The songs we play on repeat can become the soundtrack to our internal narratives. They validate our moods, reinforce our identities, and sometimes keep us tethered to versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown. Valerie Friedlander discovered this truth during her senior year of college in 2003, when she realized the melancholic Amy Mann songs she’d been playing on loop were doing more than filling silence—they were shaping how she saw herself and her place in the world.
“I was listening to Amy Mann on repeat, and it was very wallowing in sadness music,” Friedlander said. “I remember coming to the realization that I was choosing to listen to the music that was keeping me in that depressive state.”
This moment of recognition became a pivot point. Friedlander didn’t just change her playlist; she discovered something more profound about agency, intentionality, and the power of small decisions to redirect the trajectory of an entire life. Her story illuminates how paying attention to the seemingly minor choices we make each day—from the music we consume to the patterns we perpetuate in relationships—can reveal deeper truths about who we are and who we’re becoming.
The Mirror in the Music
For Friedlander, music had always been a companion. Growing up in a musical family, she sang in choirs and took lessons. Music was a tool for processing emotions, navigating moods, and understanding herself. But during college, particularly during her sophomore and junior years, the Magnolia soundtrack and Amy Mann’s introspective style became more than background noise.
“I started really listening to it kind of on repeat,” Friedlander said. The music matched something inside her—a sadness, a sense of being stuck in patterns she couldn’t quite name yet.
Then came the shift. Friedlander was sitting in her room, probably with a CD player or early MP3s filling the space with that familiar melancholy, when she had what she describes as “the thought” moment: “I don’t want to vibe with this anymore.”
“That kicked off this internal conversation of like, well, I don’t have to,” she said. “I am making an active choice to listen to this music. And if it’s keeping me in a mental space where I don’t want to be, why am I making that choice? And it was really this idea of music as a way to start to see that I was an agent in my life.”
The realization wasn’t just about music. It was about recognizing that she had been operating on autopilot, allowing her environment—including her auditory environment—to dictate her emotional state rather than making conscious choices that aligned with who she wanted to become.
From Knowing to Being
Friedlander’s awareness didn’t emerge from nowhere. She had grown up with tools for self-reflection that many people don’t encounter until much later in life, if at all. Her family history included alcoholism and recovery, and she attended Alateen (a recovery support group for families affected by alcoholism) with her father when she was 12 or 13.
“I learned the tools and had the stuff that Alateen offers and had that awareness of, you know, how to handle my codependent behavior and patterns,” Friedlander said. “But there’s a lot of difference between knowing the tools and living the tools and actually implementing them and realizing that I was doing that.”
This gap between intellectual understanding and embodied practice is where many people get stuck. Friedlander knew about codependency, about patterns, about healthy relationships. But knowledge alone doesn’t transform behavior, especially when you’re young and still discovering who you are through trial and error.
“I had definitely repeated some patterns in the relationships that I had been in, you know, in that decade or so, and had gotten to this place of ‘I’m the common denominator,'” she said. “If things keep happening to me, how much of this is actually happening to me versus I keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result? And that was the breaking point, I guess.”
The music shift became a concrete practice for a larger principle: noticing where she was giving away her agency and consciously choosing to reclaim it.
Creating Progressive Pathways
Friedlander didn’t just stop listening to sad music and flip to upbeat pop songs. She developed a more sophisticated approach that acknowledged the complexity of emotional processing while still maintaining intentionality about where she wanted to go.
“I created ‘out of a funk’ playlists that would be, you know, graded to take you from where you are,” she said. “Because you can’t just go from the, you know, wallowing to happy boppy skippy music. You’re not there yet. But you can incrementally shift your mood and help yourself process.”
This approach mirrors the journey of any significant life change. You can’t leap from one state of being to another without acknowledging where you are and creating transitional steps. The playlist became a metaphor for intentional transformation—meeting yourself where you are while deliberately moving toward where you want to be.
She contrasts this with what she calls “the autoplay,” the default settings that keep running unless you actively intervene. “We do that with so much more than just music,” Friedlander said. “Like where are we on autoplay and not making conscious choices about what we want?”
The Relationship Between Small Choices and Life Trajectories
Years after the music revelation, Friedlander found herself in a depressive period again. This time, it took a friend’s intervention—a simple “let’s go to a meeting”—to reconnect her with Al-Anon, the recovery program for family members of alcoholics.
“Going back to Al Anon and going to meetings and going, ‘Oh, hi, I’m doing the same thing,'” she said. The patterns she thought she’d addressed were still there, just wearing different clothes.
But now she had practice in noticing and choosing. She understood that self-awareness is both a gift and a challenge, a “double-edged sword” that can sometimes make you hyperaware of your struggles without necessarily giving you the immediate tools to change them.
The work continues. Friedlander describes her current relationship with her husband as one built on deliberate choices and pausing before responding—the opposite of her previous pattern of impulsive reactions. “Literally pausing and being like, ‘What do I want to say here?'” she explained. “Not just responding the way that the pattern says I should respond.”
This practice of pausing, of creating space between stimulus and response, echoes the intentionality she first discovered in that college dorm room with Amy Mann playing in the background.
Agency as a Daily Practice
When asked whether she thinks the shift could have happened without changing her music, Friedlander is thoughtful. “I think I could have, but I don’t know that I would have,” she said. “There’s something about making it tangible and something physical that you’re doing that I think helps. At least it did for me.”
The music was concrete. She could point to it, change it, notice the difference. It became a laboratory for practicing agency in a low-stakes environment before applying those lessons to higher-stakes areas like romantic relationships, career decisions, and parenting.
Today, Friedlander works as a coach helping other women unpack their patterns and move forward with intentionality. She describes her approach as “bringing that unpacking the past patterns into the how do I want to move forward in my present and what do I want to create and who do I want to be.”
The questions she helps clients explore are the same ones she asked herself two decades ago: Where am I on autopilot? What patterns am I repeating? What small, tangible changes can I make that signal a larger shift in how I want to show up in my life?
Beyond Revision to Creation
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Friedlander’s story is her refusal to get trapped in either shame about past choices or rigid adherence to decisions that no longer serve her. When discussing parenting and major life choices, she acknowledges the guilt and shame that can come from questioning big decisions.
“We’re taught not to question it, and we feel bad when we do,” she said. But she also offers a reframe: instead of asking “why did I make that choice?” with all its implicit judgment, ask “what was important to me at that time?” or “what can I learn about what motivated me?”
This isn’t about revising the past or regretting earlier versions of yourself. It’s about understanding them with compassion while actively choosing who you want to become next.
Friedlander quotes Gabor Maté’s “The Myth of Normal” in discussing how society isn’t designed to support the kind of communal care and self-awareness that make intentional living easier. The structures around us often push us toward autopilot, toward default settings, toward repeating patterns simply because they’re familiar.
But awareness of those structures is itself a form of agency. Knowing that society doesn’t automatically support your growth doesn’t mean growth is impossible—it just means you have to be more intentional about creating the conditions that support it.
The Soundtrack of Becoming
Twenty-two years after Friedlander decided to stop letting sad music define her emotional landscape, she’s still practicing the art of intentional living. She’s still noticing where she’s on autopilot. She’s still choosing music deliberately, creating progressive pathways through challenging emotions, and helping others do the same.
The story isn’t about a single moment of transformation. It’s about recognizing that transformation is always available through the accumulation of small, conscious choices. It’s about understanding that the soundtrack matters—not because music has magical powers, but because paying attention to what we consume, what we repeat, and what we allow to shape our internal narratives is a practice in noticing where our agency lives.
“I am making an active choice,” Friedlander realized all those years ago. That simple recognition—that she was choosing, that she could choose differently, that choice itself was always available—became the foundation for a life built on intentionality rather than default settings.
The question isn’t whether small choices matter. They do. The question is whether we’re paying enough attention to notice which choices we’re making and whether they’re moving us toward or away from who we want to become.
This article was inspired by an interview with Valerie Friedlander and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast.
https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting
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Music | Interview transcript: Valerie Friedlander with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | December 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:06]:
Valerie Friedlander. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Valerie Friedlander [00:00:11]:
Thank you. I am so ready. I love a fun chat.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Yay. All right, my first question for all of my guests is always, what part of the world do you call home?
Valerie Friedlander [00:00:21]:
I call currently Chicago home. Chicago, Illinois, which is on the ancestral lands of the indigenous tribes of the Council of the Three Fires. Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi nations.
Amy Stone [00:00:33]:
Very cool. Very cool. So. And all right, those are new tribal words for me.
Valerie Friedlander [00:00:40]:
There were a lot of tribes that lived on. Well, that. There were ones that called it home. But, like, lots of trading here. Cause obviously the Great Lakes, so we have a lot of active communities of indigenous people here that are bringing, you know, a lot of awareness to their cultures and the space that we live on, the land that we live on. So it’s really. It’s a great place. I love Chicago so much.
Amy Stone [00:01:03]:
Chicago is a great place. So I’m in Miami, which is interesting because it is. It’s a coastal town. It’s got water. But when it goes back to doing the ancestral statement, Miami was a transitional place even apparently then, so it’s like people would come through and leave. And so, you know, we call out the tribes that have left memories of it, but the history is really. They think that people move through here a lot. So it’s like Tesa, and we also have Seminole and Miccosukee who are still. Still here in Florida. So Testa, Calusa, Miccosukee and Seminole are the people that we. That we call out when we do that. But it’s fun to look it up. A couple years ago, not too long ago, they were building Miami, big real estate place. They’re going to build another new giant luxury condo. And they went dig, dig and found like a. A historic site. So now we have a. We have a park instead of new, brand new luxury condo building in that location, which people probably have a variety of opinions about. Probably. All right, next warm up question. What is one way that you like to recognize or honor something celebratory?
Valerie Friedlander [00:02:17]:
So, I mean, I’m a foodie.
Amy Stone [00:02:19]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:02:19]:
So when there’s something to celebrate, I. I like to celebrate with food.
Amy Stone [00:02:24]:
I love it. I love it. That’s.
Valerie Friedlander [00:02:26]:
That’s a big one. I. I always love going to interesting places. And of course, Chicag got lots of really yummy places. And I also dabble in, like, cake making.
Amy Stone [00:02:38]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:02:38]:
I feel like I’m not. I wouldn’t say, like, I’M an expert by any means, but I like to get creative with cake. So, like I’ve. I made Elsa’s castle once. Oh, wow. The Lonely Mountain, which was a lot of cake for my.
Amy Stone [00:02:53]:
Not.
Valerie Friedlander [00:02:53]:
Not to say, like, I mean, it’s. If you went to like an expert cake maker, it would probably look a little bit better, but it was yummy and I enjoyed it. So. So celebrating. If I have time to. To make something, I will make it. But otherwise, absolutely. Going to someplace. Food is my love language.
Amy Stone [00:03:12]:
A homemade cake, the effort that goes into that, that’s a, that’s a tremendous designation of importance and value. And people in your life are lucky to have that. For sure. For sure. All right, topic of the day. Neither tribal lands nor cake. I actually love the topic that you chose for this conversation. I will say that when I started the show at the beginning of the year and all I had was a concept, one of my hopes was that people would bring both stories of big sort of acute crisis level changes and also some of the smaller decisions that can have either big or little impacts on our lives. And what you shared is that you made an intentional sh. In the music you were listening to at one point in your life and how this affected how you wanted to show up in the world. How long ago was this?
Valerie Friedlander [00:04:03]:
If you remember, this would have been probably 2003.
Amy Stone [00:04:08]:
All right, so a long time. 22.
Valerie Friedlander [00:04:10]:
I don’t want to talk about how long ago that was. It was my senior year of college, so.
Amy Stone [00:04:15]:
All right, very good. All right. So I think you said that you were listening to Amy Mann. Is the, is the artist that you were listening to. How long had you been a fan of Amy Mann, the style of music?
Valerie Friedlander [00:04:28]:
You know, interestingly enough, I hadn’t listened to Amy, man, like a lot. I had a roommate my freshman year who really loved the Magnolia soundtrack. And I think she was the one who introduced me to the music. And it didn’t really hit, I don’t think, until like I started really listening to it kind of on repeat. Probably sophomore, junior year of college. So not super long in, in that.
Amy Stone [00:04:59]:
Season, like that season in the early 2000s. How were we listening to music at that point? Were you listening? Was this like iPod CD?
Valerie Friedlander [00:05:06]:
It was CD. I mean, so that was the, that was the beginning of, or actually the beginning and end and, and of Napster.
Amy Stone [00:05:13]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:05:13]:
And being on a college campus, you weren’t supposed, like we had an open network and you weren’t supposed to take music off of people’s computers. You know, there are rules about that. But we all were doing that. Like, oh, you could go into their shared folders and people had their music shared on folders and you could go grab music. So it was MP3s and CDs.
Amy Stone [00:05:36]:
Very, very. So I do remember that time when you’re talking to a broke group of students and you’re saying, hey, listen, you know, don’t. You should go buy it again instead of taking the free copy that’s right over there. It’s like, it’s not the most successful place to make that pitch because you’re not talking to people with deep pockets. It’s like, okay, I support artists and I want all of the artists to do really well. And also, I’m going to take my friends. Free music.
Valerie Friedlander [00:06:00]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a lot of musician friends. My son is interested in becoming a musician along with actoring and all of that. And so, like. And I’m also an artist, so.
Amy Stone [00:06:14]:
Yep.
Valerie Friedlander [00:06:15]:
And yes, absolutely. At that time.
Amy Stone [00:06:19]:
All of those things about. It’s really interesting how all of the file sharing and art sharing things have really dramatically changed from, like, the 1990s. And, you know, it’s absolutely a conflict of, like, intention and rules and what technology allows us to do. Right. So in the old days, right, if you wanted to copy a song, you had to be with your little, like, cassette player and hit record.
Valerie Friedlander [00:06:45]:
Oh, I have radio. Just to be clear. I absolutely have.
Amy Stone [00:06:49]:
Or bootleg it at the concert or whatever. And now it’s not that way. Somebody takes a. You can take a picture of things and share it right away. It’s just a very different world than it used to be. And ignoring the intersection of technology and how we actually use it is not a fun conversation, is, I guess, what I’ll say, you know, like. So I guess that. That’s what I’ll say. All right, very good. So how big a part of your life at this point when you were in college was listening to music?
