Featuring Carly Lewis

Explicit content warning

10/24/19 • 31 min

Carly Lewis, journalist, kind woman and spectacular human being, joins host Lauren Mitchell in the Cavern. Carly has written for the Globe and Mail, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, Hazlitt and more. She talks about the value of feeling isolated, getting away from your anger and making sure your parents drink water. “I feel like everybody has a little invisible suitcase with them and in that suitcase is their anger.”

Our favourite moments: “You should strive to be the person you needed when you were younger.” [3:27]

“I had to learn how to feel safe in myself. And that was a hard-fought lesson.” [7:40]

“It was also really important to me to be a strong loner.” [8:45]

“Anytime I have made a platform for myself that is based on anger or taking up space to be vocal about sexual assault or harassment or anything like that, I have left that space feeling tremendously guilty.” [9:20]

“I feel like everybody has a little invisible suitcase with them and in that suitcase is their anger.” [11:17]

“Now that I’ve gotten more powerful just by virtue of getting older, I’m less angry. Even though there’s so much to be angry about, but I’m not walking around the world furious in the way that I kind of used to be.” [12:35]

This is when I learned to ask for forgiveness, not permission: When I asked my mom if i could sleep over in an orchard in Grimsby Ontario with a bunch of boys and my mom was, like, absolutely-the-fuck-not.” [15:35]

“I’ve stopped thinking about happiness as a state or a promised land or a quest. I’ve started thinking about it as a fog that just kind of comes or goes away...” [22:30]

“Something out there does not want me to have a stable place to live...Something out there wants me to get used to be transient.” [26:45]

CREDITS: Cavern of Secrets is hosted by Lauren Mitchell. Produced by Ellen Payne Smith & Katie Jensen, with assistance from Vicky Mochama and Sarah Daniel.

Our favourite moments: “You should strive to be the person you needed when you were younger.” [3:27]

“I had to learn how to feel safe in myself. And that was a hard-fought lesson.” [7:40]

“It was also really important to me to be a strong loner.” [8:45]

“I feel like everybody has a little invisible suitcase with them and in that suitcase is their anger.” [11:17]

“I’ve stopped thinking about happiness as a state or a promised land or a quest. I’ve started thinking about it as a fog that just kind of comes or goes away...” [22:30]

“Something out there does not want me to have a stable place to live...Something out there wants me to get used to be transient.” [26:45]

CREDITS: Cavern of Secrets is hosted by Lauren Mitchell. Produced by Ellen Payne Smith & Katie Jensen, with assistance from Vicky Mochama and Sarah Daniel.

Previous Episode

Featuring Georgia Webber

Georgia Webber, writer and illustrator, comes to the Cavern of Secrets to talk about what it means when you can’t express yourself, learning to draw again, and allowing the possibility that someone will say ‘yes’ and help you. Georgia’s graphic memoir, Dumb, is about what it means to become voiceless and how it changes you.

Our favourite moments: “If there’s something that calls for my voice to be raised at all in a really loud way, I can push it if I want to and I most of the time really want to. But it’s a bad idea.” [4:43]

“I had always wanted to make comics but I didn’t feel like I was good enough to start. Which is a terrible trap to be caught in.” [5:34]

I hit send. I woke up the next morning and I felt - god, I’m gonna sound like such an asshole right now - I felt the closest thing I can to enlightened.” [10:05]

It’s much harder for us to accept something that changes constantly and it’s much harder for the wide broad us to accept complication” [14:55]

“It’s also fascinating to collaborate with someone and have her voice at the centre of it but she can’t see what I’m doing. She’s exercising a massive amount of trust...” [17:00]

“This idea of disability as a shift in health paradigm as the rest of the world to accept is something that I’m grappling with” [24:00]

“I could see all the accommodations that were being made for people who had those different needs and being in that space and sharing it with them was not a detriment to my experience in any way” [28:05]

CREDITS: Cavern of Secrets is hosted by Lauren Mitchell. Produced by Ellen Payne Smith & Katie Jensen, with assistance from Vicky Mochama and Sarah Daniel.

Next Episode

Featuring Eden Robinson

Author, funny woman and busy person Eden Robinson calls into the Cavern from Kitimat, British Columbia to talk nail polish, carting around family in a big car and the gift that menopause gives you. Eden’s books include Traplines, the Giller-nominated Son Of A Trickster, and Blood Sports. Her trilogy, the Trickster series, is becoming a miniseries for CBC and her novel, Monkey Beach, is becoming a film. “If you need stories, take the bus.”

Our favourite moments: “Dad had Parkinson’s. He found that seal fat was very helpful. The cousins who hunted - in the beginning, they would bring us neat little packets of seal...but towards the end, they were just leaving, like, half a seal in a bucket. [5:40]

“He was always embarrassed that I wasn’t a lady. And I was always like, 'You taught me to buck wood and change oil. I don’t remember any tea parties.'" [7:00]

“I find [that] if I try to write to an outline or if I write to a plan, my muse gets inhibited.” [14:14]

“I was realizing how few years I have left if I’m writing a book about every five years. Okay, there are books I won’t be able to write.” [21:30]

"I also don’t have a lot of anxiety about what people think about me. I remember being very concerned about that. And them menopause just wipes that out.” [22:40]

CREDITS: Cavern of Secrets is hosted by Lauren Mitchell. Produced by Ellen Payne Smith & Katie Jensen, with assistance from Vicky Mochama and Sarah Daniel.