The Grammy Winner Who Was Terrified Antidepressants Would Kill Her Creativity | Sara Bareilles

Key Takeaway

When difficult emotions surge, resist the urge to solve, suppress, or carry them alone. Today, name the experience precisely—“I feel wobbly,” “I’m grieving,” “I’m anxious”—and tell one trusted person. Sara Bareilles argues that putting language to dread reduces its power, while allowing grief to be present reveals that you can survive feelings that seem too large to hold. Use every appropriate support available, including therapy, meditation, community, and medical care.

Episode Overview

Sara Bareilles joins Dan Harris to discuss Good Grief, her album and documentary shaped by the deaths of close friends, infertility, anxiety, and a desire to live more awake to life’s complexity. They explore grief as a source of presence, the value of antidepressant medication and other supports, creative surrender, and how acceptance differs from resignation.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Grammy Winner Who Was Terrified Antidepressants Would Kill Her Creativity | Sara Bareilles from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host Dan Harris. Uh pop songs generally cover romantic love. I am I've recently did a search uh for how many songs contain the words I want you and I think and this is a while ago, I think it was like scores if not hundreds of songs. However, there are some great pop songs that cover uh weightier, heavier stuff like grief. Uh if you think about um Let It Be, uh Paul McCartney sings about his late mother, uh Mother Mary.

Um also uh artists like Beyoncé and um and Kanye and Frank Ocean have written and sung about grief. And now comes my friend uh Sara Bareilles who has recorded a whole album which comes out today on the subject of grief. It's called Good Grief and it is accompanied by a documentary which is quite beautiful and a whole tour. Um if you have never heard of Sara, I don't know uh what's the matter with you, but if you've never heard of Sara, she's a uh Grammy winning songwriter, the composer and star of Waitress on Broadway and much, much more and a friend of mine as I said.

Sara Bareilles, welcome back to the show. Hello Daniel. I um sometimes ask people, especially when I have somebody on the show who I know, I ask a question that is it it might seem perfunctory or tossed off, but I genuinely want to know the answer which is uh how are you? What's going on? You know, I'm a little wobbly. I'm a little wobbly right now. Um I think being on I had breakfast with my husband this morning, Joe, and um I it was occurring to me that being on the precipice of sharing this body of work to the degree that it will be shared is just a really it's like an OD and vulnerable vulnerability.

And me, I love vulnerability. Don't get me wrong. I love to cry in front of people. I'm not not about it. But, um it's a really tender very personal offering. And so, I think there is the part of me that's like oh, I hope people won't get it, you know, the powerlessness of that. Or it's like you release this thing that you love and you hope other people are are kind to it in some way or that it means something to someone else in some way.

I hear you. I hear you on the wobbliness. That seems I mean, if you weren't um you there might be a question of like sociopathology um given given given how vulnerable uh you are making yourself in this in this in this like uh not only in the record, but also in the in the documentary. But, so I'll just say I'm I'm like just one person and I'm totally biased, but I've been listening to the record and watching the documentary. Both are beautiful. You had played me a couple of songs from the record beforehand, so I was a I had heard some of the work, but now like listening to it in its entirety, it's amazing.

So, congratulations. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think for the first time in my career in my artistic career, there is a kind of integration happening between I don't feel like I'm presenting a body of work that is misaligned with what's happening in my personal life where I I don't have to go and put on a dog and pony show and and feel like, you know, behind the scenes there's this other thing happening, this you know, the grieving or the whatever it is, you know, I think in in in the past, it's like when it's time to release a record, it's time to go and do the song and dance thing.

And this whole offering feels more like an art project. It feels more integrated just as a piece of art and as a as it relates to my life. So, that feels great, actually. And I thought that that would be really scary, even though I feel a little wobbly, but I feel really um it's a very empowered place, actually. That there's not something that there's not some secret I'm keeping from everybody, you know, behind the work. I could imagine like past past projects like Girls 5eva, the comedy you did, or Waitress, or whatever you you or you know, in its various iterations on Broadway, and then there was also a movie.

Like, you were out there promoting something that's fun or or um a little bit light, um and you've got some Sturm und Drang or heavy [ __ ] happening in your personal life, and you you don't It doesn't make sense to talk about that in that context. Oh, totally. I mean, the first season of Girls 5eva, I was having a full-on dissociated episode, and got on Lexapro for the first time, like taking anti-anxiety medication for the first time. And I would they would call cut on onset, and I would go to my dressing room, and like have full-on panic attacks.

And I know you get it. And then I have to go and like pretend I'm happy again. That is very disorienting. So, I feel grateful that that's not at play, you know, for this record of all records, my gosh. What do you do when you're feeling wobbly? Like, what's your go-to? You know, it's really helpful to talk about it. Like, even I was so looking forward to this podcast and to and this conversation with you because but I have found like I would I have the expectation that we would talk about real [ __ ] on here, but I have found that because the material on the record it hits certain themes that generally the conversations have been really beautiful and kind of deep and a little bit emotionally charged.

Like, you know, the interviewers might have a story about grief or loss or infertility or something. Um, and I have found kind of overall, it's been really beautiful. So, I don't know what I'm scared about. It's kind of been I like that the data doesn't support me being scared about how this is going to go. Should just relax. It's funny that the the the release itself, the press tour, could actually be the solution to the problem, which is also the release itself. Yes. I think that's all the medicine.