Valerie Friedlander [00:07:20]:
Oh, well. So listening to music overall has always been a huge part of my life. Music kind of runs in my veins. My great. My grandmother, my mom’s mom was a music critic. Like, she was a journalist and wrote music. That was part of how she met her husband, my grandfather, whose parents were both composers, and my mother in the symphony. She played French horn in the symphony. So, like, music has always been really key. I took voice lessons for a long time. I was in a children’s choir. Like, music is the. Like, if I have feelings, listening to music is part of how I process the Feelings, Right? That’s. That’s part of, like. And I. I actually made a mix a while ago with a CD back when we did that, that. Because I recognized that while I wanted to get out of a funk, I called the CD out of a funk because just listening to upbeat music when you’re in a funk is not helpful. But I also didn’t want to listen to only music that was, like, resonant with the vibe that I was in. So I made a CD that was progressive. So it started with the mood that I was feeling and then slowly shifted into more optimistic, more health. So, like, it was. Went from, like, I feel awful, everything is terrible, life is dark, to I’m healing. I’m starting to see, you know, how long is this going to take? You know, this. This kind of mix of like, I want to feel better into. Then the. Like, I’m. I’m doing this work. I’m starting to see the light into, like, upbeat. Like, I’m trying to think, like, Jimmy world, like, the.
Amy Stone [00:09:11]:
All right.
Valerie Friedlander [00:09:12]:
You know, those sorts of. So I made this mix to help me move through the feelings that I was having. So music has always been really critical in my emotional experience.
Amy Stone [00:09:25]:
So. Yes. So today we would do playlists for people.
Valerie Friedlander [00:09:28]:
I actually turned it into a playlist because I was like, I still need this in my life. Life.
Amy Stone [00:09:33]:
So fun story. So we have all these kids in my family, and so we tend to have. Right now we don’t have it, but we sometimes have, like, a lot of legacy tech. So, like, for forever, we had a VHS player because we had old kid things that were only on VHS set. So anyway, we had the dual cassette deck in a couple different places for a very long time. And about five years ago, maybe six years ago, one of my kids made a mixtape. So, like a cassette for. For a girlfriend, like, so, like, it was like a, you know, an adolescent romance. So they gave this to the person as a. As a present in school, which was a very, very thoughtful gift. The parents, like, pull, like, pulled me aside like. Like later that weekend, and they’re like, you know, we had to go buy a cassette player so this person could actually listen to it. Like, this was.
Valerie Friedlander [00:10:23]:
There was.
Amy Stone [00:10:23]:
There was a lot of effort required, but they were super impressed. They still, like. They were like, the effort that it went. They were like, oh, my God, a mixtape. What is it? You know, it was really funny, but they’ we didn’t have a cassette player. And thanks for that. Like, I didn’t know I was involved in this process.
Valerie Friedlander [00:10:39]:
I bought my younger son a disc player. I want to say disc man, but a disc player because we have so many CDs and we had. And he wanted to have headphones and I was like, I’m not buying you a smartphone and like all this stuff. So I was like, we have CDs. You could listen to whatever you wanted if you had a player that you could put headphones on and listen to it. So yeah, yeah. But it was hard to find.
Amy Stone [00:11:00]:
They are, they’re hard to find and, but they’re. It’s. It’s a good thing. I don’t think we have any CDs anymore. Any music CDs. We, it was mostly the movies that kept it around, but we then had the audio. But now we have. We went through a phase where we got a new record player, like a new Bluetooth record player. And that was short lived because there’s so, it’s like, it’s. There’s the joke, right, that we keep having to repurchase our own music in different formats. It’s like I used to have these albums and now I have to rebuy them, but they’re three times as expensive because like, it’s like, you know. But anyway, always.
Valerie Friedlander [00:11:34]:
Well, I’m. I’m about to go to a place to try and fix the record player that we have or see if it makes more sense to get anyone. Because I inherited my grandmother’s record player along with a whole set of records, which I have gone through and gotten rid of some things. But I have my grandmother’s classical music records. And then my parents moved and so I pulled out a whole bunch of my dads and I was like, I have this record player. I pulled out a whole bunch of my dad’s classical rock, classic rock records and I’m like, I love this. We should have. I mean, I have a record player.
Amy Stone [00:12:07]:
Yeah, no, 100%. It is really interesting to like rebuy it. So like we. Yeah, no, it’s super fun, but it’s moves that like would cause me to like get rid of the old archival things. And then, you know, I was rough on CDs going back and forth into the like they, you know, I would scratch them and then toss them. And now I just feel like I repurchase things in my like iTunes, Spotify playlist every so often. I’m like, I’m pretty sure I’ve owned this in a variety of places already, but I guess I’m buying it again today.
Valerie Friedlander [00:12:37]:
Yeah, well, we still have all the. All the CDs too. We have a whole case. My. My husband has been going through these different CD projects. First, we were putting them in cute books to put on bookshelves. And we’re like, this is taking too much room. So now I have case. I’m like, should we really have all of this? My husband was also a DJ in.
Amy Stone [00:12:54]:
Oh, so he’s never letting go.
Valerie Friedlander [00:12:55]:
So, like, he has all of these CDs from when he was a hip hop radio, DG DJ. So, like, I’m excited because we. We just. We had to get a new car, but it has a CD player in it.
Amy Stone [00:13:08]:
Oh, it does.
Valerie Friedlander [00:13:09]:
It’s a 2000. It’s a 2023, and it has a CD player. Somebody must have asked for it or whatever.
Amy Stone [00:13:15]:
But I am thrilled. I do not think at one point. I do remember at one point, I had a disc changer that very inconveniently lived in the trunk of the car.
Valerie Friedlander [00:13:25]:
Yes. Yeah, we had one of those. We had one of those.
Amy Stone [00:13:28]:
You want to go back and talk to the engineers and be like, hey, what was the thinking here? All right, so anyway, memory lane. That was a diversion. Very good. What else was going on? You were in college. What else was going in your life that had you thinking about maybe how you wanted to show up in your life? Like, how did this sort of grow. What was going on?
Valerie Friedlander [00:13:48]:
Okay, so I. I grew up with the dynamics of alcoholism in my family. And my. My dad shares about this very. He’s. He’s done a stage presentation, so I. I have approval to share, just to be clear, because I really take the idea of an anonymity that is important. But he got into recovery when I was eight.
Amy Stone [00:14:15]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:14:16]:
And so I thought, well, first of all, I didn’t even understand. They told me, oh, your dad’s going to a. Your mom’s going to Al Anon, and you’re going to go to Alakid. And I was like, what does that mean? I don’t even understand. Because it wasn’t like overt. It was more just a way of just shutting out. And so I thought, well, I watched my parents do all of this work, so I have all the tools. I am good. I can. I am predisposed to codependency. My mom told me at one point, but because I know it, I cannot do it, of course, that just knowing something cognitively is not the same thing as having it in an embodied experience of how to act. So I felt like the way I describe it often is that I was given this Toolbox. But I was only taught how to use a hammer, okay? So I used the screwdriver like a hammer, and I used the wrench like a hammer, right? So I knew all of these things enough to weaponize them against myself and tell myself I knew all the things, so I should know better. Why, you know, oh, I shouldn’t beat myself up. And so I beat myself up for beating myself up. You know, those sorts of patterning. So mostly it was. It was used against myself. So I got into college and got into a really dysfunctional relationship, as many of us are want to do in college, you know, learning things. But it. It. I basically found somebody who had a hole they were digging in their life, and I went, I can help you. Let me in. And jumped right in and started digging alongside, okay. Dealing with my stuff. I don’t need to because I have all these tools, so I will help you. Let’s dig. And it was. It. It was not a great. It was not a great time. A lot of people after I got out of that relationship commented on how much happier I seemed, like, how much better. And that went like freshman to sophomore year, kind of on and off sort of dynamic. Just. It was emotionally abusive, really was what it was. And I have done a lot of work kind of unpacking. How did I participate in that dynamic for myself so that I cannot repeat patterns. But because of that, what. What stood out to me in that was in junior year, I had a roommate, and at one point I accused her of being like my ex. And that flagged for me that. Wait a second. Who is the common denominator here? Right? Yeah. Shame on you. You know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Whatever. I’m the common denominator. I’m doing something that I’m repeating something, and I have done everything I can think of to fix it. I have used every tool like a hammer, and I don’t know what to do. So I climbed into my bed and I went, I’m just gonna stay here and not get up. I just kind of really. I always had a tendency toward depression, and so I just was really depressed and was gonna stay in bed forever. And I was blessed to have a friend who was really more my roommate’s friend at the time who came in looking for her, found me, and checked in and was like, hey, you know, you mentioned in one of our late night chats that your dad is an alcoholic. I’m going to an Al Anon meeting. Would you like to come with me? And I went, well, it can’t get worse than this, so why not?
