Radical Honesty + Non-Conformity

A Candid Conversation with Nadia Bolz-Weber

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my girls lately. And by lately, I mean since they were born. I can’t get enough, but also I can’t get away. Isn’t this the basic dilemma of parenting?

Seriously though, we hang out a lot, and I’ve loved how, at least to this point, they have been care-free and innocuous in all the ways we want our kids to be. They skip down the street while we’re walking home, and they’re friends with everyone in their class, and they still think doing math homework is fun. It’s all so sweet.

I’ve also noticed in the past few months that, in very small ways, the kids that my older daughter hangs out with are starting to develop a sense of social awareness and learning how to navigate that. I heard one girl talking about how self-conscious she feels about her braces, and another boy told me how he doesn’t really like football but pretends to so that he can fit in at school.

I understand that and remember trying to figure out how to fit in when I was their age. I knew it was going to happen at some point and that I should accept it. And yet, I’m grieving this stage, knowing that those beautiful days of not caring what other people think about you are sliding away. I hate that for my girls and for all our children.

I’ve also learned that part of growing up is unlearning some of things we’ve learned, that we can make choices to live and love differently from how society operates. One manifestation of this for me has been developing enough confidence and security to not care so much about what other people think about me. It’s hard, trust me, especially given that so much of this psychology comes from my lived experience, and understanding that not caring what people think about me could put me in harm’s way.

When I turned 40 this past year, a friend said “I loved my 40s. It’s when you learn to not give a damn what people think.”

Another friend, who’s a little older, quipped immediately, “Wait until you’re in you’re 70s. Then you really don’t give a shit.”

I laughed, partly out of surprise. I didn’t expect either of those. But I’ve held onto those comments, because they’ve helped me understand that despite our socialization, there’s a possibility of returning to our childhoods, where we are care-free and innocuous and just happy with being who we are.

This is what struck me about Nadia Bolz-Weber a few years ago. She’s famous for a number of reasons, including her New York Times Bestsellers, and her work in prisons as an ordained Lutheran pastor, and her openly sharing about bouts with alcoholism, and her general badassery. But what I love more than anything is that she has this quality that I admire, a healthy sense of how to be herself without concern for people’s judgements about her.

I’ll provide a short excerpt of my conversation with Nadia below. To listen to the full episode of Wisdom & Practice, click here. And definitely follow Nadia on Substack here!

A photo on stage with Nadia, Sharon Brous, and Greg Epstein at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Simran Jeet Singh: Part of how I see you is a sense of like radical honesty– like you're just so real and you're you wherever I see you in the same way. And when we're hanging out outside at a picnic bench or we're on stage together, we're in this room together. You're just you. And that feels refreshing because it's so counter cultural.

Nadia Bolz-Weber: Uh huh. Yeah.

Simran Jeet Singh: Right? Like who else do we know that's like that? It's very few people. And so I wonder where that comes from for you, like in a context where you're like, I don't fit in anywhere. I don't feel like I belong and you could make a choice to conform.

Nadia Bolz-Weber: Honestly, I don't feel like I belong, and I better belong to myself for sure. And I belong to myself for sure.

Simran Jeet Singh: How did you come to that point in your life ?

Nadia Bolz-Weber: I think part of it really is the fact that I've been in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous for 32 years, you know, and so much of that process is you have to do a rigorous and thorough moral inventory of yourself. You're supposed to do an inventory of the fears that you have. I mean, you're really diving into the truth, because honesty is the only path to recovery.

The book actually says, like, this path is available to anyone who has the capacity to be honest. And so I think I saw the benefit of it, because my brain was still developing. When I got sober, you know, I mean, I was 22, and so I think it just formed my ideas of myself in the world and other people so deeply.

You know, I love going to recovery meetings because of how honest people are in that room. You walk in and you cannot believe what people are saying to a room full of strangers. And some of them just kind of hold forth and they're kind of performative, but it's rare. People are actually pretty real. So I think I had it modeled for me there. And I saw the benefit of it. And then it just became my sort of default setting.

To listen to the full conversation with Nadia Bolz-Weber on Wisdom & Practice, click here. And definitely follow Nadia on Substack here!

A photo with Nadia Bolz-Weber, and our mutual friend Jacqui Lewis in Washington, DC.