Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jan Arden Podcast. It's me, Jan Arden, and I'm in my house for 24 hours. I have such a zany schedule right now, but Sarah Burke and I are here. Sarah is at home. She's had a shit show of a week. We're going to talk about that.
So this morning I got up at 1.30 a.m. Calgary time. Rick Mercer and I had a show in St. John's, Newfoundland last night. It was fantastic. The Mary Brown Arena. Poppy, no, no, and no. But I've got Poppy for a night because I'm back here. Anyway, did the show with Rick, wrote in my journal, had a quick shower because I thought I'm going to shower now so I don't have to do it in the morning.
I actually got four hours and like 20 minutes of sleep. I had 53 minutes of deep sleep. If you have an aura ring, you know what I'm talking about.
So anyway, we left for the airport at 4.10 a.m. And it was only like a 15, 16 minute drive. We dropped the rental car off. Our flight took off on time, 5.50. We got to Montreal. Flight took off on time. All our luggage transferred over like in 25 minutes. I landed in Calgary, Alberta at 10.35 a.m. That's amazing. At four o'clock this morning, I was closer to London, England than I was to Calgary. It is so zany.
But anyway, here I am. And I picked up Poppy and his little pal Joni. And I have them and I leave on a flight, an overseas flight back to London, England tomorrow at 8 p.m. Because I have a gig for the Canadian consulate or something. Right. So what a zany week. Which is exactly, we should also say, why we're recording ahead.
Caitlin has some personal stuff going on. She'll be back with us next week. So we were just trying to do the best we can with all the flights and everything. And she sends her love and you can follow along with her on socials as you always do. Yeah. Caitlin's got some, some family stuff and I know what it's like having parents that
you know, have a few little health issues here and there, but it's gotta be tough. You know, Caitlin with her little boy and her husband and, you know, she's working on other projects and then has us to deal with. So you and me. Might I also add, I think for the first time ever, I beat you in the aura ring then for the first time ever this week. I saw your number. You did an 85. This is the first time ever. I'm going through a phase right now. I'm trying to rewrite my mornings and my before bed routines and
And I'm going to admit this to you. Okay. So I'm trying not to smoke pot before bed. Okay. Okay. So that's one thing. So I decided to experiment this week, one day this week. I didn't have a lot of meetings in my calendar for the next morning. I said, I want to know what my natural sleep cycle is without smoking pot. I was also looking forward to dreaming again. Apparently you don't dream when you smoke pot before bed.
So I let myself sleep with no alarm. I woke up at 11.50 a.m. The whole day was gone. Sarah! And I was like, oh my God, okay, I guess we're working a little later tonight. But it was an experiment, right? And that's how tired my body has been. Taxes kicked my ass. So let's back up a bit and let's talk about the habit of smoking weed before you go to bed. Sure.
because in your mind's eye, you're thinking, I have a better sleep when I have a little toot, and I'm sure folks that she's not smoking a giant spliff. Couple of puffs? Exactly. Okay. I usually have like a little pre-roll for like three or four days. I'll just have a few puffs before bed. Yeah. And do you fall asleep quickly? Like when did this start? Let's have a conversation about this. When did this start? High school? Yeah.
You've been smoking weed before bed since high school? Not every day. Okay. The everyday part, I would say maybe university. So just one phase after. In university, it was just like a chilling with friends and social. But now it's to signal wind down time.
Because sometimes I'm on my laptop. I just started this business, you know. Sometimes I'm on my laptop pretty late, keeping up with all my new clients. It's almost like I can't get myself to put myself to bed, but I fall asleep within 15 minutes and normally sleep really well. What do you think pot does for you in general?