Amy Stone [00:17:50]:
All right.
Valerie Friedlander [00:17:51]:
I thought I already knew all the things by osmosis from my parents, but apparently something. And I went to a meeting, and I went, oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah, I definitely belong here. I am doing all of these things. So about a year later. So this was about. So that was junior year. It was, like, towards the beginning of. Or, no, the end of senior year was when that moment happened that I described to you where I was driving. So I had been working the Al Anon program. I had been going to a therapist. I had had a slightly healthier relationship, though still fairly emotionally enmeshed, with someone who lived in London.
Amy Stone [00:18:34]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:18:35]:
So there was some distance there. But I had been working on this stuff, and I was listening to this album that I had been listening to and listening to because it really just really resonated with how I was feeling. So some of the songs on there. One of the first songs is Momentum, and this is the Magnolia soundtrack. Momentum, which goes. Oh, for the sake of momentum I’ve allowed my fears to get larger than life and it’s brought me to my current agenda. I know life is getting shorter. I can’t bring myself to change the scene even when it’s approaching torture. I’ve got my routine, okay. And another song that stands out is called Save Me, which is Save Me from the ranks of the freaks that suspect they could never love anyone. And there’s so many songs like that have that vibe to them of this. And the movie itself is about very dysfunctional people. And I was, like, listening to this, and it suddenly struck me. I don’t want to vibe with this music anymore. I don’t. I’m singing it. I’m, like, feeling the feels, and I’m like, wait, I don’t. I don’t want to be this much of a victim of my life. I don’t want to just let things happen to me and feel like I’m just, you know, momentum is carrying me forward and I’m not choosing, and I need to be saved by somebody because I can’t choose to do something different. Like, I don’t want that. I. I can make choices. And I’m like. And I had this whole conversation with myself in the car about making choices and how, you know, it’s. I’m afraid of. Of making the wrong choice, but really there is no wrong choice. And I. I can make choices that then if I don’t like it, I could change my mind. And maybe I Can’t go backwards. Maybe I can like, maybe I can, like go back and go, oops, you know, I don’t want to do that. Or maybe I just make a different choice as I go along. And it was like, I think my drive was maybe 45 minutes an hour long. And like, that was the conversation I was having with myself on this drive, listening to this music.
Amy Stone [00:20:50]:
And so I have a question about the conversation, which is like a random question that popped into my head while I was writing this out. When you talk about having a conversation with yourself, the answer to this makes no difference to anything ever. But I just was, like, super curious. Was this, like, silently in your head, like, thoughts, or are you a person who, like, talks?
Valerie Friedlander [00:21:07]:
No, I probably was talking it out loud. I was probably talking out loud to myself. I am absolutely. Throughout my life, my mom says she would always know what was in my head because I would be singing about it. Okay, so when I was a little kid, mostly, but I mean, I still do, like when I. I’ll sing through something. I wasn’t singing through that conversation. That was probably an out loud conversation.
Amy Stone [00:21:30]:
Right? Alone with your car, but talking to you.
Valerie Friedlander [00:21:32]:
Alone with my car, but talking to myself, absolutely. I mean, I would consider myself an out loud processor. It helps me to hear myself. And so that was actually how I started a podcast. Interestingly enough, I was in a chosen mastermind with three other women and we would vox each other and they were like, you should start a podcast. I love hearing you talk through, like, essentially coach yourself on voxer.
Amy Stone [00:22:00]:
When is the first time you had somebody tell you that out loud processing was a thing? Because I can remember the first time somebody was like, hey, you know, because it’s a thing. People make jokes about talking to yourself out loud, like, and all those things. But out loud processing is okay. A way that people do things. So do you remember the first time somebody told you that you don’t.
Valerie Friedlander [00:22:17]:
I don’t. I do remember my mom telling me that I needed to watch out because I have diarrhea of the mouth.
Amy Stone [00:22:23]:
Fair enough.
Valerie Friedlander [00:22:24]:
And that was. That goes back to a conversation we were having before we started recording, which is that idea of being an open book. Because I would share things with people that really I didn’t need to be sharing with. Not just the topic, but with the person. Like, I didn’t have a filter in terms of this is a safe person to share this with. I would just share everything. And it took some learning of. No, there are some people you share, some people you process with. And Some people you don’t process with. And that was. That was definitely a thing. But I don’t remember when somebody talked about out loud processing.
Amy Stone [00:23:00]:
So there was a lot to unpack in the story you told. One of the things that I want to bring up and go back to is that so you have this early childhood experience of your father going through recovery and then the whole family went into this. But your experience, which I think is very, very common, is that you were sort of a bystander and the awareness and the knowledge of the tools was not the same as applying them to yourself. I think that’s very, very common. But I also think that you show a tremendous amount of self awareness when you talk about the fact that you were. You were aware that you were going through a relationship that was maybe not so healthy. You were aware you had. And then when somebody invited you back into the meeting to Al Anon that you were like, yeah, let’s go and apply it to yourself. I think that that’s worth noting because there were a lot of choices there that you could have gone the other way.
Valerie Friedlander [00:24:01]:
Yeah, no, that’s very true. What was the question or was there a question?
Amy Stone [00:24:06]:
I don’t think there was a question.
Valerie Friedlander [00:24:08]:
I can talk about any part of that.
Amy Stone [00:24:10]:
That’s a very good point. There wasn’t actually a question in there. But I guess the question is, if there is a question is like, how do you think of yourself as a self aware person? Were you aware that you were, you know, that this was a helpful lens, but could also be a destructive lens that you were putting on yourself?
