Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. My guest today is me. Yep, it's my first ever and

possibly only ever solo episode. From this episode, you'll learn a little more of my story,

my take on storytelling and universal forces and how I employ them, along with ideas about how I came to spirituality

and understand it within a larger context. Hi, friends, throughout this holiday season, you will find

me right here per normal. We will keep publishing new episodes every week and a few solos thrown in as well. So when you just

need to escape from the business of the holiday shuffle or take a break from mom or dad or

who knows who, we'll deep ambivalence about it. And I only recently learned

the definition or etymology of ambivalence, which doesn't mean neutrality, which is what I had

always thought, but it means having an equal attraction and repellence to something.

And so I find myself here talking to you all.

And growing up the way that I did, I'm not a performer.

I was never really a stage seeker or someone who imagine my life talking to other people. And in a way, I think podcast is my format and books, obviously, because I get to be a voice whispering in people's ears and in my cozy hooded sweatshirt,

hiding. But I think, as I've talked about this in the past, that this is something

that a lot of people can relate to, which is the difference between interior work and or work

that's not really seen. And then the fear that so many of us, particularly women have about

bringing ourselves out into the world

in a more visible way. This, of course, dovetails closely with the book that I've written,

specifically the chapter about pride, which is really about how scary it can be to be seen. And obviously we have so many

cultural examples, again, particularly for women. And for those who don't know, my book is called

On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good. It's coming on May 23rd from Dahl Press, Penguin

Random House. And I have ghostwritten 12 books now, many, many bestsellers across so many

different categories. It's actually, it's funny. In summation, because you would look at the books that I've ghost written or co-written

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