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When Laura Dern found out that her mother, Diane Ladd, had scarring on her lungs, the doctor told her to be gentle with her mom because she’d be dead in 6 months. Laura chose to challenge that diagnosis by taking her mother on regular walks to expand her lung capacity. Not only did it work, but it turned into a new book co-written by the two award-winning actresses. Sam asks the mother-daughter duo how those walks saved Diane’s life and what family stories and secrets were uncovered during those strolls.

Follow Laura Dern @LauraDern on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Diane Ladd @Diane_Ladd on Twitter and @rosedianeladd on Instagram.

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Apple Books has teamed up with Lemonada Media for an audiobook club. The June pick is Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) by actress and activist Laura Dern, and her mother, legendary actress Diane Ladd. For more details, visit http://apple.co/lemonadabookclub.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Diane Ladd, Samantha Bee, Laura Dern

Samantha Bee  00:21

I want the ability to choose choices freedom, it’s opportunity to get to decide what happens to you and when and how and why. It’s not just the choice to do something. Sometimes choice means choosing not to do something. And that’s okay too. That’s good. Sometimes when you’re confronted with a lot of crazy choices, the best thing to do is nothing. I think about this a lot when it comes to family who becomes the keeper of inherited secrets. The stories we choose to share with each other what gets passed down from generation to generation. What do we decide to keep to ourselves? Do we choose to omit things like maybe we don’t talk about something? Because we know that even a mention of it is going to terribly hurt someone we love or blows someone else’s life up. Like if you explore all your family secrets, and you let that horse out of the barn. You can never get it back. Is it always worth it? I don’t have the answer for that. Just something I’m exploring personally, what is liberating for one person to open up about could wound another person. My grandfather point dearly loved left my grandmother, who I also dearly loved when I was just a little girl. He moved to another town with his former secretary. But my grandmother was extremely Catholics. So despite living separate new lives for decades, they never divorced. I mean, believe me, he begged her for a divorce. And she was like, Ah, no, thank you. I would prefer if our marriage would hound you to the gates of hell. And he was like, okay, I understand. But my grandfather lived his new life in his new town with his new I want to say bride, but they never got married because of the aforementioned non divorce. There really is no word for that. But he pretended to be married to this woman for the rest of his life, because it felt important to him for the time where he lived some vestige from his long repressed Catholic school boy self, like openly living in sin was not really an option. And that was a really big secret. So one day, I was walking with my granddad and we visited the grave of the woman he had been pretending to be married to the whole time, which I really didn’t know. And because some secrets you take, literally to the grave. He had put his last name on her tombstone, that secret was important to him to keep one final. No, no, it’s fine. We’re totally married. There was it was engraved in marble, not just a choice. That is a very expensive choice. And I thought about it for a minute. And then I decided that I would just go ahead and keep that secret for him. Nobody needed to know that. What would that have accomplished? This is Choice Words. I’m Samantha Bee. And today I talked to two incredible actors who also happen to be mother and daughter Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. They’ve worked together on films like Wild at Heart. Remember that can’t be a David Lynch movie with Nicolas Cage. and shows like the HBO series enlightened? Well, Laura and her 87 year old mother recently made the choice to write a book together called Honey baby mind. And it got me thinking about family and family secrets, and how we choose to protect our family and ourselves if we choose to do that. So take a listen and make good choices.

Samantha Bee  05:30

Hi, hello. So great to see you. It’s so great to see you. And Diane. Hello. Thank you both so much for agreeing to speak with me today. I do feel like I feel like the luckiest person in the world right now. I really do.

Laura Dern  05:49

We feel so lucky. So thank you for having us.

Samantha Bee  05:53

I we’re going to talk like crazy about your book which I absolutely loved. So we’re gonna get deep into conversation about that. I have to tell you both that I we know I prepared for this interview in a million different ways but also by watching one of my favorite shows in existence which was enlightened, which you are both and. And they miss it was so good. Oh, Miss it chewy. Oh boy. Amy Jericho is one of my favorite characters that has ever graced the television screen.

Laura Dern  06:25

I loved I loved being her. My whites writing is so incredible. And Mom is, you know, especially as you’ve shared my experience of my mother, as a mother through this book, you know how incredible she isn’t enlightened because it is. So the polar opposite of the mother she is. So it’s just incredible to remember our times doing that.

Samantha Bee  06:52

It must have been so fun. Doing that was incredible. So fun. Okay, so I’ll let me just say up a little bit this because this show is all about, you know, choices, how huge ones and little tiny ones and all the ones in between shape our lives, such as the choice to collaborate on a book with your parent, which is a big choice that a lot of us probably wouldn’t be able to make. So are there choices for each of you that you so clearly looked back on and you’re like, that’s the one. That’s the choice that completely changed everything for me.

Diane Ladd  07:31

I don’t think so much of a choice as just following along a path that was opening to us with an opportunity we didn’t understand was kind of forced upon us. You talked about enlightened, that beautiful dog in enlightened was named Ginger, that even Charles Cavalier, Laura, you love ginger. She, when we left the show, my grandchildren said Nana, you got to get that dog freely. And I said, Oh, honey, Nana is not going to get that’s a $5,000 train dog. Are you kidding me? And the owner, the trainer heard me and said Diane, as a matter of fact, gingers going death. And we won’t be able to use her anymore. And we’re looking for a home. We’re going to give her to anyone who would give her a good home and she loves you. I already had two dogs, right. And so I took ginger. And she was one of the highlights of life. Right, Laura? She would crawl up on the bed, put her head on my shoulder, like a little girl and just go and the tragedy is that she went out there at midnight one night, and there was dew on the grass already. And I what I didn’t know is there was 10 pesticide poisons on that grass that had been spraying for three years. And I didn’t know it. And ginger came back in after 10 minutes. We’re getting it on her paws. And she got three seizures when no blade in my arms, and her death saved my life. The Enlightened dog gave me enlightenment, because because of her death, I found out that glyphosate was in my body and killed her. Oh, yo, she a pro life to save mine.

Laura Dern  09:26

Yeah, we knew we knew. We certainly knew what was happening to mom, and that the scarring on her lungs was this advanced environmental damage from these poisons these petrochemicals so that was you know, it’s interesting. I loved your question asking about the choices we make because as you said, Mom, it’s it’s a path based on what happens in our life and how we can transform our experiences and dive deeper.

Samantha Bee  10:01

Because that’s the origin story of the whole book is that you are misdiagnosed.

Diane Ladd  10:06

I wasn’t diagnosed, I was not die had not, didn’t have a diagnosis. And but I had glyphosate and download tall, which causes they say Parkinson’s, in my blood among other poisons, a lot of people, tons of people are walking around with glyphosate in their blood from.

Diane Ladd  10:28

And I think, you know, what, I think the great misdiagnosis perhaps, or misunderstanding here was, you know, what was happening to Mom was true, right? That there was scarring on her lungs was true, that the only thing they could offer her was in order to help her if she could expand her lung capacity and breathe and therefore take walks, that that might be helpful, a kind of therapy. But the misdiagnosis thank God was when the doctor, you know, said to me as my mom was witness, but he was whispering to me to the side with her in earshot. Be gentle with your mom, she’ll be dead in three to six months.

Samantha Bee  11:20

People who are listening to this who don’t know about the origin of the book, so you received this terrible prognosis for your mom’s health? Yes. And you took it upon yourself to counteract that terrible prognosis by going for these walks?

Laura Dern  11:36

There was one one challenge other than my mom’s health in general. And Mom, what is that?

Diane Ladd  11:42

I don’t like walking. Sure, so a lot of this was a challenge to force me to walk.

Samantha Bee  11:51

So how did Laura convince you to walk? How did she get you up and moving?

Diane Ladd  11:55

Laura, you can tell that one, honey.

Laura Dern  11:58

Well, I think it’s easy. You know, for any listener, even you can hear that mom is a storyteller. And she loves truth. You know, she likes the idea of digging deeper, you know, as as a principal, certainly as an actor and an artist. And so my thought process just was to distract her, I’ll get her telling stories. And after even the first couple of walks, even though the walks were only a few minutes, I realized she started sharing stories or an anecdote or some funny thought. And I said, You know what, let me archive these for your grandchildren on I’m going to record them on my phone, because we both believed that she may only have a few months to live, right. And so I think mom’s longing to tell the truth, you know, was fed also by this prognosis. But I just loved getting her distracted, but also taking this rare privilege to really know each other,

Diane Ladd  13:15

And parents don’t always tell their children the truth. We lie to our children, because we want to be loved, respected and adored. So there’s things we do not tell our children, and then our children, they also want to be loved, and respected and adored. So they don’t always tell us the truth. There’s things they don’t tell us. So here we are trying to communicate, and not telling each other the truth, or asking the right questions, or listening with the ear of our heart. So in this case, because we thought I might be dying, when we believed I was dying, we didn’t know how long tomorrow the next day, a week, three months, then we just spill the beans. Right? My suggestion is, everybody should spill the beans while they can.

Samantha Bee  14:03

Did you feel like because I sometimes feel like when you’re walking through just the movement of your legs, it like lubricates your soul. You’re not really facing each other. Sometimes it’s easier to be truthful.

Laura Dern  14:18

Yeah, that’s beautifully put. And Mom and I haven’t talked about that enough. But that’s absolutely true. There’s something about being in motion. And being in nature that just inspires conversation and, and perhaps truth. But yeah, instead of like this face off of now we’re going to tell each other.

Samantha Bee  14:40

You know, sitting across the table from each other.

Diane Ladd  14:43

You meet a stranger on a plane. You sometimes tell them your deepest secrets you do. You’ll never meet that person again. That’s right. But another way is if you would take a minute and put a blanket on on the grass with your grandchild or sister or friend a mother And hold hands and just look at the sky and talk to each other. Find us having the most wonderful sharing. Try it. It’s wonderful.

Samantha Bee  15:11

We’ll be right back with Laura Dern and Diane Ladd after this.

Samantha Bee  17:30

The clarity and the honesty and the spark was it was so it is incredibly moving. It’s really the most amazing journey that I feel like I know that you neither of you know me, but I feel like I know. Well now, it’s so intimate. And you also argue in the book. And it’s very real. It’s very, it’s very truthful. And I think I guess how did you decide which pieces that you wanted to put in the book? How did you kind of curate the conversations for the book? Or is everything just the book?

Diane Ladd  19:31

We selected. We weren’t praying hard. We when we got through. We had about 420 pages of WoW had to go through was a great deal of work. And we spent over a year and a half, trying to be fair and honest and utilize the truth. And being actresses. A lot of times writers have had us improvise or because improvisations will give you a rare truth.

Laura Dern  19:59

And I think What was fascinating about our own, you know, self Edit process was this all evolved because of how it impacted us. Not just did our relationship deepen, not just did our family members and loved ones that we would share our journey with start to say, oh my god, that inspired me, I just asked my sister, my best friend, my husband, things I’d never asked. But Mom got better, right. And so we realized that there is literal healing, embedded in this journey. And when we decided to share it, I think what we wanted was not for us to be known. But for the journey to be known. Right? And that, you know, we’re four years later, sharing with you today, our experience hoping that it will impact other relationships. You know, in in seemingly the most mundane ways, some of the most fun we had was asking each other, the simplest of questions, right, but questions I never asked, like, what’s the first movie you ever saw? Ah, who were the first artists that ever impacted you? How do you as this little girl in a tiny town in Mississippi know, you have to find your way to New York and LA to be an actor. And yet, you know, of course, the hardest things, we sometimes move away from asking because we don’t want to hurt our loved ones by bringing up difficult things. But my God, we don’t even ask the simplest of things from our loved ones. Right?

Samantha Bee  21:42

It’s so true. Because you do get caught. I mean, I’m mom to have three kids. And you do get you get so caught in just kind of like your day to day existence, that those bigger philosophical questions. He they don’t even you don’t even think to ask. It’s just something you’re like, I think I know this. Somewhere. Yeah, you think you already know it? But you don’t know any of that?

