Hilarie Burton Morgan in conversation with Sophia Bush at Live Talks Los Angeles

[Music] hi I'm Ted hapt gabber founder and producer of live talks Los Angeles thanks for joining us since we started over a decade ago we have brought you hundreds of conversations with story tellers writers actors musicians humorists chefs and thought leaders in business and science you can watch and hear most of these in our YouTube channel and our podcast for details visit livet talks la.org and now here's the show you've tuned in to [Music] see my best friend here has been traveling all over the United States and she went out of her way to be here two days she flew in this afternoon to be here for me it's a lot that's a big ask of someone to like can you just fly across country to profile my book and you did it and we've worn matching outfits in the past but again today we showed up in velvet just hello twinsies yeah I know what you like I know you don't I feel like my mic is so loud is it are we screaming at you is it just that I can hear myself this you sound she said you're perfect you're she is perfect so much I will take it she perfect you know what's perfect this book that I clearly didn't like cuz I doged every single page I was like how am I supposed to talk to you about this for 45 minutes I feel like this could take four hours but you lived that book I know which is weird because of all the people that I've sat with in talks for this book you you were the person that was there for all those chapters well not home in Virginia but I definitely have told you all the dirt on Virginia I've seen the yearbook photos she was so cute she's been in the haunted house like all the current stuff that I talk about like loss in the book like you are the person that held my hand for all of it and so I'm so grateful my baby I love you I love [Music] you yeah all right so what do we want to dissect you guys guys well here's the thing is your team is so nice and they gave me this like very formal they were like just to prepare you we'll make you a one sheet and I was like okay and then you were like look at your book you nerd should we just play like dogar roulette yeah let's just play dog roulette I want to see what I folded here oh okay I really like this so we get to page 58 okay and you're talking all about working at MTV and how like leaving Virginia put you in the position to travel a lot yeah and that there was something about collecting all of those stories in that era and I tell her this all the time on the podcast you're so good at interviewing people because you're curious and genuinely interested in what they like and I can always see when someone's sharing something with you that like really she she's like she in and she gets really farming you for good stories yeah but you talk here about all those years later realizing that the stories stay and watching George go scream to the monsters on the farm and you say the only way for a story to live forever is if you start telling it yeah and we've lived other people's stories that we've told for our job sure we've had stories told about us that are not true I mean we've had stories told about us that are true we did that we did that and there have been some stories that we've been like can't wait to tell this one and some that have taken us a really long time to feel secure enough to share yeah so when you talk about this what does it mean to you now as the woman you are now as the mom you are now the professional you are today like talk to me about when you decide to start telling a story well that's just it right so I write this whole chapter about telling stories that are folklore okay like ghost stories that I'd grown up with or the folklore of my hometown that I've shared with my kids but it's a metaphor right because while I'm writing all of these like folk folklore stories and while I'm telling my kids these fables you and I were in the process of telling our work experience stories for the very first time and that's our own like personal mythology right and so we had to live for a very long period of time with people jumping to conclusions about us or creating narratives about us that weren't true and it's the the tacky thing to do is stomp your foot and be like that's not true you know but thou doth put test too much um and so we just waited and we waited and we knew our truths together and that was enough yeah and so being able to share those truths now as grown-up Ladies feels really nice it's like getting to eat the dessert finally where it's like oh God finally okay it's key lime pie it's fantastic um and it has made me eager to just be truthful about everything right which I have to temper because I'm like calm down um yeah but I think when you tell a truth when you tell your specific story you breathe life into it because it's going to be different than your friend's truth it's going to be different from the truth that other people experienced in that moment but it's yours and it is valuable and you deserve to honor it and so yeah for people who are who are reading that and thinking it's just about like ghost stories cool but maybe it's a ghost story about you maybe it's about a different version of yourself you know you and I have been many many different people and we've got juicy stories about all of them oh my god well and something I think that's interesting CU you love spooky yeah is you begin to realize what stories shape you and what stories haunt you yeah and it can be scary to tell a haunting but we've done it and suddenly you realize there's no monster under the bed anymore well that's what it does it's like flicking the lights on right if you talk about the scary thing if you talk about the hard thing if you talk about the frightening situation that you were in the more you talk about it it dispels the monster and that has been really healing in our lives together but it also you know you get to boil it down and do it for your kids now with my kids I'm like the more we talk about you being scared of the monster in the woods the more we talk about you being scared of the bully at school the more we talk about it the less power it has um and so I want to encourage people to do that and if you have to create a metaphor for the rough thing in your life like do that make up a ghost story make up a haunting story make up a Banshee story oh banshees are scary man and so yeah I want PE I think that is the origin of a lot of these oral Traditions right it was like people were feeling fear and they would share that fear with their neighbors or their families or their loved ones by telling stories right because it's it's easy it's I'm not talking about me I'm talking about somebody else it's like talking in code uh and I think that's a lost art form yeah that's why you know that's why we like movies that's why we like podcasts it's why we like narratives and books because it allows us to take the feelings that we have trouble feeling in our own life and assign them to someone else um and yeah I mean we certainly have experienced our fair share of that like oh you two do trauma well be like oh who up you want to talk about hard things okay I also will say that I think something really interesting of our 20 years together now is that cuz look I mean y'all you know us like we can be hot-headed who like honestly the greatest compliment I've ever been given in my life probably top five for sure I'm being hyperbolic definitely top five was when Jeffrey was like yo nobody goes for people for my wife like me but you and I was like she was my wife first bro yeah and I obviously oh my God like yeah they have their own like text thread going at this point and I'm just like who are you talking to I love that man oh Sophia they're my barracudas you know they just like come in and attack get today but the cool thing about it is like we were definitely more hot-headed when we were younger yeah now I think we're smarter and it is interesting to learn patience about when you tell your story yeah to like let everybody do what they're doing and go I can outweigh you yeah I'm patient and you have really taught me that long game oh boy yeah because you know we talk about this at length on the podcast I had monsters in My Closet for a very long time that I could not talk about and that is really frustrating because you're like can't anyone else see the monsters am I the only one and when you finally tell the truth and you find the other person who saw the monster and then there's someone else that saw the monster and all of a sudden you can be together and you're