HELEN SLATER: EPISODE LINK
SHOP OUR GIFT GUIDE: GUIDE LINK
TRANSCRIPT:
Colleen:
Welcome back to hot flashes and cool topics podcast today. We are going to have
such a great conversation with our guest Helen Slater. Welcome to the show.
Helen Slater:
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
Colleen: We’re thrilled to have you here and Bridgett and I really notice the
more conversations we have with women in our demographic, it’s so seems that we
discover the richness in their lives. And I don’t mean that monetarily. I mean that
experientially, like everyone is just growing and doing these creative things.
And there’s such great conversations. So I wanted to start today talking about the
fact that you got your PhD last year.
Helen Slater:
I did. I defended my dissertation.
And in fact, Daphne Zuniga, who you had on this show, I don’t know how many
episodes ago, she was there. She drove up to Pacifica Graduate Institute as did a
whole other bunch of my friends and my husband and my daughter, because the defense
takes place, you know, you have to present like a half hour, the way Pacifica
Graduate Institute does it, you’re presenting like a half hour PowerPoint and
discussing one aspect of your dissertation. And it was really fun to have Daphne
there and all my friends and my family and the Zoom call -in of people could zoom
in. So friends and family members came that way too. Yeah, it was quite amazing.
Bridgett:
– Oh, it’s so nice just to have that much support from people. And what really
prompted you to do this? What was your– –
Helen Slater:
So I grew up in New York and New York City. I went to the high school for performing arts, which is, I don’t know if youremember the movie “Fame” or the TV show “Fame.” –
Bridgett and Colleen: Oh yes. –
Helen Slater:
In fact, just for fun, ’cause of all the connective little tissues, Erica Gimple,
who starred in the TV version of “Fame” as Coco, is one of my dearest friends,
and she also was at the defense of my dissertation. –
Bridgett: Oh my goodness, that is sonice.
Helen Slater:
– So it’s like at all these lines. But so when I was at the high school for
performing arts, I was there for acting and this is in 19, gosh, I guess 1979 is
when I started in my sophomore year. And there was a program that was a little bit
on its last legs. It was called the bus and truck program. And it was original
music. It was an original musical or not quite yet original musical. It would be a
show that 11th graders would audition for. They had been doing the same show for
years and years. I think it was called Alice in TV Wonderland. And a new teacher
came in and said, I want to take a fairy tale. And I want to write original
music. And he had heard me perform original music at a cabaret night, and he said,
“Would you be interested in writing the music to Hans Christian Andersen’s The
Nightingale or The Emperor’s Nightingale?” And his view was, which sort of began that
opening of how fairy tale and myth can be such a beautiful way to help navigate
periods of life that are difficult, whether you’re reading the Greek myth of Demeter
and Persephone or Hansel and Gretel, ugly duckling, or it doesn’t matter what culture
you’re pulling from. These myths and fairy tales really can be almost like parables.
So if biblical stories feel too heavy, a lot of times the same messaging or the
same teachings can be found in a fairy tale or a folk tale. And the way that this
bus and truck program was designed is he made the Nightingale, or we wrote, we all
participated through improv and then I wrote the lyrics and music too. It became
almost a Christ story. So the Nightingale became a Christ figure, the emperor, I
don’t know if you know the story, but the emperor was. I know that one. Oh, it’s
such a fantastic story. He is this very egoic emperor,
Very selfish everything belongs to him and the nightingales is very plain bird who
sings so beautifully and he loves her voice and he cages her when they bring her
back to him and insists that she sing for him and finally she’s let go and as
he’s dying he lets her go and he has a mechanical nightingale built you can just
see all the implications of this, how we might try and feed the soul with things
that aren’t really the real thing, for lack of a better word. Anyway, the
Nightingale comes back and sings to him, and he comes back to life when he was at
death’s door, and then his, the way that he rules as an emperor completely shifts,
and he comes from this place of love and generosity for the people of the land.
And so that was this tiny little, I’m in 11th grade at Performing Arts High School,
and I got very lit up by this idea that music can move us,
that these stories can speak to us if you didn’t want to mainline biblical ideas or
too much religious ideas. Here were fairy tales, folk tales, myths that it was a
little more obscure, a little more hidden, but you could still get these beautiful
teachings on love, forgiveness, redemption, resurrection,
all these ideas that depending where you are in the pendulum from atheists to devout
religious person, you would have something for you could be found when it’s couched
in that myth and fairy tale idea.
Bridgett:
Yeah. so amazing that it stayed with you from
the time you were– –
Colleen:
Well, that’s what I was gonna say. For a lot of women in
our demographic, they’re going back to finding things that they were passionate about,
that’s something that, like you said, sparked them. You had such a wonderful career
in acting. Did you pick this up later in life and say this is something I’ve kind
of, it’s kind of streamlined through my life, but now I wanna really focus ’cause
your PhD is in mythology. –
Helen Slater:
It is.
Colleen:
So was it something you picked up?