Diane Ladd  22:06

Yeah, you forget things along the way. Yeah. Things that are the most important. Pinnacle’s. Let me explain that. Before this happened to me. Aside from being an actress in my life, I also had gotten a degree in nutrition from Florida State University. And I had gotten a degree in psychology, a seven year study, because of my own interest. And so I found myself through life’s path being forced to be involved in medicine, to a point that I discovered that I have an intuitional healer. And I worked with doctors volunteering for 20 years to go into hospitals and help heal other human beings. acupuncture, acupressure. I mean, there are things that help the body that we’ve just not paid attention to. So all of that was in me. And when this tragedy happened, the the desire to look at alternative modalities, certain vitamins, medicines, herbs, all came into play, which helped me but the pinnacle was that one day, Gloria had me going from one bench to another. Yeah. And as I got out, my shoelace was untied. And she bent down real quickly to tie my shoelaces. And I said, Honey, you don’t have to tie my shoelaces. And she looked up at me with her beautiful blue eyes and said, Why not mother? You tied mine when I was growing up so many times, let it be my turn. And I started to cry. Yeah, the love isn’t that action. Yes, it’s more important than any or anything you could take to heal yourself. Because we do have the power to help heal ourselves because women particularly we carry grief of of the breast we carry grief there, right there. And when we’re hurt, we hold on to that grief in the lungs. And it was my lungs, I think had a great deal of lifetime of certain projects certain tragedy or tragedies in the lungs that we all women, as mothers and friends and human beings, men to but women even more than than men hold that grief in the breast to get breast of love.

Samantha Bee  24:25

Isn’t it so funny that you these little moments that you recall like your shoelace being untied and, and Laura reaching down to tie your shoelace? Like, I remember when my grandmother was in the hospital. I came to the hospital. We were very close. I was partially raised by my grandmother. So there’s a similarity there. And I remember just painting her nails. She was in the hospital because it was so important to her. Yes. I’ll never forget it. Just those little kernels, those tiny moments.

Laura Dern  24:56

I also think you know I’m fascinated that we don’t talk about the hardest things because we feel that talking about them will hurt each other. And so, you know, I’ll give two examples, certainly in this book, you know, the fact that my single mom raised me after going through a divorce, that I would go through a divorce, be very close to my mother, be with my mother through that process, and never asked my mom about divorce, or never talk about the pain of divorce, just the pain and figuring out how you want to take care of your kids the fear of holding your kids closely, not wanting them to be hurt by something like, that just struck me so deeply. And I think as women, we often avoid the most traumatic of situations because many of us are bred to believe we’ve got to hold it together, right. So the kids for the family and our workplace environment. And you just when you said that about your grandmother, I had a flash, I mean, that I don’t talk about in the in the book, but it moved me so much, which was when my grandma went through a heartbreaking loss. And she got the news, someone she loved had passed. I came in to sit with her. And at the moment, she found out that her loved one had passed away. She immediately opened her purse and started putting lipstick. And I will never forget that visual like that something innate in her was like, I’ve got to keep myself together. Like I’ve got a present as Yeah, as that I’m okay. I can handle this even for herself. And I remember being so moved by it, but also like that, that stayed with me and I think for mom and I was about like taking the mask off. And I’ll never forget on at the very first walk we took I kind of delicately thought, okay, maybe engage mom and a silly story. About that time Polina and I were swimming in the pool and pretending we were mermaids and mom was laughing so hard. So I was like, Mom, should we talk about the time? You know, I’m just as I’m presenting a silly story. My mom goes, No, I know what I want to talk about. She said, death. I remember laughing so hard. Because by the way, she was like, Yeah, somebody said, you might die in three months. Like why aren’t we talking about it? Are you afraid of death? Are you scared of losing me? What is death look like? What does it evoke? What’s our greatest fear? What makes us laugh about the fact that we’re all obsessed with this greatest fear? As mom you say? What do you say the pop always said to you,

Diane Ladd  28:00

he said you didn’t worry about being born. And that happened and you bet your bottom mood death will happen to so instead of worrying about it, just worry about living. Let’s just take one day at a time and try to fill it with laughter and love and learning and do the best you can. And that’s it.