like great now we're going to light torches and get P for pitch for like we're going for it yeah right um that's an important that's an important step and I I give my kids that same advice I'm like take your time take your time with how you feel take your time with how you tell your story take your time when you feel like you're under the microscope um and and a lot of this book is about slowing down it's about slow communication I talk about writing letters in this book because paper mail slows us down you know we need to we're seeing so much like diff disinformation and misinformation on the internet right now and I think it's because everyone wants to be the fastest and the quickest and I think slowing down is an important thing for us to do in this moment because we want the truth and the truth takes a minute I love that it does and you know what else I love about I mean paper books mail all of it you can't reread a phone call no like there's something so precious when you talk about your the treasure box on the bookshelf you know at Hester's house and I'm like oh yeah I remember like I remember where it sat and the books on the thing and we were there for so long like the first additions we'd find and the things we'd collect that filled that out and those are the things you can pick up and smell and look at and I'm terrible I can't give books to anyone cuz I write in all of them well that's it we write in all our books when we first started working together JoJo our hairdresser pointed out she's like y'all just go into your own like little world and you got your pens and you're writing in books are you two taking a class together I don't know about I was like no maybe we just life we just needed to nerd out there was a point where I was reading Aldis huxley's doors of perception which is all about drug use um like LSD and stuff and I was taking it so seriously and I just remember like like Sophia coming up and being like what are the outlines you know like what are you underlining in here what are the notes in the margin and when you do that to a book you are participating as an audience member there is something magic about a book because it's I I have heard Alice Hoffman say this she's like a book is nothing it's not a piece of art until a reader reads it right it is the most intimate art form because pieces of art can exist you know songs can exist but a book is only as good as the person reading it and so that's the kind of intimacy I'm after I love it you're going to love this quote Jed shared with me today it you know he sent me a picture of text I still don't know what that's technically called which is embarrassing it's a picture text like you know like a it's like it's a picture of text it's not a meme but it's like a screenshot of those little like yeah like script like Instagram poetry [ __ ] you know what I'm talking about like I love those things by the way I'm in obviously we post this [ __ ] out of those are St do we send them to each other all the time it's so embarrassing um but he sent me this one that was like really think about what a book is you're holding slices of a dead tree hallucinating and I was like so Alis Huxley I mean not wrong and now everyone's doing ketamine treatment which yeah I know we were we were talking about it with my mom backstage you guys hi Mommy hi Mom she's here somewhere there you are yay okay so actually this is perfect because on page 115 you're talking about like yes yes placebo effect fine but you say I have a healthy amount of skepticism even though I do declare that I believe in everything oh yeah how do you hold both I think you hold both with great humility like I used to say all the time to Wendy Bell our makeup artist on a show that we worked on that we're on strike and we're not going to talk about um I used to say that God has a much better imagination than man and it's disgusting for humans to think that they know what God's sense of humor is or like all the things that he would dream up like a [ __ ] platypus come on you guys if there's a platypus there's a 100% a Bigfoot right yeah and fairies and all of the mystical things you know like we deserve the opportunity to be surprised by the world and to find Wonder in it and Imagination and this idea that we have all the answers already wrong there are aliens and 100% like mock man's probably real too um it makes life so much more fun when you're not arrogant about thinking you have all the answers and you give yourself over to the freedom to just buy into it you know I I want to believe that there are all those things because I want to find magic in the world and just the possibility I don't have to see it but the possibility that it's there is exciting but also Bigfoot is real so yeah but the chapter you talk about synchronicity that's what it's all about right yeah like when you start to pay attention and things continue to surface at you like we're both 11-11 girls oh my God all day and when I'm all day and when I'm having like a big day yeah it's every hour yeah it's 1010 it's 1111 it's 1212 it's 1:11 it's 2:22 I'm like I'm what is about to happen am I going to win the lottery today oh my God today's the day that hasn't happened so far but like there's time when you start to you and you say it in the book you say pay attention to what is happening what's being spoken about who's talking who's in front of you yeah like when I feel like I'm in these moments of synchronicity I look around and I'm like who's in my life now more than they usually are like am I seeing you every 3 weeks instead of every quarter yeah am are we whatever it is I look around and I think I need to pay attention to this I may not know what it's going to mean for a while but I need to pay attention to this when do you feel like you were paying enough attention to synchronicity that you decided to start to Market when it happened like was there a year or a moment or a thing when it changed yeah um I this is I haven't talked about this um during the pandemic right before the pandemic hit I took notes on my phone I had a dream where a friend who had passed visited me and it was very weird I was in my high school and there were armed guards everywhere all over the school and we were hanging out and I was like I have to make this flight to Denver and they were like no you're not going to go anywhere right now and you're going to sit tight and it's going to be okay but it's going to be really really really scary and I had this visit from a friend that had passed whose birthday is 1111 and after that dream I saw it constantly like constantly um and I was really rattled by it cuz it didn't feel like a dream it felt like a visit and so I just started to be aware of the people who I was talking to in those moments and it started to be the same people over and over again and what you find is like athletes will talk about finding a Groove they'll talk about finding a rhythm right and they call it flow and as artists it's the same thing it's like all of a sudden you're writing because you're in your flow you're painting because you're in your flow you're making music because you're in your flow um I started to find that when I spent more time with the people who were popping up in those synchronous it moments that the flow like all of a sudden like we've got this podcast happening and I'm working on this book and like all these business opportunities are opening up but also like my relationship with my husband is so much stronger and like everything started to flow when I became aware of surrounding myself with magic people that pop up at magic moments and you're definitely one of those people like when we are in the same room everything is possible and there's nothing that is impossible and that's you know we're filled with so much drudgery in our lives it's like okay we're doing the dishes and we're doing the laundry and we're doing all the boring stuff if you can open up to figuring out who your magic people are it really will make everything so much lovier those are the people who are going to be your pamp pals those are the people who are going to be your confidants those are going to be your Mischief Makers um and yeah being conscious of about assigning people those roles is important mhm well because that's how you take the synchronicity it's how you take the awareness that something magical is happening and you put magic back in it well that's it it like if you're just like okay cool 11-11 every day that's dumb um but if you take something that like sure maybe it's a placebo maybe 11-11 means nothing