I'm just curious. Like, like I've talked about this. I smoked it once with my friend, Teresa. I was 18. We ate a giant bag of all dressed potato chips and good decision, you know, and, and I just never did it again, but you know, I abused alcohol my whole life, but I'm curious about
pot because I am absolutely an advocate of gummies, of CBD oil, of the whole thing. I am your cheerleader. I believe in marijuana. So I just want our listeners to know that. And I think like anything else,
it has to be a controlled substance sort of in your life. You don't want to be stoned all day long. No, no, no, no. This is a nighttime thing for you, correct? Yeah. I don't normally like do anything until I'm done all of my work. And like if I was turning off my laptop, I'm like, oh, I'm going to have a little hoot. Like it's literally at the same time where I'm finishing. It's like a little reward. And I would call it more of a dependency than an addiction. But some people might look at that differently. And I say that because it's
The addiction piece would be if I was having it all day and I couldn't go a day without it. Whereas if I get a cold, I don't want to smoke. I can remove it when I need to. But anyway, so I'm working on all that. The sans marijuana thing has happened how many nights in a row? Two.
Okay, two nights in a row. We're fresh. And good for you. So you started dreaming. Started dreaming. So the wildest thing is that the ex-boyfriend that showed up in my dream was probably the most insignificant boyfriend I've ever dated. It was maybe a month. Like, I don't even think we made it to the boyfriend conversation. I'm calling it a boyfriend loosely.
And like, why this guy shows up? So I went to visit him and his partner now in Nashville. They lived in Nashville. And I was so upset because I forgot a hair serum and my hair was frizzy. Like, what is this dream? I don't know. We need to get a dream specialist on the show, apparently.
And you remember quite a few details. I woke up feeling like it was so vivid. And so I'm looking forward to more of the dream thing. I will also say it wasn't hard not smoking before bed. Like a friend of mine who's got through an addiction who's sort of like
helping me look at other perspectives around this, said to me, like, if you can get through that five minutes where the craving is there, you'll surprise yourself. And that, I would say, is true. I'm proud. Well, when I quit drinking, you should be super proud. And, you know, if it's something where, so what, you're having a little toot a couple times a week in the evenings, I'm saying. Like, I know that when you were here, you and your pals, when you visited last summer, had some
The drinks. THC drinks. Yeah, yeah. Which I thought was really interesting because you're not dealing with the hangover and your liver's not dealing with alcohol. Yeah, it's like drinking like a soda, like something kind of sweet. And I do think, I'm not someone who, I don't think this is going to be like a cold turkey thing. What I want for myself is to be able to enjoy it
Not every night. But, you know, if I'm going to a show and I want to have a little toot before I go into the show or with friends after baseball, that type of thing, like that's where I want to enjoy it. And maybe if I do need it to sleep for my lungs, my little asthmatic lungs, let's move to edibles. Just trying to get that all in order. And it exacerbates ADHD. So.
just before we went to air, Sarah's like, I'm going through something really zany right now. I'm getting assessed for ADHD and ADHD means what? Okay. I'm bringing it up. So I say it properly. Yeah. I would say chaotic brain. Okay. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and
A person with ADHD has differences in brain development and activity that affect attention, the ability to sit still, and self-control. It can affect a child at school, at home, and friendships. But the key thing here is there's many women
Middle-aged women undiagnosed. They've seen this as a young boys thing forever. Many middle-aged women undiagnosed. So could it be compounded by way too many activities to do with kids, with work, like juggling life in general? So what happens is that you don't really concentrate on any particular task that you're undertaking. Could that be part of it? Or is it just a brain? That's a result of it, I would say. Okay. Okay.
So multitasking, the idea of multitasking. But I mean, that's part of your... My life. You have to do that in your world. I mean, you have a podcasting network. You look after a lot of people now. You wear a lot of hats. So this is where I never even realized how far back some of my tendencies go. I was in the kid. My mom was like, why are you up? Get off the computer, you know, in high school at whatever, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night.
And I would do a project the night before and I wouldn't feel the like urge to do it until I had a deadline looming. So that's, they call it time blindness in some senses too, when you dig really deep into a project and you forget about everything else around you. So it works both ways. Like being very, very focused, hyper focused. What prompted you to think that you had this or that this was an issue in your life as a young 30 something year old woman? What? I think.
feeling overwhelmed with how many things are going on at one time and not being able to decide what to do first. And I was just talking to my therapist about it. We've sort of been talking about it for a while now, and then it became time to be like, okay, do you want to do an actual diagnosis now? So that's the point. So is she undertaking it? Yeah. So what does that entail now? So there's a couple examinations because you do, like if you're going to go on medication, which I might, and
You're going to have to go through your family doctor to actually be prescribed the medication. But, you know, my family doctor had at one point prescribed like, oh, you should think about therapy. So I feel like that part is going to be great because... You're already doing that. Yeah. You're in therapy. Like she would trust that this word is coming from someone she sent me to, you know what I mean? So that part's really interesting. But yeah, a lot of people have to go like do this full diagnosis through their family doctor. So in my case, I'm going to have...
My therapist likes to do two separate examinations. So it's almost like if one is a little off, you have the second one as a backup almost. And then she'll send everything to the family doctor. Do you feel a sense of relief that there is something that you are sort of running uphill against and have been for quite some time? Yeah.
and that maybe with medication, it might alleviate some of your tendencies to not be able to decide on the task that you want to undertake or being more focused on the things that you do undertake. I think it's really important to stop long enough in our lives to think- Could it be better? This doesn't feel normal in my mind. Yeah. And could it be better? That's a great question to ask yourself. Could it be better? Could my life
Could the way I'm thinking, dealing with relationships, approaching my job, accomplishing tasks, getting simple things done, whether it's three loads of laundry that have been sitting in a closet for two weeks that you look at. And it's not procrastination either. It's deeper than that. And it's more complicated than putting things off. I have none of that.
in my life. I have a lot of things going on at any given time and I actually thrive with that because what I have achieved, believe it or not, and it took a while, is I have a really excellent work-life balance. Yes, you do. And I would say I'm working on that still. Well, listen, when I was your age, it was all hands on deck.
I was having all these personal relationships and hooking up and doing my work and taking on new things and traveling constantly and dealing with management stuff and business stuff with record companies. I'm telling you, it is all hands on deck. And this is the time to do that. But what I've gotten to now, I'll tell you what, five, six years ago, I couldn't have had the kind of schedule that I have right now.
and feel well. A, my sobriety helps. It's unbelievable what that does for being awake, waking up for your alarm, showing up. I'm in the lobby. Chris said 4.10 a.m. I was there 4.09 a.m. and he was sitting on a bench and I wheeled out of the elevator and he grabbed my suitcase and off we went. And we keep a really, really tight schedule. But I've never even thought about
am I having attention problems? So listen, anyone who's listening, I think you know yourself well enough to have a little sit down, a little come to Jesus or whoever you want to come to, Moses, Karen, Carpenter, Elvis, that come to whoever moment and stop long enough to see, and Sarah just nailed it. Can this be better?
Can I be doing better? Can I be feeling better? Because I'll tell you what, sometimes we're going at the speed of light and we don't do that. And I do take the time to do that, Sarah. Yeah. That's where the routine comes in. Do I ever adhere to a routine on the road? I called a friend as soon as I landed just to say that I couldn't make a birthday dinner tomorrow, which I felt bad about. I thought I was flying on Sunday, but I'm actually flying tomorrow. But she said, how are you sleeping out there? And I said, really good.
But I do my same routine, any hotel room I'm in, that I do at home. I write in my journal every night, every night, every night, whether it's one paragraph. I got back to that. Good. I'm so happy. That's helpful. It's so helpful. Yeah. Just like a brain dump before bed. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of stigma around ADHD.
And, you know, like the words focus or lack of focus and laziness versus procrastination versus all these things get thrown around. The time blindness and hyper focus is really interesting. I have this thing. It used to piss my ex-boyfriend off so much because I would get into starting a project at work like right before leaving when I used to work at Sirius XM, call it like 430.