Helen Slater:
– For me, it was always with me. And I’d be curious to hear from the other women you’ve
interviewed or even from both of you that a lot of these inklings are like
breadcrumbs in the woods, they’re always with us. And then we get to a certain
point where either we wanna fan them or bring them up out in another way. For me,
I wrote music. I was cast as Supergirl then as in the legend of Billie Jean and
then in Secret of My Success. And with those people, these very big roles in
Hollywood where my career kind of took over for a while, but always during that
time I was writing music. So over the next 30 years, 40 years, I was composing
music. I I made six albums, I think I shared with you, three of them were
recorded, or maybe it was just two. Two of them were recorded in Nashville,
Tennessee at County Q Studios, and two of the albums, one is based on the Ugly
Duckling, the other one is literally called the Myths of Ancient Greece, and they
take the Ugly Duckling folktale and then Myths of Ancient Greece, and I put those
stories to music. So really, that can tell you how powerful something can happen to
you in your teenage years that even though it morphs into something different as you
get older, if it really spoke to you in those younger years, it’s wild to me how
it can stay with you for your whole life.
Bridgett:
And it’s so amazing. I think that you were able to do something with it. I would love to remind our listeners and women out there that don’t forget, don’t give up on those things that just sparked your interest because I mean I was an elementary school teacher, Colleen was a lawyer and who knew I mean you know we’re having a podcast about this time of life now how
wonderful yeah and it is amazing what women can do and you know and just
encouraging them to just go out find that passion and it it does if it doesn’t
work out it’s not a failure always it’s It’s just something that you tried and you
might find a different little way that it means.
Helen Slater:
Well, you’re touching on a really
interesting idea, which is famously, Joseph Campbell introduced this idea of the
hero’s journey or like these kinds of rites of passage in order to become a whole
person or something, but that’s not the heroine’s journey necessarily. And in fact,
I think I don’t want to make such a generalization, but feminine, let’s say,
the feminine hero. So you could be a man with the feminine quality, but let’s just
say women as a catch -all or the heroine’s catch -all is more, I think,
periods of inwardness. Things go spiral as opposed to,
you know, we’re going to go this, this, conquer this, do this, turn to that, have
a period of exile, and then we become whole, or that more classical Odysseus,
or the male, I think women, they can have those elements, but it really isn’t a
straight line, our journey. And I think we’re always staying, in general, there’s a
more, we’re just more in tune with this interior piece,
even if we can’t put words to it. So those things where it’s a dark period or we
can’t find our way out or we don’t quite know, I have a lot of, and my
dissertation actually is about this, about how we sit with periods of suffering and
sit with grief and sit with those moments where we don’t feel particularly ambitious
or don’t have a clear vision for ourselves in this back third of our life that we
may have had in the first two thirds.
Colleen:
Do you find that in going through your PhD
program that the myths spoke to you as you started to age that there were certain
things that were resonating over and over? Did you find patterns?
Helen Slater:
100 % and I would
encourage anyone listening to this or to both of you that there are going to be
stories that you’re just like, “I don’t know what this is, but I just love this,”
or you see a movie or you see something and you’re like, “I relate to that.” So
the two that show up in my dissertation, one is based on a Scottish tale, The
Selkie and the Fisherman, and the other one is the Greek myth Demeter and
Persephone. But just very briefly, The Selkie and the Fisherman is very much about
and I’m sure you’ve heard the Disney version is the little mermaid. It’s a selfie
sea animals She comes a fisherman sees her bathing with her sister.
She takes off her pelt and he falls in love with her and she He steals her pelt
and what happens and he asks her to marry him and he promises she can return
to the sea after seven years. She agrees to it. And after seven years, her skin
starts to crack and she’s very chapped and really wants to return to the sea. And
he feels betrayed by this because they’ve had this beautiful marriage and they’ve had
a child. And eventually she does return to the sea and shortening this quite a lot.
But as a metaphor, it has to do with listening to those inklings where maybe we do
have to go more in or it doesn’t quite make sense why we’re feeling we need to
make a left turn or not be necessarily with what the culture is asking us to do
or with how we’re being conditioned to respond in a certain situation. And that myth
of or that folktale, the Selkie efficiently gives this lovely template for different
ways that we might feel okay about what is organically or naturally happening to us
and not trying to squeeze ourselves into what the society might be saying we’re
supposed to be in this moment.
Bridgett:
So yeah. – I think that’s such a great message to
women right now because it’s a great message to women just, you know,
or really anybody, men can also, they feel like they have this role that they have
to traditionally be a breadwinner or something like that, but women just saying that,
you know, you don’t have to be a mother if you don’t want to be a mother. You
don’t have to, you know, do these things. You don’t have to be married or you can
be married or, you know.
Helen Slater:
– And then the question is how do we,
you know, we just need so much encouragement, whatever that path is like the idea
of strong -arming your way through a period of life that, in fact, I think that is
why friendships become so meaningful or even the spouse or the community’s certain,
whatever it is that we really need that support and people that reflect maybe our
unique strange thing at any given moment to have that encouragement to keep going,
you know, you’re not, you’re doing okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen:
How important, you know, we’ve spoken to some of your friends, actually. How important has the
female friendship been for you as you start to get older?
