Alisa sings the brain electric

Unfixed interview

You can come to a place in your life where you run out of resilience because you're in such an adversarial relationship with your body. And so it’s about how to recast and reframe and re-narrativize a body that loves you, a body that can speak to you and say, “This one thing that's here is a part of you, and it’s pushing you to be the person you were meant to be.”

-Alisa Kennedy Jones, tv writer, author

Alisa is one smart, witty, electrifying cookie. I started reading her two columns The Empress and Gotham Girl early last year and learned very quickly to not have liquids nearby while reading. She is a one woman, laugh-out-loud, tragicomedy act and infuses her work with infectious, tinkering curiosity, humility and self-compassion that might just be the #1 super-smoothie to getting through life with sanity intact.

After developing epilepsy during peri-menopause—the first in a series of grand mal seizures that she likens to “swallowing a bolt of lightening”—Alisa was forced to use her powers of reimagining to develop a more expansive, empowering perspective from the frontlines of a brain that derails, and often detonates, her life’s plans. From ground zero, instead of falling prey to despair, over-and-over-again, Alisa brushes herself off and uses her experiences to get honest and “get bigger”—sharing her voice, advocating for women’s rights and healthcare, challenging the Hollywood narrative to portray more realistic stories of neurodivergence, and championing women in midlife to embrace “the messy middle—a highly generative, creative time—one in which we can source real agency in our aging.”

In her deeply engaging and heartfelt book Gotham Girl: Interrupted, Alisa writes that auras feel like “someone reaches into her brain and kneads it with stars” and post-seizure she’s supercharged with creative euphoria, so it was a delight to gaze upon her 13 trillion synaptic connections where multiple reconstructive facial surgeries, being trapped inside a Van Gogh painting, mothering herself through uncertainty, mothering her daughters through trauma, and refusing submission in a largely male-dominated industry are all fodder for living a wild and wonderful life.

Writing a memoir, I think, is not a MEmoir, it's a WEmoir. You've gotta find the we in the me.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kimberly

Alisa!

Alisa

Al(ē)sa.

Kimberly

Thank you. Al(ē)sa. And I have this written at the top of my notes here in like 20 point font and of course I skipped right over it. It says Aleeeeeeeeeeeeeesa.

Alisa

Nobody gets it right and I answer to anything at this point in my life. It's like, if there's food involved, I'm like a Labrador.

Kimberly

You love sandwiches, right? It's all about sandwiches?

Alisa

I do, I love, sandwiches are my favorite. And the thing of it is, I couldn't with a facewired shut for a cumulative total of a year and a half now, I have missed out on sandwiches.

Kimberly

What was the first sandwich that you had after you were able to take a bite?

Alisa

A grilled cheese. Because cheese is like, it doesn't like me, but I love it. And to live in a place like a country like France where there are over 400 cheeses, I mean, I've got to read that new book that's out. And it's like, I think it's called, I Went and Had a Lovely Time Everywhere. And it's all about this woman who just takes off in midlife. And she goes to France and all she does is eat cheese and have sex.

Kimberly

My God, seriously? This is like an Eat, Pray, Love for our... This is like Eat, Pray, Love: Part 2

Alisa

Yes, but it's without the baggage of all the, you know, religion and worshipping and getting peace with oneself…she got peace with cheese. And so, you know, she didn't have to do any of the smile meditation or any of that kind of stuff. She just got to smile at a bunch of camembert.

Kimberly

And you don't need to meditate if you have cheese. I mean, right? It just does something to us.

Alisa

It's like the one thing, do you know there's a place in Grand Central called the Cheese Cathedral? I could die there. They should just take my ashes there.

Kimberly

I'll make sure that your girls know that you have the request.

Alisa

Yeah, just a little bit of at the Imagine rosette with John Lennon and a little bit at the Cheese Cathedral. Just don't flush me.

Kimberly

That's amazing.

Alisa

Because that place will surely be the month the death of me. The doctor said when I went in for my cholesterol check last year, which now I'm fine, she was like, You have to stop eating so much cheese.

Kimberly

And then you go and have a seizure and you can't eat cheese for four months.

Alisa

And now I'm fine, and I just saw her on Thursday and she was like, you never look so good in your life.

Kimberly

Well to catch our listeners up, I mean I know that a lot of people know what you went through, this is not the first time, but you've been through quite the journey with epilepsy and late-onset epilepsy too and we're gonna get into that but I wanna open with this love letter that your epilepsy wrote to you or a love letter from your brain.

And I want you to kind of unpack this a little bit for us because this is something I think a lot of us could, it would benefit us, you know, whatever that thing that seems like it's the hell on earth for us, have it write a letter to us and say what it's trying to say. So you start your letter by saying,

Dear Alisa,

My dearest love, yes, I know it looks like a real mess in here right now. I know my writing you this love letter may seem a bit unorthodox in light of the situation, but darling, I couldn't resist. The temptation in me across my every axon and dendrite was too powerful. I know you feel betrayed by me, by my electrical taunts, by what seems like faulty wiring between my lobes, but my love for you is boundless.

So tell us a little bit more about what this letter, what your epilepsy was trying to tell you.

Alisa

So when you are dealing with a long-term, a lifelong, and I know you know about this, a lifelong chronic condition that can sneak up on you in very stealthy, tricksterly ways and comes back again and again, and just so you think you've cracked the code to dealing with it, it comes back and catches you in a way that you couldn't have thought possible. You know, your meds were working just fine to control it. The things you were doing were just right. And then all of a sudden you have a seizure on Fifth Avenue and they drag you into a funeral home and you wake up and you say, I'm not dead. I'm just, this is just my brain. This is just my brain on perimenopause and a whole lot of hormones and electricity. So just, and then the funeral director is like, You can't bring her in here like that. She doesn't have an appointment. And then you're like, You need an appointment? What?

And so you get into an adversarial relationship with your body. And with your brain and with the way you think about the condition and you're angry at it all the time and you're like, This sucks and fuck, you know—I don't know, do you guys swear on this podcast? I don't know how many readers write into me going, you know, Fuck this epilepsy and I didn't for this and I didn't ask for this judgment and I didn't ask for this, you know, 100 seizures a day or a week or, because epilepsy presents in over 40 different fashions. So there's no one way that you're going to have a seizure. And often the way that it's represented in the media is actually the way that I do have it. But it can represent, it can manifest in so many ways.

But the point is, you can come to a place in your life where you're in such, you run out of resilience because you're in such an adversarial relationship with your body. And so how to recast and reframe and re-narrativize a body that loves you, a body that can speak to you and say, you know, This one thing that's here is a part of you. And it's sort of pushing you to be the, it may be pushing you to be the person you were meant to be. And, in the ways that you feel rejected and betrayed by it, there may be gifts if you are curious enough to look for them. There may be bits of magic. There may be connections in the 13, you know, you look at the Milky Way, it's got 13 trillion stars. Well, there are 13 trillion connections in a person's brain alone that make us who we are.

And so in that complexity, in everything that's going on, you have to remember, you know, that we think the brain is weird, but the brain is actually weirder than we can think. And if you want to be in a battle with it, I'm not sure that's always the most productive metaphor for every chronic illness. Because it’s a long fight.

So I needed for my own recovery, my brain and my inner knowing, my innate whatever wisdom that might exist in there, to say, to write a letter to me as if it were parenting me, as if it were talking to me, as if it were my own mother saying, I'm here for you. I haven't left you. And there's a lot here for you still to do with this and a lot of deep joy still to be had in between these electrical storms.

Kimberly

Yeah, that and that deep joy, you explained a seizure at one point in your book, and I think you did also to me. There's actually, it sounds ecstatic at some points. And we know also that you end up with, you know, massive facial, you know, teeth falling out and reconstructive surgery and all of that.

Alisa

Yes, and I've cut my jugular and I have broken my jaw. Then the last one in five places on this side, but before as I'm having the seizure, this is the thing about the seizures. And this is why it's problematic. Is that they are so ecstatic! It's like swimming, I think I described it to you as like swimming up through light and being trapped in a kind of Van Gogh painting where like you are of the stars, but there's no separation between you and the universe. It's like, you can't get back from the painting. You are in the painting. You are of the paint. You are of it. And it is so gorgeous and so overwhelming that you'd never want to leave it. And you would, and I'm doing it a disservice this morning with my lack of language, but it is, it's as if you're seeing all the light in the universe. You know how it takes light billions of years to travel, to get to us in the galaxy. It's like it's all hitting you at once.