It would be 6.30 and this guy is like, hello, are you coming home for dinner? Work ended an hour and a half ago. Hello, are you there? And I would just be in a zone and like needing to finish what I did. So it works both ways in that sense. You're either hyper-focused or not understanding where to put your focus, I would say. So I'm looking forward to like, I'm so curious about it. I've been listening to this great ADHD audio book and it's,
You know, one thing that came up was like some people lose interest in relationships, like how it impacts other parts of your life. And I was like, oh, yeah, like that's definitely happened to me where I just like I turned a corner where I'm like, yeah.
I'm done with this. So that's also something like if you decide that you love someone, like you really have to work through keeping it interesting and exciting. It's all based on dopamine. Yeah. Well, it is. It's, you know, when people fall in love, they have to understand that it's not because of the other person. It's because of what you're doing to your own body. So it's a really strange thing to think about because we attribute other people making us happy.
When you go through heartbreak, it's like someone takes your happiness. They reach into the inner depths of your heart and soul, into your ribcage, and they rip out that piece of happiness. Well, they're not doing anything. And I know that's hard to come to terms with. I've been extremely heartbroken in my life where I thought I was going to die. I felt like I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't think. I don't want to work.
I have no motivation. And as I've gotten older, certainly from my 20, 30 year old self to myself now,
It's hard to come to terms with the fact that that was self-induced. Yes, there's a person involved, but anything that happened to my physical body, I did to myself. I gave myself that happiness. My brain created that happiness. Whatever the illusion was or whatever the feeling was. External factors are bringing you happiness. And that's why when the external factor, aka the person, is gone, you're like, oh!
But they're not the ones that give you the dopamine. They're not the ones that hand you that chemical change. You're the one that's creating all of this. And I think now I know if I were to ever fall in love, quotation marks, air quotes, again, I know it would be a very different version of what in love was because I
I always somehow surrendered a huge part of myself. I took on people's lives and their friendships and their interests. And I'm talking about when I was younger. Yeah, yeah. You know, my family, my friends, my interests always took a back seat because...
I thought, this is my chance. You know, I have to pursue this. And I was so... I got so lost along the way that, like you said, when the person is removed or, you know... And I have been left as many times as I have left. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, both ways. I've seen both sides. Yeah, both sides of that street. I just know now that if I...
was in a relationship where I did feel like I was falling in love, I know it would be a much different version of that. Yeah. And that's why they say you have to be like really good with yourself to have a successful relationship because it needs to come from within you. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on this journey. I'm super excited to your point about understanding that like
It's not that there's something wrong with me. I just work differently. My brain is different. So there are lots of tools out there now that I'm understanding what's going on to help. Absolutely. But I think it's really great that you are doing it and it takes a really brave, intuitive person
and a person who cares about themselves to take time to do this. Thanks. And I'm sure you're surprising yourself these days. I mean, even the no pot thing. I am. And the dreaming again. I had a dream the other night. It was so weird. The night before last, last night was very short, although I was dreaming. But the night before, my dad was in my dreams. And I'm always grateful when my parents appear, but
Yeah. We need to get a dream expert, Sarah, because this dream, my dad, I was looking over this fence down this long, beautiful hill. And my dad was at the bottom of this valley and there were all these piglets down there. And he had this piglet in his hand and it was squealing and screaming and he was going to kill it. And I was screaming at him like, don't you goddamn touch that pig. This sounds like the Biddlemoors. Well, who knows? I mean,
But that was very visceral and very real. And I woke up and I thought, oh, bummer. I can't believe that my dad shows up in a dream like that being a dick. Yeah. We'll work on a dream specialist. That'd be super interesting. I wonder. Well, if you guys are dream specialists, call us, DM us, send us a voicemail for reals. Yeah, yeah.