Samantha Bee  28:14

Yeah. Oh, just change text for one sec. I definitely was surprised to learn that your teenage dog got her first period on Scott bail. True. That was an astonishing revelation.

Laura Dern  28:28

That is true. And I heard I heard tell that he shared that he remembers. I don’t know if he knows the trauma. I was feeling over it.

Diane Ladd  28:44

Beautiful white suit. He looked glorious. And I love dogs. And stain is beautiful.

Samantha Bee  28:54

Nothing spreads it around like club soda. Who might go I don’t know who started that meth.

Diane Ladd  29:00

Oh God. Oh God help us all. Yeah. Are you really got club soda to try to clean the material. I can barely talk about it. Let’s move on.

Samantha Bee  29:14

There’s more with Laura Dern and Diane Diane Ladd in just a moment You know I think the three of us are all working women and moms. We were all working mothers when our kids were young as well. And, Laura, you’ve talked a lot about the need to not feel guilty about that, you know, how hard is that to learn for you? Have you released that from yourself?

Laura Dern  32:02

You know, let’s start by saying for families who, even with holding down three jobs cannot make ends meet particularly at this time in our country. You know, feeling guilty is already a luxury, right? Oh yeah. And so I came to feeling guilty. Honestly, in being a child who felt sad and missed my mom and was lonely. And that’s the thing that was so healing in our walks is starting to talk about the experience I had that at the time, I felt personally, I felt guilty to share and didn’t want my mom to feel bad because I knew her work was important to her and she was needing to pay the rent. But talking about both experiences, and both sides of the experience was was really healing. But I do think about every parent who has to leave to pay the rent and do their work, right. We worry constantly about all of us. And, you know, we worry in small ways we worry about how it’s impacting our kids. And now we worry because you can’t even trust that our kids are safe in school. So we are in endless anxiety. And I think all we want is to make sure we have the value of imprinting our children with love with radical acceptance. And with understanding and inspiration and you know, it doesn’t always take quantity, but we know it takes the quality of time and listening and in busy lives in overwhelm and worry about money relationship. It’s it’s hard to remember, even when you have five minutes with your kid to really check in to really help them get away from the noise and hope that they feel safe enough to talk to you.

Diane Ladd  34:22

The irony here is that in my age now 87 I am looking back and I think as you get older, there is a blessing a thing that happens. The first point is like your life’s divided into three parts, right? The first part, it’s like Go Go, go go go, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Then there’s the second part where it’s Let’s raise a family. Let’s get it done let’s but the third part comes in no matter what you’re doing, and I’m still a working actor. And so I’ll never stop working. But the irony is that as you get older, it’s like looking at a horse with the blinders on it. They put the they put the bow blinders on a horse. So it runs straight with focus, boom, boom, boom, boom, well as life goes on, and you get older, there’s a gift here, that the blinders that you’ve put on yourself, suddenly start to come off. And you begin to truly see what they call the big picture. The big picture of life is amazing. You may not have had time when you were younger, or the opportunity to see that big picture. So I think I was so busy trying to keep it together, that when I tried to have time with Laura, I tried to make a quality time. But I think I would rationalize, which I did was her about not being whether like, look, I’m giving you piano lessons, or look, you get to do this. So look, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up up, Baba, like a machine. And it’s only now at this age. Now I’m feeling guilty, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work so hard on the book is now I look back and think, Oh, I could have done this. I could have done that. And then I know that no matter what I would have done, you can’t go should have woulda coulda. Because if you hadn’t done what you did, you think you made a mistake, a mistake is to take something and missed the mark. Well, I can promise you, whatever that is that you’re still guilty about. If you hadn’t done that, and you’ve done something else, you still probably missed the mark, you make choices, and you have to go with us and do the best you can.

Laura Dern  36:26

Yeah, and it’s really hard to be the grown up. Right? It’s really hard when you are with a child in pain that needs to share their pain or attack. You know, and it’s it’s really hard to be the adult and respond in a loving adult way. I mean, we’re all learning that and sadly, sometimes it doesn’t happen until your kids are older that you go cut. I could have helped them avoid feeling so much.

Samantha Bee  37:05

We I feel like with because I am 53 now so you know kind of in the menopause years perimenopause, menopause, not to turn this over to menopause. But it is a different time, like the third of your life lived in and after menopause is like such a different stage of life. You know? Because as you’re saying, you’re, you’re raising your children, you’re working, you’re in your earning years, you’re just like, it’s like, go go go all the time. And then you kind of hit this stage of life where you’re like, what, wait, hold on. I don’t think I have sat down for 10 years.

Diane Ladd  37:45

I mean all that baloney that we like women put on the lipstick, the world of beat a path to your door. If you use the right color lipstick, excuse me say what are the right perfumes Excuse me. And we we’ve given ourselves so many games, to hide who we are, that we get older, you take a moment. So ripping the games off, rip them off drop rates.

Laura Dern  38:07

And I remember, you know, the birth of social media, people talking about how you know it, warning signs of how dangerous it could be for teenage girls, to compare themselves to the false narrative of what other people were posting to the number of likes to this idea of who they were and what their exciting world looked like. And then we all did it. Right? every age, every generation, suddenly, we were all hooked to a false narrative, right to this false belief of what made someone lovable or successful or that their life looked better than ours. And it’s, it’s so devastating. That what happened to us in middle school is now the, you know, moniker of, of how we measure our life and our lifestyle today at every age. So just as you’re saying, you know, we’re coming into this moment in life, where we should feel that there can be time for reflection, and new inspiration, and teaching and self discovery. I feel like now at every age, nobody’s like, oh my god, I’m not doing enough. Oh my God, I need to be out there more. Oh my god, life is passing me by these people are on a trip. Right? Those people look amazing at 73 or what? You know what I mean? Whatever it is, they look 20 You know, so everybody, right? is creating this rush to be a thing right? That is an artificially invented narrative. So we need it more than ever. We need to come back to ourselves.

Samantha Bee  40:12

Coming off of that, like, I guess, how do you define success that like, what is your definition of success? You’ve done all these, you’ve both done all of these incredible things. What does what does that mean to you? What does? How does that word resonate with you now?

Laura Dern  40:27

Ah, Mom, do you have your answer?

Diane Ladd  40:29

I don’t want to lie age for me. Or each person has their own journey. But for me, I believe that we have a destiny fulfillment, maybe your destiny is just to learn how to plant a beautiful rose, or to cook a certain meal. Different people have different destinies and things that they feel intuitively, that they may be came to earth to do. Maybe it’s to learn the meaning of love, or to learn how to work hard, or to learn discipline or discernment. I call them Dion’s divine ds. So success is completing somehow what you’re attempting to do, even if you don’t have success, in what you are attempting to do, if you try to do it, to me that success. If I try to do something, and it doesn’t happen now how I planned for it, right, then maybe there’s a good reason why it’s not happening. Maybe I’m being protected. Instead of hurt. I feel like anybody who has a dream, don’t give up on your dream, if it’s meant for you to have it. Because What’s that song about? Thank God for on fulfilled visions or something, you know, find fulfill dreams, because you don’t know what would happen. Emerson, the great Emerson philosopher used to say, Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. Okay. So we’ve met a kick, a little dirt, I call it kick a little dirt. That’s the name of my company, kicking a little dirt. And we’ve been a kick a little dirt and get it better for other people while there’s breath in and out of us to use for ourselves.

Samantha Bee 42:15

I agree with you, boy. Oh, yes.

Diane Ladd  42:21

That was the meaning of success. Okay, a little dirt. My motto, you’re gonna live there.

Laura Dern 42:25

That’s southern wisdom. My great grandmother.

