Mel Robbins

Yeah.

And I would always cock my head and kind of look surprised and go, well, that's weird because it just worked at the gas station.

Yeah.

And then I'd say, come on, kids, let's go out to the car.

I've got another cart out there, which I didn't.

And you don't forget that.

Yeah.

But everybody knows and nobody knows how to talk about it, how to make it right.

And looking away in that moment is a form of respect because you don't want the person who's dealing with that heaviness to feel the weight of your judgment either.

And so please don't apologize for speaking and telling us the truth of your experience because, you know, for the person who doesn't know you, you're, in my opinion, one of the most...

decorated and awarded writers alive right now.

The American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, the T.S.

Eliot Prize, the New England Book Award, the MacArthur Genius Grant.

You are a professor at NYU.

And so while your story began growing up in Hartford, Connecticut,

immigrating here from Vietnam, your mom and the women around you being illiterate and working in a nail salon, you went on to take back language and write about dignity in the human experience.

What would you say to somebody who's listening right now and

is in that place where they are feeling a tremendous amount of shame and feeling very lost, whether it is because of very similar life experiences that you've had, or maybe it's somebody who's feeling a lot of shame because their marriage blew up, or they got a health diagnosis and they're having a lot of trouble

really just getting through the day or they've really made some terrible decisions in their life.

They're beating themselves over the things in the past.