Yeah. Yeah, one of my favorite expressions is never worry alone. And like promoting this work is kind of like um never worrying alone. Like you're going to be worrying aloud. And I think that that's where the wisdom, you know, comes from the sharing with other people and then just those little points of connection. And always, I mean, this is always the case or at least it has been in my experience is that when you put name to the feelings, so it's like the feelings of dread or the wobbliness or whatever it might be, the more you're just sort of making it real and something you're actually relating to, the less power it has.

And so, it's helpful, I think to just be in conversation with it and about it. One of the venerable therapy cliches, which I happen to think is true, is, you know, name it to tame it. I came up with that. Did you invent the lightbulb as well? Weren't that was my move on this press tour is just to lay claim to like a bunch of random Yeah. It's like, yeah, that's mine. Yeah, I do I think that is powerful and I think it's really true. It's like it just is helpful to name it.

So, let's talk about the record. Um Okay. Good Grief is not I mean, it is a play on words, but like you're you're actually kind of playing it straight. Like you you I think you mean that there is a good version of grief and there's goodness in grief itself. You know, the double meaning is helpful. It's like the exhaustion, you know, the expression that it's something my mom actually says all the time. Oh, good grief. And it always feels so like old-fashioned when it come But it does come out of my mouth and it's like, "Oh, he dropped he dropped something.

Oh, good grief." Yeah, I really my experience with grief has been just utterly transformative. And I even though I there are things about the circumstances that the grief is born out of that I wish I could change. For example, my I have two friends who passed away that I would love to still be on this earth with. But the experience of the grief has been so life-changing for me that I actually just feel really grateful for what has felt like um a kind of miracle. Of of walking through a tremendous amount of pain and loss.

Um But really seeing just how much awe and mystery and what is life-affirming about death and just how complex the experience of loss can be. So, in some ways I wouldn't change it. You know, of course I wish I had my friends, but I I feel like I'm more the person that I'm meant to become because of losing them. And um [clears throat] yeah, so I really thank them for what has changed in me in my in my grief. What is the mechanism by which grief changes you?

Andrea Gibson is this wonderful poet that I was involved with this documentary about their life called come see me in the good light and one of the things Andrea says is that grief is a shortcut to the truth. And I think it's so tenderizing and it's so overwhelming that there's a kind of rawness about your expression that just comes to the surface. It's sort of like an impulsivity that gets released because you're sort of wrung out. Um and so I think that grief can bring you a kind of presence.

There's a There's like a presence to the to the present moment. An awakeness, an awareness of the present moment. Because it's so because the experience is so big and so overwhelming. I suppose I could see that going in another way where it could also feel very disorienting, but in my experience uh it has been a reminder and the lesson is to stay really awake and aware of what is actually in front of you. This idea that we're not promised another day brings you to a sense of gratitude for the day you do have.

Which is the only day you have, which is the one you're in. And all of this of course being stuff that gets talked about so much in meditation practice. Um you know, just this moment, this breath, this Um which I I sort of love that it all orbits each other. Yeah, I was I was just going to go there because I know you have imbibed no small amount of Buddhism and uh cuz I've been in the room with you while while it's happened listening to the same teachers.

Um you know, and and Joseph Goldstein who's a meditation teacher for both of us, you know, he has he he often quotes this expression from from the Buddha. The words are becoming otherwise. Everything is always becoming otherwise. Everything's always changing. And grief as you know, at losing someone as horrifying as that is, it it does put you in touch with this non-negotiable truth. I don't know how you really wrap your arms around that unless you lose someone. Because we just live in a culture and a I mean globally, as you see, you know, we live in denial that we're going to die.

Well, then of course we do. It's so understandable. Because if you sat around and thought about the fact that you're going to die all the time, it just seems so depressing and miserable. But I think that um being what the privilege and the honor of of witnessing someone sort of walking to the end of their days. I I Yeah, I am a different person because of that. The bravery, the honesty, the generosity that came out of that. The surrender. The surrender of it is out of our control.

This life is out of our control. That is wild to really wrap your brain around. The trick in my experience is remembering or not forgetting. Because you can have this experience of watching somebody walk to the end of their days to use your your expression. And then I have found that it's pretty easy to get pulled back into like distraction and persona and all the other forms of [ __ ] that I personally am capable of. And I mean, maybe making this record for you was a way of not forgetting.

So much of this record felt like it kind of arrived from somewhere. It felt like a sort of transmission. And I think some of that is I was so raw, but I also have more dead friends than I've ever had before and I'm just like thinking about where do we go? What happens? Where are they? You know, like there's just a kind of that veil is thin thing feels very real to me. Um and it does feel like a place to gather thoughts about this without really having any answers, but just to gather myself and put it somewhere.

I do feel so grateful to have that expression, you know, available to me that I can put it in music. And that also feels like something that I can offer up, you know, to hopefully they will it will feel comforting to other people because I know I'm not the only one holding it. That we're all That's been another incredible gift of grief. Of just seeing it is the invisible web that is in every room you'll ever be in, every street you ever walk down, people carry their loss.