right but I have people who consistently check in on me on a regular basis who just happen to show up at that time that is enough you know it doesn't have to be magic it's consistency and we've said this on the podcast before that love is consideration consistently and so you're finding those people that hold that magic love for you because they're consistent feel like if I I was Oprah I'd be like tweet it Oprah you know I love when she says that did she say that yeah she'll stop a show and be like tweet it and I'm like she's not wrong put it on a mum sticker put it on a t-shirt girl you need an Oprah show come on now ready do this okay wait oh I can't read that no she's wait she's playing well yeah because I was like what's the next one and I was like oh that's the sweet thing you wrote for me I put hearts in the margin I don't need to read it I did I said that Sophia is my activism Muse I think finding Muses in your life in your real life is really important um we I was obsessed with the idea of Muses When We Were Young probably because I was hanging out with a bunch of musicians and I was like I write a song about me like am I going to be your M dud hey there's lizard W Shelly hi cutie hi my angel um yeah yeah yeah I had this idea that being amused was like really sexy and cool and then I was like wait a tick I don't want to be someone else's Muse I want to be my own muse and I want to have Muses I want to have people that make me want to be better and you are absolutely one of my Muses because I don't know how you fit all the stuff you do into a day like you're in Detroit you're in New York you're like across the pond doing all sorts of stuff and you're always helping people and building other people's businesses and putting real thought into activism and supporting other people and then you also managed to have a career of your own which is batshit to me I'm like if I can get the dishwasher started I think I think it's just like real bad add but thank you oh good Hey listen that's one of those magical thinking things we're like you could label it something negative or you could say she has superpowers yeah I'm like I could be medicated or I could do all these things at the same time oh God I love it okay actually this is perfect cuz this is this is something we've talked about the way we used to use phrases to undercut ourselves yeah she knows mine I'm not going to tell you all yeah yeah not yet but you you did used to say this all the time I still say it all the time tell them guys I make poor choices all the time and uh it's fine I've done okay making poor choices but I make really poor choices and when I met Mary post is Kate here I'm here yay oh I love you Mary's daughter is here um listen Sophia and I only got to play Mary's daughters on TV and we were so jealous of you guys cuz with all the fairies and like all the fun stories that she told us about you guys you know that was just a life that seemed magical to me and your mom was such a light and so when I told Mary post I make poor choices she burst out laughing and was like oh my God I love poor choices uh and that's how I know I knew that I like found a woman you know um and so yeah your mom made me a pillow that said I make poor choices on a pillow and it's like in my house my children are like Mommy do you yeah but I I see so many people with the artifice of social media really trying hard to pretend like they've never made a misstep or that every choice they've made is great or that they're always on the best vacation or they're making the best sourdough bread or whatever like Perfection is not for me and if anything I wrote the whole book rural diaries about being a failure at so very much and I feel like a lot of people connected with that because there's fun and failure it means that you tried something new it means you tried something out of the box and sometimes poor choices like running away with a man that you barely know and having a baby with him after knowing him for three weeks is like a great idea it's worked out honestly I loved it yeah yeah because I was in yeah she was the next time I saw Sophia we just sat down at a bar and we like closed the place down and I remember we were like seated on the bench like we were like okay so what's next what's next getting out of this place um yeah yeah poor choices are so fun cuz at the end of the day when we're all in rocking chairs and I would say with gray hair but here we are um but when we're nice and Jerry atric and we're thinking back on our lives are we going to be like wow I'm so glad I was so conservative in my choices yeah or are we going to be like I was bad like we were bad and it's fantastic it great oh it's so much more fun and so many of the things we are a little bummed about now are the things we didn't do we should have kissed everybody I know I know I know what were we thinking yeah we did we did okay to be fair uh but no I wish cuz we both had good girl complexes like each one of us was like well I was a virgin to you know like we were we were trying so hard to be such good girls and what we didn't realize is that our worth was not in how obedient we could be our worth was not in how subservient we could be our worth was not not in plain by the rules our worth was our ideas our Ambitions our our energy that we give to other people like that's our worth um and so only realizing that in you know the last the later part of my 30s was I able to just go Full Witch and like just give into it it feels so good yeah it feels nice yeah we don't care no it there's something so special and it took me longer but I think there's something so special about going wait a second what happens if I stop saying like oh thank you sorry I don't I didn't want to be in the way I didn't want to like ask for too much is everyone else okay for your whole life and going well what do I want yeah what do I need it it's a it's a shift that sounds small but it's monumental mental and you encourage that in the people in your life and when you talk even about the first book Nia said something to me in Detroit this week my God like my friends are so smart look at them and my other best friend who lives in Detroit all my best friends live so far away from me yeah we just need to start a compound babe I'm working on it we need to make it easier on so but we were talking about this idea and someone asked a question about failure um in small business yeah and Nia was like I don't talk about successes and failures anymore I talk about wins and losses yeah cuz everyone goes through loss in their life and everyone has days when they win and they're just facts they're not actually about you and I was like tweeted yeah and like even that this idea that you can kind of you can wrap yourself in your wins and your losses and your confusion and your Clarity and all of it goes in the grimoire like all of it goes in the pages of the record of your life and you wouldn't be who you are without every single thing that's ever happened to you well so I talk about Ulisses a lot in this book because I grew up on itha and I've got a big huge hip tattoo that says itha and itha was uls's home that he left to go fight the Trojan War and he's gone for 20 years and all he wanted to do was get back to this home but he gets there and it's not necessarily the home that he left right it's never the home that you left and this idea that you could still come home to it and it's like a valuable thing even though it is different is important but the bigger thing for me was understanding the hero's journey and how forgiving we are when we're reading books or we're watching TVs and our heroes stumble and they make a they make a poor choice and you know they backslide and we root for those people even in their losses but we don't do it for ourselves so in writing your own grimoire you are the hero of your own little ulses story right and you're honoring your losses in your grimoire in a way that makes them maybe hurt a little bit less but also it allows you to celebrate your wins in a really triumphant way you know because you're not seeing them isolated you're seeing them as the culmination of this big huge 20-year Journey you've been on um and so yeah I mean I was back home in Sterling Virginia just this past weekend I was there Friday Saturday and Sunday and it is 100% different than how I grew up and it was scary to me because I didn't know how to drive around my community it was like 9,000 people when I went to school there and and there's 30,000 people in my little town but like like 200,000 in like the greater area so