Podcast (sustainable-dish-podcast): Play in new window | Download

Getting a little vulnerable with this podcast here… Some of my listeners may know that the last couple of years have been especially difficult for me. With the global pandemic roiling in the background, I was going through a divorce in addition to the deaths of my mother and brother – all while trying to release Sacred Cow.

Of course, the deaths of close family members were difficult but I was especially shaken by my divorce and leaving the farm. Not only was I losing my partner of 27 years (20 years married) but I was losing my home, the future, my tribe, my dogs, my connection to a very special piece of land, and what felt like my identity. I was truly heartbroken and it also had a huge impact on my physical health too.

These events are something that I am continuing to heal from but one thing I found helpful in this journey is the book Heartbreak by Florence Williams. The book takes a scientific approach to emotional pain – what it is and what to do about it. Using science to tackle problems resonates with me so I’ve taken the lessons to heart – pun intended. 

Florence joins me in this episode of the podcast to share some of the lessons learned in her research and her own journey of healing. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version which includes original audio excerpts and excellent sound design that make it a fully immersive experience. This resource has been instrumental in my efforts to restore balance in my life.

In her book, Heartbreak, Florence divides healing into 3 buckets:

• Calm
• Connect
• Purpose and meaning

She goes on to describe each type of healing, giving examples and research that supports the need for each type in overcoming a broken heart. 

Emotional well-being is closely tied to physical health. Florence and I both suffered negative health consequences during the time of our divorces and Florence shares the science behind the effect of trauma on the immune system. 

Heartbreak and grief are universal human experiences and healing yourself is essential to whole-body health. Give this episode a listen and then go listen to Heartbreak. Your heart and health will thank you. 

Key episode takeaways:

• Emotional pain is like a toothache
• The perils of loneliness
• Connecting to nature and other methods of healing
• The power of awe
• Use of psychedelics 
• Rebound relationships are backed by science
• You find out who your real friends are
• Feeling better takes time – more time than you want it to

Resources:

Heartbreak by Florence Williams

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

Helen Fisher, PhD, Biological anthropologist 

Three Day Effect podcast

The Museum of Broken Relationships

Rachel Cusk, poet

David Whyte, poet

Divorce Song by Liz Phair

Single on Purpose: Redefine Everything. Find Yourself First by John Kim

John Kim’s Single. On Purpose. Playlist

Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One by Anita Lo

Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies by Tara Schuster

Men in Sheds

Connect with Florence:

Website: Florence Williams

Retreats: Telluride: July 15-18, 2022 | Loveland, CO: October 4-7, 2022

Twitter: @flowill

Instagram: @florence999

Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Levels, a continuous glucose monitor that gives you individualized insight into your metabolism. This is a tool I personally use and recommend to people I work with. It’s helped me figure out what foods spike my blood sugar and which ones keep me level. I can also see how certain tricks like walks after a meal affect my body. Right now Levels has a waiting list of over 150,000 but they are allowing my listeners to skip the line if you go to sustainabledish.com/levels and sign up. Try it out to see how the food you eat affects your metabolism. This is a must-have tool for anyone interested in personalizing their nutrition. 

Quotes:

“[My divorce] felt like I was leaving a tribe and almost being ostracized, which makes sense because in hunter-gatherer land if you left your community, it was death. Right?” – Diana Rodgers, RD 

“I think sometimes as parents we think we have to model competence all the time, and success and head held up high. And that’s just not really how life always works. Really what we should be modeling for our kids is resilience.” – Florence Williams 

“If we’re vulnerable with other people, they’ll be vulnerable with us. That really builds bonds, connecting to people who are authentically there in your life and are able to share love with you.” – Florence Williams

“When you’re heartbroken, it’s like, ‘Oh, man!’ You can’t avoid those feelings. Like they’re here and they’re gonna wallop you. And your only choice through it is to feel it and then it’s not that bad. It’s like, “Okay, I can feel this. It hurts.’” – Florence Williams

Transcript:

Diana Rodgers, RD  00:01

Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance an initiative, advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now on to our show. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  00:39

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today I have with me, Florence Williams. I’m so excited to have you here, Florence. I loved your book, Heartbreak. And I actually even mentioned it when I was on recently on the Joe Rogan podcast. So I’m hoping that was like a little bump in sales.

Florence Williams  00:53

Thank you. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  00:55

And some of my listeners probably don’t know this, because I usually just interview other people. But so for everybody who doesn’t know this, I went through a divorce during COVID, on top of two pretty intense family deaths, my mother and my brother. So this all happened the last two years, but the divorce and actually moving off the farm and leaving the life that I thought was going to be the rest of my life was the worst of all of it by far. And I really resonated with your book because we went through very similar divorces, very similar entrance back into the dating world. And you had some health problems. I ended up going into early menopause briefly. And then it now seems to have reversed. I don’t know. But I would love for you to share your story and how you went about writing this book. Because as a fellow, I guess, scientist or someone interested in science, I found your approach fascinating and very similar to what I would have done if I had written a similar book. So, welcome. And… 

Florence Williams  02:00

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m sorry to hear about your terrible last couple of years.

Diana Rodgers, RD  02:05

Yeah, it’s been intense. But let’s talk about you and your book. And at what point did you decide to write it because you open your book with a trip in a canoe, but then as you start… you start going back. You do have recordings from earlier in your transition and so at what point did you start it? And yeah, maybe you could just give everybody a little bit of background? 

Florence Williams  02:32

Yeah. I mean, so Heartbreak is my third book. And I do write about science, but I have really written all of them in the first person. So you know, they’re sort of first-person reported books. That’s how I do a lot of my journalism, my science journalism. I sort of sometimes experiment on myself as a way to talk about the science. I try to make it super, you know, kind of accessible, and kind of, you know, friendly, like, I’m this guide to the science. So when I have big questions in my life, you know, it just makes sense that as a journalist, I start to sort of inquire about what’s behind those questions. So when my marriage fell apart, my 25-year marriage, it didn’t take very long for me to wonder, you know, is there something here that I can write about? And I think that’s a response, a lot of writers have, you know, about big things in their lives. It’s part of how we move through the world. I had been married for 25 years. I felt like so much of my identity was getting kind of torn away. And I think as women, you know, we’re especially very relational. We take our identities, you know, in our relationships, and in our families super seriously. And so when I was confronting this sort of pain, and this loss of identity, I think it also made sense that I was kind of like, okay, I am a journalist. That’s something I know I am. And I can put that journalist hat on, you know, as a way to help me move through this event. And then I guess, I also pretty immediately started wondering about why heartbreak hurts so much. Why it was affecting my body. Now interesting that it seems to have affected your body too, you know, and emotional pain gets registered in some pretty fascinating, interesting, and frightening ways in our bodies. And so that also really interested me as a science journalist. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  04:34

Yeah and you actually met with someone who talked about the pain center is similar to a toothache. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Florence Williams  04:43

Yeah. So you know, you asked me when I decided to write the book. I mean, I was already working on a podcast called the Three Day Effect, which is kind of loosely based on my last book, The Nature Fix. And I was just used to sort of carrying a recorder around talking to people about how being in nature, you know, can help us heal. And all of a sudden, I had this, “Whoa, I have something really big I need to heal from, you know, maybe nature will help, maybe other things will help. I’m just going to bring this recorder around and start asking people.” And so one of the first people I met was this biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who’s written a lot about, you know, the science of sort of what happens to our brains when we fall in love. And she also is one of the few scientists who’s looked at the brains of people who are falling out of love, or who’ve been hurt by love in a brain scanner. And she told me, you know, we know that one of the parts of the brain that lights up when we’re feeling this heartbreak are parts of the brain is associated with physical pain. So like a toothache. It’s processed in a similar part of the brain, which is why it makes sense that you know, throughout time, like poets and philosophers, and everybody talks about the pain of heartbreak. It’s not sort of just a metaphor. I mean, there’s something here in the way our brains process emotional pain. That’s really really similar to how we process physical pain. It hurts.

Diana Rodgers, RD  06:10

It definitely does. And I want to just address your recording. I listened to your book. And it makes sense now that you’re working on a podcast because it sounded like a podcast. It was so well produced, the music and everything it was was really, really the most entertaining, the best audiobook I’ve ever listened to. Just in the way it was done. 

Florence Williams  06:32

Yeah, we layered in a lot of actual tape. So it is kind of a hybrid audiobook/podcast, and I’m so glad that you liked it that much. I mean, I’m really, I’m proud of that product. It was really fun to make.

Diana Rodgers, RD  06:45

And one of the things that was so hard for me as I was living, I was married to a farmer, I was living on a farm. The farm was part of my brand. It was part of my, also my social identity. So it felt like I was leaving a tribe and almost being ostracized, right? Which makes sense, because in hunter-gatherer land, if you left your community, it was death. Right? 

Florence Williams  07:14

Right. Or if you got kicked outright of your community, by your ex who wants a divorce, then you have these other things layered on top of the, you know, the sort of loneliness aspect and that you do have the hazards of being alone. But you have on top of that this rejection, and the science of ostracism, which it turns out, it’s super deeply processed, you know. Our brains are very hypersensitive, to being rejected.

Diana Rodgers, RD  07:43

Yeah. And so I felt first, like immediate shock, and lost tons of weight, just like you did, and then different kind of phases set in for me, but you kept kind of talking about nature throughout it, which is has always been so important to me. And so you’re running this nature workshop this summer that…

Florence Williams  08:07

I am. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  08:08

Yeah, so I would love for you to just talk about that briefly. And then we can talk more about the book, but I am going to be, unfortunately, at a conference that weekend. But it sounds amazing. And talk a little bit about the healing power of it. And a little bit about the workshop.

