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Description

Putting yourself out there — the good, the bad, the ugly — in the social media age can be a high-risk, high-reward endeavor, to put it mildly. Few people know that quite as well as writer, director, producer, and actor Lena Dunham. Lena shot to superstardom at only 24 years old when her hit HBO show “Girls” debuted in 2012 and has been living her life very much in the public eye ever since. Lena tells Claire about her lifelong love of self-expression and creativity, how being so open about the hard things in her life actually helps her heal, and how her relationship with womanhood, grief, and loss intersects with her writing. Plus, Lena and Claire discuss how early experiences shaped their views on Roe v. Wade.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Lena Dunham, Claire Bidwell-Smith

Claire Bidwell-Smith  00:09

Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell-Smith. Welcome to NEW DAY. Many of you may not know this, but this past spring, I celebrated the 10 year anniversary of my memoir, the rules of inheritance. It was my first book, and I worked on it for years. At the time, I didn’t know if it would even be published or who would read it, or how people would react to it. I just knew it had to be out in the world. And I wanted to make someone else feel less alone in their experience of grief. Looking back, I’m pretty amazed at how personal and public I’ve gotten over the years. Since the rules of inheritance first came out, I’ve written two other books. And this year, I started working on a fourth one. Every time I started a new book, I’m reminded of how much I’m still learning about myself. Whether it be with self-compassion, or creativity, or even how I navigate insecurity in my 40s. Writing has always opened me up to all kinds of versions of myself. And the more I think about it, it continues to challenge me, and helped me create more meaning in my life and with the people around me every single day. Writing has also introduced me to so many people I would not have met otherwise. Like today’s guest, Lena Dunham. Lena is a writer and actor and you probably know her from starring in her own hit HBO series, Girls, which I loved. But I wanted to bring Lena on today because apart from her being an extraordinary writer and filmmaker, I’ve come to know her more personally. We’ve recently been working on a project together and she too just hit her 10 year anniversary with Girls. A lot can happen in 10 years. So I wanted to sit down with Lena to talk about some of our shared struggles as storytellers but also the joy we found in hitting these kinds of milestones as women working in a creative industry. Lena is amazing. When we sat down for this interview, she showed up in her robe, which is just so her. I loved hearing all the insight Lena has about self-expression and creativity, what it means to be vulnerable in the public eye. And how her relationship with womanhood, grief and loss intersects with her writing. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I do.

Lena Dunham  02:14

Hi, Claire.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Hi, Lena.

Lena Dunham 

How are you?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I’m good. How are you?

Lena Dunham 

I was just showing them my kitten.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I know I saw it. I love it so much. What’s her name?

Lena Dunham 

Her name’s elegance. But we have been calling her gancy. My husband named her because he thought it would be a good name for a daughter. And I was like that’s not the case. So we are going to use it on the cat.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

We got some hamsters at one point and my daughters named them Dexter and Majesty. That was a really good combination.

Lena Dunham 

Incredible. They sound like they are solving crimes and like the north of England or a rap duo.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Lena, thank you so much.

Lena Dunham

Oh my god, it’s such an honor.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I’m so excited to do this. All right, I start every episode of this podcast asking my guests how are you doing? But how are you actually doing today?

Lena Dunham

That’s such a great question. I mean, you know, it’s so funny because we spend that’s a ship. Firstly, I feel like I always end up when I see you in other contexts telling you how I’m actually doing as opposed to the meeting. How are you doing? I thank you bring that out of people with your combination of special skills. But you know, because I have some chronic health stuff, which I’m always working on. I have days, someone who I used to work with used to refer to them as yes days and no days. And today, I’ve been having a bit of a no day, which is why your listeners can’t see me. But you see that I’m wearing a bathrobe and sitting on the floor of my bedroom. And it’s not that you don’t do anything on no days, you still do things but there’s like a little bit of like a kind of wall of resistance. But I have been so excited to talk to you that it’s the thing in my day. That is, it doesn’t involve pushing past the wall of resistance.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  04:00

Oh, thank you.

Lena Dunham 

How are you doing?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I am doing pretty well. It’s been a rough week in the world, in the country. So, we’re recording this a few days after the Texas shooting and yeah, anniversary of George Floyd’s death and just a million other horrific things that are going on in this world. So, you know, trying to do some self-care around just being present to life right now.

Lena Dunham 

That’s such a good goal. I just spoke to my best friend who lives in the US and as a mom of two small daughters, and she’s like, I don’t even know how to conduct myself. I just went to church for the first time since I was like 10. And like a female Rector just held her while she cried and I’m living in England now. So it’s an odd thing to experience sort of, you know, this collective grief separated and also to explain to people who I love here, kind of what the conditions are because I think being separate, it seems, you know, we’re in a country where police officers don’t even carry guns. And so it’s like, very, very hard for my husband or his family or certain friends to understand both the rage that this brings up in America, and there’s a resistance to change in America. And I have to admit, it’s hard to explain, because it doesn’t make sense.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Right. I know, that’s the thing, right? Like, how do we explain it? We can’t explain it. It doesn’t make any sense at all. And it’s maddening. And it’s embarrassing, you know, to try to explain to someone who doesn’t share those beliefs or ideas.

Lena Dunham 

Completely. My husband was asking about, he was like, but I don’t understand why would you have universal background checks? Why wouldn’t you just ban guns, and I was trying to explain, like, that is what I too, would like to do. But first, we have to get people to even agree that there’s a problem. And you start to realize how much of our American identity is sort of built around so many forms of denial. And also, you know, being wanting to be there, despite all of that, because you love your, your community and your people and all of that. And so, I’ve wished I could hug everyone. I love their including you extra bad this week.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  06:16

Yeah, well, thank you. Well, okay, so I was kind of wanted to start by asking you, how do you describe yourself these days? Who are you right now? Lena Dunham. Like who is Lena Dunham right now, at this point in your life?

Lena Dunham 

That’s a really good question. And I know that you’re a person who also has, like a multifaceted identity of different jobs and a multifaceted personal identity. I think like the way I describe myself, if a stranger, you know, if an Uber driver who’s extra chatty asks me what I do, I say that I’m a writer, because that always has felt like the thing from which the rest of my identity stems from, whether it’s directing, whether it’s acting, whether it’s writing prose, whether it’s, you know, even if I sit down to, you know, do my hobby, which is, you know, painting murals on my wall of my house, it all sort of stems from this storytelling instinct. But there were, there were moments in my life, I think that I got more I didn’t realize at the time, but more like, have an ego stroke from trying to list all of the all of the back slashes of what I was, but I realized that the more comfortable I become, with who I am, the more comfortable I am just saying, I’m a writer and realizing what a gift it is to even be able to say that at all.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

I love that. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s usually kind of the core identity, I go back to two is just being a writer. That’s what I tell people on airplanes and Uber rides too.

Lena Dunham 

Seems right. Because, well, if you told them that you were also a grief therapist, you’d have a lot of strangers crying in your lap.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Every time.

Lena Dunham 

And also, I feel like not that I have been in your, you know, treatment chair. But I feel like so much of what you do is does come from storytelling and the kinds of stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, the kinds of stories we tell ourselves emotionally. And that’s one of the reasons that I love what you do so much.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  08:14

Thank you, I feel similarly about you. When did you know that you’re a storyteller?

Lena Dunham 

I mean, it’s funny, both my parents are visual artists. And so I always and like, just because by virtue of its what they knew how to do, they always raised me to, you know, every time I was bored, it was like, here’s a pencil and a paper, draw something, here’s some paint, smear it on something. And you also really weren’t allowed to see your board in my house. Because the idea was like, you can always make something. And if you can make something you can’t be bored, it’s a very lazy thing to be. And, but there was a certain point where it was like, they handed me the pencil on the paper. And once I could put words together, I wasn’t drawing I was writing. And in that I even I found some old journals of mine that my mom, you know, grabbed out of a box around when I was home for Christmas. And it’s like, I’m 7 or 8. And you can see like, half of them are drawings. And then suddenly, they start to be bad poems. And then suddenly, they turned into short stories. And then there was like, a weird attempt at a screenplay, even though I didn’t know what they were supposed to look like. And I wasn’t a super social kid. And so I remember like, my parents had a studio that was downstairs from our house in Soho, we lived on Broadway, and my mom, mom and dad worked on the second floor, and we lived on the fourth floor. And it was a big deal when I was old enough to like take the elevator down to their studio at night when no one was down there and use like the big bulky computer to type up my stories. I remember so well what it felt like to like sit in this little alcove with this mac computer that took up like, you know, three quarters of the room. And I would always be like, I’m working on a novel. Now, when I look back the novels were like nine pages and they were always, always basically inspired by the fact that I had seen Les Mis once, and I was writing almost exclusively about orphans. Speaking of grief, my passion was always like orphans just because I was like, well, that seems fun. And seems like a delightful thing to be eaten. I do not believe that to be the case anymore. And then that was always sort of also the way that I could figure out how to relate to other kids. So like, at my school, we had a thing where you could do, you could write a playwriting class where you could put on plays in a festival and like, I remember not ever feeling popular, except for when I was casting my play, because like other kids were like, oh, there’s good parts in that. So it was like for like, a couple of weeks. Each semester, I would get to be really popular while I was filling my play with like girls who were excited for their melodramatic monologues, and then it would cease.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  10:52

I love all of that. We’ve never talked about this, but my mum was an artist too. And she also put me in just copious amounts of art classes, and always have me you know, with painting and just, you know, it wasn’t my thing either. And you can see the same kind of progression of I was, I was drawing stories, you know, it was almost like cartoon strips, because she kept wanting me to illustrate and be in that medium, but I just wanted to tell stories. And so it was like ladybugs getting married.

Lena Dunham 

That’s so funny you say that because all of my early pictures are like, she’s pregnant. And you can see the baby, there’s a little hole in which you can see the baby inside her stomach, but she’s also having a wedding and there’s nine dogs there. And they all have names, and I’m making my mom write their names down.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Exactly.

Lena Dunham

I also was always obsessed with the TV show. This is a real throwback. I don’t know if you remember a show called under the umbrella tree. It was like, it was like a Canadian show that was on I believe the Disney Channel briefly in like 1993 or 92′. And it was about a woman named Holly, who was a teacher. And she shared an apartment with like a puppet that was a blue J, a lizard, and a gopher. And they were all have like, awesome. It was pretty awesome and pretty demented. Like, and it would have a title at the beginning of every episode, it would be like, you know, DJs play date or whatever, like PJs play date. And if I would remember the credits would roll and then I would scream for my mother so that she could come in and read the title to me. And if she was not there to read the title of the episode, I would become hysterical because I felt that I was not so like, when I learned to read, it was a huge relief because I was like I’m not, I can independently do this. And then of course, I realized that reading was, you know, I then started being the kid who literally walked down the street with a book open and had to like be scooted around potholes. I’m sure you are the same, I’m sure.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  12:45

It’s that storytelling trajectory, right? Like it’s just kind of in both of us.

Lena Dunham

Completely. And it’s the same part of you that wants to make sense of your life through memoir is a person who’s always made sense of their life through either reading other people’s stories, telling stories, and it was always my, it was just always my comfort and it’s still my comfort. And I feel really lucky that even though it’s a job, I still love doing it. And like I still will take a break from writing to write some more. And that is and especially in my adult life, having dealt with, you know, different physical issues that constrain me to bed at certain times. I always still felt like there was an escape hatch because of the possibilities that come from being able to write and to read.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I totally relate and agree. Okay, so most of the world got to know you when Girls premiered. And we just hit the 10 year anniversary. Yeah, what does that been like for you to reflect on?

Lena Dunham  14:09

It was I definitely like I don’t usually take tremendous like anniversaries aren’t, you know, dates that I take tremendous stock in. But the 10 year anniversary was actually kind of profound like, not only did I take a moment to appreciate some other people’s thoughts about what the show had meant to them, which were amazing to take in, but I also just got to really look at like 10 years is a big chunk of your life, like a decade is a big chunk of your life and to look at what the show had been how much of my life had consumed how much of my life had changed. I found to be intensely emotional and I ended up writing about it because that’s what you do. And what I wrote ended up really being a lot about female friendship and the fact that it was sort of my experience of female friendship was what made me start that project and my experience of female friendship was also what gave me you know, the most comfort during it the most pain, the most inspiration. And kind of the way the issue around which I’ve shifted the most. So that was like, I found the 10 year anniversary to beat we were just talking about anniversaries, you know, hard anniversaries of tragic cultural events, beautiful anniversaries, I had never understood their power before. And suddenly I really understood why, why people become emotional on certain dates why people, I mean, I’m sure you, you talk to people about this a lot, dates of the year have specific events that moves something in them. And this one really moved something in me because there’s of course, within in any 10 year period, such an enormous amount of love, beauty, pain, suffering, fear, And also, it can be a really good occasion to just go like, okay, I’m still here, what a good, amazing thing to still be here.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, and just to look at the ways you’ve grown, I mean, I hit the 10 year anniversary of my first book, The rules of inheritance this spring. And so that’s, that was kind of mind blowing to me, too, right? That was my first thing that I put out into the world. I know, girls wasn’t the first thing you put out into the world, but it was..

Lena Dunham  16:12

But close to it, close to it. And it’s like, and also, I think sometimes the first thing that people have a response to or notice, has a very, very specific tenor to it, I’m just grabbing some tea from behind me, has a very, very specific, oh my gosh, I’m so I consumed so much tea on the set of Girls that they had to make, like only a few green teas a day role, because I would get myself so jacked up on green tea and caffeine that I was intolerable. But yeah, like, and also what a big thing, like, how much putting that book out must have changed your life, both outwardly and people’s reactions to you. And inwardly, in your perception of yourself like is, do you feel like, that’s when you really started to think of yourself as a writer?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

You know, I think I had thought of myself as a writer before that, just because I had been just even so prolific personally, I just was always writing like you, you know, like, even it was like, I would take a break from writing to write something else, you know, just always writing and reading and, but that was the kind of the thing that kind of put me out there and people started reacting to it. And also, you know, I’m sure you had this experience, people start shaping you into an idea, right? So that was the point in my life when I became somewhat of a public person. And people have their own ideas about who you are, and how much they know about you, or react to you in different ways. And so that has been an aspect that has been part of my life for the last 10 years that has both positive and negative qualities, you know, and I’m sure that you’ve experienced that as well. People just have an idea about who you are based on this one thing that you’ve put out into the world.

Lena Dunham 

Absolutely. And then you sort of start thinking, you know, it’s an amazing thing to be recognized for something that you’ve done, but you also start to think about the other forms of expression that you’d like to, I try not to spend an enormous amount of time thinking about people’s reactions to me, but I do spend time thinking that it’s interesting, always to dismantle people’s perceptions of you with the next thing that you make. And that I mean, you and I have been talking a lot about, we’re both writing books. And do you find that having written another book and having had people respond to it, that the process, the process of writing, another one becomes more convoluted for you? Or more complex?

Claire Bidwell-Smith  18:30

Absolutely, yeah. Because when I was writing that very first book, I didn’t think I didn’t know if it would ever be published, or who would read it or what their reactions would be. And now I’ve published three books, and I am more familiar with the way people react to things and, and so when I’m writing these new books, I know that people will read them and that can feel a little different in the process. Totally, it doesn’t really change it that much for me, like, there’s a level on which I really just don’t give a fuck what people think. But knowing that it will be read, makes it feel a little different.