it's unrecognizable and yet at 2 o'clock in the morning on Saturday night after I'd worked all day at my high school like signing pictures and stuff I'm out with the football team and the metalheads and like the cheerleading squad and like the good girls like we were all out doing shots and I was like home is completely gone but it's still here you know like and I wouldn't have been able to celebrate that if I hadn't left for 20 years you know that night wouldn't have felt so magical if it hadn't been such a journey to get back home to that spot um and so that's what I want people to have for themselves like seriously writing it down is what they tell you to do in therapy we're just calling it something magical yeah you know it's all the same thing I mean therapy is pretty magical yeah it is you can tell someone you're your feelings and they make you feel nice about it I love that yeah okay so what feels like you did the first book yeah you've helped inspire people to collect magic what feels like the next hero's journey to embark on you went home to itha I did like where's the boat going now you know where the boat's going now well I mean I know she I wasn't going to she knows where the boat's going now um I was giving you the opportunity to tell you want to tell them there are things that you and I both loved as young people stories stories that you and I both loved as young people and in this phase of my life teaming with my work wife and like telling stories that matter and making things for a new generation of young people is very important to me cuz I look at the content that's on TV and I'm like do I want George watching this like what's Practical Magic for my daughter yes do you know what I mean like there are certain Touchstone things like we were so excited to go to Wilmington North Carolina because Empire Records was filmed there and like that like oh God it was Rex Manning day um Rex Manning day and so I think this mix of a writing and telling stories and empowering other women is really important and so it becomes like this is solitary witchcraft you're working on your grimoire all by yourself like good good good that's the right first step and then you build your coven right so like who's in my coven and we're the we're the like OG OG we really are I have that picture that I drew in the trailer I took I drew a pict picture I don't even know what year it was but it was all the women we work with and I just drew caricatures of every woman around this bub bubbling cauldron and I was like we're a coven and so that's like now when people are like you're a witch I'm like where have you been oh my God tell me about it girl where has everybody been here's to being obvious you know we brought drinks obviously H okay so it's a teaser but it's not an answer to my question that's fine we're going to conjure some [ __ ] how about that that's just fine H we've talked about intent hold please guys I told you it was going to be roulette I didn't plan ooh I want to talk about talismans oh yeah cuz you're the best at this look I love trinkets y I don't leave the house but like to be clear we are the same like we're gentle hoarders and gentle as being generous Hillary and I don't no one holds more [ __ ] than Sophia we don't know we don't know how to throw things away no I'm worse it's okay you are worse but know I I benefit from it every ticket tuub every play Bill people are like what are you going to do with this I'm like I don't know I don't know but I can't but but you thank you you ritualize you make it sacred talk talk to me I think what I'm realizing in real time what I'm asking you is can you tell me what to keep and what to throw away what needs to stay I'm valid wor okay what's Worthy is The Experience right and so obviously we all hope that we have the best memory forever and that we just remember the things that we do that's not the case as I'm learning as I get older I'm like oh I did that weird um I just recently did like a a TRL retrospective and they asked me for old videotapes and like old pictures and stuff and of course I had it cuz hoarding um but I hadn't seen it in so long and I completely forgot whole chunks of my life yeah and so for me if there is an experience I want to remember I will hold on to the thing if it's just ribbon right that's personal that's a personal attack it is my my best friend Nick has lived with me off and on for years and Nick would just like open a box and find all this ribbon and be like Hillary no no and so if it's an experience thing then keep it if it is not then someone else is really going to enjoy that and we're going to take it to Goodwill um yeah I mean look I save every everything and what was lovely about going home is that all the saving paid off cuz for whatever reason I have been able to remember the names of every kid I went to school with right and I think it's because I've got those yearbooks or and I'm not ashamed to say I look at them damn it um I really value those people that I grew up with and I you know I remember memorizing the back of call sheets so I would know like every crew member's name and now when we go on to other jobs and we see them I'm like oh my God how's your son Wolf Gang you know like yeah that's a true story I I went to work on a job right when the pandemic hit and there was a man that had worked with us when we were younger and I was like oh my God how is your son Wolfie and he's like he's actually here working this kid is a grown ass man now it's Jeff ly son yeah um and so yeah I think the hoarding is beneficial people have vilified it and and part of the reason they vilify it is because everyone we talk about this in the book The home improvement shows have destroyed people's lives well they've ruined they've ruined personality girl if I see if I see one more distressed pop oh what are you going to say I'm saying contractor gray and beige walls so you can you can work the resale value of your I don't give a [ __ ] about the resale value of your home I don't care paint it purple paint it green paint it red everything in Tree Hill was red um no everything in my world was purple purple yeah we were colorcoded I was pissed but but this idea that um that everything is like supposed to be beige and gray and really simplified really bothers me and part of that is decluttering your home so that the resale value you know is high that's easy to sell in the future you can't be in a relationship worried about the exit right and you're in a relationship with your home you got to treat that home like it's your woman and you have to dress it up and accessorize it and treat it well Adorn it give it gifts but Jewel it hello yeah your house deserves Rings yes I'm saying so yeah treat your house like it's your fancy girlfriend that's what I want for you guys well it's also weird when you really think about it and this is something we have in our jobs like the the temporary permanence yeah you're going to pick up and move somewhere but every year they're going to tell you you might get cancelled so every year you're like do I pack up my apartment commit oh and then they keep you so you go home for the summer and you tell your friends you can go to their weddings and then yay but also [ __ ] your show gets picked up so then you can't be in anybody's wedding and you go back to your show and you're always kind of like do I settle here or do I not and it is a very disconcerting way to feel it's like one of the weird side effects of working in the circus and reading that chapter in the book I was like what a weird thing that we've encouraged people to feel temporary in the place where they live it's supposed to be the most sacred place in your life right this is where you you do your own like personal work it's where you bring your loved ones like it's your church why are we painting it contractor gray I just I can't I'm like well are you moving out like tomorrow no cuz if not maybe enjoy your house and by the way I am a huge fan of removable wallpaper the Weir the better the background on our I finally got an office like an adult with gray hair at 41 years old uh and I was like I'm going to put up some wallpaper and I got the loudest most eccentric wallpaper I could yeah because we live once like make it colorful mhm color matters mhm says the two girls dressed all in black you don't know what we're wearing underneath listen listen okay I'm back on the talisman's hold please yeah oh yeah talismans but yeah you should fill your house with talismans like I have evil eyes all over my house cuz my best friend share a game is oh