Helen Slater: I mean, I think you could write a dissertation on that.
The power of female friendship. Yeah. And I’m sure both of you can relate to this,
that not all friendships stay. And there are some that really are with you for a
lifetime, some that are with you for a lifetime, but become almost like siblings
where you just accept that you’re in a different place. Then there are just those
wisdom friends. They might be a few years older than you or just because of who
they are when you’re in their presence, you just feel like you can open your heart
and speak so, so truthfully. And that variety, I don’t think it’s so one size fits
all. And, and yeah, I mean, super interesting to how we walk with our friends
through their difficult periods, how friends walk with us through our difficult
periods that, but, but without, you know, I’m, I think there’s, I personally rely on
very much this fellowship of women in my life for sure.
Yeah.
Bridgett:- You know, well, just having them show up for you for your dissertation.
–
Helen Slater:
Yes. – Oh my God. – I mean– – So amazing. – You know, that sounds so amazing that
this community showed up for you. – It was, and one of my friends, I mean, they
were all sitting there, I have one particular friend, I look up, I’m like halfway
through with the PowerPoint, the images of the tree and the path and whatever it
was. And I look up and I see one of my friends and she’s just sobbing like could
not stop crying. Which I took as a great show of support.
Bridgett: – You’re just like, you’re so proud of someone. I mean, I’ve done that. You’re so proud of somebody.
You just overcome with emotion.
Helen Slater:- Yes, being there.
Bridgett:- That you’re just so happy for them. And I think that’s a great thing about this time of life too, because I think so many women that we have encountered are so happy for the for the success of another woman. They’re cheering them on. It’s very rare that we find someone that is not happy for the success of the other woman.
Colleen: And I think that’s a really beautiful thing that we found just through doing this podcast. And everyone’s kind of doing it differently.
Helen Slater:Some people really do feel driven to keep going in a more creating things, accomplishing things almost like that vertical thinking, but that really speaks to them. It gives them joy, gives them that feeling of
meaning. And then I have other friends where it really is just kind of a quieter,
things are blooming, but they may not be as obvious. They’re a little more Interior
based or just the range is pretty spectacular how how people are walking, Walking
each other home as Ram Dass says Yeah,
Colleen:
and it’s true because there’s you know,
we find so many listeners say I feel invisible I feel not heard not seen but in
our conversations with so many women we find that they’re finding their own paths.
It doesn’t have to be a huge look at me, look at me, you know, CEO of a company
or maybe it is, but it’s finding those moments of peace,
of fulfillment, of joy, and then bringing your friends along with you to see that
that’s yours. Their paths may be different.
Helen Slater:
Yeah, that’s beautifully said. And I would even add to that, that my understanding is that when we are in that place of receptivity or peace or practicing having a rendezvous with things that put us in
that state of mind, that does have an effect with those that are around us. But it
does take effort to say I’m going to take the hike in the morning and really just
take in these birds and what’s going on in the path or I’m I’m gonna really slow
down with that cup of tea or read a passage of whatever sacred text or a myth,
whatever it is, and that you can just feel the mind pivoting and resting down a
little. And then I do think that has like the butterfly effect, I think rippling in
ways that may not be seen, but profoundly affects the community. And who knows
that’s going all the way to, yeah.
Collee:
– That’s very true.
And I know that we have to at least touch on your very busy career in acting,
because they would be like, “Why didn’t you ask about Supergirl?” So, they’ll get
mad at me. So, you started very young. We talked about that. You were in Performing
Arts in high school.
First was your first was an after -school special?
Helen Slater:
Yes, Amy and the Angel.
Colleen:
With some heavy hitters, Meg Ryan and James Earl Jones and Matthew Modine and I mean like crazy.
Colleen: So starting simply you just and then you drove right into Supergirl when you
were 18. Can you talk about what that was like because you got to actually have
conversations with Christopher Reeves about it.
Helen Slater:
It was four months of training.
Colleen:
You’re 18 years old. Luckily, social media is not around at that point. But what
was the experience for you like?
Helen Slater:
Well, it’s interesting because when I was in high school, we weren’t really allowed to work. Some of us took a job here and there,
but part of the performing arts ethos was you’re going to get this training. And it
was rigorous. It was half the day was acting class movement, voice diction.
So I was chomping at the bit to not go right into college and to see if I could
get work as an actor. And I think when you’re 18, you kind of have these blinders
on, you can’t see the consequences or pitfalls. So it was just pure
drive to try and get work and totally committed to it. As if I was still in high
school, that was just that passion, and no matter what the script, no matter what
the audition, working on it in the way that I had learned to work on it at
Performing Arts, treating it as depth fully, these TV auditions and movie auditions,
as if it was check off or as if it was, so it had that kind of innocent, yeah.