Diane Ladd  42:29

Her name was Aunt fruity. But the thing is improving my great grandmother was a healer. And she was a humdinger. And she she didn’t have any money down south. She was a pioneer. She got married at 16. And they didn’t have a doctor. So she got in a horse and buggy and went to New Orleans. She went into the library, and she took all their medical books, which was wrong. But nevertheless, she took them and went back to Mississippi where they didn’t have any medical books. And she taught herself to be a midwife, and a healer. And she delivered 3000 babies before 1000. That’s right. That’s right. And her lifetime. And one time we’re there we do get snow in Mississippi, and one time a horse through her and she actually broke her leg and crawled back on that horse and went and delivered that baby and then had her leg said she was only five feet too little thing. She was a humdinger. She was a humdinger.

Samantha Bee  43:27

Boy, I’m hearing that we should have a mission to we should have put purpose in your life purpose keeps you alive. You know, everybody needs purpose in their life.

Diane Ladd  43:36

Gave me the purpose to walk. And then yes, yeah, Mom, come on breathe, that could get that air and now come on her love. What healed me the best alternative modality is love itself. You know, and when you when you’re acting, you are 1000 emotions you go through that there’s basically only two. One is love. Right? And the other is a lack of love. Because where there’s lack, fear enters. And after fear comes anger. And after anger comes hatred. And so it’s love or a lack of love. And my daughter on those walks. She filled me with off the love of my own child. My daughter, my beautiful Laura filled me with her love to help my life to help me Bree. And let me tell you some honey, it worked is the best medicine better than castor oil, hello?

Samantha Bee  44:33

Better than castor oil a lot smoother going down. There you go. Oh, yeah. But it’s true. Your book is like one loving touch. It’d be that really like you feel it. You feel it that it emanates from the book in such a meaningful way. Who’s gonna who’s gonna play both of you in the adaptations that you get? Play ourselves, got to make a movie. Oh, boy. Well, I just have to thank both of you for speaking with me today. I just think your book is great. I love the projects that you do together. I mean, it just, you’re just a living example of what a real truthful relationship can be what it can look like, imperfectly perfect. It’s, I took a lot away from it. And I’ve taken a tremendous amount away from this conversation. And I’m just sitting here in full gratitude. So thank you so much.

Laura Dern  45:36

Well, we do from you as an incredible guide, you are such a beautiful voice, and I am so grateful for you, and celebrating the book with us, but also just the way you, you know, phrase things is so moving to me, you know, just in the imperfectly perfect conversation about living and, you know, parenting and learning about ourselves as women. You’re such an inspiration. So thank you so much.

Diane Ladd  46:07

God bless you. Thank you so much.

Samantha Bee  46:15

That was Laura Dern and Diane Ladd. And I had no choice but to Google one thing after that conversation, look, I’m not a novice when it comes to menstruation. I’m no dummy. I know dogs get their periods, but it did. sort of get me thinking. How did dogs manage that? Or rather, I’m sorry, how to dog owners manage that? Do they? Please tell me they don’t make dog tampons? I’m not into it. Okay. What kind of Ben and Jerry’s do dogs eat? And you know what? It turns out they make dog pads. I mean, it’s basically a doggy diaper. But what isn’t that kind of what a human pad is too? Anyway, I’m positive this is not where you thought this podcast was going. Sorry everyone. Thank you Laura and Diane for coming on and good news. There’s more choice words with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like a rapid fire round of trivia questions based off my recent interview with Judy Blume. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts.

CREDITS  47:29

Thank you for listening to Choice Words which was created by and is hosted by me. We’re a production of Lemonada Media, Kathyrn Barnes, […] and Kryssy Pease produce our show. Our mix is by James Barber. Steve Nelson is the vice president of weekly content. Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Wittles Wachs and I are executive producers. Our theme was composed by […] with help from Johnny Vince Evans . Special thanks to Kristen Everman, Claire Jones, Ivan Kuraev and Rachel Neil. You can find me at @Iamsambee on Twitter and at @realsambee on Instagram. Follow Choice Words wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.