Florence Williams  08:23

Yeah. I mean, I was so blown away, you know, by some of the lessons that I learned while writing this book, and also writing my last book about the power of beauty, the power of awe, the power of, you know, being in nature, to really help us calm down in terms of our nervous systems. But even more interestingly, being in awe, experiencing awe can sort of open up these windows for learning. And for self-transformation, so much so that beauty is actually, it turns out, an antidote to heartbreak and loneliness. And so we’re gonna, you know, sort of explore that. And actually, two retreats I’m doing one is in July in Telluride. And we’re also going to do one closer to the front range of Colorado in October. So people can go to my website and learn more about those. But we’re going to be doing, you know, a lot of kind of exercises, both in terms of nature, immersion, in terms of journaling, in terms of kind of helping us rewrite our stories, you know, of who we are, and where we want to go. So that we become, you know, agents and authors have our own story, which it turns out is also another lesson in the book. And so I think it’ll be really, really great because nature can help us do exactly that.

Diana Rodgers, RD  09:42

Totally. And I did find myself… my first degree is in art education, and I found myself going back to art and you went through an experience where you remind me again. You were sort of drawing your emotions. Talk a little bit about that.

Florence Williams  09:58

Oh, yeah. So you know, so in this book, I mean, I talked about the science of heartbreak, I talked about the many things and the reasons why our bodies are reacting the way they are. But I also try a bunch of interventions that have some evidence behind them. And one of the things I did was this workshop led by a therapist in something called EMDR, which is a sort of modality used in therapy, especially sometimes for post-traumatic stress. And people can argue sort of about whether heartbreak is really trauma or not. But I was, you know, I was convinced that there certainly are a lot of traumatic elements of a big heartbreak. So EMDR stands for eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. And for part of this workshop, and this was, by the way, this was a workshop for divorcing people. It happened to be all women. And I was like, “Okay, these are my people, you know, I’m gonna give this a go for a weekend, see how it works.” And at one point, the therapist who’s leading it gave us… well, several times give us these really big crayons, you know, that you might see in preschool, and some paper, and we had to draw out some painful scenes, draw out painful memories from our heartbreak. And there’s something about using the sort of artsy parts of our brains, as opposed to just the talking parts of our brains, you know, that can help us access, kind of our limbic brain, help us access our emotions. And then we do this thing involving bilateral motion. And typically, if you’re doing this one on one, that therapist might be moving a finger back and forth, so that your eyes are moving right to left, right to left, right to left, while you’re thinking about this really painful memory. And the idea is that there’s something about that bilateral motion, that seems to help kind of take the storm energy out of the emotion of the memory. So you want to ideally decouple the emotion from the memory. So that yeah, that was a bad memory of what happened. Bummer. But you’re not like, completely flattened by it. And your body doesn’t have to relive the stress, you know, of that moment, your nervous system doesn’t have to go into fight or flight every time you remember some scene that happened that’s painful. And, you know, no one really understands why this seems to work. But in, you know, in several studies, big studies, it does seem to be more successful in, you know, helping people move on from super painful memories than just straight, for example, talk therapy, but I think the bilateral motion is a big part of it. So that’s also why I did, I think, so much hiking, and so much paddling and kayak. There’s something about that kind of motion that just seems to help our brains kind of get grounded, maybe make some connections, you know, between different parts of our brains, that can just get us out of this kind of fight or flight state.

Diana Rodgers, RD  12:59

And I also think just getting out of your head, right, and just realizing like when you’re in the middle of nature, you know, I haven’t done as much work as you have outside, which is why I wanted to do one of your workshops, but just to realize how small you are and how beautiful the world is.

Florence Williams  13:17

Exactly, that’s that awe piece makes us feel like we’re part of something bigger, bigger than ourselves. And that’s a really, really healthy response. And I think there’s also something about being in nature. And I think a lot about this that just wakes up our sensory beings, we get into this kind of more animal state of, of having senses and paying attention to our senses, and what are we smelling? And what are we hearing? And that alone can help us get out of the sort of soundtrack of pain and misery and that self-narration that can be so destructive.

Florence Williams  13:34

What were some of the other things you tried that you either loved or didn’t love? Will you share some of the other experiences that you had?

Florence Williams  13:59

Yeah, sure. So let’s see. We talked about the EMDR. We talked a little bit about, you know, my time in nature. I actually ended up doing a 30-day wilderness trip. Because I thought, I mean, in the Three Day Effect, which is this podcast we made. You know, I talk about how three days can be really helpful, but I was like, “You know what? This is such a big heartbreak. I need 30 days. I’m gonna try 30 days outside.”

