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

We'll be back next Monday. Thanks for listening.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:48:56]