Tell The Truth, Tell The Truth, Tell The Truth

Women are particularly good at sharing their deepest truths - both in friendship and writing. To learn from them we need to listen to them, even if that means looking beyond their privilege

I just listened to the Goop podcast where Gwyneth Paltrow interviews her friend Amy Griffin about her new book. (You’ll find the episode here: The Tell: What Happens When You Finally Share Your Story ). I really enjoy Paltrow’s style of interviewing - I find her so curious and open herself. Amy Griffin has just released her first book The Tell, which deals with her experience of and journey beyond sexual assault - worthy, absolutely. But powerfully, the discussion didn’t dwell on the crime itself or the perpetrator of the sexual assault. As the book title would suggest, the conversation focussed on how Griffin’s telling of her own story has been a massive part of her coming to terms with and understanding what happened to her as a small girl. It’s about the power of owning your story.

I had seen alot of promotion around Amy Griffin’s book ‘The Tell’ served up by my algorithm. I was immediately curious, yes, but to be honest her status put me off somewhat. By ‘status’ I mean my assumptions of her status and her privilege. When a gorgeous white, slim, blonde, apparently well-to-do lady who is friends with Gwyneth Paltrow started to promote her first ever book with Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore and to her already massive and obviously influential (check out the comments section!) social media following, it turned me off. My curiosity about her book wasn’t such that I felt moved to give yet another privileged person my few bob at the local book shop. Obviously, I think it’s really important to be aware of privilege and how it serves certain sectors of society while actively working against others, but I am growing increasingly aware of how it holds me back too, in terms of my thinking and dreaming bigger and putting my head above the parapet. The burden of privilege is real (boo hoo, I hear myself say) but I need to be conscious of how it effects how I judge and approach others and how it may be closing me off in certain respects.

Gwyneth Paltrow is most certainly an extremely privileged individual (another blonde, white, skinny woman with familial wealth and access to the elite-est strand of society) but / and I really admire her. A hangover from my years of girl-fanning her as a just-older-than-me actress? Totally. But I find her genuine and extremely engaging. I like her style, I am curious about her family life and her friendship circle, I admire her hunger to know herself better and her seeking of health and happiness and balance. I do accept that she can be a bit daft and there is alot of quackery associated with Goop-stuff, but what of it? Gwyneth does not profess to be a doctor or an expert - she is a seeker. In the midst of sunscreen-gate (IYKYK), I could feel her rolling her eyes at herself. Even if her cashmere sweaters are outlandishly expensive, I can enjoy how pretty they are on instagram. And we could all do with some pretty in our lives, am I right?

This edition of the podcast, this chat between friends about writing your story from a place of pure, pure honesty, really resonated with me because I absolutely love female written autobiography. I think there is no better, more satisfying or more nourishing writing (or reading) - either in a caption, or an essay or a book - than women writing about themselves with vulnerability. I remember reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love for the first time, having randomly bought it in a bookshop in Adelaide when, I can tell you, I really needed to hear from a woman who had lived to tell the tale of her life falling apart. Her line "tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth” flashes through my mind so often, it is insane. I think it was one of the first times I had thought, deeply, about how telling the truth and seeking the truth and leaning into the truth of one’s own life, is the only real cure. The open-ness of Nuala O’Faolåin’s writing in her Irish Times column and her book Are You Somebody is still hard to beat. Other autobiographies of women have continued to move and mould me - Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (and all her Dear Sugar work), Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms, Clover Stroud’s My Wild and Sleepless Nights (a Mother’s Story), right to Sinead O’Connor’s beautiful Rememberings… each one could and should blow your heart wide open because we learn so much from other people’s truth-telling. (The writing of music is a whole other thing - Jagged Little Pill anyone?)

The interview between Paltrow and Griffin works so well because it takes place between two friends who are adept at being open. In pursuit of personal alignment, they consciously push their conversations towards the next level of honesty that we the audience are invited to ear-wig on. What transpires is a lesson in why we should all continue to tell and talk about our own stories.

A good friend of mine said to me recently, as we packed thoughts and feelings and everything in-between into ten minutes we siphoned together before she needed to run home (because women are always running somewhere else to do something else for someone else); “I don’t have time for small talk any more”. This was echoed in the podcast when Paltrow quotes her own friend who said; “These things that are hard to say, are really the only things we should be saying”.

Women have a great gift in that they often allow themselves to share from a place of vulnerability - particularly if they feel safe and if they receive that vulnerability in return. It is facilitated by deep and sincere friendship borne out of a longing to be understood.

During the week I was chatting to a woman who had just come back from two months travelling around Australia and South-East Asia with her husband, and I soaked up the conversation. They had also spent November in Spain. So privileged, for sure, but truth be told I want to be the person who gets to do nice things, if I can, and I want to feel free to share my experiences and I want to learn from others who have found a way of leading a lovely life that they really like. Tell me about your travel plans, tell me about your adventures - how do you do it so that I might do it too? There was a third lady in the conversation who happened to interject with a; “Oh! Need to watch your carbon footprint there” which felt so stingy in the moment. The comment was thrown as a low-grade missile to take the air of joy out of the conversation rather than a sincere bid to have a (valid) conversation on the environmental impact of travel. I too have been - and am - a missile thrower. I just hope that when I next feel that impulse to be a bit stingy I think about where that might be coming from because I don’t want to be stingy for the sake of pursuing some kind of one-upmanship in my own head - I want to be curious. I want the opportunity to listen to people’s experiences and to feel free to share my own with an un-guarded open-heartedness.

Of course we can’t all tell every thing to every one. Not everyone is here for the sharing, so it’s ok to let that be, to let some friendships go, to accept that not everyone will agree with you or be interested to hear from you or be in a place to reciprocate vulnerability. It’s not you, it’s just where they’re at.

I want to read this book The Tell - it sounds real and like it will really open my mind in some way, and I want my mind to be opened. I don’t want privilege to become something that inhibits my listening to certain people - I want it to be an awareness that informs more openness, not a closed-ness because that just wouldn’t make sense! Amy Griffin, for sure, sounds like she got a really great start in life. But so have I. And what she has done with her life - built a family, become an entrepreneur, an athlete, and now an author… I admire that and I want to read more.