Amanda

If you want to bring your own thing, let's talk.

But I will only use my own story in this experiment that I want to spend my life doing.

That is what I would say.

Like maybe it's arrogant.

I can't imagine the chutzpah.

the whatever it takes to say, I'm going to use you.

I'm going to criticize your story, your life, your whatever.

That is what, when I read those pieces, that blows my mind.

Maybe it blows their mind to see me mining my own story again, but it blows my fucking mind when I see people

decide to do that with someone else's life.

That is my answer.

And I want to say to anyone who feels the same way as I do, your story is your fucking right to tell.

And by the way, they only say this about women.

Nobody says to David Sedaris or whoever the hell, whatever guy is writing the next thing, that it's a navel gazing, that it's confessional, that it's this or it's that.

Men are writing about life.

Women are writing about themselves.

Men are exploring the great ideas and women are navel gazing.

I actually believe that there is a space that most of the drama and trauma that's happening in our lives and in our world is because people aren't doing enough fucking navel-gazing.

Like, maybe people really need to sit with their own story, work out their own shit before they unleash it on everybody else.

I encourage it.