And most of them are never talking about it, but everybody's got it. Yes, and I think the fact that most of them are never talking about it is really painful for them, for us, and I think one of the acts of service you've done in in making this record and the and the accompanying documentary. A few things before we hear from our sponsors, I just want to gently nudge you, if you haven't done it already, to go over to danharris.com and sign up for my newish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris.

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Go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. We'll be right back after this. If you are doing the work, meditating, managing your stress, getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and you're still waking up like you didn't quite recover overnight, our sponsor BiOptimizers says that might not be a discipline problem, it might be a nutrient gap. Specifically magnesium, they say magnesium plays a key role in how the nervous system relaxes and recovers and that when people don't consistently hit their daily intake, sleep, mood, and stress tolerance can all take a hit.

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There were three losses kind of in your uh mind as you wrote and recorded the record. Uh you mentioned Andrea and but there were two two other people. Do you mind just kind of walking us through the players here? All my dead friends as I joke about with my friends. There's so many incredible dead friends. Um Chad Joseph is is uh the first one of my very close friends to have passed away. Um he was very beloved to, you know, my friend community. I met him in college.

And there's a song on the record called Just a Kid that's really about Chad. Chad and I met when we both came back from our year abroad studying abroad. He went to England. I was in Italy. And we [clears throat] commiserated about the fact that um we got back from our entire year being gone. We went to UCLA and everyone was like, "How was your summer?" And we were both like, "You know, I was I wasn't here at all last year." You haven't seen me in a year and a half.

People are like, "How was your summer?" I'm like, "Oh, we're really making a big impression." But it was incredible that we were both having that experience and then we really bonded and he was just one of the funniest people I've ever known in my life. And so we just laughed a lot together and we moved in. I was going to school for 5 years. So in my senior year my fifth year he was already working and we got a little apartment together and he was my first manager, my first road manager.

He was with me as at the beginnings of my career were really taking root. Was at every show, holding the email list, sending out CDs to people. He was just an uh an invaluable part of the beginning of my life as an artist. And really kind of sacrificed his own He was working at a PR firm at that time and he quit his job to come with me on the road because I was so overwhelmed. And that, you know, that I sort of honor that. You gave up your dream for mine is a lyric from that song.

And it was just one of those pivotal moments where I'm like, I actually don't know what I would have done if he hadn't got on the plane and met me on tour. I think I would have I really don't know what I would have done. It was life-saving. It felt life-saving in the moment. Um and we were just, yeah, friends for decades after that and um he died in 2020. So, banner year. We all love that 2020. Um and the other very dear friend that I lost is uh Gavin Creel.

And he was a Broadway darling and a one of the one of my most confusing relationships because I met him and I was actually felt like I had fallen in love with him and he's a very, very, very gay man. I was like, this is clearly not going to work out in my favor, but I really felt like I had fallen in love with his soul. And I did. I did. I fell in love with his soul. And he taught me so much. He's um again, a very beloved member of the theater community and also in the West End in in London, but in New York theater, he was just one of those Oh boy, he was like a sparkler.

He just he brought light and generosity and fun and childlike joy into every room he was in and and then he was gone. It was so fast. Between his diagnosis and his death was just a few months. So, it was a really disorienting I was saying to someone, he he feels like a dream. It was like the experience of him was so profound. And then it's it's like as as surreal to me that he ever happened as it is that he's gone. It's it's a very strange experience cuz he wasn't in my life for you know, for the years.

He was He was like I got like 10 years with this guy. I mean, and I wish we would have grown old together, but um what an amazing gift of a life. And Andrea like surprisingly really they feel like a little trinity to me. There's a little trifecta of them. And they all have this for those who are not familiar with Andrea Gibson's work, um they were the poet laureate of Colorado. Unbelievable writer. Just one of the most profound thinkers. When I think of Andrea's work, I really I refer to them as a prophet.

I really think it's like spiritual guidance that I get from Andrea's work. Um Andrea dealt with a lot of years of um suicidality and major major depression. And they talked about when they got their cancer diagnosis, they went into this state of rapture. And they for like 2 years, they were in love with life. And it was this strange thing they were always afraid of getting sick, always like super hypochondriac and really afraid of getting sick. And also had crazy depression and then got sick and it was like the greatest gift that ever happened to their life.

Um but this film about Andrea's life, Come See Me in the Good Light, is a really extraordinary, so funny. You wouldn't think that a queer poet's cancer journey would be like a great watch, but it really really is. It is so life-affirming. Um but the three of them those three people really carry a kind of magic. Each one of them carried a kind of magic that I almost can't believe was real and it just makes me want to live in their honor to the degree that I can.

You talk about all of them when there's a real sparkle in your eye while you're doing it and and yet I I if I understand correctly like when when you were really going through it, there were times where you thought like the grief would eat you alive. Yeah, it felt akin to when I would go into really deep anxious like I had like my hurricane of anxiety depression. It was almost like the feeling is too big to hold. Like I I actually had the physical sensation of like I'm going to dissolve into this bigger experience.