So being cast as a superhero, I didn’t totally think, I didn’t know,
it didn’t square with anything, it didn’t fight with anything, it was just like,
well, that’s the role, like that just seemed incredible to get a job that soon out
of high school. And in that way, I didn’t really see much difference of that and
what I have been learning in high school. It just seemed to be all part of that
same thing. You had your work ethic, you had, I met these incredible people in
England.
There was isolation. I was living by myself. But I made friends through the man who
coached me, outjoined. He brought my stunt double, Tracy Edmonds and Tracy Michaels now,
who’s still a dear friend of mine. So she became like someone who I could be
friends with. But yeah, definitely isolating and friendship and in a new country and
kind of eyes wide open and so grateful, so happy that I had gotten work out of,
like that was the dream and it had happened. I think that kind of describes.
Bridgett:
– It’s so wild that that’s become this cult classic. And I know that you go to different
Comic -Cons and things like that. How is that? Like, has that been kind of a
continuous thing or when did that kind of start?
Helen Slater:
– In the last, I would say the last 10 years I started going to Comic -Cons. Maybe it’s even been a little longer now. And weirdly, Supergirl is certainly the reason they say they want me, but I would say the fans, it’s almost equal or even more for the legend of Billie
Jean, which was this, I think ’cause they were just running it on TV so much that
this different generations just grew up with this modern Joan of Arc story.
And you know, it’s great. I’ve told people that when you’re at these events,
what’s so moving is the stories that you hear. It’s not even like, you were so
great in that I mean of course there’s that piece but there are things like you
know my father was very sick and he was at the end of his life and we were
watching movies and this was a movie that so things like that were your heart just
opens immediately and you know very uh very moving yeah it’s
Colleen:
It’s interesting because it’s a timeline in your life but it’s also a timeline in everyone who’s watching it and people Remember, I was doing this, I was giving birth during this one, and it’s a moment in time, which is really kind of a nice memory to have with stuff like
that. Did you feel like, because you did hit the ground running,
so to speak, play onward, ’cause you’re a super girl, did you feel like you had to
keep the momentum going or did you kind of take it as it came with each role?
Helen Slater:
– In the beginning, it was just so dazzling and overwhelming to be shot out like
that and be working so much in those first five, six years, in my 20s,
like from my teens to my mid to late 20s. And then there were some like,
it started to fray a little. I didn’t love the feeling of fame. I just wasn’t
unnatural at that. I felt uncomfortable.
The privacy thing just seemed so strange, even though I’m not looking any gift horse
in the mouth. It was just genuinely how I felt. It just felt so odd to not have
your privacy. So there were little moments like that that started to puncture the
kind of dream of it. And then it takes years and years and being in therapy and
meeting a wonderful husband and having a daughter and writing these, making these
albums and working throughout. I never stopped working. It kind of went a little
more underground, but it became more right -sized for my thing.
So to have that big crash in the beginning, I didn’t feel as joyful as it was in
the very, very beginning. it started to get uncomfortable. Probably a psychologist
could say why. I mean, as a mythologist, I could say why. But I’m sure there’s
something developmentally happening that if you’re too exposed and the psyche doesn’t
have time to repair or to turn in or to navigate it,
I mean, I think there’s very few people that navigate it very well and come out
the other side feeling, for lack of a better word, normal. And I kind of had a
thing of really wanting to feel normal. Or like, I don’t know whatever that was,
maybe from writing the Nightingale, the Empress Nightingale when I was in high
school, just understanding so profoundly the thing of someone who has so much
material wealth is nothing if you don’t have a soul or if you’re not connected to
something that has deep meaning. So probably that had some kind of effect on me.
Bridgett:
I think that comes through though in the roles that I’ve seen you in. There’s some
kind of innocence about your characters and my favorite that you’ve been in is
Ruthless People.
And I think that with your, I think it’s this innocence or something that just kind
of comes through. I don’t know, but I mean, you’ve been in so many movies with
some really big names. I mean, that movie, “Bet Middler,” you know, Danny DeVito.
Helen Slater:
Danny DeVito, sure.
Bridgett:
Like, oh my goodness, how was that?
Helen Slater:
Well, incredible. I mean, “Bette Middler” was just a force to be reckoned with and so
helpful. You learn early on when you’re on a set, just they’re actors,
especially when you’re younger and they’re older, and they’ll just help you just be
generous with you. And she really was of that kind. And I had met the Zucker
brothers. When I was making Supergirl in England at Pinewood Studios,
they were filming, I guess, Top Secret with Val Kilmer. So we were all on the
Pinewood lot. Um, that it was just like one of those, I’m sure good sign, good fortune things
that two, three years later when they were then doing Ruthless People that I had
met them back then. So that had a nice little synchronous CD or, you know, re,
re -meeting people you knew back in England.
Colleen:
you were interviewed recently and They asked you about Faye Dunaway. And it was
really interesting that you talked about how she was very aware of the lighting.
Helen Slater:
– Yes. – And she was maybe in her 40s at the time, but a lot of actresses are
very aware of the camera and the lighting.
Colleen:
Can you talk about that and how it
affected, ’cause it didn’t seem like you really cared either way.
