Poise and transparency takes a special form in award-winning actress and producer Tracee Ellis Ross as she opens up about how she picks herself up when she's not feeling her best or feels "unlovable." She sat down with Glennon Doyle and her sister Abby, to reveal the inner-workings of her mind, how she rejects societal norms and more on the latest episode of We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle.
LISTEN NOW: We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 235. Tracee Ellis Ross: How to Make Peace in Your Own Head
Diving into the conversation, Tracee revealed an interesting theory of hers. She believes in what she refers to as "cauldron sisters." She breaks it down like this, "I have this theory that souls are made in bunches and um, I don't know, mother nature someone, somewhere, some beautiful gathering of people they have these big cauldrons that they make people in, that they make souls in... They're like this one's gonna have a little bit of heartbreak and a little bit of joy," she continues, "and when they're cooked, the little veggies, souls they like sprinkle them out through time." This is how she explains what us regular people would refer to as soulmates. That feeling of comfort and familiarity you have with people you just met? It's because you're both "from the same soup."
Tracee admitted that she very rarely meets people from her same cauldron, which ultimately plays into her single relationship status. "I am single. I have been single. I've been single for a really long time. I've had many wonderful ins and outs of things but no one has stuck to the pan," she said.
But while she has yet to run into her cauldron spouse, she has made it a point to not let societal norms downplay her worth. "My job as a woman is to be choose-able, having nothing to do with who I am, what makes my heart sing, what floats my boat... But really it's more about how I might be seen so I might be chosen so that my life could mean something as a chosen woman. Who then gets to have a child and then be a mother and then do that for a child," she said explaining how this is the life that our culture sells women, adding that there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's the choice you make for yourself.
Although she's not a mother, Tracee realized she has a very mothering nature to herself. "I'm very mothering and its been hard for me to claim that," she said before sharing a journal entry from about three days ago. "I can feel my body's ability to make a child draining out of me. Sometimes I find it hilarious as if there's a fire sale going on in my uterus and someone's in there screaming all things must go. This is what's interesting to me as my body becomes a foreign place to me that doesn't really feel safe or like home and I don't know how to manage or control or fight the external, the binary narrative of the patriarchy that has haunted me and haunted me most of my adult life. Is it my fertility that is leaving me? Is it my womanhood? Or is it really neither?," she read leaving both Glennon and Abby teary-eyed and speechless.
Aside from the realization that bearing children may have not been added to he cauldron when she was created, she revealed she feels down about her self "a lot."
She talked about having something called a "risk hangover," where she doesn't feel anxiety in the moment, it's not till after she's done something that her brain scolds her for her decisions. "Who would do that, why would you do that, omg you're so dumb, this is actually evidence, put that in the fire of unlovability... that's what happens the next day and its out of control."
But while she is on this journey to be more deliberate about her care for herself, she gave credit to her friendships and therapy for lifting her up in those moments where she felt "floored." "Friendship has been the biggest and the willingness to be transparent and to be able to call people when I am on the floor," she said.
Reflecting on the times she wasn't so nice to herself, "I have abandoned myself way too many times, way too many times," she disclosed. "But each time in the after math of the hurt, I do ask myself the question of 'how do I not end up here again' and what I have discovered is I will end up here again."
Knowing what she knows now, that being hurt and feeling down sometimes is inevitable, the Black-ish star said "I don't know that life is supposed to be a thing that just feels good all the time but how can we hold the spaces and the days and the period when it just doesn't feel good and I just feel so unlovable and like how can I have the hurt without deciding it means I'm unlovable," leaving listeners with the question, "how do you not give meaning to it? And that's where the work is like in that little space."
Check out the full podcast episode above.
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram