Hello, nine year old. You are about to leave the only house

that you have ever known. You're leaving all your friends. You're leaving everything you know,

but don't tell anybody. If you share your joy,

you also have to share your pain. And we don't share pain. That's private. Those

are the secrets the boomers like you do not have to

break yourself up into little pieces to make other people

comfortable. Stay whole and let them choke.

Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I go by L2. Yes,

you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's a long story. It's actually not

that long a story, but we'll save it for another time. Welcome to

Different Not Broken, which is our podcast on

exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling

broken. And the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.

Okay, so this is a genuine question that I have, and I would love to

know your feedback on it. And I say this as I think

I'm an elder millennial. I think I'm 38. I feel

elder. I feel far older than a millennial, but

I think I'm an elder millennial. My dad was considered greatest generation because

he was about 10 years older than my mom. My mom definitely a boomer. So

I was raised by very boomer esque people. And

there was so much we weren't allowed to talk about in our house.

I don't mean it as, like, topics were taboo. Everything

had to be packaged up and made presentable to share with

anybody outside the walls of our family. Right. Like, if you were fighting about

something, nobody could know. If you were angry at each other, nobody could know. If

we were moving, that had to be kept secret for a long time. If we

were selling the house, we couldn't tell anybody. If you lost your job,

oh, my gosh, don't tell anybody. I think of all of the different

things that basically were. It had to be spoken in

hushed tones. I obviously, I have railed against that

very hard and do everything exactly the opposite. Maybe too much, though.

Probably too much, though. But I still have that instinct when something

happens of being like, oh, my God, don't tell anybody. Oh, my

God, I don't think anybody can know. Oh, this is so embarrassing. Oh, what if

somebody finds out? And I realized it's because we have been

conditioned, because boomers like secrets. They

like to have a very deliberately

constructed, curated version of existence

that is the only part about them that you find out. So if

you lost your job, the answer Was not to tell people you lost

your job. It was to just hide until you found another job.

You know, I remember when we moved from Florida to Louisiana when I

was a kid, My parents didn't tell us we were moving. And there

was a for sale sign in our front yard. No, no, no, it wasn't a

for sale sign. The real estate agent came over with the car, like

emblazoned in the real estate company. And I was like,

that's the stuff that's usually on a for sale sign. I wonder why this person

is at our house. And my mom is like, walking this person through the

house while she's taking pictures and didn't tell us

that it was because we were moving across the country. So

me being somebody who could, you know, it's that pattern recognition.

Even as a child, I was like, a real estate agent is at our

house and my mother is showing the real estate agent that about our house.

So I wonder if somebody's gonna buy our house. That's weird. I.

I probably was maybe eight, maybe nine. And

the real estate agent left and I looked at my mom and said, are we

selling our house? The answer I got equated to, like, that's none of your business.

I kind of feel like it's like a little bit my business. Not that I

get to make the decision, but like, maybe good information to have. So of course

my dad came in later and said, I

got a job offer, we're going to go take it, we're moving. But it

was, don't tell anybody. Hello, nine year

old. You are about to leave the only house that you have ever

known. You're leaving all your friends, you're leaving everything you know, but don't tell

anybody. Hey, you probably feel anxious. Not that this was ever

addressed, but like, you probably feel anxious about the fact that your entire life is

going to change and you're going somewhere you've never been before. No

big. Keep it to yourself. So, of course, the next day I went to school

and like, told everybody because I was so upset about it.

I don't think I told everybody. I think I told my teacher and I think

I told one other person or something like that. My parents later that day were

like, did you tell anybody? And I'm giving my mother a whole lot of credit

by including my dad in this nonsense. But he was not particularly involved in

this nonsense. He was also an innocent bystander in it. And

I think I fessed up to who I told and she was like, oh, so

no one. And thankfully, she took it well within the time period of that

day or a couple of days, however long it had been. I think they had

probably finalized the job offer and put the house on the market. So it was

like, well, there's a sign in our front yard now, so everybody knows, so now

we can't keep it a secret. But like, their instinct was to be like,

hey, there's this major life changing thing happening. Don't tell anyone.

Some of that is boomer. Some of that I think is just Jewish superstition.

A lot of it is probably Jewish superstition. Like, you don't celebrate anything until it's

done. And even then, be careful. I remember when I was pregnant with my

oldest, my mom was like mortified

that we would order furniture for the nursery before the baby

was here, because apparently that's not a thing that the Jewish people do.

She was like, other people can buy you stuff, but it doesn't go into your

house. It has to stay somewhere else until the baby gets here. And I'm like,

oh, that's why I'm like this. Oh, got it. That's why

anytime something, something good happens, I'm like, nope, Wait until

we have the signed form and all of the money in the

bank and three years have passed and then we can talk about something good that

we have done. We don't celebrate shit. Because

the threat of the thing not happening has always been held

over as this, like, impossible, insurmountable. Like,

well, what if you tell someone and it doesn't happen?