What else has been going on? You said you had lots to talk about. Traveling is something else, but being on tour with Rick. Must be so fun. It's a really amazing feeling because what's happening for me, A, I'm so grateful people are showing up.
But Rick and I are telling stories and it feels like a really old art that sometimes is dying because it's not a comedy routine. We're not up there doing made up bits about, so my wife, diggity dong dong ding, bing, you know, that click click boom kind of stuff. It's not stand up comedy. Yeah. It's storytelling in the best possible way possible.
And it's he and I, you know, talking about how we met, talking about the Mercer report. I was on that show for 15 years doing all kinds of crap from, you know, going down a, a luge track, uh,
or Brahma bull riding or paintballing or dangling from a climbing wall or the CN Tower. There was no end to the stuff that we did. But then we touch on that and then we start getting into, and it's different every night, childhood stories. I love this. They're so funny. And then-
His story kind of leads me into thinking about something that I did with my dad or, you know, how our parents affected our childhood. People get in there and they laugh for 90 minutes nonstop. Yeah.
And the most hilarious part is we have a huge QR code on the screen behind us. And so when you come in... You guys are millennials now. Look at you. We are Gen Xs, Gen Zs. And you can click on your phone and you can send us a question. Well, we are getting four, five, 600 questions every night, right? One of the questions the other night was...
If you guys were in a thruple, who would the third person be? Well, the audience goes absolutely crazy. Oh, my God. So we thought, okay, you pick who you'd have for us, Rick, and I'll pick who I'd have for us. Rick would not say. He would not say.
He would, he says, I'm not doing it. I'm not going there. And I think mine was Clint Eastwood, young Clint Eastwood. Okay. Like he's going like old wrinkly bum Clint Eastwood. I said, no, like fistful of dollars, good, bad and the ugly. Yeah. Or Olivia Newton-John. Oh yeah. Well, the audience just fell to pieces. Like they just...
They just thought that was so funny. And then there's so many questions. Like I said to Chris the first night, my road manager, I said, what's the general gist of these questions? And he's like, Jan, there are so many sexual questions. He's reviewing them before they come to you. Oh, yeah. He vets everything. Like literally 600 questions. And we each get, we answer about four each. Like we ask each other these questions.
But he says, I was so gobsmacked when those questions started coming in the first night of when was the first time you slept together? Why did you guys get married? Like who made the first move? Like who, who made the first move? Did you ever date Rick? No. No, God, no, never. Okay. This is just, yeah. He's had a male partner, Gerald. He's been with him for like 30 years. Okay. Okay. So yeah, Rick is very gay. Like I was talking to him about girlfriends and
And he lived with a woman for a while, you know, out of high school. I'm still so shocked that half of the questions are of that nature. We'll make sure that when he comes on the show later this month that our first question is not, who'd be in your throuple?
Is that not funny? It's pretty fucking funny. It's good. Oh my God. But what I was getting to is when you see two or 3000 people coming into a venue and they don't know what to expect and the set looks beautiful and we've got a video components. That's really cool. There's lots of clips from the Mercer report and there's, it's really fun. Um, but the laughter is so infectious to see people laughing, cry laughing and bending over and looking at each other and smiling like it's
Every piece of trouble, worry, sorrow, concern, anxiety, they sit down with it. I can see them sitting in it when they come in. And then within about 10, 15 minutes, I literally see this gray haze lift and it floats to the back of the arena, back of the theater, and it goes out the exit doors and
You just see a brightness. It's such a privilege to be standing there and to be part of bringing joy, just unadulterated, gut-busting laughter about really ordinary things that connect us all.
To be part of a tradition that goes back literally thousands of years with people traveling minstrels or traveling theater companies, people have always done that. And musicians, artists, actors, we've always traveled. And I said that to Rick. It's so funny that in 2024, we're doing something exactly the same as they were doing in 1224. That's so wild to think about. Yeah.
They were in wagons. They loaded up their food. They had their families with them. And they went from little village to village and they set up. And they did this oral tradition. And you have to understand that a lot of people back then didn't read and write. Everything that they did, that's why anything religious, anything biblical was out of reach for most people. There was
maybe four or five percent of people that had reading skills and religion back then it was all in fucking latin too so they didn't have any access to these sacred educational inspiring words they had to go listen to somebody else say them and if they didn't speak latin they would sit in a church yeah dumbfounded by what it was anyway so you're gonna go to england this week and
And then Caitlin and I are going to see you. By the time this episode is out, within 24 hours, we're going to see you in Toronto at Massey Hall. Or was it Roy Thompson? Yeah. Roy Thompson Hall. Yeah. So we have, I think there's like 100 tickets left. The evening one is sold out. That's the one we're coming to. But there's 100...
some odd tickets left for the Mother's Day matinee at Roy Thompson Hall. But I don't know if people will hear this in time for that to make any difference too. Right. But yeah, this will come out on the Friday right before Mother's Day. I don't want to catch you off guard with anything, but is it hard being on the road on Mother's Day for you? I know you had a really close relationship with your mom. Yeah. You know, it isn't anymore. I think there's a very soft place for my mom.
I think other people, I know some people find it really difficult on birthdays and special occasions and Christmases coming around. And I had more time with my mom and more time
of an opportunity to be with my mom because you're looking after her. She didn't die in a plane crash. She didn't die in a car accident. You know, she didn't suffer from some long, painful thing. My mom's, she wasn't in pain. She had Alzheimer's, but she was quite cheery at some, you know, sometimes she was, had a really great sense of humor, but my God, to be able to look after her and to get to know her almost in a childlike way because I became the mother. Yeah. And, and,
I really did experience what it must have felt like to have children because I was a parent to my mother. And it's funny because mom would say to me, you know, I said to her many times, you know, do you know who I am? Yes, you're Jan Arden and you're my mother.
And I'd say, well, that's so funny, mom, because you're my mom too. No, I said, you are. You're my mom as well. And she just would light up. She really, she felt looked after. So she thought of me as her mom. So what a privilege. All this stuff, like when I spend time with my parents at the cottage,
I'm just like, oh my God, how did I waste so much time not spending time with them? Like that's what's in the back of my head. Like I'm so grateful for the time. But you're getting older. We don't think of that when we're in our twenties. We just don't. I know. We want to get the fuck out of there and we want to go live our own things and we don't want to be told what to do. We want to make our own mistakes. I was the worst. I used to tell my mom I hated her. Like I was so rude. Well, it's not indigenous to you that, that,
formula is repeated over and over and it was repeated about a hundred thousand times today by various mothers and daughters across the planet whether they're in africa china korea a daughter was saying i hate you yeah i don't want to be here anymore and you don't you don't know me and you know what i will say to my mom now mom because i know she listens to the podcast every week
I know I was a bitch and that I didn't make you feel the best, but now you are my favorite person and you are my best friend. So I love you, mom. And that is what the point is. You can't just get on a track and go to that spot. That's not how our humanness works. We are, our character comes from our personality.
our disappointments, our failures, our crashes, our lack of understanding. Our character comes from all the chaos and the ruin. And then when we find it, it sure is satisfying to be able to say to your mom,
I'm sorry I was like that. But, you know, you also had a brain that was developing. You know, I feel like I'm finally, just in the last few years, the person that I want to be. True. My God, it takes so long to become a person. Yeah. And, you know, there's nothing more annoying than a fucking...
25 year old that knows everything that, you know, can show up and suck the air out of a room with their entitlement, their lack of empathy, their lack of tolerance, their lack of understanding. But I also cut them a very wide girth because their brains are growing. Yeah. They're just, they're just becoming a brain. We're blobs of flesh for a long, long time.
And then all of a sudden we kind of get it, but we sure have to skin our knees a lot. Yeah. Because it's, um, anyway, don't be hard on yourself. What was your favorite thing about your mom? Leave us with that. My mom was so frigging funny without knowing it. She said so many things that made me laugh. I just like just silly things. Like my friend,
My friend's sister was going out with a guy from Australia for like a year, this hot and heavy, wicked romance from Australia. And I told my mom many times, you know, Australia, Australia. And every time she talked about this particular situation...
well, how is your friend doing with that fellow from Afghanistan? I'm like, oh my God, this isn't Alzheimer's. This was just an A word. Okay. Yeah. And it would just send me just laughing.
But my mom would always say to me, Jan, like no matter what was going on, and I was always flying off the handle. I was like you, Sarah. I was just like, I would go from zero to 105 seconds if something didn't go my way, if I lost my phone for five minutes, or, you know, if they were needing me to do something that I just didn't have time for. Can you fix the remote for dad and I? We hit a button and we don't know how to get it back onto the satellite. And I was just...
Jesus Christ and blah, blah, blah. And mom would always say, Jan, it's not the end of the world. And I know every mother says that, but the way my mom tied little bits of cloth and string in the trees for the birds and the way she stood there and looked out the window and
with folded arms, watching the clouds go by and thinking or looking at a squirrel burying a nut, the way she was observing the things that I never even paid any attention to. And I remember her saying to me when she was quite sick, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks, she said, she held onto my forearm and she said, who will feed the birds when I'm not here?
And I thought, like in that moment, I thought, I'll feed the birds. And you do. And I do. I don't know why I didn't see the birds before. I don't know why I didn't appreciate what was around me. My mom loves birds. I wish younger people could find them earlier. But it's not the way it works. And I understand that now. It just isn't. But I think if we're going to survive in the world...
And if we're going to make a difference, younger people need to see the birds sooner than we did, Sarah. Yeah. They need to see, they need to connect again with nature. They need to connect. And I'm not talking about put your phones down. Like, fuck, it's not helping telling kids not to be on their phones because it's not going to happen. They're not going to do that. Balance. Once again, it's the balance. But they need to find balance.
and appreciate a tree, they have to connect with it or we will be doomed. So these connections, they may seem just kind of trivial, like old lady things, but they're not. They're really specific of what happens in our minds and in our hearts and souls. The connecting of the dots brings instant empathy and caring. And you think about where your food comes from and you're thinking, I couldn't kill that fucking chicken if
I couldn't electrocute a pig. I couldn't put a fucking nail through a cow's head, but we pay other people to do it. Anyway, I will leave on a happy note. And that is going to say, Oh boy. No, no, no. It's I know, but those things are important too. Yes. All of it. But if, if Sarah Burke can find her way back to her mother and have her mother be her greatest champion and friend, um,
Other young women that are struggling with the relationships with their mothers, they can find their way too. So all y'all out there listening, I don't care if you're 20 or 70 and your mom's still around and you've had a hard time connecting with your mom, it's never too late.
It's never too late to find a spark. When you're 60, your mom's still your mom. When you're 70, your mom's still your mom. Jane Goodall, a big part of her speech when I spoke to her three weeks ago in Vancouver was her mother and how her mother enabled her to go out into the world with bravery and confidence. Her mother went with her on those first early trips to Tanzania. Her mom was with her. So special. So special.
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Anyway, I'm thinking about you guys on your own Mother's Day, and we really appreciate you listening in. We might have a few voice notes. Yeah. We'll see if we do. Yeah, yeah. Hi, Jan. It's Maureen from Kamloops, BC. Thank you so much for having Tara Laurie on your recent show. I looked her up on Instagram and listened to her latest moon ritual. It really spoke to me as the phrase, I choose to release, was used over and over.
My one word for this year is release, as I'm releasing my 32-year teaching career and retiring at the end of June. It's interesting that I can predict a full moon with uncanny accuracy as my grade one students get a little squirrely close to that time each month. As I release my career and all the bittersweet emotions that come with that, I look forward to my first September off since I was five.
