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This is high function revealed. People see what I get done. What I want to talk about is how I got this way, what I learned growing up, what it takes to keep going, and what I'm starting to notice about the things I do over and over again.
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Some of those patterns have served me well, some I'm still working through. And I'm curious whether you see them in your Life, too.
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Season 1 what you don't see Episode 1. Janice is back and she's better than ever. I was a little girl on a block in Queens the first time I remember announcing my comeback. Nobody heard the announcement, by the way. The kids came over to say hi, and in my head I said, janice is back and she's better than ever.
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Better than ever. Where did I even get that? I must have heard it in a movie. I couldn't tell you what those kids said after high. But all these years later, I can tell you exactly what I said to myself.
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I thought about this little girl this morning. And the funny thing is, it took sitting down to make a podcast for me to realize how many times I've given myself some version of that same entrance. I have other podcasts. I know how to introduce a guest, get a conversation going, ask somebody a question that'll get them to tell me a good story.
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It feels a little different to sit down and realize, well, Janice, you're the topic.
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And I did want to do this one with just my voice. People have had something to say about the way I look since I was a little girl.
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I was the exotic one. Exotic? I was a kid from Queens. What exactly was I supposed to do with that information?
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Being sexualized, that young stays with you. And for this, I just wanted to talk a little bit of me at a time.
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This morning I was listening to one of those videos about Carl Jung. I should probably tell you who he was, because I spend enough time listening to things about this man that sometimes I bring him up. Like we all know Carl.
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He was a Swiss psychiatrist. I gravitated toward him at a time in my life when I really wanted to understand people, particularly people I loved. You can spend years with somebody, know their family, know what happened to them when they were young, and still be sitting there one day thinking, how did you get from there to what you just did? And somewhere in all that trying to figure other people out, I got curious about myself.
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I got interested in Jung's life, too.
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He was somebody who spent his work life studying the mind, and he paid attention to his own dreams, his own inner life. I like that about him. And every once in a while, I'll come across something he studied and think, oh, I know what that feels like. I've just never had words for it.
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One of those ideas is what he called the Persona, the face we learn to show the world.
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The easiest way I can explain what that means to me is if you know me through work, you know who to call when you have an idea and you need somebody to figure out how to make it happen, that's me.
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I enjoy being that person.
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You could know me that way for 20 years and have a pretty good sense of who I am, but it might never occur to either one of us to ask who I call when I have absolutely no idea what to do.
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So I'm listening this morning, and there's a line in the video that stays with me.
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You cannot shed your skin under the gaze of those who love the show.
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The first thing I thought about was a few years ago when I pulled back from social media.
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There had been a time when people paid quite a bit of attention to me there, and then I came out of an abusive relationship feeling like I'd lost myself. I needed some time where nobody was looking at me.
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Then I thought, hold on, you did this way before social media?
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Ask my family, ask my friends. I stopped calling. People look for me, and I love these people.
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You'd think I could pick up a phone and say, listen, I've got a lot going on. Give me a little time. Sometimes I don't even do that, because now you're going to ask me what's going on, and what am I going to tell you? I'm still trying to figure it out myself.
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So I let it go another day.
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And the longer I go without calling, the more there is to explain when I do.
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That's how I got back to that little girl in Queens this morning.
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My mother and father had a beautiful house on the same street as Louis Armstrong's house.
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I lived on that block from the time I was a toddler until I was about nine.
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I played there. And when I think about my father from that time, I remember going to baseball games and McDonald's and getting to ride around in his cars. It was cool. I liked being with my dad. With him, I got to feel like a little girl.
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I also remember him throwing a beer bottle at my mother.
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She has a scar.
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I love my father.
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He left, and I love him. I've been trying to figure out how to go from the baseball games to that bottle in a way that makes sense. To somebody
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listening.
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And this is about as close as I can get. I was there for both.
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My mother was in an abusive relationship, and we would leave. I went to five different elementary schools.
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Five.
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When you're grown, you can say that in one breath. When you're a kid, you have to walk into every one of them.