Helen Slater: – Well, when you’re younger, I don’t think you care at all because you’re just floating in estrogen or
drowning an estrogen and there’s just like collagen for days.
It’s hard when you get older, I think. I mean, I, I, I,
what do I feel about this?
I really respect women that take care of themselves. Like there’s nothing wrong with
figuring out the lighting. Like she probably felt rightly so that she was on that
movie for maybe four weeks, we were on it for seven months, right? So she’s coming
in doing her thing. So can the Director of Photography be as tuned in to what she might need if she had been in every shot of every frame? Probably not. I mean, this is me just guessing.
So she had developed that skill of, I’m protect myself. I’m going to make sure that
I, and I’ve seen that with our other actresses too. Yeah, who was I, I was just
talking to somebody who said just they were not taking care of her on the set, you
know, when you get older, they kind of, they can just put you in a category that
they’re not going to spend the same amount of time of, I guess, prettifying and
beautifying. Yeah, it’s crazy that it’s part of our business,
Bridgett:
But it kind of, is do you do you find that and I’m not really trying to bash men I always say that but do you find that men might get more attention than a woman at a certain age on
the set for just for anything like you said making them look their best or do
their best?
Helen Slater:
I mean that hasn’t been my experience And I have been working
so much less now like last thing I was on was the Supergirl TV series and then I
did a small thing in the flash. And because it was so minimal what I was doing,
I felt like I had the thing of going in coming out. And my mind not really
focused as much on these things that we’re even talking about right now. But I had
had that feeling probably in my 40s where when I saw something that I did, I’d be
like, oof, that’s, I guess that’s what I look like. That kind of adjustment like,
“All righty, that’s how we look now.”
Colleen:
You mentioned that one of the happiest times
was when you were in grad school. And I’m sure some people would be like, “Wait a
second, she was in Supergirl, she was famous.” But why was it going back to school
and fulfilling that need to learn more such a great time in your life?
Helen Slater:
Oh my goodness.
I can’t recommend enough that if you love learning, or if there’s something you
wanna learn about that to be in a program that you value is,
certainly it’s one of the high points of my life. Everything that I loved, I had
studied Jungian Carl Jung’s writings and Marion Woodman and Louise Van Fransen came
into more of James Hillman’s writings, which is hugely throughout my dissertation.
He came after Jung, but he was a Jungian and Lionel Corbett and these writings. And
all I can tell you is the in concert with these folktales and myths and epic
poetry, the Odyssey, the Iliad, Moby Dick,
endless world mythology. It had this feeling of just coming home. I wasn’t trying to
like squeeze myself, oh, I have to shoot a movie in Luxembourg. Luxembourg’s
incredible, I have a week off, I’m gonna take a train here and making these
marvelous bouquets wherever I was in life. I did feel I could do that. I could,
this was the whole thing was just a giant bouquet. I had nothing to add or to
take away or I’m gonna make sure I get, it was right all, It’s as if falling into
a pot of jam that’s your tasty life,
what your number one thing. – Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Colleen:
With that,
and then also you are an accomplished pianist. And was that something,
were you always focused on saying I want to be an actor or did you want it to
kind of merge everything together the musical part?
Helen Slater:
the I mean, I I felt that composing was Probably the closest until I started writing papers and my dissertation.
Before that I would say composing music had the most Direct line to what was
meaningful to me. So in my albums, in these story albums,
The Ugly Duckling or The Selkie,
that kind of was,
that always felt like it was in the second position to acting because what I was
doing was, it wasn’t really commercial, it’s very singer -songwriter, very interior,
almost like song cycles, but it was such a creative soulful thing for me that I
started to see like oh this or I never pursued it as a commercial endeavor it just
felt like something that would make me you know just it just was so satisfying to
write that kind of music and I tried to I didn’t try and I mean CD baby I made
the CDs I did do some performing out, but it wasn’t in the cards, I guess,
to be plucked in that direction and be like a full -time singer -songwriter.
Nonetheless, it was very and is still very precious to me as like an art form or
yeah. Right. It’s like it’s fading your creative soul. I mean, it really is. At
times. Yeah. Well, during grad school, I’ve talked with other friends just and other
composer friends where you just have these long periods of not writing not playing
because your your attention is just so somewhere else like in when I was in grad
school that happened for sure I wasn’t writing music and yeah so it goes like that
yeah yeah
Colleen:
now that you’ve you know you’ve had six albums you’ve had a great acting
career you now have your PhD what’s what’s next what are you looking forward to
doing next or are you just gonna just sit and enjoy all that you’ve done because
you’ve got you’ve been busy
Helen Slater:
so I defended I defended my dissertation a year ago
it’s just just past the one year mark and it’s been an unusual year of feeling
very liminal like on the outside not feeling driven to jump
into something or even pursue acting work. I’ll have auditions that come in and I
have to say, it just feels like a shirt that doesn’t fit quite right. Like I’m a
size 10 and it’s a size six. Like it’s just so that feeling of nothing quite
feeling quite right.