And the the wonderful insanity of those kinds of experiences is that the truth is is you don't dissolve. If you can just stay your you will survive. It is painful but the grief won't eat you alive. It won't. And the more you allow it to be the less power it has over over you. I think I think that's true. But yeah, I remember being upstate and calling my husband and just being like I It's making me tearful. I didn't want to go to sleep. I was like afraid.

I didn't want to turn the TV off. And I was just really afraid of my grief. [snorts] And it was But it won't um ultimately make you dissolve. What you discover is that like [snorts] there is no bottom to any of it. It's just that incredible freefall that we're in. The the groundlessness that gets discussed so often. That is surrender that is necessary in order to relate to what is actually happening. [snorts] Yeah. I'm sorry it was so hard. And and I feel like um what you're describing and displaying here is is courage.

To just sit with it. To feel what you don't think you can take. I feel really lucky to have discovered [snorts] another one of my great discoveries. I discovered Lexapro, which was really helpful. Um But I Oh my god, I don't know what I would do without these other resources. Like, you know, I'm someone who takes medication, but I also am a meditator. I am in therapy very regularly. You know, I use the tools at my disposal to manage what sometimes feels unmanageable. And it's not linear.

It's not always pretty. It's better than the alternative, which for me was always like a kind of a frozen fearful state. Which I don't I don't I don't experience that nearly as often as I used to. Let's talk about Lexapro. So if I understand correctly, just for people who don't know, Lexapro's an antidepressant. Um Uh I have I just want to be super clear to you and to everybody else. I take an antidepressant and have for decades. So I'm not asking these questions from a standpoint of unfamiliarity or judgment.

When you started taking it, if memory serves, you had some resistance that it might like [ __ ] up your art. I had so much resistance. It was more than [ __ ] up my art. It was like, who am I if I can't handle my life? Who am I if I'm trying to suppress or put distance between what is clearly a very natural state of being. I mean, I've always been someone I don't even like taking aspirin. Like I'm just like I like to know what my body is feeling.

And I think that my deepest fear around taking medication was that something would feel some part essential part of myself would feel suppressed. That I would feel distance. And I actually, and I talk about this a lot, is that what I experienced being on medication to feel like is it was a return to myself. That I started recognizing myself again rather than who I had started living with and making you know, and being around all the time, which was a very fearful kind of paranoid depressed, anxious person who was having ruminating thoughts, who was um fixating on weird problems, just like terrible sleep, you know, this is like not a good um quality of life.

The quality of my life is so much better on medication. And if I'm honest, I still have that I'm curious to ask you this question. There's a part of me that's like, am I ever going to get like enlightened enough to get off meds? Do you think about that? I think about it quite a bit. Not only am I ever going to get enlightened enough to get off meds, but you know, they didn't have meds until recently and so um um am I just a wuss for not being able to manage what people have managed for millennia?

But I I think what I've come to is a different POV. I'd be curious about yours, but but like I use a telephone and I go to the dentist and I drive a car, all relatively recent discoveries. Um and so why would I not avail myself of these new technologies which can relieve suffering? In my conversations with Joseph Goldstein, his point of view is like you you should definitely avail yourself of it if you need it, you know? Like you we all have different nervous systems and brain chemistry and if there's um medicine that can treat that to to do exactly what you describe, which is to I sometimes when when I'm not on the medication or under-medicated, it feels like somebody's pulled the fire alarm in my nervous system.

And nothing [ __ ] good is going to happen in that state. And and so if if if you can medicate for it, go for it. Um I'll just tell you one little story and I'm talking too much, but um right before a dinner uh that I think you were at a couple of months ago, um I can't remember if you were there or not, um but you were invited. a really big impression. Yeah. Exactly. It's like when you were in Italy for a year, I didn't notice, you know?

Uh It's okay. It's okay. It's kind of my plan. You were definitely invited. It was a dinner with a bunch of people that you know. Uh Joseph was staying at our house uh for a couple days um and right before we were supposed to leave for this dinner, I had a really really stressful phone call and my wife was worried about me and she told Joseph and I stepped out of a meeting and Joseph and my wife were both like, "We think you should take a Klonopin." I love it so much.

That's a long way of saying, you know, I do think there's I think there's a pretty good case to be made for medication if done wisely. I deeply agree. I just was off it mostly because I was, if I'm honest, lazy, but I just didn't want to make a follow-up appointment with my psychiatrist. I see my therapist almost weekly, but I got to you know, make another appointment and I got to go to the pharmacy and get so I was like rationing my meds cuz I was like getting to the end of my bottle of Lexapro.

And then I'm just like I watch I watch the panic level start to rise just like you're saying where it's just like uh my state of like agita is just increasing and increasing and I'm just watching myself become a little less capable of coping. Things knock me over just a little more easily and I'm like why am I doing that? What is the point? You know? I think it is if it's a tool that betters your quality of life and makes you more readily available to do the things you do, which I know that for me it does matter to me to be of service in this life and I know I can't be of service if I am so distracted by my own whatever.

You name it. So it's it's helpful for me to get out of my own way so I can go be in my life in a way that I think is helpful. And what is service if not enlightenment? And so what the medication is allowing it's not it the wrong formulation of the question is will I ever get sufficiently enlightened that I don't need the medication? It's if I don't have the medication will I ever achieve any degree of enlightenment at all? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. So just to jumping on the timeline there, you made a reference of going off of it.