And for a long time felt like, realistic. And

then I was like, wait, what if you tell someone and it doesn't happen? Well,

then you tell them it didn't happen, right? Like, you just tell them

it didn't happen. I feel like that's a pretty easy solution. So

I, at one point, when I was pregnant with my oldest, I bought some clothes,

like one of the baby stores, you know, I got an email that

there was a sale and it was still fun to shop for baby clothes. So

I was like, I'm gonna buy a bunch of baby clothes. So I went and

bought a whole bunch of stuff on this sale that cost me like almost nothing.

And I had it shipped to my house. And my mother lost her

ever loving shit. She was like, you should have had it shipped to my house.

It doesn't go to your house. But like, I, I go to your house. Like,

why wouldn't. Why does it matter? She's like, you don't bring baby

stuff into the house until the baby gets here. That is

inconvenient. Because what if I have to put together a crib? What if we

need to paint the room? You want me to paint the room when

there's a baby in it so the baby can smell fumes?

I've now had a child, and no, the first year, my oldest was not

in her room almost ever. At the time, it was like, what do you mean?

I'm not allowed to have any baby stuff in my house

because the baby's not here yet. Like, technically, the baby is here yet. The baby

is in my belly. Anywhere I go, the baby is. So if I'm

standing in the baby's room, the baby is in the baby's room.

She was having none of it. So eventually, I'm sure we just ignored her and

we were like, cool, bro. Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. But it

goes back to the same thing. I think there's a lot of that with pregnancy

loss, too. I think you're not supposed to say anything about being pregnant for the

first 14 weeks or however long it is that is the first

trimester, because what if it doesn't work out meanwhile?

Like, you have to pretend that you're not vomiting every

37 seconds because you're pregnant. And if somebody asks why you're vomiting,

you just have to have food poisoning for three months. That's not

realistic. There's a spot in my backyard

where, for some reason, and we had just moved into this house, for some reason,

every time I walked across ar, I would hit a

spot and puke. Every time. I don't know if it was the plants that were

there. I don't know what it was, but I had a puke spot in the

backyard. And if I walked across our backyard, I knew I was vomiting in that

spot. You can't hide stuff

like that. But we're not supposed to tell anybody, because

if you share your joy, you also have to share your pain. And

we don't share pain. That's private. That's

kept for secret. Those are the secrets. The boomers like,

pain is ugly. It doesn't come with a

hoop skirt. And it's not curated. It's not perfect,

obviously. I'm sure, like, a lot of that was their upbringing. They came out

of very, very difficult times. My mom was born very

shortly after the Depression, at the very

tail end of World War II. My dad was born before World War II.

They lived in worlds that had very little and

eventually, you know, grew into something. And

you curated the appearance of what you were able to get your hands on,

I guess. But I do not have a lot of time for secrets.

And for secrets that serve the purpose of shame. Right?

Like, why would you not share your pain? Because pain is shameful.

You don't want to tell somebody that you had joy because then you might

have to tell them that you have loss. Somebody who doesn't want to be present

for both shouldn't be present for either. Somebody who only wants to celebrate with you,

but then isn't going to show up when you're on the other side of it

or at the same time, somebody who only shows up when things are really

terrible and only is able to have compassion for you when that

compassion serves this image of who they are. But then

on the day to day, you know, regular stuff, they're nowhere to be found.

That's equally problematic. So it's something I have to work through all the

time. Again, some of it is boomer stuff. Some of it I think is just

Jewish superstition. If you

ever see a Jewish person spitting three times, it's.

It's to ward off the evil eye, because that's a thing that we do.

And then, like, there's this. I. I have this

like deep feeling in the pit of my stomach

when I say or do things that are,

quote, unquote, bringing on the evil eye. Which means, like, don't

tempt fate, don't welcome things that we don't want here

by asserting something that we don't know is true. Yet it is

really, really hard to undo. And I say this as a person who talks about

my whole entire life and every single part of it on the Internet pretty regularly,

including, like right this second.

It's still there. I remember with our second,

I actually was pretty open about it when we finally got the positive

pregnancy test because we went through IVF and it was like a whole thing. And

when we finally got the positive pregnancy test, I don't remember if I told

people or if I was like ready to tell people because the first one, we

hadn't told people for a really long time. And we had been married for

five years by the time we got pregnant. It took us a long time. And

it was Thanksgiving. And we went out for Thanksgiving, which we didn't normally do.

It was the last Thanksgiving with my dad. He was already pretty sick at that

point. We had decided we were going to tell my parents and my husband

being doing the right thing, but not

thinking of the optics of the right thing he was

doing, looked at the server and was like, can we get. There were five

adults at the table. And he goes, can we get four glasses of champagne? My

mom's like, four? Why do we need four? There's five of

us. We need five. And he kind of goes.

And I don't remember how he got out of it, but he did get out

of it. And he. I think he said, oh, well, I don't want one. So

he gives, performatively gives me his glass of champagne, and then he's like, you know,

I. Give me that back. I want to make a tapas. I want to talk

about what we're thankful about. And I'm like, you could have just paid for the

fifth glass of champagne, you dingus. So we told our family that

way. I still have it in my brain, like, nobody should know. We can only

tell our immediate family. But of course, we're in public

and somebody's gonna overhear. And so the server comes over

and she's like, congratulations. And I'm like, I guess this is

okay. Cause I don't know. You're a nice person. I like

you, but if the rule is we don't tell anybody, I just told this complete

stranger on accident, and that seems like it totally defeats the

purpose, but I guess who's she gonna tell

now? When we did our launch party for LB

in 2024, the person who served that party was the person

who served us that night. She basically got to see the child

that she was there when I was five weeks pregnant.

Also, funny story unrelated,

we had another party at the same

restaurant, like, four or five weeks later. We were

closing our main office. We were moving to a different office. We decided to have

a party to just kind of say goodbye to everything. And we invited a bunch

of people. And I, at that point, I was 10 weeks pregnant and nobody knew.

And so I decided I was gonna wear these, like, high heeled boots that I

really liked. And I just wasn't thinking. I pulled up the

zipper and I'm like, why can't I put these on? This is weird. I

can't put them on. Okay, I guess I need to wear different shoes. I don't.

I just wasn't thinking. And so I grabbed different shoes and I looked down at

my feet and they're like. I was only. I was 10 weeks pregnant. They're

like. They look like elephant feet. And I was like, why are my feet like

this? This doesn't make any sense. What is happening? And so I go

downstairs to my dad. We were staying in his house at the time. And I

sit on the bed. And I go, dad, my feet are all swollen. What is

happening? What's wrong with me? And he goes, I don't know

how to tell you this, but you're pregnant. And

I went, okay, but, like, I'm only 10 weeks pregnant. Why would my feet be

so swollen? And he goes, you can't be a little

bit pregnant. Welcome to being pregnant. I was

like, this does not make sense. And he was like, it actually makes exactly perfect

sense. You are the only person who's confused. And so we went to the party

where we had, like, bought a whole bunch of, you know, wine and stuff so

that everybody could have wine, and they had the bar. And I would usually have

a glass of wine, even though I don't drink that much. But the manager of

the restaurant, who we've known for a million years, got sparkling grape

juice and put it behind the bar so that it would

look like I was drinking wine the whole time. I was sitting across the table

from a really good friend of ours who's an ER doctor. And I ordered.

I think I ordered salmon. I don't remember, But I know I ordered something that

I always order that I love there. I take a sip of my grape juice

and I put it down. And then I look at my food, and I think,

I must have just made this, like, awful face. And he looks at me and

he goes, something wrong with your food? And I said,

no, it just all of a sudden doesn't look that good. I don't know. My

phone pings. It's him across the table, and it

says, how many weeks?

And I was like, God damn it, get your doctor ass out of here. So

I think they ended up bringing me, like, literal saltines at this very fancy

party because all I wanted to do is puke. But anyway, like, I'm standing in

a room of, like, my favorite people, but because I was 10 weeks pregnant, not

12 weeks pregnant, I didn't say anything to them, even though it would have been

an amazing time to celebrate with all of them. And that's

stupid, because every single one of those people would have

supported me through immense amounts of pain, just

like they would have celebrated with me. So I think it is time, first off,

that we very much normalize the discussion of

pregnancy loss, but also dispel

these very deep connections that we have with this

very boomerish idea of curated life and

how things are supposed to look and what you can share publicly and what you

can't share publicly. That doesn't mean you have to share everything publicly.

Absolutely. Like, use your discretion. Share what you're comfortable with. People like me have

big mouths that, like, I'm the type of person that I'm always like, oh, my

God, this is embarrassing. I'm never going to tell anybody. And then I immediately pick

up the phone and go, oh, my God, just guess what's happened. Or post it

on the whole Internet for everybody to find out. My titer for embarrassment is

very big for about 30 seconds. And then I'm like. And time to publicly

embarrass myself. Like, I'm literally the one who's always like, oh, my God, don't tell

anybody. And then immediately tell somebody.

It's deeply, deeply tied to this

archaic idea from generations past that

you have to keep the jagged edges secret,

that they. They can't be shown publicly, that you have to be

fully presentable, fully put together, fully made up, only

digestible to everybody around all the time. And I have

a friend who posts things like this on Instagram all the time. I think he's

the one that I got it from. But you do not have to break yourself

up into little pieces to make other people comfortable.

Stay whole and let them choke. Your pain

is allowed as much airtime as your joy. There is

nothing more shameful about pain than joy.

And this idea that we have to keep those things secret

because sharing them is

ugly or uncomfortable or

in some ways, attention seeking is not

correct. There are situations in your life where you should get attention, and

attention doesn't have to be a bad thing. It doesn't have to be a dirty

word. There are times where you need people focused on

you, and it is okay to exist in those times and not keep them to

yourself. If you're comfortable with Chairman, even if it's just a very small

group of very trusted people, we should not be

responsible for carrying around prior generations. Shame

about the ways that we exist in 2025. We're

different people. We have different access to information. And every

time you share one of your experiences,

it normalizes it for somebody else. Isolation. L.

For this week's small talk again, Remember, this is something we do every week. It's

his birthday and he was being shit because he's always a shit on his birthday,

which is fine. Then he's like, fine, we'll just go somewhere. And he doesn't tell

us where we're going. We end up at Guitar Center. Like, most people are like,

for my birthday, I would like a cake and a new pair

of shoes. And my husband is like, please only present me with

$10,000 items and make sure that they are

of only the highest quality and that you know everything about them inside

and out. And I will still hate it, but I might keep it. You know

the ones. I don't know anything about music. Like, I think it's a mixer.

They have, like, the blocks, like, the squares that you can program

to do different things, and if you hit them in different. Okay, he's had that.

He's had that for, like, years. He's never touched it.

He's never played with it. He's like, I just saw the synthesizer, and I think,

I really like it. And I really like that. And I was like, okay, but

I'll buy it. I don't care about buying it. But, like, are you going to

use it? And he just. I swear to God, this man looks at me and

goes, I mean, well, that's always the question. And I was like, no,

it should not be the question. You should know. Like, yes, this is something

I'm going to use. Not, like, this is the thing that I want because it's

expensive anyway. This is my life. And then he's looking at other ones, and then

he's, like, looking at ones that are, like, $4,500. And I was like, did not

sign up for that, bro. But it's his birthday, and I'm trying to keep my

mouth shut, and I'm like, maybe, like, maybe he's just gonna say no, and I

can get out of buying a $3,000 present for his birthday. Like, that'd be magical.

So that's starting to percolate through my brain. And we're standing in

the store, and this one pops up. Or he just,

like, sees this one, and he's starting to, like, tinker on his phone, and he's

like, oh. And I can see that he's, like, thinking about it. He, like, kind

of looks at me and does the like. And I'm

just like. He had already been so grumpy. I was like,

shut up and work harder and it'll be fine. A sales guy walks over.

He's very nice. His name is Jason. Shout out to Jason. Jason

comes over and he says, hey, do you have this one in stock? And he's

like, I don't know if we do, but let me go check in the back.

And this is my husband's luck in everything that he does. Oh, to be

a white man in America. So he comes back and he's like, we do have

it in stock in the back. And he's like, okay. And this is all the

information and, like, points to the tag. And he goes, yeah, except that's not the

right price. And he goes, what?

And he goes, it's. It's on sale. It's less than that. I don't know why

the tag's wrong. He's like, let me go ring it in and I'll tell you.

So anyway, he's ringing it out. What this man leaves out, not the

gentleman who worked there, who was a very nice man, but what Kyle leaves

out is that if you buy the synthesizer, you

also need the monitors and the synthesizer stand

and the bench and the monitor stands, none of which I had

purchased him previously, because who the fuck knows that? So he's like, all

right, I'm just going to go look at a couple other things. And of course,

of course, in typical Kyle Howard fashion, he's like, no, I'll pay for these.

And I'm like, how does that make a difference? Because it came off of your

debit card number. We've had the same account for 15 years. Like, how does that.

Are you squirreling away money that I don't know about? Because if you are,

gimme. Because I spend a lot of money on you, sir. His mom

was there, and his mom actually covered a bunch of the stuff because she didn't

have anything for him for his birthday because he was being such a shit. And

so she was like, I got those. That's fine. And then he wasn't a shit

the rest of the day because he got a new toy and a new thing

to obsess over and be hyper fixated on. Thanks for being here,

guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.

Somebody just stole one of my dogs. Somebody just walked in and took one. That's

fair. My shirt is so filthy now because he walked up and slapped me with

his tongue. And since his tongue is at shoulder level. Oh, my God,

there's so much slobber in my hair right now. These are my choices. Chihuahua.

You don't have this problem with Chihuahuas?