I've got two for you I'm going to give look I'm giving you that right now look at that uh see never leave home without one you never know who needs one um yeah yeah filling my house with talismans is really important and my husband did our book tour stop in pipsy and Jeff didn't realize that I have altars all over the house wait he didn't know no he was just like she likes crystals what do you want um and then when he read the book he was like oh wait no I get it now like that's what those are like that's a Depot for magic yeah I'm like Jeff there's like a deer jaw there and some crystals and some candles what did you think it was he'll get there I love him I know you two are so in love I Jeffrey loves her so much he's like the big brother I never got to have that's it and you guys give each other [ __ ] I love it I love it it's really fun he can be in the coven he can be in the COV he pretends to be above it but he also has taken advantage of my ability to heal Burns um he burns himself all the time and he'll just walk up and be like good just a random can you fix that I don't want to ask but help me yeah I love it it's interesting to talk about you guys like OB obviously there's so much humor cuzz y'all are funny wow but there's like deep love you were willing to take a risk you trusted your gut which was hard after we'd been raised as young adults in a place that told us every single one of our gut instincts was wrong poor choices oh boy and the way that you open the book is something that I love I talked about it when I posted about it this idea that you can create your own inheritance and that an inheritance doesn't mean like how much money is in your bank account that you're going to leave for your family to fight over unless you're good at paperwork I'm spending it all there will be nothing left for you but like this this inheritance of magic that you can make tradition yeah if you didn't have it that because let's be real most people don't have a perfect family or you know Leave it to Beaver life or The Brady Bunch like most people have stuff they have to carry with them and eventually go to therapy for and I love this idea that you've been really conscious in your family about what you want to create to fill the gaps of what you weren't given and what you want to make just cuz it's fun yeah I just want you to to talk to people about it okay okay so I read a book called Italian folk magic oh tell me about it are you a little Italian just a week okay mostly um fantastic book Mary Grace Fon is a a Canadian writer but she comes from a long line of Italian women who would never say that they were practicing magic because they're deeply Catholic but they're prly magic um and so she did this whole book about this hereditary magic that was Generations deep and so ingrained in the culture and I I struck up a friendship with her just like being a fan girl on social media and I was like what you have is Magic like I love that you have this bond with your aunts and with grandmothers and things like that I'm very jealous of that because it doesn't exist in my family you know like my mom's side is like full Dutch I guys I have no idea what that means like I If there is someone that is Dutch that wants to walk me through my hereditary magic my Birthright I would very much appreciate that um I just know I sunburn uh and so then my dad's side had this like appalation magic but it was incredibly taboo we did not ask about it and you know my grandmother died and no one told me for like eight years and so by the time I found out she was dad I was like oh no I'm never going to learn that side of my family um and for my kids I had the choice whether I was going to let them have this void this vacancy of hereditary magic or just an inheritance of culture you know Jeffrey at our last at at the book stop that Jeffrey and I did we joked but when he was growing up his dad told him that he was Greek and Hawaiian and he believed it forever and he is not I oh no he's Welsh and I know I know he really thought like he thought they'd changed their name at Ellis Island so he and I were like well God we don't have any cultural stuff to hand down to our kids what are we going to dig for and what are we going to find ourselves so I knew a little bit about this kind of magic that my grandmother and my dad's side of the family practiced and so I dug into that and that's like granny magic of the Appalachian Mountains and powwow magic of the Pennsylvania Dutch and that felt like home to me because it is one of the only um the only situations I can find especially in the United States where women were not vilified for being practitioners of magic or magical thinking or magical healing they were the heroes of their Community um and they were protected at all cost C so I loved that like like great I love I have that to look to and be like oh women weren't picked on in this situation that's what I want my daughter to have um but then yeah I I also wanted my kids to have holidays that were just specific to the Morgan Family and so Jeff and I have always celebrated Timmy Nolan day which is a bar here mhm and where is it is it in TCA lake or Burbank yeah yeah that's definitely the bar where we met and so May 8th is Timmy Nolan day and we decorate like it's St Patrick's Day and get Guinness and that's like our thing and our kids don't know that that's not a national holiday right like they're going to meet people later in life and be like you guys aren't doing to no today I can't wait all right do you but like actually what better holiday is there for kids than the one that is the reason you exist exactly I mean he legit that night was like hey let's start a family and I was like stop you're like oh my God calm down okay why not fine yeah so Timmy Nolan day guys you want this um I yeah I think it's really important for people to celebrate their own personal holidays and celebrate a personal mythology um that they invent for themselves if it doesn't already exist like we talk at length on the podcast about the early 2000s where the meanest thing anyone could call you is a poser right and there's this sense in our generation of like oh you're making that up you're a poser you hav't you don't come from a long line of witches and it's like fine then I come from the first line of witches that's cooler and more work anyway um I don't want people to feel like they are beholden to the things that have come before for them I want everyone to have the opportunity to invent who they want to be and what they want to pass down and that includes your own personal mythology I'm just going to make some [ __ ] up I talked to Alice Hoffman about this she and I both used to go into thrift stores and just buy old pictures of strangers right I do this too and makeup stories I have them all over the corkboards in my office and people come over they're like who is that I'm like I don't know that's it's Agatha does he look cool yes he yes no I I mean when I lived in Wilmington my whole house was decorated with other people's relatives and I would just pick up stories by the way the best cuz we like old things yes we do you guys we have antiqued and treasure hunted and thrifted and like wound up in people's barns that are having yard sales everywhere or not having yard sales or just like hi we're friendly we're not super we're harmless the best place I've ever found that we're going to have to go make a movie in Toronto just so I can take you there an hour don't put this on the internet I'm serious just for everyone in this room I need you to like to energetically pinky promise me because I don't give out like my tips very often but an hour and a half you know this is a freaking virtual show [ __ ] well now I've started it so I can't we're going to have to cut it out I'm going to talk to post no you're going to Easter egg it Easter egg it just give them a hint and if they can find it then they earned it ooh yes Swift this okay I don't I'm not a okay she's so good at it I'm not good at an Easter egg I'm just good at honesty I'll just I'll just tell you the man who own who runs the shop is 80 he's lovely he'll be thrilled if everyone shows up the best place I've ever found to go through drifting is an hour outside of Toronto and it's literally called dead people's stuff stop I had a hat it's amazing yeah internet you're welcome oh man to the friends I told I would never share that I'm so sorry listen we're going to road trip you know we'll go how far is is Toronto from the farm get not far okay great I'm ready I love a road trip I'll make a playlist I'll