Lena Dunham 

I think you and I share that which is like, you want to think about it insofar as it’s useful to the writing and insofar as you’re like telling a new story. But I have the same thing, which is like when push comes to shove, if I’m like, people might hate this and like, and who fucking cares. And that has sort of been both a disaster and a saving grace in my life. That combination. It’s hard to know on any given day, which it is, but like, I definitely share that with you. And I think also, there’s just something about memoir, once you understand sort of how deeply people parse it and what the response are. It’s like, you feel and also you have children, you feel responsible to them, I feel responsible to family, it’s, it becomes and it just becomes more and more complicated. The older you get and the more experience you pick up that involves more, more, more varied people.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Totally. And I think there’s a layer of it too, of just being a woman, right? Like that just gives it a whole different layer of what women are I want to write about who they’re allowed to be what we’re allowed to say and do. And so it’s very different for men to write memoir. Oh

Lena Dunham  20:08

Oh 150%. And I know I was telling you about Melissa Phoebus who wrote this beautiful book he worked.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I just destroyed that book. I loved it so much.

Lena Dunham 

It’s so incredible she talks about that she’s like, I learned really on, early on that meant and stories or literature, I mean, this I’m paraphrasing her like men’s stories or literature. And women’s stories are sort of like a, a narcissistic, unnecessary. Like she, in her early classes, like young men were applauded for their bravery and honesty. And women were told that they were being navel gazing. It’s one of the reasons I hate the word oversharing. So much is because I’ve never heard someone say that a man over shares, right, women are accused of oversharing all the time. And that’s because like, ultimately, we just don’t put the same kind of premium on women’s stories. And exactly, I mean, I was even noticing it. I hate even bringing this up. But just like in the way that people are responding to this, I hope we look back at this Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are very ashamed of ourselves, but, even the way that people sort of like act as if and I’m this is not even a value judgment of the contents, but sort of treat his testimony like he’s really baring her heart, and then a woman can cry on the stand and is accused of like a certain kind of manipulation, it’s just all you see it in the dynamics of our culture every single day, in the news, in the response to the news in the response to the response to the news. And it can be really disheartening, if you I think it can be really disheartening. And then like the women I know, like you, like get a good night’s sleep, wake up the next morning and go like, okay, I just guess I’m gonna keep doing it.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

How do you handle criticism? How have you, how has it been for you, I mean, I know there’s a certain level and layer where you don’t give a fuck, but then there’s other pieces that come in and float in at night, or when you’re trying to fall asleep, that just start to get under your skin, how do you handle it?

Lena Dunham  22:00

Well, I think when I was younger, I thought that there was something like, almost like inelegant or embarrassing about admitting that you cared what people thought. And so I spent a long time kind of in a defensive pose going, this doesn’t reach me, it doesn’t touch me, I don’t care, but at the same time, sort of responding with a certain degree of venom or something. And then I kind of as I became, I grew up, I got sober, I got more, I sort of started to realize that like, for lack of a better word, being connected to your own vulnerability is not an embarrassing thing. And also that it’s okay to say that you respect people’s ability to criticize you, and that it’s not ultimately going to change your artistic stance, and to also admit that it doesn’t feel very good. And so then, for example, like I don’t run my own social media anymore, someone else posts for me and sort of deals with the responses because I realized, there’s no like reward for being able to read your Instagram comments without crying. Like, I used to think I’ve got to be the tough lady, you can do that. And then I’m like, actually, this feels terrible. It is. I’m sorry, I moved my knee and I almost flashed your producer earlier, I felt really bad. But, there’s no reason that we should, it’s unnatural, actually, like, I think there’s like a time which we all wish, kind of have some fondness for in our memory that I didn’t even ever experience, which was like, when criticism was like, you know, in the New York Times, or whatever, and you’re like the one review that could either make you or break you and break your heart was like in a newspaper. But now, we’re exposed to such a wide range of people’s perceptions of us. And it’s not just limited to celebrities, or writers or people in the public eye. Like, I look at the way that teenagers have to deal with, like I was at a friend’s house. I mean, you must see this with your kids already. I was at a friend’s house the other night and her daughter was like, Bailey got a new haircut. And she looked at her phone and her daughter had like a Snapchat image. And she was like, you’re not even on Snapchat. How do you have that? And she was like, she sent me a screenshot. And I was like, Oh my God, these kids like you could try to ban your kids from it, but like they are going to be given the information.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  24:14

The anxiety they’re grappling with as a result, it’s just breaking my heart. It really is. It’s really weighing on me all the time.

Lena Dunham

It must I can only imagine. I mean, I again, like I remember when that first computer was hauled into my house, and you had to dial up to get your two email or the sound. I miss it. And you have to get your two emails from your two friends. But like life, like when I was in college, we didn’t have smartphones. Like if you wanted to look the internet, you have to go back to your room, like that. And so the kind of ever present ever trailing possibility that criticism is going to intrude on your life at every minute, I think really did do a number on my nervous system in my 20s and I’m really working to kind of repair some have the kind of neuron damage that occurred from just because the fact is, is like, although our body’s fight or flight was made to, like, deal with us running from a saber toothed Tiger, you feel those same feelings. When you read a terrible tweet about yourself, or somebody writes you a threat online, or like it’s very, very hard for the human psyche to differentiate.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I feel like we just like jumped into this whole age of the internet without at all thinking about it without all like thinking about how we need to learn how to self-regulate our time on the internet, that we need to teach our kids how to do that. And now we’re doing all this backtrack and trying to balance it and we’re just fucked.

Lena Dunham 

I know, I know, it’s really, really hard. And so the only thing that I can do is create some limits around my for myself, which is, you know, I don’t have social media on my phone, I don’t have my own passwords. And of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t still like go to daily mail.com And then feel very ashamed of myself. I joke with a friend that like Daily Mail is like my go to as guilty escape. Until then I’ll be looking and then suddenly, I see like a picture of myself. And I’m like, where did that come from? How did they get that? And then I remind myself, you don’t want to be looking at this. And then the cycle starts over again.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Okay, next big question. Who are you as a woman today? I know you just got married recently. I know that you’ve gone through some major health stuff that you had a hysterectomy. Who are you as a woman right now?

Lena Dunham 

So really great. Question. Well, it’s so interesting, because, you know, I mean, that question is so varied for everyone. And one of my great pleasures in life is you just asked it so succinctly is like finding that out about other women. But I think I mean, I’ve really lived and married for eight months, I’ve really loved it, I wasn’t a person who necessarily, it wasn’t that I didn’t sort of dream about it as a concept, but I wasn’t sure that I was going to get there. And I ended up finding someone who was able to tolerate who I am as a woman now, which is really amazing. And, you know, I had a hysterectomy at 31, which was also not something that I expected. And I had always been a person and still am a person who wants children. And so that was something that I had to do for my health. But then I had a lot of processing to do around what that loss was to be able to just exist in a world where I mean, we’re constantly reminded of everything, especially in a world where we can see each other’s business over that internet, we were just discussing, but to be able to exist in a world where, you know, I was just at the beginning phase of all of my friends starting to have kids. And have you know, so many people that I know, who didn’t even think they wanted children having them and I needed to be able to subsist in a way where I didn’t feel jealous, angry, slighted, because that’s such an unpleasant place to be coming from both for you and for the people that you love. And so I think that for me, it really took some time. Said, I mean, I actually, you and I have talked about the phases of grief, and I feel like I went through all of them after that. And it was hard because I, you know, I thought that grief was limited to people who had lost a child or people who had had a miscarriage. And I realized, like, the grief of, of mourning, what you thought was possible is a whole other kind of grief. And so

Claire Bidwell-Smith  28:52

That’s a very real grief that I think a lot of people don’t give themselves permission to acknowledge.

Lena Dunham 

Well, it’s amazing music because yeah, I was I was very hard on myself, because I felt like it was something I was like, it needed to happen. It happened. I need to be able to stomach this. And I couldn’t for a while. And like all grief unfortunately, like the real I mean, there’s no cure for it, but the real salve for it, is time.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, I know. I know. It’s so hard to tell people that to when they’re just in the beginning of that journey. You know, it’s just like in my chair, when I sit here and look at the person who’s just starting out their grief journey, and I know that so much time is going to be necessary.

Lena Dunham 

It must be so hard to say that because at the end of the day, I’m just gonna move this up here. At the end of the day, all people want is to under is to imagine that there’s like a quick fix or something like that. And there just isn’t and the feeling of going okay, I guess I’m going to be stuck here for a while is and but then I think I almost feel like the mid I started to settle into it like, Okay, this is what this is going to feel like is when it started to ease.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  30:05

Yeah, yeah. What was it like to share your experience of that grief and your hysterectomy and your health?

Lena Dunham 

My mother and I were talking about this, because her response was always like, this is a really big deal. And you might want to protect yourself. And my response was like, This is how I process things. And so I sort of jumped into the concept of sharing, maybe before I understood exactly what it meant to share. But I will say this, like, even though of course, always buried in the responses are a couple of snarky ones, or a couple of painful ones. I find, writing about painful experiences. And you know, this, it’s so unifying, because the people who come up to you and say that it affected them or the people who write to you or the people who tweet to you. They’re helping you just as much as you’re helping them and like, so much of the time, in an experience of grief, we feel just alone on an island. And I felt very alone it I thought I was, you know, I intellectually knew I was not the only woman who had had a hysterectomy at 31. And then whose IVF had failed and who wasn’t going to be able to have biological children. But it felt that way. And so as a result, it was actually such a wonderful, natural thing to share. Because it helped me like it took me a minute to really be able to phrase that when my mom was like, why don’t we keep it a bit private, because then people will know what’s going on with our family. And they’ll either be concerned or they’ll be critical. And I finally had to really say to hurt and it was scary. And also very empowering to say, this actually helps me. I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing this for me, because when someone else offers me their experience back it, like starts to heal something in me.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, right? I totally agree. That was the whole reason I put my first book out there. You know, after my mom died when I was 18, I was living in New York City. And I just felt so alone in what I was going through. And I kept turning to like any memoir, I could get my hands on of like somebody who had been through something really awful and hard and like, somehow somewhat come through the other side. And those books were so meaningful to me at that time when I felt so alone. And so when I was writing mine, I just wanted to do the same thing for other people. And Mike, and hearing all of their stories back was like, just so profoundly healing to me.

Lena Dunham  32:32

And is that part of what also made you become a therapist. Do you think that experience do you think? Do you think there was a part of you that also found the experience of sitting there was someone in your chair in some way healing? Or was that just then you felt so regulated in your experience that you thought, okay, I can do this.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Man regulated in my experience; I don’t know if I’ve ever been fully regulated, in my experience, Lena, but.

Lena Dunham 

That’s a very intense one, I like to claim to be regulated.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I think I became a therapist, because my mother was the person who made everybody feel comfortable being who they were. And she passed a lot of that down to me. And it’s just been something I’ve always been good at, like, I’m just really open and really compassionate with who people are. And so people have always told me their stories and their secrets. And I wanted to do something meaningful with all this grief. And I already was really good at being a receptacle and a person who can listen and hear all these stories. So it was kind of a natural fit, but it came from my mom, you know?

Lena Dunham 

That’s amazing. And knowing that you can do that. I mean, it’s, I think all the time about how challenging I think about my therapist, and I go, Oh my God, if I mean, I consider myself fairly empathic, and I love to listen, but also, it’s such a, it’s such a responsibility. And I always think that people who can successfully balance listening to others in a professional context with having a family having another job like you do, being a writer, it means that you’ve like done some real work around boundaries, which is like, you know, a real buzzword these days, but also it’s a buzzword for a reason, which is it’s important.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  34:21

No, it’s true. It’s a weird part of me. I do have like terrific boundaries. In my work. I don’t really have as great of boundaries in my personal life. Yeah, like the kids would tell you that I’m not a boundaried person. But I take it so seriously in my work.

Lena Dunham 

That’s amazing. It’s amazing, because, you know, you’ll always hear funny stories, like people in New York love to tell their therapy stories and like, you know, like, my mom has a story about telling a therapist that she didn’t want to see her anymore. And then like the therapists partner, who turned out to be her boyfriend, like work partner turned out to be your boyfriend who my mom vaguely knew calling my mom and saying she’d hurt her feelings. And I was like, people are wild, but like, you hear so many stories like that, and then I think to be able to be, whether it’s a therapist or a sponsor or whatever, and let people come and let them go. It’s like, it’s such a beautiful gift.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, I actually had a shitty experience with my very first therapist who was a man. And I’ve been writing about it my new book, but he didn’t have good boundaries. And I’m actually so grateful for it, because it taught me the importance of boundaries with my clients.

Lena Dunham 

That’s amazing. And, and that will be really useful to people, because everyone knows what it feels like to sit there and go, Is this normal? I don’t know. And it’s an amazing thing that you’re doing. I’m so excited for your next book, just on a purely fan level.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Thank you, likewise, but we need to talk. We’ll talk on the side at some point soon.

Lena Dunham 

We’ll do a side chat. We’ll do a side chat.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

Okay, let’s talk about you know, coming out of this conversation about your body and the hysterectomy. Like, let’s talk about Roe v. Wade.

Lena Dunham 

Yeah, I mean, another one that was hard to explain to people in England, another one where you’re like, how do I even begin, because, you know, my mother was a, and her friends in New York were part of this group called wack Women’s Action Coalition, which was a downtown New York feminist group. And I remember distinctly like her coming back from a protest in Buffalo, where they held hands around an abortion clinic and, and the time and, and going early to rallies with her and the time and the effort that she put in and her being like, this is so that you all don’t have to experience what we experienced in our attempt. And my mother was always very open with me about the fact that she had an abortion, she was very open with me about the fact that she had gone with friends to have illegal abortions. She was very open with me about like, this is why we’re fighting for it. This is what it looks like, safely. This was what it looks like unsafely. And like so many of us, I took for granted the concept that that was done and dusted. And also, I have, although I am not able to have children, I am dependent on good, solid, ethical, gynecological care to literally be able to live my life. And I also have had experiences even you know, I’ve had experiences of doctors who spoke to me in ways that were, you know, everything from condescending to inappropriate because of just what a kind of contentious topic women’s health is, when it should not be. And so, I was very shaken like all of us by these Roe v. Wade conversations, terrified about what it would look like. And also just like the, you know, the shame that it brings back to women’s sexuality, the shame that it brings back to women’s bodies, and also, like so many of the people I know who are really politically intelligent, a little bit stumped on what to do when there’s and it’s similar to gun control the issue that like you’re talking to people who have such an ideological divide, that how do you, how, without resorting to snark or name calling or insulting people’s intelligence, how do you explain this incredible difference in thought? And how do we bridge it to create a solution that does the thing that we’re really aiming for, which is keep women safe?

Claire Bidwell-Smith  38:23

It is, it’s really hard to navigate and to figure out how to talk about it, it’s been hard to talk about it with my kids, you know, it’s like how it’s like trying to explain it to someone in England, you know, they’re just like, well, why? You know?

Lena Dunham

Of course. And that’s because you’ve also raised them to have a particular set of, you know, values. And I think the thing that people are mistaken about is like, it doesn’t mean you’re raising your kid with liberal values. It just means you’re raising your kid with like very human values, which is like to protect existing human life beat through the act of choice and explaining it to your kids, especially you know, you have a young daughter, has that been challenging has happened emotional, how have you talked about it? Do you talk about your own past, your own life? How do you tackle that as a parent, I want to know as a future parent.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, I mean, just a lot of open conversations. My daughter’s both know that I had an abortion when I was 18. After my mom died, I found out I was pregnant. And we’ve had a lot of conversations about that. You know, Vera and I just watched the season finale of Euphoria the other day of season one, and just you know, there’s an abortion there. And it’s hard because I think that there’s so many different ways to see it. And there’s so many layers to it. But this idea of choice is the one that we have the most discussions around and how important that is and why it’s important and what has happened in the past that has emphasized why it’s so important and what may happen in the future in terms of just women’s rights and choices and our bodies.

Lena Dunham 

Well, it’s interesting, my mom raised my brother and I and my brother is trans and my mother raised us to say instead of to say, pro-life to say anti-choice, she was always very, that was like a linguistic thing, she was very firm of that. Because she would say they’re not pro-life. Because if you were pro-life, you would want to give people who are alive the right to choose their anti-choice. And so that was something that was a very just that simple language trick, I feel like was very, very important for me to learn early on. And my mother also did a really interesting thing my mom was, you know, everyone has a complicated mom, but things my mom was amazing on were, and it’s it, we’re bodily autonomy. And so whether it was telling us if someone ever makes you uncomfortable, ever, like, I remember my mom saying to me when I was, I don’t know, 5 or 6, I know that we say that you should be polite to adults, but if adult ever makes you feel uncomfortable in the way that they touch you, you don’t have to be polite to them. And I’ll never get mad at you. Even if you make a mistake. Or even if you think that some it’s always better to go with your instincts, and yeah, protect yourself. And that was she was incredible about that. And she was also..

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I want to hang out with your mom.

Lena Dunham 

Oh, my God, I think you two would really enjoy each other, you will find your way to each other. And then the other thing that she would say is, you know, when she brought up the idea of abortion, she never leaned into that after school specials, sort of, it’s a very hard choice. And it makes a woman very sad. Like, she treated it in such a clinical way. And one of those plays that I wrote in high school was like this really embarrassing play about like a bunch of women in an abortion clinic waiting room grappling with their decision. And I remember showing it to my mom, and she was like, people don’t sit in the clinic waiting room of an abortion clinic weeping. Like, it’s like people who have gone in there to make a decision. This is very overdramatic. And like, that was, even though everyone of course is response to the experience of having an abortion is different. It was important that to my mom, that we understood that it didn’t always have to have this laden heavy that sometimes it could just be a very clinical choice about how you wanted your life to proceed.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  42:08

Yeah, absolutely. I think we need more moms like your mom, I aspire to be like her. She sounds amazing.

Lena Dunham 

She is amazing. And I feel actually everything that’s happening in the world has made me feel more and more lucky that I was raised by someone who had the particular ideals that they do, because it’s easy when you’re a teenager to like dunk on your mom or decide that she’s your most mortal enemy. But my mom really, and to this day really, always like, took her side, but also was incredibly clear and factual and forthright without also exposing us to like too much adult thought. And I’m sure those are the challenges that come up when you’re talking to your daughters about this. And that’s also like, that’s also the power of television, like to see those stories get told, you know, like euphoria, yes, it’s starting like teen makeup crazes, but it’s also bringing up really important conversations for teenagers about things that when I was in high school, like, you know, that wasn’t happening on Dawson’s Creek as greatest.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

And I can’t believe this is what I’m watching with my teenage daughter, when my mom and I were watching my So Called Life together, you know, and it was, and it was awesome. But we were having great, huge, important conversations. And I know my mother was like, stressed by watching the show. And then here I am, you know, all these years later watching fucking Euphoria. And I’m like, I’m like trying not to heave and vomit over the side of the bed.

Lena Dunham

I know. I just made my husband watch my So Called Life because he had never seen it before. And I was like, You don’t understand what this is what it meant. What like one? This Winnie Holtzman, Claire Danes, what this was, and I have to say, like, he was like, yeah, it’s good. And I was like, It’s good. It’s good. I was like, it’s perfect.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

But I mean, it’s like everything that’s come after that has been part of what that started. And I think girls is similar. I mean, what you did with girls had not been seen on screen before. And that is such a big deal. Like, I, I just I remember watching girls for the first time. And it was right around the same time that my first book came out, and I was a new mom. And I just was blown away. I was like, wait, this can be on television and these thoughts and these ideas. And do you think of yourself as a disruptive presence?