And then people asking that question, what are you gonna do with the PhD and not
feeling like I over throughout the year, just not knowing, like, gosh, I don’t know
how to answer that. I don’t feel like jumping into teaching. There’s something that
would be wonderful to teach myth and psychology, depth psychology, or try and create
a bus and truck program in a performing arts school in LA. So these things were
kind of satelliteing, But nothing was gripping and it certainly didn’t feel right to
drive it through so that it’s had that quality of Just not knowing there’s a
beautiful Christian mystic text called the cloud of unknowing and it’s It’s that the
author is anonymous but that title can kind of give you that the whole feel like
the cloud of unknown like you just don’t get to know. And I’ve had that feeling.
And recently a friend of mine who’s edited and is about to publish a book of
Jungian essays on AI. He had a template for a book proposal,
and I was talking to him and I said, you know, I can I just see the template and
I’ll just plug in my dissertation, how I might convert that into a book.
And I did just finish the proposal, the rough draft, turning the dissertation into a
book, and we’ll see. I’m waiting to get feedback from him on how the proposal can
be better. I think I’d like to send it to one of the professors, but that’s
something that might be coming down the pike where it would be taking what I
worked, I mean, it ends up being like five years, I guess, and then making that
into a book. But we’ll see. Nothing feels 100 % like, I’ve got it.
Colleen:
I know it’s more like, maybe, maybe this would be– – I think that’s a gift at
this time of life.
Helen:
That’s a gift, because it’s like, you don’t have to jump in
there. If it’s not speaking to you, then there’s maybe, you’re just like, okay, I’ll
just there’s a lot of that kind of feeling like we drop it to the ground and then
see what comes up Drop it to the ground see what comes up. I’ve been in this
movement class for a year with David Bridel who founded the clown school and was
the head of the drama department at USC and the movement class is not clown based.
It’s very kind of modern movement improvisation with certain playwrights or certain
styles of theater throughout the last hundred years. And that was so joyful for a
year. I could just show up. I don’t have to know anything. I don’t have to present
a paper. I don’t have to just move your body, follow the prompts. And there was
something very freeing about that. And I called it doggy daycare to a friend of
mine. I’m going to doggy daycare on Friday. It was like from 10 to one, I just
show up and my clothes, you can move around in and leap around and roll around.
Bridgett:
Yeah. I would think your brain after I would think after doing that and having to
defend a dissertation that your brain just might need a little bit of Oh, my gosh.
Helen Slater:
And the moments of like, crazy, I’m sure you’ve experienced this just like stress.
I had a thing before submitting where the actual document, the formatting kept having
little, like right before you press send and you’re submitting the disparate,
just something would happen, a paragraph, as I’m just scrolling through, it would
just go like a little to the left or to the, and I had a company I hired to,
they do, it’s like just for formatting. And it was very well -formatted ’cause we
were taught how to do it. But you just are so nervous that nothing worked. And I
had a friend come and sit with me. We went through all the changes. Did we looked
at the whole thing? She was on a laptop. I was on this computer. And then I was
flop sweating. Like you just crazy stress. I took like three deep breaths and
pressed send. But there was something in the unpredictable nature, just when you
think you, yeah, anyway.
Colleen:
My daughter’s getting her PhD in clinical psychology and
she’s in year three and she’s just getting the dissertation team together.
Yes. That’s a whole process.
My God. It’s so, it’s so all consuming and, But she’s had such a passion and it’s like
you, it kind of radiates, it radiates out from you and it radiates, it’s, it’s
really a wonderful thing to watch. And what would you say to women?
We talk about privileges that we’ve earned at this stage of life. What would you
say to some of the listeners are the privileges that you feel like you have earned?
Helen Slater:
You know, we always talk about not having to be in a rush to get somewhere, not
feeling like you have to accomplish everything on your to -do list. Hard earned
things that we now that we get to take for granted. Yeah, that’s such a good
question. I mean, I think the balancing act is sometimes we’re definitely called to
be more active in the world. That’s just what’s true. We have a trip coming up or
we’re taking care of a parent Doing is something and we’re called into that kind of
action. We naturally or maybe Cranky just are called that way.
So I can’t say a hundred percent. It’s about Releasing and letting go and just
letting things not doing that because there are things that are still calling us in
the world, but I would say the privilege that I earned, although that language is
tricky, but okay, would be
not turning away from the things that might have scared me throughout my life.
Being willing to just stop and take a seat,
which is in the title of my dissertation, in whatever is happening in any given
moment and offering some kind attention to whatever that is.