Diana Rodgers, RD  14:21

Where do I go?

Florence Williams  14:22

I paddled the Green River in Utah, you know, from pretty close to the headwaters all the way down to where this river joins with the mighty Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park. Some of it I did with other people like my kids and my siblings and friends. And then the last two weeks actually did totally solo by myself. Because I was trying to kind of translate this metaphor, you know, I am now going to paddle my own boat. Like I have to learn how to paddle my own boat. I’ve never done this as an adult. You know, I’ve been with my ex-husband my entire adult life. Now it’s time for me to be the captain. So try that. I also played a little bit with the idea of storytelling and trying to access the universal nature of heartbreak by visiting the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is in Croatia. It’s a place where the rituals of heartbreak are sort of getting, I guess, getting off the ground. I mean, we don’t, as a society, we don’t really have rituals for heartbreak, like we do for a lot of other painful or significant, and sometimes happy events in life. But heartbreak is something that’s kind of been missing a ritual. And so the founders…

Diana Rodgers, RD  15:42

That was fascinating. Yeah, sending in stuffed animals or odd objects that reminded them of somebody else, or just sending them to this museum with maybe…

Florence Williams  15:52

Right, they send them to this museum. And then they have to write like two paragraphs about sort of how this object represents their relationship. And there’s something about doing that, right, the act of putting this on display, you know, for other people to see, telling your story in a couple of paragraphs, creating this ritual, participating in this ritual. It’s really that I thought that was helpful and interesting. And then, of course, you know, well, I also tried to rebound dating. And one thing that you hear in a lot of, kind of, popular, I guess like podcasts about how to recover, you know, from a heartbreak is people will tell you, “Oh, don’t jump into another relationship.” I can’t tell you how many people told me that, you know, you have to learn to love yourself. First, you have to work on yourself. And I was like, “Well, where’s the science?” Like, is there science saying that that’s right? And in fact, there was no science. And instead, there was actually some science showing that having a rebound, can be really good for you, after a big heartbreak. It can help rebuild your self-esteem. It can help you regain self-confidence and feel attractive again, which, you know, I was 50, I thought that was important. And it can actually help you sort of separate from your ex and move on a little bit more quickly, according to, you know, a couple of the studies that I saw. I wouldn’t recommend it off the bat for everyone. It’s a really, that’s a really sensitive kind of decision. You have to feel safe if you’re going to, you know, get your nervous system calmed down again, you know. Not every rebound is going to be like a happy and safe event. So you have to… I think it’s something to be taken carefully. And then of course, I also tried psychedelics, and then it sort of in an effort to experience an even bigger dose of awe. I talked a lot about in the book about the science of awe, and how are in fact, maybe the pathway, like the sort of single most significant pathway for why having these psychedelic experiences sometimes been very helpful for people, you know, dealing with anxiety or fear or trauma.

Florence Williams  16:35

Yeah, and you had like a whole guided experience in, you know, with somebody who was watching over you and everything. 

Florence Williams  18:02

So, I worked with the clinical, a clinical therapist in a very safe setting, again, not something I would recommend everyone jump into a lot of risks associated with, it’s not going to work for everyone. I think there are a lot of kind of wacky guides out there. But for me, it actually turned out to be a very, very helpful experience.

Diana Rodgers, RD  18:31

That’s really interesting. What were some of the other things you learned? I mean, you talk about a lot… But in your book, you also talk about just having a meaningful, kind of finding meaning. And I think that’s something that I think it’s hard for women in particular, who have spent a lot of their life, as moms. It can be difficult to have a job that is meaningful, that pays well but also allows you time to run back and forth from soccer practice or whatever like those jobs are hard. I’ve been able to make that for myself. And I’m so grateful because I just jumped into my work. But for a lot of other women that I know, that’s it’s very difficult.

Florence Williams  19:14

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and work certainly can be a pathway to meaning and purpose, but it is by no means the only one. So I mean, if you’re a mom, chances are you’re finding a lot of purpose in that, you know, alone. I think of purpose and meaning as being kind of the big why, you know, the why you do what you do. The ‘why’ you care about the things you care about. And for a lot of people, that’s going to be providing love and sustenance to their families. It’s going to be caretaking. It’s gonna you know, I mean hopefully if you are a caretaker you’re gonna find some meaning and purpose in it. And I think just thinking about that, reflecting on that, reflecting on why you do the things you do. You can be very, very grounding and helpful as you move forward, you know, from these really difficult transitions.

Diana Rodgers, RD  20:08

I definitely noticed my relationship with my kids is much stronger now than it’s ever had been, especially because my ex immediately jumped into a relationship. And so the kids were sort of spinning a little bit, and I was able to be 110% for them, which I think they needed too during that transition. So yeah, it felt really good.