pack snacks she will though she'll come with a whole [ __ ] like fishing I never go anywhere without snacks just in case there's a situation I was a camp counselor I have to keep other people's children alive it's my job um this is probably why your daughter's my best friend yeah dude George George thinks that Sophia is Sophia the First from the cartoon she just thinks like she's grown up right and she's like well I know Sophia and the other kids at school are like do you she does MHM yeah I love it I know I really love it she sent me a letter recently with little dolls in it and I was like I will hoard this yeah you will you're going to put that in your grimoire yeah like I keep all of it yeah she made your presents oh kills me kills me that little one oh I'm on the page about the box in the hallway with all the letters in it see I told you it's roulette I can't promise that it's going to go in a good this one okay but it's going to go in a good order so I loved this so much that you talk about learning a lesson that you have to open up if you want to deepen your interactions with people yeah and that you started to get the kind of mentorship mothering from Wendy Bell and some of the other women at work who took care of us yeah when you opened up and said hi yeah how I know because so many people talk to us online and we get such great feedback from so many of you not only about the job we won't discuss cuz we're on strike but also from our from our podcast and I think such a universal thing that we all go through that we still go through that so many of of the people in our community go through is a very natural fear of being vulnerable putting yourself out there like how do I admit what I want how how do I go after more than what I'm offered but really what I desire like how do I say I I want to be your friend yeah what a weird thing to say no it's so uncomfortable do you want to be friends do you want to be friends guys like how you talk about how magical it is when you open up yeah but how do you do it yeah it's risky man it's risky and was recently a young a young woman who came to an event in New York and she asked she was like I don't have any friends that like the same things as me right like I want to get into more of this spiritual talk I want to sit around and like have girlfriends that want to discuss this stuff I want to learn this from people but I'm in college and like my friends just want to talk about boys or you know like whatever and I God that that really struck me cuz I remember us being that age right and people had all these preconceived notions of who you were and who I was and there was not a lot of room for us to explore even though we were so young like like we should still be exploring at our age right now but like at 20 come on now um and so putting yourself out there is so much easier now than it was when we were kids because there's this magic thing called the internet social media allows you to put in hashtag witches and like do you know what I mean and like find some people um and I I think that that's a really easy nice first step is to practice vulnerability with like strangers like anonimous creatures on the internet and I certainly do that I mean when I've reached out to Alice Hoffman or Angela slatter or any of these authors that I've talked about and I'm just fangirling and I'm like hey this thing that you said really um resonated with me I would love to know more tell me what else to read um I've certainly struck up plenty of of conversations with people that way and also created community that way and once you do that a couple times it makes it so much easier to do it in real life um but I also think it's really important to meet people where they are right and so if there's something you're wanting to cultivate whether that is like a spiritual Community or friendships of any kind opening yourself up and putting yourself on that person's Turf is important um it is a a show of support um and it's really easy to always I don't know be like do you want to come to my house do you want to do this on my terms and you experience so much more when you accept other people's terms and it will push your boundaries and it will push you know your ideas but I have learned so so much from showing up on your Turf because it is very different from mine you know you have been very good in my life at pushing me outside of my comfort zone and how much richer is my life because of that you know and so yeah I think that those situations what's the worst that could happen right like you tell someone like hey I want to know more about you I want to know more about this and they say no they're not the person you wanted to hang with anyway you know um yeah mat but I also think that the people who are supposed to be in your world will give you encouraging signs like sometimes it's right in front of your face sometimes it's like the moms at PTA that are always there and you wouldn't think like Hey we're going to connect and get along and then all of a sudden you're doing shots after after the fundraiser you know um sometimes s it's right in front of your face and so you are responsible for opening yourself up to signs from other people you are responsible for looking up and for looking around and seeing maybe you know you might be so focused on who you want to engage with pay attention to who wants to engage with you you know let yourself be pursued um I I would say that of my friendships the women who pursued me are still my friends like you pursued me Elizabeth pursued Elizabeth put me in a choke hole down in Louisiana was like we're going to dinner I was like yes we are I like this you know I I think but I would have shut that down because I was so insecure and I was raised told that women weren't your friends don't trust women don't trust women don't trust women and so in my early 20s it was women like you guys that that were like no we're friends and I was like are you sure really yeah no you set you set the tone but I think there's something also kind of magical in what you're saying is that you can trust that your people like all of us like the community that we built that started 20 years ago yeah the people that are really meant to be in your life will come around con pretty consistently until you look up yeah cuz timing kind of is everything oh sure and so I think one of the things we hear from a lot of people in our extended Community is that fear that they're going to miss it that maybe it's too late and the the book really is it's about magic and it's about Mischief but it's also about holding on to your hope cuz you get to make it and it's such a great reminder like let the anxiety about maybe I'm going to miss it go because what's meant for you will find you if you just if you chill your book dude yeah I I really believe firmly that the calmer you are uh and that's hard it's hard for me to be calm oh for people like us to be calm is hard oh weird it's yeah yeah I wouldn't have about that all the first week of July just made us anxious little humans um and and I think when we first started becoming friends we had a lot of the same anxieties which made us like magnets but the sides that won't meet up you know oh God yeah cuz you can't be both afraid of the same thing at the same time and well when you don't have the language to communicate it yet yeah and so I especially for women who are conditioned to think that there's a level of competition or not even competition but just that there's only room for a couple of us I really encourage women to bleed all over the dance floor like just share your feelings tell everybody what you're thinking all the time tell them what you're feeling all the time and the right people will be attracted to that um people who are willing to share just as much will be attracted to that and then people who are shut down aren't the people that you want in your circle anyway um so yeah just share share share share share share share MH and then you know like writing what another woman has taught you in your grimoire is that's like a Blood Oath women used to die for that right if you learned from Helga how to use a plant to you know cure a fever and you wrote Helga's recipe in your book Not only would you get burned for being a witch but Helga would get burned too and so that act of solidarity of writing a another woman's impact on your grimoire is incredibly important but it's you know it's a sacred thing well and it's a it's an energetic action in our modern day to remind the world around us that there is space for us yeah like the