So if it’s, you know, we still get jumped at 60 years old, I still get jumped. It’s crazy that
this is true, but I can still get jumped by some of the same things from when I
was 20 or 40 or 50 or in my 30s. But While I’m navigating that now with a little
more kind of a vow, Pema Chodron talks a lot about this,
the Buddhist teacher, about like, you’re not giving up on yourself. So this idea
like, here it is, I’m not going to react in the same way or make it worse. And I
really do have a vow for the back nine, this is my friend Helen Hunt says,
the back nine
that I don’t want to make, I want, I don’t want to make things worse. And this
time next year, if I am, let’s say, super anxious or feeling I keep getting caught
by the same thing, like, ah, whatever it might be with a person with a situation,
I want that to be less the feeling of it. I can’t control how it’s going to come
in. But with that kind of practice, spiritual practice, whatever it might be for
anyone. For me, it’s that, that the same thing that might have put me at a 10
this time next year, you know, I really hope I can manage, it’ll be a seven,
or I can put a hand on my heart and just go like, oh, there they are, here we
are again, gosh, I wish it had gone differently. All right, before we pick up the
phone or before I just make it worse, you know, what can I do to just,
uh, diffuse that feeling of.
Colleen:
So important. It’s, you know, we don’t have to accept every invitation into
something.
Helen Slater:
Yeah. That’s a great way of putting it. We just don’t. I mean, in our
20s, we were looking for it. We’re like, bring it on. And now it’s like, do I
really want to step into that? And I think that we all have people in our lives,
like I said at the beginning of this, that are encouraging us or model for us or
are there for us in a way that is a little bit downshifted.
It’s not going to be– I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but there are
people where there really is catastrophe after catastrophe or difficulty after
difficulty. Not that we’re not going to try and be there or all the things, but
when you just start to get a little adjusting in the perception of what’s happening,
I don’t know how to describe it other than this. Well, one way, and I don’t want
to talk politics, but for myself personally, just about even what we’re intaking
every Just how we’re in taking things and starting to connect the dots like oh if
I keep drinking from that well I’m I actually don’t serve my nervous system very
well or You know, can I take it a fast from this for a little while and that can
be with drama like drama with Family members drama with like can I maybe just take
a break? We’re just gonna do like a little fast.
Bridgett:
Yeah. But you know, we had someone on a few weeks ago, Dr.
Mary Anderson, she wrote a book called the happy high achiever. And she called that
easy people and uneasy people. Oh, I loved it because I thought,
Oh, that really speaks to me. You know, sometimes it is, It’s you know, you don’t
like to cut people off even an easy people are in your family
Colleen:
But sometimes you
can’t cut them off. Yeah.
Helen Slater:
Yeah, but true
Bridgett:
That was such a good way to describe it.
I love that easy Easy people that you’re just like, oh like like Colleen Yeah,
Helen Slater:
I would even go a step there maybe,
I don’t know if this would resonate, but that sometimes the uneasy thing people are
like our greatest teachers, because they show us how reactive we are.
And it becomes, well, how can I work with my reactivity, let them be who they are,
but how can I work with this propensity or this habit of always either,
however, it’s going to be feeling responsible for them or feeling angry or how can
I or scared you know how do I work with these aversive feelings so that I’m not
going to be able to heal someone who’s really down in a hole but maybe by not
reacting in the same way it doesn’t make it worse for them either you know that
kind of
yeah I’ve just been reading yeah the stoic the daily Stoic I have been
every day.
Helen Slater:Oh, wow. Is that Stoics like from way back in the day?
Bridgett:
Yes.
Helen Slater:
Wow.
Bridgett:
We’ve had, we’ve had several guests that have been on over the past
couple of years that follow Stoicism and it’s, it’s, it’s really the reaction.
Yeah, it is. It’s how you react. It’s such like what you really only have control
over three things and it’s your reaction, your reputation. Now, I can’t even remember
the other one. But it is a big one is reaction and how I react.
Helen Slater;
Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t even know. Like I said, it’s still same old me from 40,
50 years ago, but I am kind of holding it differently so that it use if I used
to get struck with that feeling. I used to feel I’m going to do these four things
or or I’m going to have to or and now I feel more like can I just be with this
experience that probably so many other people share also that feeling that you’re
getting it wrong or you’ve blown it or however it presents same old self from
looking at it from a different lens is so and I think that comes with wisdom and
life experience that’s just you know people will say well why can’t we learn it
earlier well we just don’t have a life experience to apply to a lot of a lot of
things
Colleen:
so my last question is of course about menopause how was your menopause
experience i would be remiss not to ask
Helen Slater:
if you didn’t know of course um you know looking back because i’m 60 now so i feel it went on for quite a while. I’m going to say so to count the perimenopause it’s going to have to be mid -50s is when it
started or I’m sorry early 50s maybe even late 40s for perimenopause so for the
last 10 -12 years it’s been.
The one thing I’ll say that I found so interesting I’m I’m in a long -term
marriage, we’re married 35 years. And what I noticed that was like a clear,
well, this isn’t a head cold and this is not a blister on my elbow,
this is like really interesting. And what it would be is we’d be talking about
anything, where to put a vase or what movie we should see tonight or how we,
and we’re very, he’s such a fun, wonderful companion. We just would have like a
little give and take and we’d go back and forth and that was how it was forever
until what I’m gonna say, part of the gift of menopause, I would have this
incredible rage come up and I couldn’t believe it,
and I wouldn’t start screaming, nothing like that, but I would be like, say things
like, well, I don’t feel that way. I don’t want to see the Tom Hanks movie.
No, it would be like, I don’t know what I was saying until that moment,
’cause I might have been, but it had that feeling of but I’m just going to repeat
again, the vase should go under the right bookcase and we will put a flower.
It was like as if I had to just speak more clearly.
But I didn’t feel I was getting run over, but I was acting as if I mean, I, I
did feel like something was being threatened. But I’m telling you, hand to God it
absolutely was not but the feeling was I must say what I need or what I want or
that more flexibility thing seemed to take a hike.
Colleen:
We’ve heard many women say all of a sudden he started chewing and I was like why
are you chewing that way?
Are you speaking?
Helen Slater:
And the Another piece I would say is I just wanted to be in
nature as much as possible, like on my morning hike or going to the beach once a
week or looking at a tree. I just found that was such a restorative act,
a kind of short -circuited, just being in nature and a lot on my own,
like hiking by myself or going to the ocean before meeting friends and just sitting
there for like half an hour. And that just seemed to, to skip over maybe that kind
of thing that we’ve been talking about this whole hour where you just get so
reactive. You can’t, there’s no space in between what’s happening.
I think a long time.
Bridgett: Yes. Alone time, alone time is so important. And I noticed
that that was something when I was going through this that I really valued my alone
time.
Helen Slater- Oh yes, because it’s hard for a lot of people to be alone.
It’s really hard for a lot of people to sit. – Yeah, I have a friend who said
like, she will never be alone. Like, she’s, if something ever happened, God forbid
your husband, I’m gonna get married again.
Bridgett:
– And I’m like, I’m not. – I don’t wanna
be alone. – I’m like, I’m not. I’m like, I’ll take care of him.
I’ve been married to him for 33 years and 32, so we get it. Yeah,
but I said I’m Invested in him. If something happens, I’ll take care of him because
I’ve been with him, but I’ve Watched too many other people and I hate to say this
because so many want a nurse with a purse
Helen Slater:
And oh my yeah work. Can I just hear for
you menopause like was there one or two things that defined it for you? Or was it?
Bridgett:
Oh, I really went through everything. Like I had the hot flashes, night sweats,
moods. Oh, weight gain, I had it all.
Colleen:
Brain fog was really hard for me.
That’s a good one. And I know they say, oh, I’m post menopause now, so is Bridgett.
And they’re like, oh, it comes back. And I’m like, not, not completely.
Helen Slater:
No, they’re
still, I do feel different from, but you know, it got mushed with COVID too.
Like I didn’t know how much of COVID and that isolation was affecting mood. And I’m
one of the few people that really loved being in lockdown and off the hook to have
to being out at the world. I don’t know if you should cut that out.
Bridgett:
I got my kids back. So the empty nest really hit me hard and they both came back for a
while. Oh, wow.
Colleen:
And I think we all have daughters from 1995. Yeah,
my daughter was born in 1995. We all have daughters in ’95.
Helen Slater:
So they all came,
well, I can’t say they all came back.
Bridgett:
Ours came back.
Helen Slater:
Yeah. My daughter didn’t come back, but I mean, she, she, she was in Brooklyn, but we were communicating, but it
was more just my own, like my own feeling of, I don’t know. – Yeah,
it didn’t bother me too much either. I had to be honest. I must be a home body.
Helen Slater:
– Maybe that’s a privilege too, like that we got to, I heard one thing,
I think she’s a scholar, writer, Diane Kafka, I think is her name,
that she said in the medieval time with the first plague that that was when all
the monasteries were springing up and it was this just blooming of interiority
because the plague people couldn’t be out and about in the same way but in the
monasteries there was all these writings going on these contemplative the mystics like
Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, all the they had these great contemplative
beautiful writing period. And they think, I mean, I guess, maybe out of COVID too,
there was this interior, something like a creativity just kind of takes took off at
that of interiority, not in the world, right? But of our own personal kind of
journeys, which is, I hope something came out of it for that for a lot of people,
because I think mentally, it was really hard.
Colleen:
Oh, gosh, no question. I think it was a lot of the isolation and and I mean and the younger generation. Oh,
100%. So hard.
Bridgett:
Just, I mean, yeah, especially the college and high school age.
Colleen:
Oh my gosh. Just the right to passages that they weren’t allowed to do. Yeah, I
really feel for them.
Bridgett:
And now Colleen and I had just started the podcast like five
months before. Oh, We had that, we actually got a lot of guests ’cause people
wanted to talk to other people and they wanted to talk. So we really,
if I don’t know if I hadn’t had the podcast, it would have been, I think, more
difficult because I had that to do.
Helen Slater:
– Yeah, yeah. – Give us a purpose. – Right.
Colleen:
– Well, thank you so much, Helen Slater, for coming on the show.
Helen Slater: – Yes, thank you.
– This was a joy.
Colleen:
Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom and
congratulations on your PhD. – Thank you. We can’t wait to see if you’re going to
do something or if it’s just for your own personal fulfillment.
Helen Slater:
– Thank you, I
appreciate that.