So if if if memory serves you were kind of on for a couple of years and then off right around the time that you recorded this record, not because you as you just described, not because you made some affirmative decision to go off of it, but because you were procrastinating or something, and then you went back on more recently. Is that correct timeline? Going off of it wasn't while I was making the record. It was just actually just a couple months ago. Oh, okay. Okay. so kind of just letting it I did try one other time though.

Maybe you're remembering a conversation we had. Yeah, I did try one other time to get off of it, and it was just it did not work. And I think there was a part of me I think it was about a year in um there's a part of me that just wanted to know like what's in there. And turns out yeah, pretty uncomfortable stuff. So So your initial fear was that if you were on medication, it would block your ability to make art. You hadn't made much music for a while until this record.

Like there was a like a four, five, maybe longer year interregnum. Um and you you said that the well had run dry, I think. Um so Yeah, how do you explain all of that? I really experienced uh 2020 as like a before and after. I think I was stunned into silence, quite honestly. Like I was so overwhelmed by what we were watching happen with the world and politically, and I and I think the and so much what felt like cruelty, and and I was so I was just stunned.

I had nothing to say about it. I couldn't metabolize the experience enough to make anything out of it, and I remember feeling sort of jealous of artist friends who were like making they were doing online concerts and doing things, and I just had nothing to say. And I had a couple of little musical moments that started that year, but they were very sort of private. One of them being a song called Wind Is the Weather that is my only experience in my whole lifetime of channeling something where I just pressed record and the song I have the audio recording of it.

It's just the song was writing sort of wrote itself. And it felt like a prayer. It felt like a desperate plea. It was on my birthday in 2020. This is pre-medication, and I was like, I'm really going to lose. I'm like losing it here. And this song showed up, and it was just all about I am not broken. You cannot break me. Like there's nothing to fix. There's nothing to fix here. There's It's just the weather. Like the wind is the weather. Um and it was a really profound experience.

So, that song was actually like one of the last songs to make it onto the record. Um but it was a very slow I mean, I sort of average, I would say, 6 to 7 years between albums, which is shockingly not so typical for people who are trying to be competitive musical artists who are like in the in the pop sphere. They're like, yeah, we have a really long attention span. But, um it's just the pace I work at. I just don't I can't manufacture it very easily.

And I do work in other mediums, you know, I have another musical coming out, and so it's not like I'm doing nothing, but um it's it is a really slow process for me. It always has been. For all of you parents out there with teenagers, we know you're already trying to keep a million different things under control. Cash App is here to make sure your teens' money and their spending is not adding to the craziness. Cash App is designed to help teenagers age 13 to 17 where they are with intuitive educational tools available through sponsorship by an eligible parent or guardian.

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Savings provided by Cash App, a Block Incorporated brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure. When you say nothing to fix, do Say Can you say more about that? Uh because I think that's a very countercultural notion in this era of optimization, etc., etc. It's the thing I really keep trying to cling to, and it feels like, again, another tenant of of meditation practice that is to just be in relationship with what is, to just be with where you're at without trying to change it or alter it or fix it in any way.

And I think I had a friend my friend Shoshana Bean actually, she's a wonderful artist, but she said that to me. She's like, "You're not broken. There's nothing There's nothing to fix." And it really stuck with me. Um and I think about it a lot. I mean, especially aging, I don't know how this I've just been thinking a lot about this as a woman aging and being sort of public-facing. And of course, I can always change my mind about this, but you know, I don't haven't done anything to my face.

I'm not doing anything to my body that is um sort of manipulating what's happening naturally. And it is hard hard to do. And I just am watching myself really feel at odds with what the culture is telling me and what even people will tell me on the internet. Thank you to the man who sent me the He said he's really worrying worried about the aging in my face. I'm like, "Bro, get in line, man. Me too." But like, it's it's hard to just be with what actually is.

So, it's when it's like the medication thing comes up for me where I'm like, "If I'm trying to be with what actually is here, why do I allow myself help in this regard?" You know, it's it's a thing I I toss I you know, I chew on in my mind. I mean, I'm not putting down my medication anytime soon. I just think about it, you know. But I'm not doing Botox or I'm not doing No judgment on that. I just This is something that I'm trying for my for my life.

Trying this thing for my life. Seeing how it's working out. I'm reading an autobiography of the Buddha right now, and if I think about his work and his life uh it wasn't an autobiography. Obviously, he I was like, "What?" It's a of the Buddha, my bad. Yeah. That'd be quite a find. I was like the Buddha on the board not himself. I love this. Yes, it's called um uh it's basically Bel Bel Burden's book but but a little bit different. He was taking affirmative action in the world.

He wasn't like sitting back and not you know, he he uh built this huge body of of um nuns and monks and promulgated this massive set of teachings and was you know, trying to intervene and stop wars before they happened like acceptance in a Buddhist concept is like seeing things as they are. Yeah. But then this next step is you you do whatever you can out of compassion to to be useful. And so you can see my mind you know, and my nervous system are totally tweaked.

And it's a compassionate thing for me and by extension the world to treat it um similarly you know, with your with me with my face. I'm also a you know, not as well known as you are but I my face is on television and on social media and I have to see it. Um I haven't done anything either but like I wouldn't rule it out not not not in a desperate attempt to pretend impermanence doesn't apply to me but I think more in that if there's small things I could do to make myself feel better so I'm less self-conscious and more useful to other people.

I would be open to that. I love the um the compassion piece about it. And I think it just applies differently for for every like that's so personal about where is it is it compassionate to yourself or to others to imagine what it looks like to just age naturally or is it compassionate to to yourself or others to be like, "Yeah, let's use the tools that are available to free up some brain space." Totally. I I I really I think it gets so it's so personal.

You said something about the song arriving as a transmission like "Wind is the Weather" and then I think there's another song on the record that's called "Say Leave." How do you understand receiving a transmission in that way? So, my philosophy, do you know a lot of artists share this? Um is that you know, the music is not mine. It just is sort of it's in the ether and it's looking for the portal and it comes through. So, the these ideas and these stories and these muses per se are are kind of floating around and like my job as a songwriter is kind of to try to clear the channel so I can be available to what comes through.

Um and yeah, "Say Leave" was another one of those. Which this record has a an inordinate amount of these kinds of This is not how I usually write music. It usually feels a little bit more mine, but "Say Leave" is um it's someone else's story. It is not my story, but it just came through and I wrote it upstate in my little house up there and that place has so many um there's just so much kind of spiritual information up there for me. It's a really sacred place to me and I just felt this story kind of arrive and I did have a friend who was going through a breakup at the time and I So, I wonder if it's a little bit her story in the ether that was coming through me.

But no, it's not mine, but it's I think it's a beautiful kind of letting go. So is there something in letting go that allows you then to receive something new and that's the and that could be a like a a full a song that arrives maybe fully formed? I think there's it's really interesting to play with like what can kind of feel like the danger like the edge, the growth edge. The dangerous part we really don't quite know what it is. I feel like Ben Folds said this to me a long time ago.

That was a really it stuck with me about when you're in the writing process to kick the editor out of the room to make sure that you're not sort of watching yourself create like just let that playful it's like our most intuitive selves, our child selves know how to play. We just we know how to do that, but as adults we put so many um rules and walls up and I just think the more we can be in the mystery of what creation actually is, making something from nothing is so awesome to let it be as mysterious as I think it actually is.

Which just felt really cool. And to also I find it very um helpful to put down the idea of taking ownership over anything. Like it's not it's not mine, it's not for me, it's it's for everybody. It's that that makes a lot of sense to me when I think about what music actually does to the world and to people and to me and I much prefer that. I mean, I really want people to clap for me, don't get me wrong, don't get it twisted. But but I'm happy to acknowledge that like the wisdom is like somewhere else.

Like what comes through is like not entirely mine. Now that we're on the [clears throat] subject of mystery and mysticism. There's also a song on here about your relationship to the divine. I think it's called a love story. Mhm, yeah. Where are you and God? God is my homie. God's your homie, yeah. God's my homie. That That song actually feels like Andrea's song. So, I wrote that song in Colorado. I had gone out to a fertility clinic in Colorado that everyone said when I couldn't get pregnant after years of not getting pregnant, everyone was like, "You have to go to this clinic.

It's the Mecca. It's the place where people who can't get pregnant, they get pregnant when they go there." Okay, I'll go anywhere. So, I'm in Colorado, um which is where Andrea and their wife Meg lived. And I was there for an egg retrieval that ended up being unsuccessful. But in waiting for the days prior to the egg retrieval egg retrieval, my friend Edie Carey was going to um Andrea's show at the Paramount Theater in Denver. And so, I was like, "Well, I'm here. I'll go see Andrea Tig Notaro's opening.

I love Tig's comedy. Let's go see the show." And while I was at the show, um I saw Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach down in the front. And I had done their podcast before and I sent Glennon an email and I I was like, "I think we're both here randomly in Denver watching like, what are you doing here?" We spoke and I told them what was going on. They're close with Andrea. They were part of this documentary that ended up being about Andrea's life. And they were so sweet about the fertility issues.

And then they invited to me to be a part of the film and that film experience was so transformative for me. Um so, this song I wrote the day of my egg retrieval which was not successful. But I had just seen Andrea on stage and I felt so full of Andrea and the cadence of their language and the and Andrea talks a lot about, you know, God or the universe and and when I say God, I think I really mean life force. I think I think Yeah, yeah, there's something about like the mystery.

I don't believe in the bearded man, of course, like but I but I do believe that there are there is a kind of life force that is bigger and has better answers than I do. I really have a lot of faith in that. Um So, this that song was written after seeing the show and running into this man on a walking path who told me about losing his wife. And I just was overwhelmed with grief. I'm just like how connect how connected it was that I felt like if the whole reason I went to Colorado was to be a sign for this man that his wife who just passed away was going to take care of him in the afterlife, then so be it.

You know, the surrender that that came from and the comfort that comes from the idea that like we might not have all the answers or all the perspective at any given moment. I mean, I was devastated. I I went through this procedure and we didn't get anything. And and the worst part being that like no one told me that it might not ever be an egg. It turned out it was just a sack of fluid in my ovary. It wasn't even an actual egg that was growing.

And I didn't even know that was a possibility. So, I had been there for weeks for this one what I thought was a follicle with an egg and then there was not even an egg. And I was devastated. But then I got this song out of it and I got this experience with Andrea and Meg and Tig and Glennon and Abby and like on and on and like a life-changing experience being a part of that film. So, I'm just like I don't know. I have a lot of faith in the wisdom that's not mine.

I'm curious like how's it going with the fertility stuff? Ugh, I'm taking a break. I had a miscarriage earlier this year. The good news being that I got pregnant and I had never been pregnant before. And boy, did I love it. I loved feeling pregnant. I loved it. And I'm going to tell you it was what I really feel is relief because I have also felt so saturated by this creative output. I mean, in addition to what I'm doing with the record and the movie, I also have a new musical that we've been in it's launching at the end of this year.

It's I'm going on tour. It's just a really really intense time creatively. And I I don't know how I would manage if I was also I would probably have canceled my tour is what I probably would have done. And so, I feel grateful that I don't have to be in that kind of in the tension between artist and mother. Um But yeah, we'll try again. We try we had a a little embryo that didn't take, but it was a huge amount of learning that happened and and I felt really I really celebrated that I could get pregnant at all because that's the first time that's happened.

So, hey man, I'm in the messy middle. I don't know what's going to happen, but we'll try again. But I'm on a break now and I'm not mad to be off those meds. The hormones are [ __ ] awful. I know we've talked about this, you know, but but we we had very we had a lot of infertility struggles in our family including a miscarriage and um IVF and all the many of the things you're going through and we were essentially told it wasn't we were never going to have a kid and um now I have a giant Aryan child marching around the house with a mouthful of braces and mouthing off to me.

So Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that's the right term some days. Uh Yeah. But yes, I mean it really yeah, if you feel like persevering um yeah, amazing things can can happen. Again, it I mean it feels like there's a theme there around just like there is a kind of mystery to all of this. There is like a kind of surrender and a mystery. Like acceptance is different than resignation, you know. There's a kind there is a sort of beautiful path through acceptance of what is maybe not so easy.

I mean for me with fertility and I know I've shared with this you with this with you personally but you know, it was humbling to be [clears throat] someone I I really like me and life get along pretty well. I I it's not that I don't I work my ass off but like I've never been someone who was who felt like nothing ever works out for me. Like that's just not my philosophy. I've always had a lot of glass half full kind of just perspective. And it was really humbling to be really trying.

I mean it still is where I'm like I'm really trying and it's not working. Or it's working on some level that I don't understand yet, you know, but it's really humbling and I think there's beauty in that too even though it's not particularly comfortable. I mean that seems to be the through line of this whole conversation and of this body of work that you're in the middle of on the cusp of releasing into the world and by the time this post you will have released into the world is the is like an awareness and embrace of the poignancy of this whole being alive thing.

The point is to just I don't want to say appreciate but to just be awake to the richness of it. It's just so astoundingly complex and varied and strange and mysterious. It's just like how and there's so much beauty in that in the mystery. If you're open to it and if you're not, you know, just walking through life or sleepwalking through life, you know, in denial and distraction. Um but and I think that's the fundamental brave choice that you've made which is you're not doing that or most of the time.

You've been a huge huge part of why I can say that I'm more awake than I was before. And I really have to thank you just as a teacher, as a friend and as someone who curates spaces that really cultivate a kind of interest in people seeking a different way to move through the world. You have been so instrumental and so helpful in making my quality of life what it is. So, thanks Dan Harris. It's my pleasure, Sara Bareilles. And and really it's like it kind of what you're saying that with which I really appreciate.

I was just thinking porousness of the line between service and self-interest. I do a lot of work that I hope is helpful to other people but it in doing that work it's very beneficial to me and enjoyable and I I assume, I'm just this is an assumption, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, that you feel the same way about your art. Joyful narcissism. Yes. [clears throat] Yes. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I used to feel really conflicted about the fact that I was doing this work, meditation, Buddhism, happiness, whatever you want to call whatever it is I do, and that there was self-interest in there, you know, like it pays my bills and I'm I like people clapping for me and all that stuff.

And my executive coach, Jerry Colonna, a very wise guy, said something to the effect of, you know, you know, you can think of it all as like a an exchange of love. Like you are doing work and I think this applies to what you to what you're doing. You're making content out of love and then you get love in return in the form of like the ability to pay your mortgage and the the dopamine from applause. And then that allows you to do more work and up you go.

I think that's right. Yeah, but it's also that return is energizing. Not all the time, but so often it's energizing and it makes you want Yeah, to be it's like a a loving feedback loop. I think that's good. One more song I want to ask you about before I let you go. Um and this is this was one of the songs that you played when you were just so viewers and listeners know, Sarah's friends with my wife, Bianca Harris, and um Sarah and Bianca and a few other women organized a little day-long retreat at our house in the winter.

And Sharon Salzberg, the great meditation teacher, was part of it and I was the gofer I think fetching you guys food and incredible fire. Yes, I made a fire and then I was told to get the [ __ ] out. But I there was one period toward the end where I was allowed to stay for a brief period of time and you played us a few songs on off this new record and one of them was Heartland, which I think may be my favorite song on the record and it's about America.

It's about America. And um yeah, I was just curious to hear you hold forth on the work. I think one of the things that I have not really known how or or I guess where to put is my grief of country. And I think I it's something that so many people I know and love are also grappling with. And I don't know if we've been calling it what I think it actually is is just like grief. It's like it's not what I thought it was. And I really believe that it's important to not um sort of surrender the idea of patriotism and that you can love this country and also know that it is deeply flawed.

But um so the song is sort of written from the perspective of the Statue of Liberty and the Constitution is a personified those talisman to I don't know, just talk about the ideals that this place is founded upon. Yes, deeply flawed, obviously not inclusive from the get. And but that the the things that we are reaching toward I think are still beautiful ideas. And it makes me sad that love of country feels co-opted by people who I find to seemingly be so cruel, exclusive, and so narrow-minded about what makes America whatever.

Um so yeah, I've just felt so sad. I've felt so sad about what we've seen transpire, what I thought would never be possible, being possible. Um and there there is a lot of grief in that. So, I wrote a song about it, which is literally my job, Dan. It's a great uh so beautiful and um you know, as I was listening to you speak, you're talking about like people weaponizing patriotism, you know, when in fact they're hiding behind it as a excuse for cruelty or corruption and you know, that expression patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel and like yeah, who who does that that suit fit better on than Donald Trump, you know, um the guy is using his position as president to enrich himself to like obscene extent all with a Make America Great Hat on.

Yeah, I mean, Joe and I talk about my husband and I talk about this all the time. I'm just like it just feels unreal. And and the fog that's in it's just how long are these [ __ ] presidencies? Jesus. It's like we're not even halfway through. Are you kidding me? It's it's it's a long haul and you know, there's probably you know, this the reckoning that we are walking through is I don't know, do we get there without someone this horrible? I don't know. I I it's I again, I want to sort of believe in in the mystery, but it is it is a brutal thing to watch and I really and I see and appreciate so much of you know, people coming together to to work against that current and work against the corruption and try to build safety and community in places that need it and it's not all bad.

There's still so many good people. I think there are still so many more people working for good and not. There's just a lot of greed and corruption and power-hungry people. A million percent. And I think it's really important to hold two things in your mind at the same time as you've just pointed out. Like, yes, there are some very significant problems at 1600 Pennsylvania right now and throughout the body politic and there are definitely more good and amazing people and good and amazing things happening, but the algorithms that control our lives um are you know, people are profiting off of making us angry and anxious.

And I think it's really helpful to to keep in mind that we can be aware of the problem without lapsing into like, you know, posting it in all caps and you know, and or resignation. I mean, the distortion the the amount of distortion that happens online is just astounding. So, yeah, I am definitely someone who really keeps or at least tries to keep my social media experience in check and just like get have your experience of the world be in the world. Like there's there's that beautiful quote that I don't know who said it, but it's not I said it.

No, it's not me. Just kidding. It's that we don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. And I think that the phone and these algorithms like you're saying, they are just designed uh to they're they're designed to destroy our idea of what the world actually is. Reinforce our priors and warp uh you know, and and bolster our prejudices and you know, vilify the people who disagree with us 100% I think it was Anaïs Nin who said the quote that he said it Anaïs Nin, that's right.

now I'm just showing off. I really I love your intellect. Well done. How do you know I didn't just Google that real quick? I could have. Cuz I watched your hands. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. It's like a intellectual three-card monte. Anything anything Sara Bareilles that I should have that we should have talked about that we haven't gotten to? Oh, I think the only thing the only other thing I want to say is that the beautiful documentary that was made about this record that I feel is a really a sister piece to this record is going to be in theaters on September 2nd.

So I really highly encourage people to go check it out with their friends. I promise it's it's at least a little bit funny. You might cry you'll probably cry a little bit but it's at least a little bit funny and you'll get to really understand the music differently. So if you're if you're interested in the in the sort of behind-the-scenes look it's it's a pretty cool one I think. I love documentaries about music and watching the creative process and I just started watching this last night and it really like it's so cool to watch you and your team and your co-creators make this beautiful thing together.

So I recommend it and also you are going out on tour. So if people want to find out when you're coming to their town, how do they do that? You can go to sarabmusic.com and everything you need to know is on there. Also all about this film who I also want to shout out Josh Alexander who's a friend and also a meditator and a and a fan of yours and he's the director of the film. So he brought together the beautiful team and and made this beautiful movie.

So really grateful to him. But yeah, everything you need to know is on sarahbmusic.com. So you don't even have to know how to spell my last name. You're welcome. So just to to restate this, the record's called Good Grief, it's out today. Documentary also called Good Grief out soon and the tour information sarahbmusic.com sarahbmusic.com. Thank you. I'm super proud of you and also really grateful to you for sparing the time to do this. So thank you. So happy to do it. I'm happy to see you and I hope to see you soon.

Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Also one last thing before you go, remember to sign up for my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris.

You can sign up over at danharris.com. On the app, you'll find a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, ad-free access to the full expertise of our podcast guests, meaning you'll get this podcast with no ads, exclusive live stream events, which we do weekly, sometimes twice a week, robust discussion threads to connect you with our team, with our teachers and with one another. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy. Peace.