Valerie Friedlander [00:24:27]:
Yeah, I think I’ve always been pretty self aware. People have called me an old soul. But then I’ve also heard that old souls usually come about because of some sort of trauma or, or adverse childhood experience or whatever. I’m like, well, you know, maybe I know. So it’s interesting when I think about the time where everybody entered recovery and my dad has stayed in that program as support. My mom has found different places for support. I eventually said, you know, all the kids in this program are going through physical abuse. And I don’t have that. And I don’t resonate with this. So I don’t really. When I was given the option to continue, I was like, I don’t really see how this is helpful for me at the time. I mean, the mate. My main takeaway, unfortunately, because the people who run the. The Alakid program were also in Al Anon, so they were working through their own stuff. And the only. The main Thing I remember was that the person who was guiding us one day was like, one drink and you too could become an alcoholic. And I was like, I know that’s really bad, so I shouldn’t ever drink or do anything that could possibly be addictive because that would terrible. So. So to the. I don’t know if again it was how I processed that information or if it was, I think maybe a little bit of both that and being pretty self aware. But when I was in seventh grade, I went through a period that I was sick all the time. But the doctor was like, she’s not actually sick, you should take her to a psychiatrist. And I could tell that the psychiatrist was just kind of waiting for me to say something dramatic enough to prescribe me something. I really wish they’d taken me to a therapist at the time. But you know, it was the 90s and there was a lot of stuff that we know now that we didn’t know back then. And so waiting eventually at a certain point he was like Prozac. And this is not to say anything about depression meds. I think they can be really helpful for people. And so that, that’s not like I’m my personal experience not to project onto what other people’s needs are for me. One, I was terrified of becoming addicted. And they were like, oh, it’s not physically addictive. And I was like, but if I’m not addressing the emotions and I’m just covering them with a med, how am I supposed to deal with them? And how wouldn’t it become addictive? Because clearly if I’m not dealing with this, it’s. It’s still there. And then what? And they didn’t have a good answer for that. So I just stopped going to the psychiatrist and didn’t end up on meds and found a community actually through a youth group group that would meet periodically throughout the year. And that helped me feel connected and, and then things slowly got better. But I think there were probably some underlying facets of perhaps adhd. And I was listening to the Ologies podcast recently because my sister sent it this episode to me about obsessive compulsive disorder. And I now working on getting set up to get tested for that because while it’s not as prevalent for me, I had a really big issue when I was young with obsessive compulsive behavior. And so learning about that I was like, oh, I wonder if these are facets that might have been impacting me at that time. But I didn’t have words for it didn’t have name for it.
Amy Stone [00:28:03]:
It is. You highlight on something that I think, and I am not qualified to talk on this other than as an observer and a participant in life. One of the huge challenges, I think, in diagnosing anybody with anything is that the person who has that job of diagnosing only has the information in front of them. And I think this gets compounded when you are working with someone who is like a child and who doesn’t know what needs to be shared or how to advocate for themselves or. Or even a concept of what might be normal versus healthy and unhealthy to share. That just makes it really challenging to make the first right guess. Combine that with the fact that our medical system is so fractured and you go to one person, they’re like, oh, this is not what I do. But they don’t send you to the other person necessarily, or even worse. Oh, well, this one is covered by your insurance, but the thing you actually need is only, only covered by insurance on full moons on Thursdays every alternate year if your name is Fred. You know, like, so, I mean, all of that I think is there. I do think. I think that. I think that, you know, the 12 step programs in any shape or form named and otherwise, like, so, like the, the AA programs are some of the most famous, but they are very. They can be polarized in opinion. Some people really love them and other people don’t find them successful. So I don’t think that’s a polarizing statement. And I think that when it comes to meds, one of the things that’s so interesting is that really good meds don’t necessarily work for all the people. Right. Like, so we’ll move it out of the mental health perspective and talk about like, like, you know, so blood pressure medication. Right. Like my dad was taking blood pressure medication. They were four or five before they found one that he didn’t get crazy side effects, you know, but those would have worked fine. Maybe for somebody else.
Valerie Friedlander [00:29:56]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:29:57]:
And so, you know, for my. I’m like, you know, so that’s the.
Valerie Friedlander [00:30:00]:
Way, you know, there’s no one size fits all, really. There’s just, I mean, that, that I think is when it comes to your body, when it comes to your brain, your being, there’s not a one size fits all. There are certainly, and I come from a sociology background. Like, there are certainly patterns amongst people that we can look at, but in terms of what’s going to be healing and supportive for you, it’s. It, it’s not Something that can just be a blanket statement.
Amy Stone [00:30:27]:
Yeah. So the through line here is that you are actively engaged from a pretty young pret age with group sort of peer support, if you like say, like, and just self awareness, self awareness, self help. So you go. And so you’re young and so you’re having these struggles. Music is a through line. It’s a part of your family. It’s all of these things. You’re in college, which all by itself is a self development journey. Right. So. And you’re in this. This story takes place your senior year of college. So you are really in a re. Identification time. No matter, you know, at that point anyway. Like, although maybe you went on. Did you go on and do more school after this or did you.
Valerie Friedlander [00:31:10]:
I didn’t. I didn’t end up doing that. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:31:13]:
So then you’re also in that part of your life where you’re like, all right, I have to grow up and like do this work thing somehow that has never, never happened. And so the. So I think it’s incredibly self aware that you were like, all right, if I don’t want to embody the message of this, what if I just change the soundtrack in my car? So. And how did that, like, so like I just. How did that just popped into your head?
Valerie Friedlander [00:31:43]:
Yeah, I mean, so I will to. To be clear with that. I didn’t completely stop listening to Amy, man. I still really liked the album. Like, the music was great and when I was in a mood, I would turn it on. It’s one. I’ve got several of her songs on that get out of a Funk playlist. And for me it was really just that, like, I need to pause on this for a minute. I need to give myself a refresh. But even just the conversation, the awareness that I was embodying the words and what was being said that it was. There was a relationship to this space that I was sitting in. I think that idea of even the progression out of it because I would sit in a, in a album for a while. Like the who’s Tommy when I was in maybe seventh, eighth grade. That was on repeat.
Amy Stone [00:32:38]:
Yeah.
Valerie Friedlander [00:32:38]:
You know, and the See me, hear me, touch me, feel me, like I, you know, that I still, I even get chills still saying that because like I was so desperate to feel seen and connected, that belonging sense was, was so there was such a gap, gap in my life around that. So I think even just taking a break and going, I don’t need to keep feeding myself this message, at least for a little while. But that the interesting thing with that conversation like that I had with myself is I turned that music off. I don’t even remember what I put in next. I might have just sat in silence or just had that conversation. But it was like the next day. Pretty sure it was the next day. I went into my costume production class and I think I was just dropping in. I don’t even think it was class time, but it was right around there. And I ended up having a conversation with a guy who graduated two years before me, who was working at the theater at the time and who was coming in unbeknownst to everybody else. His. His other assistant technical director was dating the other Valerie in the class. So he would come in sometimes with that guy. Anyway, so I was just chatting with him and he asked me if I wanted to go to a movie. And I told him, let me think about it, I’ll get back to you. And that was the beginning of me not feeling like I had to answer right away or just kind of going along and every part of that relationship. I called him up and I was like, sure, let me know where and when. And showed up, he wasn’t there. I was like, okay, I’m gonna wait for like five minutes. And if he doesn’t show up, because he. We had run in different circles. So he was like. When he said, like, look, go to a movie with us, I was like thinking that it was the circle I didn’t belong in, that like activated a lot of feelings for me. And I was like, oh, this is a joke. He’s not here. I’m gonna five minutes. And then he did show up. And I went to this barbecue ahead of time and it was with a whole bunch of people who like, worked at the theater. And I was like, oh, this is a different crowd. Wait, he’s interested in me. That wasn’t like a group thing. That was like a me thing. But every piece after that of like, we went for a walk together and he invited me up to his place afterwards and I was like, I know what happens if I go upstairs and I don’t know what I want to do. So I’m going to take a rain check because I need to figure out what my answer would be should things progress as they are want to do when you go to.
Amy Stone [00:35:23]:
When you go to the room.
Valerie Friedlander [00:35:25]:
And so just those check ins every time and pausing and saying, I want to think about this before I answer right away. Pausing was so powerful, like, I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know what choice I want to make. So I’m going to pause and think about the choice that I want to make and make an active decision. And when we did have that moment of I said yes, I did go up and as things are want to do, and I started check, checkout, because I had plenty of experiences, intimate experiences, where I would. I would just check out and not make a decision and let things happen because I wasn’t going to make a decision. And he actually, he’s the one who checked in with me. He was like, we don’t have to do this. And this was like one of those, like, I think he was on top of me and he was like, paused and went, we don’t, you know, like, are you okay with this? And I was like, oh, my God. You asked me how I feel about this. But that gave me that moment to go. Am I sure I noticed I was checking out. Do I want to check out or do I want to be present? No, I want to be present. Like, why would I say, if I’m going to check out, I should say no and I should leave? If I want to be present, then I should actually be present. And so every moment of that. And we’ve been married 20 years now, and so.
