I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

People often ask me how I made the switch from law to writing, and that is a long story for another day,

but I will say that now that I'm a parent myself, and I realize how much parents want their children to be happy and safe,

I realize how remarkable it was that my parents were so supportive of me making that big career switch.

At the time, I had just finished law school, which by the way my parents paid for,

I was finishing up my clerkship for Justice Andrew Day O'Connor,

and I'm sure to my parents, my future looked very secure and established,

and it was at this point that I announced, hey, I'm going to start all over from the beginning,

and I'm going to become a writer.

And my parents were very supportive of that, and it made it a lot easier for me to make that change.

I'm very influenced by my parents, and it would have been very, very difficult for me if they had opposed me taking that risk.

So I was saying that to my father the other day, I was reminding him of that time,

and I was saying, wow, I really appreciate looking back how hard it must have been to just be supportive of that big change.

And my father said, well, honey, at some point you have to switch from advisor to cheerleader.

And I thought, oh my gosh, and I said, that's so true, that's right.

When do you think that you need to do that?

When do you think you switch from being advisor to cheerleader?

And he said, well, I think it might be about that time for you to do that for Eliza,

because Eliza's 18 years old now.

And I hear advice all the time about, oh, it's important to let kids be independent,

you have to make children make their own mistakes and all that.

But I didn't really quite get it until my father put it into those words.

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