Florence Williams  20:32

I think it’s good for them to, you know, see their parents hurting a little bit, you know, to the extent that it can help breed empathy in them. It can help them understand their own pain. I think sometimes as parents, we think we have to sort of model competence all the time, and success and head held up high. And that’s just not really how life always works. You know, really what we should be modeling for our kids is resilience. It’s, yes, we’re hurting, and guess what we can learn how to feel better, those are the best lessons we can give them.

(Ad for Levels) Diana Rodgers, RD  21:10

Hey, guys, I wanted to tell you about my experience with using Levels, a continuous blood glucose monitor, that I’ve been trying out as one of their early access members, and let you know how you can get an early one too. As you know, I pay close attention to what I eat and where it comes from. I’m one of those people who always wants to know how food impacts my health and have known for a long time that excess carbs have been a big problem for my blood sugar levels. Before I started eating this way, I was on a blood sugar roller coaster and would feel really terrible. If I skipped a meal, I constantly felt like I needed a snack and I didn’t understand why. The great thing about wearing a continuous glucose monitor is that you know exactly what’s happening inside your body minutes after you eat a meal. It’s been a huge game-changer for me to learn that certain carbs or food combinations work better than others. And the cool thing is everyone is different when it comes to how certain foods spike your glucose, for example, white rice, even in the context of a meal will send my glucose soaring. But potatoes with the same amount of carbs keep me pretty level. I also learned that I don’t need to be quite as low carb as I thought I needed to be. And certain tricks like eating salad or vegetables first, or taking a walk after a meal make a huge difference in my spikes. I’m recommending wearing one for a month or so to everyone I work with. Levels currently has a waitlist of over 150,000 people, but they’re offering my listeners first come access to their Beta program. So just go to sustainabledish.com/levels to get yours without a prescription, that’s sustainable dish.com/levels to jump ahead of the line and try this out for yourself to learn how your individual body reacts to food. I know you’ll think is pretty cool. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  22:51

So what are some of the tips? I mean, I want everyone to preferably listen to your book because it was just so great. And I’d be walking around through my town, just like fully immersed in the book. But between now and when they finish your book, what are some tips you can give some of the folks? And it doesn’t have to be – I was also in… it was a 27-year relationship for me. 20 years married, but you talk about it doesn’t have to be like these long-term marriages, you know, you can feel equal pain from a short-term breakup. I actually, even in a couple of the short relationships that I’ve had post separating, they hurt too. Just you know, because you kind of like think about what it might be like, Right?

Florence Williams  23:41

 Definitely. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  23:42

Yeah. So what kind of tips can you help people with?

Florence Williams  23:46

We know there are a lot of ways to feel heartbreak, right? It doesn’t even have to be from a romantic loss, you know, can be from some other loss. So who knows, I mean, we’re so going through a lot of collective and individual heartbreaks right now, as we watch people, you know, become ill, or mentally struggling, you know, or isolated or lonely. Thinking about climate change. I mean, they’re just hundreds of ways I think that we’re sort of experiencing suffering right now. And I think the lessons that I learned really carry over to a lot of those. So, you know, one thing is that our nervous systems really do become implicated, and our immune systems become implicated in our emotional state. So I guess I sort of divvy up that kind of healing piece into three big buckets. And the first one is really calm, like calming down. So we need to put our nervous systems in a place where they’re not so freaked out. However, it is that you find calm. So for me, you know, that was a lot of doing yoga and some meditation and a lot of time in nature, just like walking around, even walking around the block, you know, and looking at the flowers but trying to find things that I could sit with and attend to and breathe into. So the calm piece is the first one. And then the second one is connect. So we need to, I think, be vulnerable with people so that we can feel like we’re authentically connecting, that we’re reaching them that they’re reaching us. If we’re vulnerable with other people, they’ll be vulnerable with us. That really builds bonds, connecting to people who are sort of authentically there in your life and are able to share love with you. So whether it’s your family or your friends, or nature. I mean, I talk a lot about connecting to nature as a way to feel less lonely. I think there’s there’s a lot of evidence for why that works that I talked about. So okay, first calm, then connection. And then finally, this purpose and meaning, what can we learn from this experience, that of suffering that can help us become better people moving forward? What are the stories we can tell ourselves about who we are now? How our hearts have learned to open through being so hurt, and not everyone’s hearts do so it’s really important, I think, to think about that, and to try to access it. And then you know, when you feel like, “Oh, yeah, I actually am a better listener. I am more empathetic with others. I care more about my community now. I feel more connected to my community now.” These are things that actually make you better people moving forward. And that’s the fantastic gift right of heartbreak if you can learn to find it.

Diana Rodgers, RD  26:47

So you just listed a few things that I was, that were part of my next question for you. But I want to know, what else about you as Florence is different today than… How long has it been now?

Florence Williams  27:01

Yeah, it’s been five years. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  27:03

Okay. So what’s different about five-year-old Florence? 