greatest lie that a patriarchal society ever told us was that we weren't the most powerful ones in the room dumb dumb dumb they're like women talking is Gossip guys should not hang out cuz if you do you'll realize we're all idiots and we don't know what we're doing and you'll take over and we're like yeah dang it's time yeah no we figured out the secret we were like hold on if we go over there if we all go there it's fun there and not here at all and that's what we've experienced working together because it has been so unpr problematic and so peaceful and so fun and also productive as hell and like that's such a nice feeling to know that for all the years that I was told it was me and all the years you were told that you were the problem to eliminate everything else and be like oh no we actually were the ones like getting stuff done and like being sweet about it and making it fun and and so yeah that realization I hope more women come to a younger age me too you know I feel like the generation above us is like oh we didn't get there till a little bit later till we were empty nesters you know we're not that we're figuring it out a little bit earlier and the next crop of ladies will figure out a little bit earlier and then you guys are in trouble all five of you here how many boys are here it's okay you're safe everyone is welcome here I see you is a time okay yeah see hi to both of you you hi um how did you realize that you needed to slow things down uh I started losing my hair what you yeah when I um when I don't sleep uh or I wake up with like tooth pain because I've clearly been grinding my teeth I'm like I need to something needs to be different yeah we both had TMJ when we were younger remember when we would just have lock jaw in the morning um and then have to do things together where just like oh crying um yeah your body will tell you and women are conditioned to work through the pain and you know suck it up and I think it's very important that women honor their bodies and understand that our body is the barometer for everything in our life and so if it's gone sideways it's time to make some conscious decisions to do things differently and not every woman is in in in the pris privileged position of being able to make those changes and so if you are you have to make yourself healthy and make yourself right so that you can help another woman who maybe doesn't have the same tools that you have um yeah dude you'll start when you start breaking out and losing your hair and just everything's gross and you don't feel hot getting slow helps you get hot yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you yeah yeah hello how's it going we're great I I've watched you guys for years thank you for doing this tonight thank uh but my question was is there going to be a companion to this like a spell book or a cookbook or anything oh I mean per my contract yes thank you Harper one um yeah no I feel very lucky that my publisher has been really open-minded about all the things you know when I took them rural Diaries it was supposed to just be a book about like funny farm stories and then I wrote a book about infertility and they were like that's cool and then when I brought them this I was like I'm GNA write a fun little spell book and then all my friends died and I was like never mind I'm writing a story about loss and keeping your your head on through all of that which is the real magic of life like how do you deal with tragedy and not absolutely lose your mind and that's what magic is um and so they were wonderful about letting me really pivot this book uh because what I was living was very different from the pitch document that I turned into them and so in terms of building out on grimoire girl they're very supportive of that and I think that seeing the feedback from people who have read it also means a lot to them you know when they invest in me as an artist seeing that feedback is really important because they know that people people's lives are being changed because they are softening and they're opening up and coming out of a pandemic where everything was a hellscape we're all trying to collectively make things nice you know it's why you see little girls sharing friendship bracelets and it means so much you know that making things nice is a valuable effort and we want to be a part of that yeah it's been important to us since we were little hi hi hi right here my name is also Sophia I'm a very very massive fan so hello um my question is have you ever or what do you do when you ever feel disconnected from the universe and from the magic that you feel or what advice do you have to people who are struggling to get connected to the universe in the magic in the world yeah I mean for me ritual is so important um I get I get frustrated I grew up in a house for like losing your temper was pretty normal um and and I didn't I didn't necessarily want to keep being that person I mean Sophia can tell you I'm a hotthead I was a hot head she used to be so scared uh and I don't I don't want to be that I want to be cool um and so instead uh I really like candle ritual and it's not lost on me that there's a lot of candle ritual and ceremony also organized religion you know if you go to Catholic church you can go and light a candle for somebody um if you have little altars at home you know lots of world religions use candles as just a way to meditate and for me it's been really helpful to have tan that tangible thing where I can watch the candle burn down I can I can see this transformation that's happening and feel a shift in my own energy um it's a timed meditation really it's the same as like if I had a little you know glass timer um and I also think that there are things you can do to add to it like I write about in the book for me um there's a practice where you can use a pin and you put a pin in the candle as you're manifesting whatever it is you're hoping for and it's almost like a like a one of those magic eight balls where if the pin drops if the CLE burns down and the pin drops it means that your manifestation is going to happen but if whatever reason like the flame goes out or the wax melts in a weird way and the pin gets stuck it's like baby it's time to Pivot um so for me I really like that physical thing because even as I'm B bopping around the kitchen and that candle's burning I constantly check in with it and it allows me to put a timer on my own emotion whether that's frustration or grief or anger or any tough tough emotion that I'm dealing with it's just a timer on it um and it also really freaks my husband out when he comes in the kitchen and there's just candles lit and he tries to figure out by the color of the candle what exactly I'm trying to do sometimes that's enough feel me um yeah it feels cleansing and then I'm also the lady with incense sticks around the house MH hi um my name is Gina I just want to say thank you first and about being vulnerable my question is coming really quick but I made a friend yesterday and I brought her here today and we vulnerable yesterday for 4 hours I just wanted to shout out you guys for saying that that's appreciate it but I wanted to ask really quick if what is the first thing that you do when you realize that you are not being kind to yourself like you're being hard on yourself is there something that you say or do to bring you back um yeah I can get very frustrated with myself um I I write in the book about writing your own eulogy right and what that is for me is a running tab of all the things that I've accomplished and they're not necessarily professional um but all the things that I've accomplished that felt like a crazy story like the kind story that I want told at my funeral and in I've been doing it for 20 years and in writing my own eulogy and keeping this list of just like Rando stuff that I thought was either hilarious or really daring or fulfilling um that is probably the thing that I use most in this book I come back to it over and over and over again and I can be like all right well I totally screwed this up like there will be nights where my family has has all different dietary needs there'll be nights where I lose across the board where I just screw the pooch and I'll get so frustrated and then I'll remember that like I danced on a tabletop in Paris with a snake around my neck like I don't care about dinner you know and and so maintaining that sense of humor is important and having a tool to go back on is incredibly helpful because we don't have perfect recall when we are in the depths of frustration or despair we're not reliable reporters so that's why having things written down is really important um because this becomes your reliable reporter uh you get to write in it during your high moments so that when you are low you have this cheerleader that's you right and who better to cheer you on than yourself I want everyone to be just a little bit of a narcissist healthy ego the fun Parts yeah not the toxics but what you're also talking about is like a rebalancing of the Seesaw yeah cuz when you're when you're like in the thick of it you just think like I'm terrible yeah everything's bad and one of the women who really mothered Us in Wilmington JoJo yeah she was our hairdresser she was our older sister she's just the best woman I remember having she's the woman that taught us to walk around with paper cups she sure did we were like okay assignment understood MH but Jojo I remember one day when you know we were in the trailer in the morning and talking about life and I was like him and and Han telling venting about just every mistake I'd made and why everything was going wrong and JoJo spun me around in The Hair Chair and grabbed me by the shoulders and said you watch your mouth you're talking about my best friend friend like that and I went oh cuz I would never clearly like I would never allow a person to talk about you oh yeah the way I was talking about myself yeah and I would I would think that's true for all she really wouldn't she would destroy them on the Internet I've done it and I'll do it again many times proudly come for me I dare you but like I I also think that as you lean into a practice like this like the kind of lessons that Hill is giving us to you know create these years and Decades of a life that you can pick up and read through like a week in you might be like I don't know my list is pretty short but a really good way to come back into your body is to be like would I let anyone talk about my best friend like this if if I were my best friend how would I talk about her how would I demand and other people acknowledge her and respect her and I think that that's a really healthy thing to begin to learn cuz I'm like oh I am the first person who's like out with a flamethrower in a four-wheel drive if she's in trouble and if I'm at home I'm like I just I don't know I deserve it and you you you have to like bring your ride or die self for you also mhm we talk about that in the book like I talk about like writing love poems to yourself and just making a list of like all the things that are good about you especially as women we're we're conditioned to have kind of this Midwestern sensibility of oh don't pay me that compliment I got it for free it was in a box you know like don't do that like build yourself up uh you deserve it and we're not of the generation anymore where we have to be passive you know be bold and then the right people will come along for the ride MH your new friend hi new friend hello um my question is um looking back over like the last 10 or 20 years was there ever something that you feel like you didn't have the Insight or the like integration like Shadow Self light self to put in a grimoire but now you feel like you do and if so what do you feel like got you there if that makes sense yeah oh wow um I would have never been bold enough to say I'm putting out a grimoire like I did not come from a background where exploring this kind of thing was cool um or acceptable or safe you know I'm I'm a Church Girl and finding the duality in that was a really difficult Journey for me because I was like well witchcraft is the devil's work right oh god um had I given myself permission to be curious about it as a young person I would have learned how wrong I was um and not wasted so much time but so often like magic and Witchcraft and all of this like vilification of women it described witchcraft as women with the absence of God right with the absence of spirituality and what I found in all of the research that I've done is that it is the exact opposite when you are the kind of person who honors nature when you are the kind of person that finds spirituality and Divinity in everything you are so much closer to God than someone that sits in church for an hour once a week and the women who I have encountered in the witch Community are So Divine and giving of themselves and curious because they're not just exploring like Pagan practices but they're also exploring Buddhist practices and Mary Magdalene and her book of the Bible and Christianity in its truest form and so in this book I go into religious talk often um because it is my upbringing and certainly in the Appalachian community and the Catholic Community there is so much faith in magical practices that it is no longer the division of women in spirituality to me it is the Deep tissue that connects our Humanity you know women who are in practice of Witchcraft are the ones who are calling for peace they are the ones who are calling for love they are the ones who are calling for connection between people and so yeah I wish I'd known that sooner um I think I was told at a young age that Curiosity was sinful and it is the exact opposite it's a Divine gift that humans have have curiosity and so if we don't employ that we're spurning a gift that is you know a cherished thing yeah I mean we ask way too many questions but we're just exercising our gifts hey my name is Victoria um early in your book you mentioned um inserting yourself into families and curating your own Traditions along the way so I was wondering what your favorite tradition so far in your life has been that you've been able to share with your kids that younger Hillary would be thrilled to see you being able to live out yeah I I mean I was always so drawn to other cultures I I was very very lucky that as a young person I grew up by Dallas airport which is an international airport and it you who knows Dallas okay hey now loud in County um and what that meant was that my high school had kids from Africa and kids from the Middle East and kids kids from Europe and you know kids from all over the world and I took it for granted you know I was like oh okay everybody has that experience and that's not true uh and so for me you know my best friend in the Hudson Valley I've got a really good group of girlfriends there one of my best friends is sharim Kemp um who was on Friday night in with the Morgans and I write about her at length in this book and she comes from a really fabulous family and they're from Iran and so my children have grown up in her home my son is best friends with her sons my daughter is best friends with her daughter and my children love Iranian culture they love the food they love the Happy Birthday song they sing is so much cooler than ours guys they love that when they go to Uncle uncle's house they get money for whatever reason like there's just like and they eat rice with a spoon you know like there's just cultural stuff that they're growing up with that would only happen if I was I was encouraging them to open up to other people and so I do think that that's part of the coven right your your coven should be a collection of people that each bring different things to the table if you're all kitchen witches it gets competitive right you want a crystal friend you want Shar game's the evil eye friend she's the one who hands out bracelets on the regular you know like everyone's got their little niche thing and you want your coven to Encompass lots of different skill sets and so yeah encouraging my kids to reach out and make those kinds of friendships is important but we can't tell them we have to show them you know you have to do it yourself um because kids will call [ __ ] on you quicker than anyone yeah so yeah thank you guys I mean I see yeah well look I feel incredibly fortunate that my ride or die my sister could be with me here tonight because this is a person who I've gotten to make magic with in the past and that I'm oh baby I'm so excited I'm excited to make magic with you in the future and I I see the next 20 years as like better we're just like doing more more and more and more and more and more so thank you guys for letting us be indulgent and I hope that you write your grimoire and that you find your fellow witches and that write their secrets on your pages and you take very good care of each other so thank you [Applause] thank

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 21,067

Keywords: Live Talks Los Angeles, Live Talks LA, Conversation, TED Talks, inteview, books

Id: wkiFxbz6KBg

Length: 82min 44sec (4964 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023