Lena Dunham  44:29

I’m sure my seventh grade teacher would think of me as a disruptive presence. But, you know, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s always amazing to hear that.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

In a really positive

Lena Dunham

No, it’s thank you. It means so much. And the idea that girls would have shifted anything for anyone or made it easier for someone else to get their show on TV. Like something that I always said when girls was on was like, I’m not trying to be the only show even though the show is called Girls, which I think made people think we were going for something really, really huge First I was like, I’m not trying to be the only show about women in their 20s. I’m not trying to be the only show about women’s sex lives, like, there are so many of us who have such different perspectives, who have so much to say. And that’s the media that I like to consume. And so if this can do anything, I hope it’s just open the door and let people know like a 24-year old woman can create a show, she can run a show, she can cast a show, and let more of them do it. And what’s been exciting is to see how many shows since that time, whether it had to do with girls being on or not have gotten to sort of tell different sides of that same story, because I knew always that I was occupying a very specific, kind of like micro slice of the women in their 20s population. And especially now, it’s so exciting for me to see how much more conversation like when we were starting Girls, there was almost no conversation about the gender binary. Like, one of the reasons you could even call a show girls because there was no conversation about the gender binary. And that’s why there’s so many things about the show that were specific to that. I mean, the concept of slut shaming didn’t exist yet, the concept I mean, all we got slut shamed within an inch of our life, like there was so much that was shifting in the world and in the media. And it just is so satisfying for me now to see when shows about women, about people identify as female, when they come out, it’s really exciting for me.

Lena Dunham 

I’m so grateful for you for just starting that ball rolling, and just being part of that huge change that’s been happening these last years.

Lena Dunham  46:38

I’m grateful to you, because there are a few voices who I feel like made me feel way more comfortable in embracing certain aspects, like one of the things that I was still scared to do in my 20s and early 30s was like I could be, I could share facts, but it was really hard for me to be actually vulnerable, and about, like, what the, like feelings and just I said, like feelings, but like facts versus feelings. And I feel like meeting you. And reading your book has really shifted a lot of those ideas for me. And I think that it talking to you does that for so many people, whether they’ve lost a parent or whether they’ve just lost aspects of themselves. There’s so much to take from it.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Thank you, Lena. Last question, another 10 years, 10 years from now, what do you see? What do you want for the world? What do you see for yourself? Where are you in 10 years?

Lena Dunham 

What a great question. I mean, for the world, I’ll start with the world, then I’ll go micro. I mean, I desperately, desperately something I care so much about is universal health care, just on a very basic level, especially now living in England, and seeing what it looks like when people don’t have to be afraid to go to the emergency room, because they have to then decide between paying their doctor’s bills or paying their electric bills. And as a voice for people who deal with ongoing illness. I recognize that if I didn’t have insurance from my guild, from the Writers Guild, and if I also didn’t have the ability to pay for private doctors, I wouldn’t be here right now. And so I think I used to kind of get more lofty with my goals, like I hope people accept each other, I hope people but like, I think so much many of these issues, gun control, because of how many people who commit gun crimes are dealing with mental health issues, mental health and mental illness. And also Roe v. Wade, all of it connects back to having a robust, universal health care system. Do I know the answer? No, I’m not a political genius. But I will continue to try to be a voice that says, you know, this is absolutely loony, how we’re doing this. And so that’s a huge concern. And then, on a personal level, you know, I just turned 36. So when I think about being 46, I would love to, I mean, I’d love to be doing what you’re doing, being a mom, writing a book, and continuing to sort of that develop that storyteller muscle, but also, you know, I’ve taken, I’ve really lived for my work in my 20s to my mid-30s. And now I would really like to, while continuing to passionately engage with my work, also really carve out some space to build our family. And I’ve also just started to really realize the value of not taking friendship for granted. And so also being able to carve out space to really build being up a mom, a partner, a friend, which is which is stuff that I sort of thought just happened when you were, when I was younger and now I realize like..

Claire Bidwell-Smith  50:02

And it takes work and effort.

Lena Dunham 

So much work so much effort. And also, unlike other things that take work and effort, it’s incredibly satisfying.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

I’m so happy to know you, you’re amazing.

Lena Dunham

I’m so happy to know you and I adore you. And we share the same love of face dogs and funny children. You know, drinking caffeinated beverages, and gabbing, and I feel really lucky to be your friend.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Oh, I feel the same way. Lena, thank you so much. Thank you for everything you’re doing in the world. And thank you for being here today.

Lena Dunham 

Thank you. And thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure. I’ve listened and now I get to be part of this soothing ASMR Claire’s voice session. Thank you, lady.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

Oh my gosh, I just love Lena. I adore how she thinks about the world about women about bodies creativity. I also just think it’s really important for women to be able to go out into the world and show up as their full selves. After all these years, I think Lena and I can both agree that this work as storytellers requires a lot of effort, courage and honesty about the world we’re living in. I just hope in another 10 years, we can both look back on these times in our lives and feel proud of the vulnerability we shared. Thanks for joining me. I think by now you know that new day has moved to three times a week right? The best way to keep up with the show is to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. And submit questions for me to answer on those Monday and Wednesday episodes by emailing me at newday@lemonadamedia.com. Or at my online question form at bit.ly/newdayask. I’m serious. You can find the link in the show notes. See you next week.

CREDITS

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our VP of weekly content is Steve Nelson. And our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me, Claire Bidwell Smith. NEW DAY is produced in partnership with the Well Being Trust, The Jed Foundation and Education Development Center. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me at clairebidwellsmith.com. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow NEW DAY listeners at facebook.com/groups/newdaypod. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts.  Thanks for listening. See you next week.