Amy Stone [00:36:49]:
And you draw a connection from beginning to do this, like, this through line of, like, I can make this decision about the music that I’m playing in my car and then connecting it to the other things. Like, I’m actually in control here. I can hit pause and check in with myself and do that along with the very important and should be acknowledged. Consent is for all things, is a power tool. Good stuff. All good stuff. All right, so my next question is a revisionist question. These sometimes are terrible. This may not be a good question, but I have two, actually. So looking back now, do you think that you could have actually made this shift without having the. Without changing the music that you listen to? Do you think that it could have happened some other way? And this might be a terrible question. You might be like, I don’t know.
Valerie Friedlander [00:37:41]:
Well, I think because I didn’t 100% change the music, I don’t know if it would have. It was really like an epiphany through the music is the way I would describe it. Right. It was more of a. Like I was listening and I noticed something, and noticing is so powerful. It was. Oh, so because it wasn’t completely gone, it was more. I can choose what I’m resonating with. I think that was more of what it was with the music of like, I can choose what I resonate with and what serves me. And I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. I always just picked music that matched my, of like where I was. I didn’t necessarily think I could do something different. And I think that’s where that, that playlist, that progressive playlist idea came from, was like, all right, well I’ve tried the whole, like just don’t feel like that. That’s not really healthy or helpful. And so what if I chose to draw myself out of it, right? What if I picked I want this music right now because I’m feeling these feelings. But I, I, I can choose not to stay there. I can choose to do things that allow me more room in my experience. And I know that when I’m in that space not to make decisions. And I, that’s, that’s the biggest piece. I know that when I’m in this space, this is my life’s happening to me. And so if I make decisions in this space, they’re not decisions, they’re non decisions.
Amy Stone [00:39:18]:
And one of the things that I’m wondering, and this is a question like not pre thought could be terrible. It seems like there was an element of this which was sort of allowing the autoplay, the checkout. So like making the playlist, that’s like a really intentional sequence of music. But like, you know, you mentioned that the Tommy CD was like on repeat and that you would check out in situations that you didn’t want to make a decision. But it’s like making that decision to, to turn off the music at that time and think about it. I wonder, does that sound like that’s actually like sort of the, the nugget that was sort of the command choice, the action?
Valerie Friedlander [00:39:58]:
I think so, yeah. Pulling in intentionality, going, oh, I can choose. And, and I think to that point, like knowing I can choose to be in this mode, I can choose to listen to this music and be in this vibe. But I know the dynamics of it for me, I know that I don’t want to, to stay here and that I don’t have to stay here. And I know that I don’t want to make decisions from here, from that one thing.
Amy Stone [00:40:27]:
Now, do you use now? And I think that you, the fact that you make the playlist leads me to believe that this might be like something that is, you’ve sort of, sort of already answered. But then do you do it the other way? Do you sometimes like intentionally put on music to try and lead you into a certain feeling? State, like, it’s like, all right, so I would like to feel better. Let’s put on, you know, feral.
Valerie Friedlander [00:40:50]:
Yeah. Yeah. I. I definitely pick music based off of the energy that I. I want. So one of the things that I’ve done. So in my own podcast, I ask at the end of every interview, because my podcast is named Mindset Unlimited. And so at the end, I ask people, what song do you listen to when you want to evoke that unlimited feeling? So I ask, what does it mean to be unlimited to you? And then what song do you listen to that evokes that for you? And so I. I have a whole playlist. You can see playlists are definitely a theme. I have a whole playlist of. Of music that people have said evoke that for them. And it’s so eclectic. Like, there is such a. So I wouldn’t say I necessarily listen to that playlist when I’m looking to feel unlimited, because it’s not necessarily all the songs that I would choose for that, but I love that there’s such a experience of music that is articulated in that. For me recently with music, it’s mostly like, what my kids want to listen to.
Amy Stone [00:41:58]:
Sure.
Valerie Friedlander [00:41:58]:
I know my husband and I often joke with the kids about, like, when we say, not this song again, like, we want to listen to something else. We joke about how when we were in the car, we had to listen to what our parents wanted to listen to. And like, unless we had headphones and otherwise it was. We didn’t. We weren’t nearly as flexible with what we were listening to. But I enjoy being exposed to different things and different ideas. So I think maybe that answered the question.
Amy Stone [00:42:27]:
I think it did. Do they still have. Do they still have. For kids, There used to be this thing called kids bop. Is it still around?
Valerie Friedlander [00:42:32]:
They were like, last we listened to it, it was. But my kids, I have a 14 year old and an 11 year old, so I actually like. I mean, we went to the My Chemical Romance concert just recently and both of them just loved it. My older son plays guitar and he’s. He’s pretty awesome on it. Just.
Amy Stone [00:42:53]:
It’s very cool.
Valerie Friedlander [00:42:54]:
I don’t think it’s just a mom’s opinion. I feel like other people have said so too, but you get to have.
Amy Stone [00:42:59]:
The mom’s opinion, though.
Valerie Friedlander [00:43:00]:
I’m allowed to have the mom’s opinion. And so I think my younger son tends towards the music that I’m like, okay, I can’t. Because he does like the game music, like, among us songs and things. That people have made up about video games and stuff. And some of that’s fine, but some of it gets a little. A little old and he wants to listen to it all the time. I get that there’s a thing about these ages, like listening to the same thing over and over again. So. But yeah, so I, I listened to a lot of. A lot of their music.
Amy Stone [00:43:35]:
They used to, when, when some, some of the kids in our. There were like giveaways. They would give you at some restaurant, they would give you kidz bop CDs. My sister, my sister in law, she got it at the restaurant, they put it in the car. And she was not even out of the parking lot before she took the CD out and was like, no, we are never listening. You are not listening to this ever again. She was like, give me the actual song or you do not need the kid Bob mix. So, all right, so with. So we’ve talked about this. You can see that there are some pretty big shifts that have gone through your life that you tie back to this, this one, this one moment in your life, sort of like ripples in a pond. Like when you drop a rock into a pond. Is that still true today? Do you still see the things that you’re doing and being intentional and tie it back to that one decision, that one conversation with your. Yourself?
Valerie Friedlander [00:44:27]:
I mean, I think that it, it was a trajectory that has had a huge influence. I always have this thing when people do have like this. This one thing happened and my entire life changed forever. And I do think that each thing, each choice that we make make, you know, changes things. I love, you know, the, the idea, the multiple dimensions and. Right. Like I’m a butterfly, the butterfly theory, all of that. So I do think that that, that’s a thing that I enjoy and I would say so often it’s so much more minuscule than we think. Like, I’m waiting for that one thing to happen. That is the biggest epiphany that I’ve ever had. And not to say that everything changed forever. The idea of making choices. One of the things that I’ve realized over time is that there are plenty of places where I didn’t realize that I had choices.
Amy Stone [00:45:27]:
Sure.