I will be going to Europe for my first time, and I'm hoping that you'll do another riverboat cruise there at some point, as that is on my travel bucket list. Thanks, Jan. Love your music and this podcast. Hi, my name is Susan. I started listening to your podcast, I'm going to say, four weeks ago-ish, and I've been
And I've been fast tracking through them from the beginning. I love them. I love all three of you. I feel like I know you. You give me laughs. You give me insight. You're just smart, brilliant, wonderful women. And your podcast always makes my morning happy. You keep asking for voice messages or whatever they call these. I'm kind of a dork when it comes to this. So I thought I'd send one. The funniest thing is that I just listened to your podcast today and
about Caitlin losing her job and you guys branching out. And so I added Sarah and Caitlin on my Instagram. I'm already following you, Jan, because I love you and I love Rick Mercer. But I see this post from Caitlin's husband of Will and I'm
I just want to reach out and say, oh my God, he's so cute. He looks like a little businessman and he's just adorable. And then I remember like, I feel like I know you guys, but you guys really don't know me. So it's just a weird thing when you start listening to someone's podcast and you just feel you're a part of their life. They're certainly a part of yours. Anyways, I want to thank you. I'm rambling. Thank you all, all three of you. Hi, Jen. It's Kim from Ottawa. I wanted to send a voice note. My very first one.
to let you know that I have just finished The Biddlemores. I was a little skeptical when I first started reading, talking cows, you know, but I loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. Loved the story, loved the characters. I loved everything about it, and I especially loved the ending. I was cheering at the ending, and thank you for watching.
sticking with that and writing that book. And I sure hope you have another novel in you because it was awesome. Thanks so much for all you do for the podcast. I've been a longtime listener. I tell everybody about podcasts. I love it. Ladies, keep it up. Hi, Jen, Caitlin and Sarah. My name is Anne-Marie Akins and I live in Toronto. I've, uh,
listened and watched Jan as her career growth for years and years and years. And I can't wait to see her on Sunday in Toronto with Rick Mercer because it's Mother's Day. And it's my was a gift to myself because it's one of my greatest accomplishments. But I'm sure I'll be lulling all the way through it. Learn that from you guys. Here's a little Mother's Day message from our girl Caitlin. Happy Mother's Day to all of our Jan pod pals.
I am going to be celebrating this Mother's Day by getting a tattoo in honor of Will. So I'm very excited about that. I also think it'll probably be a little bit painful. So I don't know if it's appropriate to have a mimosa before you get a tattoo, but we're going to find out this weekend.
And I do want to acknowledge as well that Mother's Day isn't always just happy brunch photos on Instagram. It can be a weird day for a lot of people. It can be challenging. And you maybe want to just avoid it because perhaps you've lost your mom. Maybe the journey to becoming a mom, if you even want to do that, hasn't been an easy one. Maybe you have a challenging relationship with your mom, whatever it is.
I've had weird Mother's Days and lots of people have. Something I learned was all the DMs and all the really nice supportive messages I received is that it's not the most simple day of the year. So if you are not really going to be celebrating it or maybe you're going to spend Mother's Day just being a loving parent to yourself, I salute you and I say do what I would do, which is go and get a baked good, Craig's Cookies, a croissant, whatever that looks like.
You do it and enjoy this day. And if I could leave you with a laugh about my mom, one of the things I love the most about my mom is when I FaceTime her, she still picks up the phone like this. I'm like, mom, I'm looking at your ear. Yeah.
You know, it's a different generation. I don't blame them. Anyway, I'm glad you still have your mom. My mom's out there. She's tripping the light fantastic, that's for sure. And my dad is apparently trying to kill a pig. So there you go. Well, look out at our socials this weekend too because, yeah, Caitlin and I, we're going to make sure that we say hi to Jan at her show. And, yeah, we'll take you behind the scenes a little bit at the Jan Arden Pod. Absolutely. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Toodly-doo.
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