And it is so overwhelming. And there's no like people waiting for you at the end of a tunnel or anything like that. It's star stuff. You are of the stars and you are in a tornado of stars. And to come back—and I could hear my daughter actually during the first time that it happened.

Kimberly

Is that right? So you have a sense of self still while it's happening?

Alisa

I could hear her voice. I could hear her, it was like a veiled, distant voice of her trying to cut through, but I couldn't, I was too in it and it was too gorgeous to come back. And the worst part was coming back and seeing all the damage it had wrought on me, the trauma of, you know, a child seeing their parent, you know, pretty much die in front of them. I mean, that's a lot for a kid to deal with. And so, you know, that is something that I would immediately say No way to, Please let this not be in my life. But that it is in my life, and that it started at age 40. It was something very foreign because I'd never been an unhealthy person. I don't even think I knew what a seizure really was. When I got to the hospital, I finally, I was unconscious except for the part where my daughter had somehow gotten me into bed because I think she thought it was better to get me into bed if I was gonna die.

And which is so sweet and reverent and caretaking and lovely. But of course, then I had the sense of just around me blue authority figures and this razor slice of the pen light in my eye because they always think the worst of a person who's had a seizure. Once you have seizures or epilepsy, you become this sort of unacceptable person who must have done something or taken something. And that's the first question they ask. They're like, and they say your name in this like terrible, Do you know your name? Do you know your and, and, and Alisa, Alisa. And they're like, Do you know who the president is? And I'm like, O-bam-a… for the first one. And, I'm like, and I'm like, No, not Trump. Not Trump.

And they’re like can you tell me who the president is? Do you know the year? And they're putting on their gloves and I'm like, all you're doing is like, Don't tase me, bro, I think I am a human stun gun right now. So just, just, just let me sleep. Because most of the time people with seizures, if they're not injured can be put back to bed and recover at home. One of the worst things I think you can do is actually call the ambulance unless the seizure is longer than five minutes, if you call an ambulance straight away, that person who has the seizure has suddenly a $35,000 ER bill. And that can really just, Dah!

Kimberly

So you have this like crazy, I mean, in one hand, you're holding ecstasy, like pure ecstasy that some of us never even experience in an entire life. And then the other hand, you're holding $35 ,000, you know, medical bills just to get to the hospital, and the horror and the trauma and the surgery…

Alisa

…and needing to take your child to therapy because they've been traumatized. But what I found was that, a lot of the things that I was, you know, a journey, I hate that word journey, was going through were things that a lot of chronic illness patients were going through, not just a person with epilepsy, but a person who might be suddenly diagnosed with severe anxiety or, I don't know, Crohn's disease or MS, they suddenly have to learn this new world and way of being. And so how are you going to do that? And how are you going to keep your sense of humor while you're suddenly changing.

Kimberly

Which you do beautifully. I mean, Gotham Girl is both a tragedy and a comedy. Your book is like, laugh out loud because you have such an incredible perspective during some of these horrifying moments of your life. But you also have this ability to stay curious. And I think that maybe that's some of where your sense of humor comes from. And I want to ask you about that, because you talk about whether it's anxiety or bipolar disorder or epilepsy, that your own wiring might be in fact your magic rather than your tragedy. But I think there's prerequisites to discovering this magic. And I want to ask you about what those prerequisites are or what do we need to cultivate in ourselves so that we can access the magic.

Alisa

I was just reading this thing in the New Yorker. I do think it's curiosity and I think I definitely was, and it's that tinkering curiosity of going back to the tree and shaking it again and again for more fruit to fall off. I think it is because that's definitely what you have to do when you're trying to crack the code of what works for you, whether you're dealing with, again, ME or MS or any of the things. I mean, there are different combinations of drugs and therapies and treatments that are gonna work for different people. And the idea of writing a memoir, I think, is it's not a MEmoir, it's a WEmoir. You've gotta find the we in the me.

Kimberly

I love that.

Alisa

Otherwise, no one's going to relate to like, but people also didn't talk about the fact that there are 65 million people who have epilepsy. They're just afraid to talk about it because, because it's so stigmatized. But, but the, but back to your question of what's required, I think what's required is also a certain sense of reserving judgment because there is a tendency right now in our culture to take psychiatry and different labels, whether it's bipolar or borderline personality disorder or generalized anxiety and turn them into identities. And you're more than just your diagnosis. You're multitudes. So you've got to not have that amnesia and get so down the rabbit hole with your diagnosis that you can't see the joys outside of the diagnosis of the rest of the world, of the things that you can still do.

And also there's a tendency when life becomes very uncertain and when uncertainty hits you is to make life very small and to try to feel safe again. And I think that, and there isn't enough state of the art healthcare to make one feel safe in our current situation. And availability of caretakers and of community health workers who can say, come and check on you. So you have to set up those networks and be proactive of having people who, and having a tribe of people who know your situation, who can be like, hey, you doing okay? Hey, hey, I'm just checking in. Like my neighbor upstairs, her husband was a doctor and had seizures for years. So she knows exactly what the drill. And so we look after each other.

And then all of my girlfriends have all had different things happen in their lives that, you know, and they have helped me look at it just a hundred times over. And so having that curiosity, having that tribe to help you remember that you're more than just your diagnosis, that there's joy to be had, to not make that your identity because we really want to do that right now. And there's an article in the New Yorker this week all about that very thing. And what you tend to find with the DSM is those diagnoses are rather creaky and they change. And so don't pin your whole life on the diagnosis.

We always have more choices than we realize, because we kind of get myopic with our illness when it comes down to our health. So uncertainty can make you feel, can make life feel smaller. And so what I've tried to say in the book and what I've tried to live in my life, is to always to say, okay, I'm gonna take this uncertainty and I'm gonna try to expand and make it bigger than just me. And so, you know, my kid comes in and she's like, Who are you talking to? And I'm like, Everyone, I'm talking to everyone. So, I am like, How can I not be in the closet about this, even if it hurts my career in certain aspects, even if it makes people nervous to be around me, even if they're asking you, What do I do if you have a seizure? Are you going to have a seizure right now? No, I'm not going to have a seizure right now. Usually I have a warning. And if I do, you're going to know what to do because I'm going to tell you. And it's actually not that hard to get through one and you'll feel like a real hero.

And so there's so much in the caring economy and in the caring ecosystem that we can build toward. And that's the expansiveness I see in the next sets of decades toward health care, toward humanity, toward the way we look after each other. And toward the way we I mean, there are whole villages, I write about it in the book, there are whole villages designed in the UK for people who have dementia and Alzheimer's to direct them home when they are having a moment of an amnesiac moment and for people to intervene and say, I'll get you home. No problem. I'll get you back where you need to be. And that is exactly the kind of responsible citizenship that comes from compassion and empathy and good design and urban planning.

Kimberly

Did you know how to instinctively do all this when you first had your first seizure during the Obama era? I mean, I'm thinking back to when I first started developing dizziness, I isolated. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I wasn't getting a diagnosis. I wasn't getting the... I mean, I had no idea that I needed people and I needed to speak out.

Alisa

I was terrified and I had no idea that I needed people and it was only by grace. It was only by the grace and I had the diagnosis and my diagnosis was not friendly. It was not bedside manner, it was not, We are going to do everything for you. We've got a team of great people here with multiple dream team treatments and we're going to help you in every way possible! It was, You have epilepsy and you better get real about it. And I'm like, I do not!

So denial was my strategy and I was like, I better keep this a big secret. I better not tell anyone. And it was only by the grace of my friend Camille who stopped me outside of school because I was terrified of letting any of the other mothers know that I was different. And she was like, Hey, get in here. I'll drive you home. Hey, Jones, come on. Get your daughter. Get over here. And she was like, and I was like, Well, hang on. And I was so terrified. I was so terrified to let the cat out of the bag.

And then I just finally passed up to her because she was so bossy and wonderful. And I loved her so much that I just couldn't, and she was like, You gotta move over to our hood and so that we can all be together. And I did, it turned out there was an apartment that opened, it was a house a Victorian that opened up two doors down. And what happened was our kids ended up running back and forth all in a big brood, we'd eat dinner together. We'd drive each other when I wasn't able to drive, like to work to the ferry, to the train station. And we would take each other to lessons and do all kinds of things like that. We'd play bananagrams at four o 'clock when the fog rolled in. And when I would have a seizure, if I had to go to the hospital, they would go with me or they would come and stay overnight with my kid.

And all the kids would stay together. And so this was the sort of thing, like what got me out of the, because I was so lonely and I was so scared and so Googling How you could die like in your sleep from SUDEP, which is Sudden Unexplained Deaths from Epilepsy. And the doctor had not spoken about it at all or, you know, given me any clues and the meds weren't working.

And I continued having auras at work and I was unable to focus at all because there was like a wire tightening around my head constantly, like a metal thin wire. And you know, I just, they saved me. And it was these people who wouldn't let me keep it to myself.

Kimberly

Yeah, which makes me think, okay, so you had these wise, beautiful women that were coming in and saying, just be vulnerable, share what's going on. But then you have the contrast of that with work. You're a writer for Hollywood, you write scripts, you have a demanding schedule. I don't, I think I recall in your book that their reception was quite different.

Alisa

Yes, it's very hard to get a completion bond on a writer, on someone who could die. And so you've got to have your work finished. And so that becomes very difficult. It becomes very difficult to ensure a cast. And as we come to DEI casting, if we're casting epileptics, people who are people with epilepsy, however you want to call yourself, and people have different preferences. But for casting people with epilepsy, which the community would like, it's very hard to insure that on a set, as you well know.

There are other ways, there are creative ways to do it with consultancy, but even that sometimes is just pleasing to the community because they don't want to be hired for a consultancy one-time fee for hire job. They want the job. They want the insurance. They want the hours. They need it. And we need to employ them and we need to make it, and now that we have more medications and we have work from home which makes it much more easy for someone to say, once you've got your showrunners, the notes, to just go and do. And once you've got that, I think it's a lot more, I just think it's a lot, there's more possibility. But studio bosses, that mindset hasn't shifted yet.

But the reason I think I get hired is to take terrible, terrible subjects and inject levity. And so that's the one thing that I can like, I can take the most bleak thing and be like, Okay, hmm. But no, and so the note that you will get from actresses is Oh it's too gloomy. And to the point where it's almost bigotry, where they're just like, they're almost ableist toward the epilepsy community. But for the most part, you find with actors a genuine curiosity to know, because once they get I think into the book, which I'm working on at the same time with this script, which is once they read the book, like the book that Gotham Girl: Interrupted, and once they read the fictionalized book that we're basing the show on, and they see the interiority of the wonder of the seizures, because the seizures actually tell the journey of the character's sort of soul and interior life.

So we're getting to do a little, we're getting to take some poetic license with the seizures. Then you get to see that interiority and that's a lot of fun for an actor to work with.

Kimberly

You're teaching these actors like an incredible life lessons. I would imagine, you know, they're whoever gets cast in this is going to walk away with not just, you know, a deeper understanding of epilepsy, but a deeper understanding of how to deal with uncertainty and anxiety and when shit hits the fan.

Alisa

It should extend beyond epilepsy. And that was why I was sort of like when they marketed it and just put, plunked “epileptic” right on, I'm like, Oh we're going to get put on the medical maladies section of the shelf and never be seen ever. We should not have that on there because no one in the world wants to talk about epilepsy. It's too scary. All they remember is the guy in gym class who had seizures and peed his pants on the floor. That's their memory of epilepsy. And that's not what we give them, not in the book, not in the show. And honestly, I've never peed my pants, cross fingers, but it just hasn't happened.

Kimberly

Listen, I've passed out and peed my pants, so I'm one-upping you on that one. On set, in front of the crew.

Alisa

On set? Woo!

So you and your crew are really close. Yeah. So anyway, but no, but embarrassing things happen on sets and that's why, you know, it's a closed set. But this is the thing. I think even if it dies in development and purgatory, which so many things do, for me, just to keep writing.

And whether it's Gotham Girl or The Empress and The Institute for Women's Futures in terms of building healthcare systems and putting together fellowships for more care providers, like medical doctors to have their med school paid for so that they treat women, which is what we're working on right now. And I'm...

Kimberly

Tell us a little bit more about that.

Alisa

So yeah, OK, so The Institute for Women's Futures is a nonprofit organization that I established with

Alicia Dara

/ Woman Cake Magazine, and Heather Bartos who is one of the top five menopause doctors in the nation. She's recently written a book with, or she's part of writing this book with Maria Shriver. It's the Our Bodies, Ourselves for midlife women, which I think we all need. I know I definitely needed it. And so she, we have put together this think tank where we are coming together for our first initiative, which is to do, I think what we're going to call the Pincolla Estes Fellowship for women to medical students to pursue a two-year fellowship certification in midlife women's whole body healthcare, East and West. And really, because right now so many OBGYNs only get four hours of menopausal and peri-menopausal training their entire four years in medical school. So this would put women in a position to have paid training.

And with the top OBGYNs in the nation who specialize in this type of care for women, you know, going into perimenopause, going into this very complex hormonal phase, because there are going to be a billion of them come 2025 globally. And so then after that, we'd like to see them working in some of the care deserts that exist around the nation. And there are a bunch of them. Because women are going without health care, especially women, especially indigenous women, especially women in lower socioeconomic regions, especially women who have had like black maternal health care issues. So and black and brown women have tons of maternal health care issues and they do not receive the adequate listening from their physicians and caregivers. And so we really need to create a legacy and next generation of caregivers who can serve these women because there are a billion of them coming. And so that's what we're working on right now.

Kimberly

So you're re-imagining—this is my word for you, Alisa—Re-Imagine. You are somebody who takes any situation and re-imagines it. And you've obviously already done that with epilepsy, but now you're taking this into the WE-moir instead of the MEmoir. And you're looking at all the women…

Alisa

Well, I was like, all the women there, it's impossible to get an appointment. It's impossible to get the care that you actually need so that you can feel good. It's not about, for me, it wasn't about looking good into perimenopause. That was already shot. With breaking everything and I had to go through all that. But it's like, How do we feel better about this? How do we feel better as we age? And how do we tap the wisdom also? That we keep getting shunted off.

And there's this patriarchally imposed maiden mother crone ideology that is just bogus. It is just, I'm sorry, rage against the decline. There's a whole Empress phase in between of women who have ideas and power and agency, money, and resources who can employ each other. That was the other thing that came out of our discussion with, as we keep discussing in the think tank and we were talking with Kirsten Miller of The Change last weekend and one of the things that she wants to see set up is women over 40 because this is just so the film industry and so advertising and media. Women over 40 and women over 45 especially employing each other and creating micro economies where we are doing business with each other and getting it done and keeping each other thriving because women in America, 80% of them die in poverty. And that is because generational pay inequity, they've only saved two thirds of the amount they need for retirement and they live eight to 10 years longer than their partner.

Kimberly

Did you say 80%? That's insane.

Alisa

And that is insane. And the unemployment rate for women at our age during a time of record employment, where it's 3.9 % unemployment for the rest of the nation, our demo in the 50 plus is 13 % unemployment, that is unacceptable.

So the think tank and is all about state-of-the-art healthcare for midlife women, socioeconomic and political power. How do we get representation and take back our bodies? I mean, what? And then cultural visibility. Too many women are not seen enough. I mean, they are being seen now with Halle Berry shouting, I'm in menopause, from the Capitol steps, but they've got to keep being seen. And in order for state of the art health care and socioeconomic power to happen, cultural visibility is the first thing and is the easiest thing to make happen.

Kimberly

People that are listening to this right now because you said once that even in trying to write a book about The Empress and the messy middle the publishing world, I quote, came back to you and said There just isn't enough interest. An agent said that to you. So how do we even, if there's if the gatekeepers are saying nah.

Alisa

So now they're getting, they're changing. And I've gotten some better news that I can't share just yet. But I don't want to jinx it.

But, what I can say is, How do we change? So how we change is when it comes to cultural visibility. It means you go out and get all of your over 40, over 50 girlfriends and you take that center table. Often you'll find in restaurants when you walk in, they will seat you at the perimeter if you are a group of midlife women. You must demand center. You'll see this happen over and over again. It's a subtle thing, but it's what's done. Cultural visibility is making sure that you're at the, I mean, it's exhausting, but that your work is getting seen and getting awarded and that you're submitting for awards and that you're not just saying, you know what, I have, I've done enough. I don't need to prove anything to anyone anymore, which we're all guilty of.

So cultural visibility. If you can do one thing is to get your four girlfriends and go out and get the center table and insist. Because I was at dinner at Williamsburg and they seated us in New York and they seated us in the oldster section.

And I was like, what the fuck? And we had just come from a commercial shoot and I was like, I'm sorry, I'm way more groovy than this. And then the other thing with socioeconomics, I would say, and the political piece right now more than ever, I would join Galvanize, which is Jackie Payne's group, which is a group that is designed to really reach across the spectrum and get women who are kind of center of the tent politically and get them to stop voting with their husbands, Republican. And so that we can keep at least, we can hold on to at least sanity in the White House for the next four years.

And not have that guy back. And so Galvanize is a group that I, it's run by Jackie Payne and she is a neuroscientist, she is a data scientist, a neuroscientist and she works with neuroscience and cognitive science. And she is one of the smartest women. If you can interview her, she's based out of Seattle. She is amazing. Her data work and her work in messaging to the right, to show that you can still be a patriotic person and still support the ideals that are going to protect you as you age as a woman, because you don't want your social security taken away by all of these white male senators. You do want your daughters to have reproductive rights. And so it might be time not to vote the ticket, the Republican ticket with your husband, but to vote for your own interests and see that that is the reasonable thing to do. So she does it in a way that is extremely artful. And she moves these women with her narrative, with the narratives that they run, they do a ton of testing. She moves them across the line just so that they can see that they can at least, you know, they can hold on to their values. They can hold on to what's, you know, they need for the long-term care of their family. And you know what? They're gonna have choices instead of autocracy. So she’s really interesting. Galvanize—and it’s GAL, you know.

And then Emily's List, and then because we have to have more women.

And then the third thing I would say is just we have to support the Menopause Research and Equity Act and keep supporting healthcare and community-based healthcare so that people stay. There's a lot to be said for keeping people with disabilities, people who are of older generations in community and out of assisted living because we learn from them and they add to our community and they are, their lives are so much richer and they, we need them in our communities. And so community healthcare as opposed to centralized putting away institutional healthcare programs, that kind of outreach, especially with portable medical devices becoming so prevalent, that's the kind of thing we need to see happening and we need to support happening.

Kimberly

Alisa, you said earlier, an antidote to uncertainty is living big and because the tendency is to kind of get small and you are living big. I mean, you just named all of these different projects that you're involved in and the passion that you have behind them. And I also am aware when we're talking about this Empress stage there are a lot of curve balls. I mean, the midlife crisis, I guess, is an outdated term for it, but women, their children are leaving home, they might be losing a loved one. There are also these curve balls, and you're managing to stay on that beautiful, curious edge where anxiety and shit hitting the fan and failure and uncertainty can also coincide with this deep drive to still make change and you even wrote an essay about it's called What Makes You Feel Wise as Fuck and you talk about this relationship between anxiety and curiosity and I think it's important, talk me through that a little bit because I know women are like you talk about this and I get excited and I want to be part of this and I want to engage my life and my energy that a lot of women have right now to make changes but we can also get really scared.

Alisa

We can get scared, we can get scared, but I think the antidote to fear is just, we have to remember that we know a lot. We've been here. We have to remember that we've been through these cycles before, that we've done a lot of these scenarios. If you break them down they're the same thing. It's the same shitty flat circle. It's the same. I'm like, I've been here before. I've done this before. What did I do last time? I did that badly. I'm going to try something. Because what I have now is the power of discernment amid all the curiosity. Because curiosity is a dopamine driver, right?

And you feel rewarded by curiosity and discovery. But at a certain point, you need to step back and say, because shit does hit the fan. And you're like, OK, I need to make a big life decision and or about X thing. And one of the things that I love is a book by Abby Davisson and Myra. I think her last name is Strober. And it's called Money and Love. And it's not about love and money as much as it is about decision making. And it's got the, what is it, the five Cs, and it's about discernment in decision making. And so I always try to put on that lens of Have we covered the five Cs, which are,

Clarity, what do I value? Okay, this is a scary thing that's happening to me or that we have to make a decision about. What do I value most in this situation? What is the most important thing about this situation?

And then am I Communicating to all the people, second C, who are involved and stakeholders in this situation? Because I may not see there are extra stakeholders who I may not have thought of, which I'm famous for. I'm like, I should have talked to you about this.

And then the third thing is, you know, considering the, you know, the, the, the Choices at hand, well, you could do X, Y, and Z. And usually what I find at our age, and I say our age, I'm older than you. But usually you have more choices than you realize. And so that's where the discernment part comes in, and the curiosity part comes in. It's like, what am I not seeing here that we could do? Are there other ways that we could approach this? There might be another way. And so that's the third C. But then you've got those choices. You've got those mapped. And you're like, OK.

Now I need to do my research, which is to Check-in with the people on the ground for the choice that I'm leaning toward the most. So number 4, so I need to check in with the actual people on the ground. Does it suck there? Does this situation merit this choice? Or am I, am I actually, am I just being an idiot? Is this an even possible? Or is this a solid choice? So checking in with the research with the actual people on the ground. I made my dad go through this when he was considering going into assisted living. I'm like, talk to the people who have had the bad nurses and get their stories. Do your legwork, mister. Be the detective. And so be the detective. Do the legwork on the ground like Perry Mason.

And then map out all the Consequences of everything that could go right and everything that could go wrong because chances are it's going to be a mixed bag no matter what you choose.

So having that framework for discernment is something and I write about this in the Empress Age book which, God willing, is something that I mean that I learned from Abby but I've put into practice in my own life because there have, there continue to be curve balls. Like coming home from the hospital and being served, you know, with, with, you know, crazy papers from my board going, Where have you been? We're evicting you. And I'm like, I've been in the hospital and then getting, you know, 700 pages of seven times served to the point where I'm like, to me, you know, I'm holding up my Love Actually sign, “You are the perfect process server.” Hi, guys. I couldn't talk. So I was just like, and of course, I was in court going, but no, I mean, it's gonna throw you curveballs. So it's like, when should you ask for help and when is that gonna be really humbling too? And when can you put your ego aside and just ask for it? And that's really hard, but sometimes you just have to. And there are times in my past life where I haven't asked for help because I've been way too prideful and I should have because it would have benefited my children, I think, to have that extra help. And for that I'm regretful because I, you know, I didn't, you know, when you don't deal with your shit, it deals with you.

Kimberly

Right, right. But how, I mean, how would you have known, these skills that you're learning now are, these are hard earned skills. And just like, you know, this discernment that you talk of, post-menopausal orca whales, I just heard, those are the wisdom keepers of the pods. And they're the ones that are, they have value in their pods to stick around and teach the younger generations all of these things that they need to survive and you are learning those as you go along as we all are.

Alisa

We have to write them down and we need to develop this literary canon so that we are the last generation that has to deal with, My mother never told me this was going to be so crazy and awful. That this could happen at age 40.

But having that level of discernment now, it’s like Oh, that’s the best. Because it means I don’t have to feel afraid of every curveball. I've been here before. I get it.

Kimberly

Alisa, you are truly wise as fuck and it is hard earned. And I want all of your projects to succeed because you're making real change in this world. And I just wanna end with asking how we can support you in everything that you're doing including the book that needs to turn into a script so that we can see this show!

Alisa

If people can support Gotham Girl and The Empress as paid subscribers, that helps me tremendously. Because what it does is it frees me up to write books. Because I love writing, I love writing The Empress, I love writing Gotham Girl, I love hosting The Empress sort of little tiny salons because, then I can go back and recap. And I feel like we do get nuggets of wisdom out of those salons that are really useful. So like, just being able to write freely and not having to take on big, giant corporate branding projects is, that's the thing that helps me the most at this stage of the game.

So, and I've been really lucky in the last few days to have the support of

Nick Hornby

. And that was just such a huge, huge, huge, huge honor because I love him so much. And he is one of my favorite writers of all time.

Kimberly

Yes! Yay! I'm so happy to hear that.

Alisa

And if I could write even an inch closer to his genius.

Kimberly

Although I don't see it too far out for the two of you to collaborate because you both have that wicked, smart wit. Like the two of you together, I don't even know if I'd want to be in that room.

Alisa

I would love to do something, but I just to have his support has been like everything on Gotham Girl. And then to have Heather's support on the Empress Age has been great because what that does, you know, where I get exhausted, I think is just promoting. And just, I think that's the promoting your work is the hardest part. You just want to do it and let it stand for itself.

I also want to form a collective where, you know, my dream is ultimately to do one film a year and have it be in the country and have it be just all my friends get together and make a film that we love.

I'll write it and someone else can direct it and to just have it be the fun and wonder that it should be.

Kimberly

And it can be, it really can be. There's a lot of hoops that we don't have to jump through anymore.

Alisa

With the bigger projects, I’m just happy to see people interested and other women who are younger and have the energy step up and go, Yeah, I'll let me do the marketing for this. It's been so exciting.

Kimberly

Well, Alisa, thank you so much. What an incredible conversation.

Alisa

This has been really great and I really appreciate you having me on and I just I can't tell you what your support and your work has meant to me over the last year. So I really appreciate it.