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And then one day, my mother went back to the old block to visit cousins, actual cousins, makeshift cousins, who knows? They were family to me.
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The kids came over to say hi, and there I am with my little movie line.
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Janice is back, and she's better than ever.
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In my head, it still makes me smile. There's part of me that's like, of course that child gave herself an entrance. I know her. There's always something about it that makes me sad. Now I wonder what I thought better meant.
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I wonder if I even thought about it that much.
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Maybe I was just happy those kids came over. I'm old enough now to have all these questions for her, and she was little enough to be perfectly happy with her line.
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Later, I went to Louis Armstrong Middle School. And when I told the story out loud earlier today, what I said was, eventually, when I stabilized, I went to Louis Armstrong.
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When I stabilized.
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Listen to who I made responsible for that sentence. I was the kid who went to five schools, five elementary schools.
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What I had was a school I could count on. I had friends. I had dance classes.
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I had honor roll. I was happy there. I want you to know that. Because if you'd known me then and you remembered me happy, you'd be remembering me right.
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Home was scary. My hurt me. By the time I got to high school, I'd worked up the courage to say something.
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My aunt tried to take me in a few times. I remember who tried.
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I also remember what it felt like when other people knew. And somehow it got folded into family life.
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And there I still was.
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Think about what it takes for a kid to decide, okay, I'm going to tell somebody.
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I'd done the part that took everything I had.
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I'd said it out loud, and I was still the kid who had to go home.
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I would have liked somebody to help me.
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Now there's something I want to get right about 16, 17, because those years were horrendous mentally, and if I leave it there, you're going to get the
wrong idea about the girl I was. By then, I had found my courage. Nobody physically hurt me again during those years. People try to hurt me mentally many times over. That's another podcast. But at 16, the feeling I had was Nobody can hurt me now. And, God, I remember how good it felt to feel that way about myself.
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I was doing great in school. I had loads of friends. I grew up in Queens. And here I was going to high school in Manhattan. I got to go on the train by myself. Even now, listen to how I said that. I got to go on the train. I had a transit pass. I could take myself somewhere. And what a time to have that city open to you. This was 89, 90. I graduated in 91.
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I was on the east side. I wasn't that far from Tompkins Square Park.
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I saw what crack was doing to people.
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I saw the face of HIV and aids.
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When I think about New York, then all of that is in the memory for me, too.
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I didn't understand everything I was seeing.
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I was 16, but I was out there seeing the world for myself, seeing people whose lives were so different from mine. I could get on a train in Queens in the morning and spend the day in Manhattan. And then I'd go home. And it could be such a lonely place.
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It's something to think about how much life could fit into a school day and how lonely I could feel by the end of it.
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And I had mtv. I'm telling you, music was everything to me. Dance was everything. I took the classes. I did the dance shows. And I'm smiling, talking about it. Because if you'd asked me at 16, Janice, what's going on with you? You probably would have heard about a dance show long before you heard anything about home.
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I would have had plenty to tell you. I had this whole world of my own. I loved it there. They knew me there.
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You know what was hard about those years?
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I found the courage to tell adults I trusted what was happening at home.
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They knew. And at 16, what was I supposed to do with the fact that I was still the one going home and figuring out how to live there?
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I think that's why I remember my friends and the music so clearly. I could be having a hard time at home and still spend half the day looking forward to dancing. And when I got there, I was happy.
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That was how I kept going. A lot of the time I had things I wanted to get up and do.
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You know what's funny about telling your life in pieces? I could spend the rest of the episode telling you what happened at home, and you could walk away thinking, that poor girl must have hated her life.
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And I'd want to call you back and say, wait, where'd you get that? I have hated being poor at times. I can tell you that without much soul searching, I've had to bounce back more times that I would have liked. But I've never resented my life. And I loved being that girl, doing well in school, having my friends, getting myself around Manhattan, dancing in those shows.
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Somebody who knew me at school might be surprised by what I've told you about home.
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Somebody hearing about home might be surprised by how happy I was at school.
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I remember going back and forth between those two places every day.
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I know how much of me was in each one.
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I think about her sometimes. When people tell me about how capable I am, I understand why they say it.
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I build businesses.
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I like walking into a situation and figuring out what needs doing.
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If you've ever brought me an idea and gotten off the phone with a whole project, please know I was having a good time, too.
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Where it gets complicated for me is when I love somebody.
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I can tell you what he's going through. I can tell you who he's lost, what's weighing in on him, why a particular thing is hard for him. I can give you a pretty thoughtful account of how he got to be who he is.
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And if you stopped me in the middle and asked, janice, how's it been for you living with him, I might need a minute. I've had a lot more practice answering the first question.
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That's one of the reasons I went looking for people like Jung in the first place. I really thought if I could understand somebody better, I'd have a better idea of what to do.
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And sometimes all that happened was I understood him better. I still had to decide what I was willing to live with.
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That part was mine.
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In one relationship, I went all in. I paid for so much.
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I did so much.
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By the time I left, I was broke. And what I kept saying to myself afterward was, I thought I was smarter than that.
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I hear how hard I am on myself in that sentence.
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If a woman I love told me she'd given somebody everything she had because she believed they were building a life together, would my first question be, well, how smart are you?
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God, I hope not. I'd ask her what happened. I'd want to know what she thought they were building.
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What had she hoped life would feel like with him?
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I know my answer.
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I wanted a home.
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And this is where I have to slow down a little because I have a home. I've worked hard for it. The words that came out of my mouth today were, I finally have a home, but it's me that's holding up the home.
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I keep Hearing the finally in that I went to five elementary schools.
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I remember what it meant to me when I got to Louis Armstrong Middle School and I could count on going back to the same school.
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Of course, it means something to me to be able to say I have a home.
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I know how much went into being able to say that.
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What I'm still figuring out is when I'm looking for stability, do I sometimes find a situation I think I can make stable?
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Because that would feel familiar to me. I know what to do when something needs doing. Give me a problem, I can get busy with it. And while I'm busy, it can feel like we're building something together.
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It might take me a long time to stop and ask, if I took my hands off this for a minute, what would happen?
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I'd like to know. I could have a hard week, go a little quiet, leave a few things undone, and the home would still hold me.
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That's about as far as I've gotten with that thought. And usually this is where I'd disappear on you.
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I'd go away, think about it, do whatever I had to. The next time you heard from me, I might have a new project, or I'd put a picture up where I'd look good. I like a cute picture of myself. Who doesn't?
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I do. And the picture could be from a genuinely good day.
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You'd see it and think, oh, there she is. Good to see her. And in my head, same kid, same block. Janice is back and she's better than ever.
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Then I'll sit down and write something on Substack that takes a little more out of me.
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I'll go back and forth about whether I'm ready to say it.
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Finally put it up and it gets quiet.
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And I'm over here checking, thinking, well, damn, I thought you wanted to know where I went.
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Does anybody actually read my stuff?
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Of course. I wonder.
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I wrote it hoping somebody would read it.
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But I think I'm figuring out sitting here talking to you is what I hoped would happen after you read it. I'd like somebody to tell me a story back.
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Maybe you're the one in your family who goes quiet. Maybe you're the friend who keeps calling.
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I've been wondering about you, too. Because while I'm over here taking the time I need, you're on the other end of a phone trying to decide whether to call me one more time.
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And here I am saying people come looking for me, like that takes care of the whole side of the story.
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I've told you how it feels to be the one who disappears. I don't think I've asked you often enough how it feels to be the one who misses me.
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So if this brought somebody to mind or brought you back to a block of your own, here's what I'd love to know.
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When you finally saw each other again and you got past hey, how have you been?
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What did you wish you could have said?
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I think what I would have liked to say to those kids is actually pretty simple.
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I missed you.
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I'm glad you still know me.
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Thanks for spending this time with me. If you recognize something from your own life today, I'd love for you to tell me that story. I'll talk to you next time.