Valerie Friedlander [00:45:27]:
Or that I was making choices. And so like, while that was much more present in this one to one interaction in a romantic relationship that my focus was around how do I have healthy relationships. I didn’t necessarily see that in terms of careers, in terms of what I chose to have in my life, whether I chose to have kids, whether I Chose to buy a house like, oh. Where I chose to live. Like, they were choices, but I didn’t know some of the underlying conditioning that influenced those choices. And so as I’ve unpacked more of those things, I’m like, oh. And that expands it right? Then I see more things. So I think the idea of being intentional with choice was really accessed. That shift out of I can’t influence what happens was that moment. And then the desire to be empowered to. The desire to be an agent of my life was really activated in that moment. And there are plenty of places where I’m like, I look. I can look back and go, huh. If I had thought about that, if I had been like, this is. Is. Is this really my choice or is this my social conditioning?
Amy Stone [00:46:47]:
Yeah, I think that that’s. I mean, this is just my opinion. I think that sometimes it’s unavoidable. And one of the things that I’ve thought about sometimes is that it’s not. I’m not sure it’s always helpful to do that deep dive for what we could have done in the past. I mean, sometimes I think it is very helpful. Don’t get me wrong. But there are times where. And I’ve said, you know, specific to, like, relationships and parenting and things. It’s. You can look back and be like, wow, I didn’t realize I was making the decision at that moment or the choice that I didn’t see. And sometimes that’s great, and other times it’s like, well, you know, if I had noticed. But. And there’s a point where the microscope is not helpful. We’re turning it in on ourselves.
Valerie Friedlander [00:47:28]:
Oh, yeah.
Amy Stone [00:47:28]:
Only, you know, I’m not actually a.
Valerie Friedlander [00:47:31]:
Huge fan of going back into the past and going, what would I have done if or woulda, coulda, shoulda kind of stuff. What I do think is helpful because our patterns carry. We carry the patterns. So, like, if we think about trauma responses, you know, everything is in our bodies. So when we have this interaction or this experience, it’s not a past thing. It’s a. It time warps and we are in the experience that we had, and we make decisions from that experience. So I. I think, you know, there’s a. There’s a place of. I like to look at patterns. So we’re not going.
Amy Stone [00:48:07]:
If.
Valerie Friedlander [00:48:07]:
If we do look at the past, we’re not looking at the past in order to go, oh, I wish I had done this. It’s what motivated this. What’s. What made these conditions. And it’s not even Just like things I didn’t like. It’s things that I did like. And looking at what was helpful about that, what supported me in this situation, what kept me from making this is the decision that I would have liked to have made. What environment was present for me, looking at the pattern that are playing in the present that to know, oh, these came from. I still have these patterns playing. So it’s not so much past, it’s more present. What’s going on right now, how do I. And I can see it better when I can see the expanse of it sometimes than when I’m just looking. I could make it like, oh, I just did that just now. Well, but did I or did I do it it like what I did before? Because I’m perceiving things from this lens that has built up over my entire.
Amy Stone [00:49:10]:
Life up until this point and for me. And then we’ll have to. We’ll wrap this up because I could talk to you all day. One of the things that’s been interesting is as I get older and wiser, at some point people started asking me things like, hey, well, why did you make this decision? And I can remember sometimes thinking, I don’t know why I made that decision. Why did I make that? You know, like. And that put me in the spot of like, what were, you know, why did I make that decision? And having to think about it. And some of that comes up when you’ve got these. You create your own army and you’re trying to, you know, guide them into, you know, their best life. And you think, why did we do it this way? Like, what is the reason that we do it this way? And. And so there are some times where I have learned the repetitive questions where you get the same question from people over and over again, like, hey, why did you do this? And there are a couple of them I’ve learned to say, I’m like, listen, I’ll tell you what I did and I’ll tell you what I think the lessons were. But I, you know, there’s no. I don’t want to myself in a position of judging this past decision I made because I can’t go back and change it. Like, I’ve lived with the impact of that. And so me reflecting for a long time on the why of that is like a. Is just. It doesn’t do me any good. Like, you’re in a position where you get to make your own decision. Now is the time for you to think about it. But like, the, like, for my life, it’s in the past. I already did it. You know, I already jumped off the bridge. I can’t undo it. So that. And that’s sort of what, you know, like, it’s. It’s. I guess it’s semantics. And really, in a lot of ways, not maybe necessarily a thing, but. But it was so, like. So people used to ask me all the time, like, if you had to do it again, would you be a step parent? And I was like, that is not a helpful question for me to ask myself, because I have done it. I can’t undo it. And it just, you know, like, I’m like, I will tell you what I did, but I. I’m not gonna put myself in that spot to judge my past decision anymore.
Valerie Friedlander [00:51:04]:
I think the energy behind the question really matters.
Amy Stone [00:51:06]:
Yeah, but people mean and people mean.
Valerie Friedlander [00:51:08]:
Well, yeah, yeah, but I mean, how I ask the question, right? Like, how I process that question. Because I work. I work with so many women who look at their life and go, you know, if I. Not that. And there’s a lot of caveating of, like, I would not change having kids for the world. I love my kids. I wouldn’t not do that again. Like, I wouldn’t change that. It’s there. But if I had known what I know now, I don’t know if I would have made the choice right to have kids. And I have a lot. I have worked with so many women, and there’s a lot. It’s hard to acknowledge that there’s a lot of shame. There’s a lot of guilt around that feeling and bringing it to voice to be able to look at and go, well, how does that influence where you are now? The fact that you made those choices, we know, has this impact. And what inspired that choice, like, what influenced you and what could we do to shift some of those things so you feel like you have more power now even because you wouldn’t change, because you can’t change, because.
Amy Stone [00:52:13]:
Yes, you cannot.
Valerie Friedlander [00:52:15]:
One of the things that I really liked is just a little coaching trick or, you know, a little magic or whatever you want to call it is. Is the. The type of question.
Amy Stone [00:52:25]:
Yeah, you asked.
Valerie Friedlander [00:52:26]:
So, like, why has a kind of an innate judginess.
Amy Stone [00:52:30]:
It is a judgment. That’s true. Yes.
Valerie Friedlander [00:52:32]:
And so asking why. That’s what I mean about, like, the energy is like, asking why often has this feeling of, like, I, maybe it was wrong, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Like, there’s a lot of energy to that. So, like, I find to. To the answers that you give. Yeah, Asking that, well, what. What am I learning from this? What motivated that decision? What do I want to take away from it in my pres. For my present moment so that I can keep growing and expanding and being more of the person that I want to be in this moment with the reality that I have built for myself? Yes.
Amy Stone [00:53:09]:
And I do think. I think it’s unfair that anybody out there who’s in the position where they’re caregiving for parents, for siblings, for kids, it’s find yourself the village that honors the fact that it’s a lot of work and that none of us ever know what the future is going to bring. And, you know, like, we buy the dream that we want in advance. And, you know, it’s like, people sell us the cute booties and the outfits and the very, very cute smiles, and there’s no advertising about small children. That is at 3am Sick kid crying for four hours.
Valerie Friedlander [00:53:44]:
Heck, even if there was, I think a lot of us, I think I would have been like, well, that’s. That’s not going to be my kid.
Amy Stone [00:53:50]:
I know. I was the very, very, very best version of my adult stepmom momself before I had children. Like, I. I was amazing before I had to do it for myself.
Valerie Friedlander [00:54:01]:
Yeah, yeah. It’s just there’s no preparation because our society is not designed to support that. I read Gabor Mate’s recent book, the Myth of Normal, and it really highlighted some helpful things along those lines.