Florence Williams  27:08

Yeah, sure. I feel like I have fully embraced my imperfections. And I understand that to be human is to feel your feelings. You know, I think I used to not want to feel my feelings. And maybe part of that is because of our cultural conditioning, right? That we’re all supposed to kind of put on a happy face and get a lot of stuff done. But also, I think when you’re in a long marriage that’s maybe not so great, you don’t really want to open your heart up and look inside it. It’s a lot easier not to go there. But when you’re heartbroken, it’s like, oh, man, you know, you can’t avoid those feelings. Like they’re here and they’re gonna wallop you. And your only sort of choice through it is to feel it. And then it’s not that bad. It’s like, okay, I can feel this, it hurts. But then these feelings passed, you learn, right? That emotions are transient. I mean, all these lessons of the Buddhists are kind of like, Oh, now I get it. If this kind of makes sense, I need to feel these feelings. And then, of course, the amazing gift there is that once you learn to sit with your pain and your uncomfortable feelings, you also learn to find the positive feelings in a much bigger amplitude as well. So like the joy, the art, the beauty, these feelings, surprisingly, to me, you know, could coexist with the sadness, and the loss. And I became like, much more interested in you know, what’s real, what’s authentic, what it means to be human. And I feel like all that has made me more open to beauty and awe. And also just a better person for the people I love.

Diana Rodgers, RD  28:52

Hmm. I’m getting there. I mean, this is two years for me and not enough. But I definitely am feeling much, much more of those things for sure. Were there any movies or books or albums or anything that helped you through that time?

Florence Williams  29:13

Yeah, I mean, I think there is some good heartbreak literature out there. I mean, there’s a lot of poetry. I read people like Rachel Cusk. I read, you know, a lot of the Bronte sisters talk about unrequited love. I read some poetry. I really like David Whyte. W-H-Y-T-E. I mean, his poetry is – he talks a lot about how you know when you’re heartbroken you feel so lonely, but how it’s actually such a universal emotion. And he says he’s got this line that the great mistake is thinking you’re acting the drama alone. We are all acting this drama, you know, at various times. I thought that was really helpful. I personally you know, listen to a lot of Liz Phair. You know, she’s got the Divorce Song and you know, there’s a lot of sort of like breakup songs that she does so well. You know, I listen to a lot of R&B. There’s a lot of heartbreak there.

Diana Rodgers, RD  30:12

There is a lot of heart. That’s like, that’s interesting. That’s like the main theme of R&B, isn’t it?

Florence Williams  30:19

Yeah, yeah. Soul music. I mean, the called soul for a reason. Like, there’s feelings. And that’s all music is great. What about you? What’s your recommendation?

Diana Rodgers, RD  30:27

I well, I read John Kim’s Single on Purpose, and actually found out that he and I had a mutual friend and ended up wiggling my way into his practice, which was really great. And now I work with a colleague of his as like a once a month check-in kind of friend, which has been really, really helpful and, and the idea of not running away when you start to feel stressed out or anxious and just kind of sitting with it a little bit, and allowing it to happen, and then watching it just wash away to the other side. For sure. I mean, there’s so much conservation land, I’m really lucky right around here. Wish it was always summertime, unfortunately.

Florence Williams  31:13

You don’t always have the best weather where you are.

Diana Rodgers, RD  31:15

It can be really difficult in the New England winter to get outside on a regular basis. But I ended up joining kind of an – I know this is a huge privilege, but a slightly pricier gym that feels kind of like a spa and has made me feel really great. But in John Kim’s book, he does recommend making yourself a playlist. And then he recommended a playlist and he’s, you know, about the same age as I am so all those songs that were really fun in college. 

Florence Williams  31:45

Oh great. Yeah, that’s great.

Diana Rodgers, RD  31:48

I did make a list of all the girlfriends that I had that would make me bring me joy.

Florence Williams  31:55

Good. So friends are so important. And you learn who’s there for you. You know, which is really, I think, another great gift.

Diana Rodgers, RD  32:07

Right? And it’s tricky, though, because when you were a couple friends, the single woman often – well, I don’t know, for the guy. But I remember a girlfriend telling me that because I had many single girlfriends that came over with like, they’re like, if you need me to come over with a gallon of wine, please let me know, you know, but one of them initially told me you wait, and you’re not… Because if there’s trouble in someone’s marriage, you’re going to be a threat to the husband because you might convince the wife that it was time to go, right? And then the wife isn’t going to want you talking to the husband because you might be threatened that way. And so you end up basically losing a lot of couple friends. I mean, they might wait…

Florence Williams  32:52

Your social life changes. Yeah, it does change. For me, I had to really find – I had to spend more time with my friends who were divorced. And I was looking for more role models, you know, of single women, you know, who were happy and thriving, and it became important for me to spend more time with them. So some friends are not there for you. And some friends really are.

Diana Rodgers, RD  33:14

Yeah, so I got a lot closer to my one girlfriend who is much younger than me but has always lived single. And I went over there early on, and I just sat in her apartment. And I was like, “Well, how does… how do you even do this?” Like, and I saw a list on her fridge of all these like gourmet dishes. And I was like, “Well, what’s that Eggs Benedict and Creme Brule?” And she’s like, “Well, those are all the things I want to cook for myself.” And I was like, “Wait, you cook for yourself? Like…”

Florence Williams  33:24

I bought this book, this cookbook, maybe you know it. It’s called Solo by I think it’s Anita Lo. It’s a beautiful cookbook, and sort of simple, delicious things that you can make yourself that will really help you feel like you’re taking care of yourself. And that also work well as leftovers. You know, it’s important to still create beauty in your life, and sometimes that’s going to be through food.

Diana Rodgers, RD  34:12

Yeah, there’s another book called Buy Yourself the Fucking Lilies. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that one.

Florence Williams  34:17

That sounds really good. No, though I like the title.

Diana Rodgers, RD  34:20

It’s similar. She went through a breakup. I’m forgetting the author’s name, but she has an audiobook that I also really loved. And she’s like, you’re worth the $7 lilies, so just pick them up at the grocery store and get them.

Florence Williams  34:32

Oh, that’s great. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  34:33

And so fresh flowers have definitely been a big part.

Florence Williams  34:35

I just bought myself a lily. It’s so beautiful. Yeah, I’m thrilled with it.

Diana Rodgers, RD  34:41

And so I skipped over the part I did want to address briefly like this brought on for you a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard of someone getting Type 1 diabetes from a trauma event. As someone with celiac, I had a lot of other weird autoimmune things popping up for me that I think were a response to just my nervous system being hyper wacky. But will you talk a little bit about it because that’s really scary? We’re losing all this weight and…

Florence Williams  35:12

Yeah, we’re losing all this weight. My blood sugars were really crazy. And I mean, it’s, you know, it’s kind of impossible to say my diabetes was caused by divorce. But we do know that our immune systems really change in the shadow of these big emotions. And specifically, what happens I spend a lot of time in the book talking about this, is that our genes start up regulating for inflammation, and downregulating for things like fighting viruses, which is, you know, unfortunately, the worst response you can have right as you’re heading into a pandemic. And we know that this inflammation, I mean, it can be kind of helpful if you are, in fact alone, stumbling through the jungle 20,000 years ago. But if these feelings of insecurity and loneliness, you know, persist, then you’re dealing with long-term inflammation. And we know that that leads to all kinds of chronic diseases in modern life, everything from these metabolic diseases, to heart disease, to even dementia and cognitive decline. So there’s a lot of urgency to recover from heartbreak, and to do it, well… and just too quickly, for me, I was we looked at my genes, we actually looked at my genetic markers in a lab at UCLA. These are tests that are not available to the general public, but I worked with an immunogeneticist, who studies the illnesses of loneliness, and he’s trying to pick apart, you know, which genes are implicated. And I was up-regulating, you know, genes for inflammation. So we have these white blood cells, you know, that listen for loneliness and listen to our emotional state, which I thought was fascinating. And also, you know, a concern, because so many of us right now are struggling with feelings of isolation and loneliness. So many young people are struggling with these feelings. We need to get better as a society at being there for each other, about reaching out to each other, about being vulnerable with each other being real with each other. Because if we don’t, we are headed for serious physical problems and emotional problems down the road.

Diana Rodgers, RD  37:23

Yeah, I ended up having this thing called Burning Mouth Syndrome. Where my tongue – it was like I burned my tongue for a month. And I could only eat watermelon, and fresh mozzarella cheese because everything – like my tongue was on fire. Nobody knew why. It can be associated with autoimmune stuff. I had weird joint stuff. Like I said, I went into this sort of like false menopause state for a while. So it definitely and actually even not too long ago, about a month and a half ago, I did some labs, and my CRP was 10. 

Florence Williams  38:02

Wow, that’s really high. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  38:05

Wow. Well, you know, one of the things I talked about in the book is the timeline for healing. And unfortunately, 

Diana Rodgers, RD  38:05

Like I’ve never had super abnormal labs like that. And so that’s just a marker of inflammation. And again, as a dietitian, who’s like, paleo, I eat really clean, gained at least 15 pounds that I didn’t really change much, but it really took a toll on my body. So…

Diana Rodgers, RD  38:21

I don’t like it. 

Florence Williams  38:37

It’s long. It’s like, you know, I was so impatient to get better soon. You know, I’m like, okay, a year, I’m gonna give it a year, and then I’m gonna be fine. And a year later, I was like, dang, I still don’t feel so great. You know, the psychologists. There’s a psychologist I talked to at University of Arizona, and he said, you know, divorce is a story of inflammation. And he’s found by looking at these really large datasets that it takes about four years 

Diana Rodgers, RD  39:03

No! 

Florence Williams  39:04

for people to sort of come back to baseline in terms of their health. I feel like I sped it up, like maybe, maybe 50%, maybe 25% by doing all these things that I did, yeah. But be patient with yourself, because now it’s gonna take a while.

Diana Rodgers, RD  39:23

You know, there was one thing I’m remembering that was the most adorable little clip you had in your book, and that was this kind of like grandpa’s workshop shed. 

Florence Williams  39:35

Oh yeah, the Men’s Sheds 

Diana Rodgers, RD  39:37

The Men’s Sheds, because I feel like it must be hard for the men who are the ones who are sitting with a broken heart because women, we have often more time during the day where we have girlfriends. I think some suburban especially men, they especially if they don’t drink a lot, right you know, like, go into a bar or watching, like, men don’t have those like, men relationships as much.

Florence Williams  40:08

Yeah, they don’t. They don’t. Women are good talkers. And that’s really helpful for healing. The men don’t, or they’re just not as good at those kinds of good, strong friendships, unfortunately, and so they have a harder time. And that’s why so many of them jump back into new marriages, they get married super quickly because they tend to sort of derive most of their social and emotional life from their spouse. Whereas, you know, we’re just better at making friends I think, and having friends and feeling better from our friends. Psychologists call ‘Tend and Befriend.’ It’s one way that women really can sort of, I think heal up faster in some ways.

Diana Rodgers, RD  40:47

Hmm. Interesting. So there were these cute little old men sheds that you found. What country was that in Croatia?

Florence Williams  40:57

No that was in the UK. And the UK has acknowledged that loneliness is this epidemic. Yeah. And that it leads to people being ill. And so because they have, you know, a fantastic health care system that believes in prevention, they are paying for a lot of these social programs and social, what they call social prescriptions so that people can be healthier. So and one of their social prescriptions is funding these Men’s Sheds, which are basically these workshops, you know, in a lot of rural areas, but kind of all over where, you know, guys can go and play with their power tools, build birdhouses or whatever, help each other, you know, learn to use this the file or the drill or whatever, and drink some tea because it’s England. And, you know, make some friends. They don’t call it an anti-loneliness program. They just call it a woodshed where they can like play with power drills. But it definitely gets to this idea that men sometimes do better not like sitting down and having tea face to face, but kind of doing something – what they call ‘shoulder to shoulder’ and that can give them a real sense of belonging and help them make some friends.

Diana Rodgers, RD  42:20

Yeah, and I’m remembering actually, too, you had mentioned that some pubs were opening up in the morning time for women to get together and knit or whatever. 

Florence Williams  42:27

Yeah, there’s like knitting, knitting hour in the pubs. There are, you know, singing groups and birding groups and hiking groups and something they call the Chatty Buses, where you can like, take these buses where you can like, meet someone new and have a conversation.

Diana Rodgers, RD  42:42

That’s awesome. Well, we need to do a better job of that here in the US for sure.

Florence Williams  42:46

Yeah, and the Internet doesn’t really seem to be helping, you know, especially when you look at the young people, especially, who seemed to have some of the highest rates of loneliness across the culture.

Diana Rodgers, RD  42:57

Well, and I also think with young people, too, there’s less and less of a tolerance to be around anyone who doesn’t 100% aligned with you in every single ideology. And so it’s interesting. Yeah, like, there’s just, if you don’t agree with me on everything, I can’t be your friend kind of thing. And so the ability to make real-life friends, for most of my friends who are younger than me is a lot harder for them.

Florence Williams  43:24

That’s really depressing. Yeah. Well, another reason why public schools are so important, why community organizations are so important, and why places like parks and trails are important because we actually get to hang out with people who maybe aren’t exactly like us in these public spaces.

Diana Rodgers, RD  43:45

Well, thank you, again, for just such a wonderful piece of work. It really helped me a lot. And I’m sure it’s helped a lot of other people. And I want everyone who’s listening who’s maybe still struggling with this, I would like it to be over, but I don’t know that it is yet even though I’m willing it to be.

Florence Williams  44:04

Be patient. Find some beauty. You’ll get there.

Diana Rodgers, RD  44:09

Where can people find you?

Florence Williams  44:11

My website is Florence Williams.com. And there are all kinds of links on there to social and to my audio work, to retreats, and to talks coming up. So thanks so much.

Diana Rodgers, RD  44:25

Yeah, thank you. Have a great afternoon. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  44:30

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on iTunes and check out my website at sustainable dish.com where you can sign up for my newsletter, catch up on the latest blog post, and check out my courses and favorite products. See you next time and thanks again for listening