Amy Stone [00:54:17]:
Yeah. No. One of my takeaways from that book that I call out all the time is he’s one of the first people who I heard say that right now, in present time, we’ve transferred the concept of authority and respect to the institution and the buildings as opposed to people with experiences. And that’s one of the themes behind this show, that the voice of personal experience can be very complementary and helpful, along with expert opinions. And my joke about that is the dentist who walks you through with the root canal is going to be like, that’s going to be maybe a different story than the person next to you who just had a root canal last week. Both are helpful.
Valerie Friedlander [00:54:54]:
Yeah, yeah. Because that person’s experience might not be your experience. And it’s useful to hear other people’s experiences, but also like, where are they coming from with anyway? It’s. It’s so called. There’s no one size fits.
Amy Stone [00:55:07]:
All right. Like we said. Exactly.
Valerie Friedlander [00:55:09]:
Source the information.
Amy Stone [00:55:11]:
All right, so in a second, we’re going to do the final questions. I want to give you a chance. You Mentioned coaching. I want to give you a chance to tell people about what you do and how you want them to find you online after they watch and listen to this fabulous episode.
Valerie Friedlander [00:55:24]:
Yeah, well, I. You can find me online on my website, which is my name, valeriefridlander.com and I have a podcast called Mindset Unlimited that is in its fifth season. And so you can find me by listening there. I always encourage people to listen there because then you get a sense of my personality and my process and my approach and worldview and all of those things. And I think all of that’s really important when you’re looking for a coach and somebody to. Or anybody who’s supporting you on a very personal level. I tend primarily to work with women who are in periods of transition, usually within their career, their professional life, but sometimes will come to me in a life transition. And we work around bringing that. That. Unpacking the past patterns and into the. How do I want to move forward in my present and what do I want to create and who do I want to be and helping move forward with intentionality. Yeah, no, that’s the work that I do.
Amy Stone [00:56:21]:
Intentional life design. It’s a. I love it. All right, so you have a very special offer for the audience, which is called the Energy Leadership Index assessment. Eli. And there’s a giant description here, normally, which is in the show notes. Everybody can check it out. Normally, this is for sale for $375. But you’ve given us a code of imperfect for 60% off. And there is a link that people can use that is in the show notes wherever you are watching and listening to the show. But the very easiest way to get these links is always to be subscribed to the imperfect adult thing email community. Because then I send it straight to your email box and you just click on it. You don’t have to hunt up a pen while you are on the treadmill listening to the show. So just my little bit of advice. Valerie, are you ready for the final three questions?
Valerie Friedlander [00:57:06]:
I think I’m as ready as I could be.
Amy Stone [00:57:08]:
I know I. I oversell this and I know every single time, okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:57:12]:
I listen to your podcast, so I hear it. I’m like, Everybody has that same reaction. I’m like, well, you know, here we go. Let’s do it.
Amy Stone [00:57:17]:
Here we go.
Valerie Friedlander [00:57:18]:
I ride roller coasters.
Amy Stone [00:57:20]:
I don’t think I have that on yours, but okay, let’s see. All right.
Valerie Friedlander [00:57:23]:
I did not.
Amy Stone [00:57:24]:
I truly, truly, when I came up for the concept of this, I did not realize how many Questions I would be coming up with that is definitely like a point of personal objectivity of, okay, what is one way that you enjoy working movement into your life?
Valerie Friedlander [00:57:38]:
So we have this really nice lagoon near us. We’re near a natural nature preserve area and there’s a lagoon, Gompers Park Lagoon. It is beautiful. And so after everybody goes off to their various places, I will go for a walk in the morning around the lagoon and bird watch. And I, I sometimes will add in like walking around the neighborhood and just, you know, being present to the place that I live. And so that is that. And then also dance parties, because dance parties are great. So like put on the music that I want to dance to and then dance so good.
Amy Stone [00:58:14]:
All right, when you, Valerie, have a question in 2025 and you’re getting ready to do some research, what are some of the first tools that you will use to get started with that research?
Valerie Friedlander [00:58:25]:
Oh, it so depends on what I’m researching. You know, I feel like a lot of times I’m really interested in people, so I will talk to people.
Amy Stone [00:58:37]:
Okay.
Valerie Friedlander [00:58:37]:
More like that’s, that would be my go to is curiosity about people. But recently I’ve been exploring some, some generational patterns and like the idea of a micro history around like when do women stop being this. My, my great grandmother. My grandmother called my great grandmother very bohemian who turned into this person that she knew as someone who turned on the term refined. And I have been so curious in reading. My grandmother was a poet and reading that poem where she talks about this shift and like, I guess it was the 1800s or whatever, but wow, you know, going, well, what. What shift? Because I see this generationally and like, what happens? So looking at, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of like the, the ancestry.com or you know, the, the family tree stuff kind of going, where are these roots from? Like, what are we, what are we tied to? What’s the relationship? So that’s been another area of recent study. So people books and then like specifically recently the family tree stuff.
Amy Stone [00:59:41]:
The family tree stuff. That is such a cool thing. All right, very good. So now I’m going to ask you about connection. If you, how would you say that you like to connect with people that can’t. It’s. I write these in advance, so I didn’t know you were going to talk about people in the earlier one. Connect with people today in 2025. Do you like to connect with people? So this, you mentioned something in person with like food, drink, like a party, happy hour, share a Meal at an event, so on and so forth. Are you likely to call somebody or go online or video chat or text or message? How do you like to connect today in 2025?
Valerie Friedlander [01:00:13]:
I think how I like to connect and how I typically do connect are two different things unfortunately. And that has to do with just all of the things. I prefer this kind of connection to be quite honest. If it can’t be in person, I’d rather be like video chat, like face to face sort of dynamics. That’s, that’s my preference. I do find that with close friends a lot of times I’m sending voice messages back and forth because I talk, talk, eat more easily than I write. So I’ll like process stuff on a voice message. So those are, those are my two preferred.
Amy Stone [01:00:48]:
That is okay. When people send me voice messages I’m so funny because like I first of all like I have to be in a place where I can like listen to it. Like if I’m standing in my kitchen, I’m like, okay, what is this going to be? You know. And then sometimes I will type my response back. I don’t know why. And I always do like a thing. I’m like, I don’t know if this is breaking like an etiquette rule. Like if somebody sends me a voice mess message, is it only appropriate for me? Like should I suppose to record it and send it back? Like I do this whole like self coaching thing like where I’m like, is this, am I following the rules of this message or am I not? I don’t understand.
Valerie Friedlander [01:01:21]:
I mean I, my friends, I have people who are. It’s more easy to type things out. I just, I don’t like usually when they come in, I like it’s on my phone. Yeah, I just don’t like typing on my phone at all. I’ll do it it but I don’t like it. So it’s easier for me to hit a record and talk than to either type it on with my thumbs or sit at a computer and, and type it out. But so yeah, I have people who are like listen to the message and like respond while they’re listening, typing it out. And that’s fine, that’s fine. Just for me. It’s the response that matters. And this is from me who also has the. I don’t know what I want to say and I don’t come back to it. I’m like, I am so sorry I have not gotten back to you.
Amy Stone [01:02:05]:
I apologize. But for like years when I was doing like kid carpool right. And people would send me voice messages and it would, like, come up on, like, the car, like, system. And he’s like, do you want it? Do you want me to play this? And I’m like, no, because God only knows what that’s going to be. And everybody in the car maybe doesn’t want to hear about it, but that sort of. That’s it. All right. That’s it. Valerie Friedlander, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the Art of Imperfect Adulting.
Valerie Friedlander [01:02:29]:
It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun.