Lifestyle
Painful sex? Broken vaginas? This underground zine normalizes the taboo
One night as she was lying in bed, Becky Feldman wondered, “Do I remember how to have sex?”
It had been at least a decade since the L.A.-based writer and performer tried to have intercourse. She had avoided it throughout her 20s for a few reasons: 1) She thought dating or being in a heterosexual relationship meant that she had to have penetrative sex, which wasn’t an option for her because it was too painful. 2) Several doctors had brushed off her pain, telling her that she just needed to relax. (After years of being misdiagnosed, she learned that she had a condition known as vulvodynia (a general term for chronic pain around the vulva). 3) All of the above weighed heavily on her self-esteem and confidence.
When Feldman turned 30, she realized that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life closing herself off from intimacy and pleasure. That’s when she decided to take the advice of her sex therapist and connect with a high-class male escort, she said.
The night didn’t turn out exactly as she’d hoped. She and the guy made out but didn’t have sex. Her takeaway from the experience? For the first time, she was able to confidently tell a potential sex partner about her condition. Not only did he believe her, he tried to understand her pain unlike her previous partners or her doctors.
This is just one of the intimate stories featured in Opening Up, a zine created by grassroots organization Tight Lipped, which advocates for people with chronic vulvovaginal and pelvic pain. The 80-page zine, which was first published in 2020, is filled with art illustrations, Q&A interviews, handwritten letters and poems from people living with conditions including vulvodynia, vestibulodynia (a form of vulvodynia and a general term for pain in the vestibule), pelvic-floor dysfunction (when the pelvic floor muscles function abnormally) and vulvar lichen sclerosus (a skin condition that primarily affects the genital skin).
The cover of Tight Lipped’s zine Opening Up.
(Kelly Fry)
Up to 28% of women deal with these physical conditions, which affect people’s daily lives when it comes activities such as having sex, using tampons and wearing pants, according to a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that polled nearly 20,000 women. (This study doesn’t appear to be inclusive of all gender identities.)
Because these medical issues aren’t required study in most residency programs, including those for gynecologists, many patients are misdiagnosed or aren’t given a diagnosis at all from their doctor. Also, for some people, the shame and embarrassment related to having one of these conditions keeps them from seeking treatment altogether.
“It was the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done — ever,” Feldman said about sharing her story in the zine. She learned about Tight Lipped via its podcast and responded to a submissions call-out to contribute to the zine. But “I’m happy that people are able to feel seen and heard through this,” said Feldman, who also talks about her medical condition through her solo comedy show, “Tight: A Night of Painfully Sexy Stories” which she’s performed in small theaters around L.A.
“I think so many people just relate to it,” she said.
That was Noa Fleischacker’s hope when she and other members of the Tight Lipped community decided to create Opening Up. Since her younger years, Fleischacker, Tight Lipped’s founder and executive director, has struggled to use tampons. She also couldn’t complete pap smear exams and she found penetrative sex to be painful. She was eventually diagnosed with pelvic-floor dysfunction.
Shortly after, she launched the Tight Lipped podcast, which allows her to talk about how these conditions affect people’s relationships, gender and sexual identities, and their overall daily lives. She also formed the patient-led organization for people with similar conditions. In November 2019, she hosted a weekend-long workshop in New York for people with vulvovaginal and pelvic pain. She said hearing people’s stories inspired the zine.
“I saw what happens when you put people in a room, and they hear each other say the same things that they’ve only thought to themselves,” said Fleischacker, a former political organizer in Chicago. “So it felt like: ‘OK, we have to find a way of creating something that not just makes people feel less alone but makes people understand the kind of bigger and political story about their pain and the medical experiences that they’re having.’”
Tight Lipped used donations to make the Opening Up zine. Since publishing Opening Up, the organization has distributed more than 750 print copies of the zine to individuals and doctor’s offices. (It sells for a suggested donation of $30. A free digital version allows people to listen to the contributors read their stories.)
Opening Up features entries from more than 50 contributors of various ages and backgrounds who come from L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Brooklyn and Indianapolis as well Australia, Canada, France, the U.K. and Germany.
(Julianna Brion / For The Times)
In Opening Up, there’s an entry from a 78-year-old woman, who wrote about how vulvodynia affected her marriage. Another entry tells the story of a woman who added her conditions — vulvodynia and pelvic-floor pain — to her dating app profiles to inform potential suitors. Some of the entries are anonymous, and content warnings appear on stories that discuss sensitive topics such as sexual assault.
For Kevinn Poree, 37, of New Orleans, reading the zine brought her comfort.
“I felt like, ‘Oh my God, I understand where you’re coming from,’” said Poree, who discovered Tight Lipped on social media after she was diagnosed with vaginismus and later provoked vestibulodynia (vestibule pain that occurs with pressure). “Even if you don’t necessarily have the same condition or the same symptoms, it was just so shocking and alarming that most of us have gone through the exact same experiences with providers and with stigma and dealing with friends and family and partners.”
“It was just very cathartic,” said Poree, who has since become a community member of Tight Lipped.
It took nearly a decade and about a dozen doctors for Keena Batti, 33, of Los Angeles, to receive a diagnosis for vulvar lichen sclerosus, pelvic-floor dysfunction and hormonally mediated vestibulodynia (which causes urinary urgency and frequency as well as pain during urination and penetration). She developed the latter condition from taking birth control, she said. After reading Opening Up, she asked her pelvic-floor therapist and gynecologist if they could display the zines in their L.A. offices. They happily obliged.
After a series of unpleasant and embarrassing doctor’s visits, Batti said she wonders if having the zine sooner could’ve helped her prove to others that her “experience is not uncommon.”
“I think it’s really powerful as a patient to see a tangible example of your own experience in print,” said Batti, one of the team leaders for Tight Lipped’s L.A. chapter. (The organization has chapters in San Diego, New Haven, Conn., and New York. Additional chapters in the U.S. are expected to open this year.)
“So hopefully as we continue to distribute it, we can catch more of those people who are feeling isolated,” Batti said.
Dr. Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist, said she has seen the effect of having the zine available in her office has had on her Washington, D.C.-area patients.
“It’s really powerful and important,” said Rubin, one of a handful of physicians with training in sexual medicine for all genders, about the zine. (She completed her fellowship with Dr. Irwin Goldstein in San Diego.)
“We can’t know what questions need to be answered if we’re not talking to people who actually have the questions,” said Rubin, who’s also the chair of Tight Lipped’s medical advisory board of 14 health-care providers. “So it’s a no-brainer to work with [Tight Lipped] because the more the patient advocates and doctors that can work together, the more change that we’ll see faster.”
In 2022, Tight Lipped launched a campaign for OB-GYN residency programs to include vulvovaginal and pelvic pain curriculum. The organization’s first major win was at Yale School of Medicine, which will offer this area of study as an elective for residents, according to Dr. Yonghee Cho, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the school.
Fleischacker said Tight Lipped is hoping to work with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and USC on future curriculum.
Sarah Ponce, 25, initially planned to become a primary-care physician when she enrolled in medical school at USC in 2021. But after she was diagnosed with acquired neuroproliferative vestibulodynia (pain that begins as a severe allergic reaction to a topical medication or is stemmed from a severe yeast infection), she realized that she was most passionate about urology.
“I’ve experienced the health inequities and disparities that come with being a female with pain and I know a bunch of other patients who have too,” said Ponce, a third-year medical student at USC. She added that she wants to change that.
As a Tight Lipped organizer, she’s assisting with the group’s campaign at her school. She also has helped host free pelvic health workshops at Los Angeles General Medical Center.
Tight Lipped also wants to make change on a federal level. When President Biden announced the first White House initiative on women’s health in November, the organization sent a letter with signatures from more than 800 patients, medical students and healthcare experts to call for chronic vulvovaginal and pelvic pain to be included as a priority area of focus.
All of this gives Ponce, Feldman, Poree and others hope.
In the zine’s foreword, the creators make it clear that Opening Up isn’t just for people who are coping with these conditions. Rather they encourage people to share the publication with everyone they know including their romantic partners, doctors, high-school sex education teachers, family and friends.
“It’s going to take more than just all the patients,” Poree said. “I think that the more the general public knows about these conditions, the easier it is for people to talk about them and get directed to the help that they need.”
In 2021, Zhao made history as the first woman of color to win the best director Oscar for her film Nomadland. Her Oscar-nominated drama Hamnet has made $70 million worldwide.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
It took a very special kind of spirit to make Hamnet, which is nominated for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Chloé Zhao brought her uniquely sensitive, mind-body approach to directing the fictionalized story about how William Shakespeare was inspired to write his masterpiece Hamlet.
Zhao adapted the screenplay from a novel by Maggie O’Farrell, and for directing the film, she’s now nominated for an Oscar. She could make history by becoming the first woman to win the best director award more than once.
Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, in setting an intention, a mood, a vibration for any event. Before Hamnet premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, she led the audience in a guided meditation and a breathing exercise.
Zhao also likes to loosen up, like she did at a screening of Hamnet in Los Angeles last month, when she got the audience to get up and dance with her to a Rihanna song.
She, her cast and crew had regular dance parties during the production of Hamnet. So for our NPR photo shoot and interview at a Beverly Hills hotel, I invited her to share some music from her playlist. She chose a track she described as “drones and tones.”
Our photographer captured her in her filmy white gown, peeking contemplatively from behind the filmy white curtains of a balcony at the Waldorf Astoria.
Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, and makes them a part of her filmmaking process.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
Then Zhao and I sat down to talk.
“I had a dream that we were doing this interview,” I told her. “And it started with a photo shoot, and there was a glass globe –”
“No way!” she gasped.
It so happens that on the desk next to us, was a small glass globe — perhaps a paperweight.
I told her that in my dream, she was looking through the globe at some projected images. “We were having fun and it was like we didn’t want it to stop,” I said.
“Oh, well, me and the globe and the lights on the wall: they’re all part of you,” Zhao said. “They’re your inner crystal ball, your inner Chloé.”
“Inner Chloé?” I asked. “What is the inner Chloé like?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” she said. “Humbly, from my lineage and what I studied is that everything in a dream is a part of our own psyche.”
Dreams and symbols are very much a part of Zhao’s approach to filmmaking, which she describes as a magical and communal experience. She said it’s all part of her directing style.
Chloé Zhao used painting and dance to connect with actors on the set of her latest film Hamnet.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
“If you’re captain of any ship, you are not just giving instructions; people are also looking to you energetically as well,” she explained. “Whether it’s calmness, it’s groundedness, it’s feeling safe: then everyone else is going to tune to you.” Zhao says it has taken many years to get to this awareness. Her own journey began 43 years ago in Beijing, where she was born. She moved to the U.S. as a teen, and studied film at New York University where Spike Lee was one of her teachers. She continued honing her craft at the Sundance Institute labs — along with her friend Ryan Coogler and other indie filmmakers.
Over the years, Zhao’s film catalogue has been eclectic — from her indie debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set on a Lakota Sioux reservation, to the big-budget Marvel superhero movie Eternals. She got her first best director Oscar in 2021 for the best picture winner Nomadland. Next up is a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“A creative life,” she notes, “is not a linear experience for me.”
Zhao still lingers over the making of Hamnet, a very emotional story about the death of a child. During the production, Zhao says she used somatic and tantric exercises and rituals to open and close shooting days.
She also invited her lead actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley to help her set the mood on set. They danced, they painted, they meditated together.
“She created an atmosphere where everybody who chose to step in to tell this story was there for a reason that was deeply within them,” actress Jessie Buckley told me.
Buckley is a leading contender for this year’s best actress Oscar. She said that to prepare for her very intense role as William Shakespeare’s wife, Zhao asked her to write down her dreams “as a kind of access point, to gently stir the waters of where I was feeling.”
Buckley sent Zhao her writings, and also music she felt was “a tone and texture of that essence.”
That kind of became the ritual of how they worked together, Buckley said. “And not just the cast were moving together, but the crew were and the camera was really creating dynamics and a collective unconscious.”
Filmmaker and Hamnet producer Steven Spielberg calls Zhao’s empathy her superpower.
Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR
That was incredibly useful for creating Hamnet — a story about communal grief. Steven Spielberg, who co-produced the film, called Zhao’s empathy her superpower.
“In every glance, in every pause and every touch, in every tear, in every single moment of this film, every choice that Chloé made is evidence of her fearlessness,” Spielberg said when awarding Zhao a Directors Guild of America award. “In Hamnet, Chloé also shows us that there can be life after grief.”
Zhao says it took five years and a midlife crisis for her to develop the emotional tools she used to make Hamnet.
“I hope it could give people a two-hour little ceremony,” she told me. “And in the end, I hope that a point of contact can be made. That means that there’s a heart opening. But it will be painful, right? Because when your heart opens, you feel all the things you usually don’t feel. And then a catharsis can emerge.”
As our interview time came to a close, I told Zhao I have my own little ritual at the end of every interview; I record a few minutes of room tone, the ambient sound of the space we’re in. It’s for production purposes, to smooth out the audio.
Zhao knew just what I meant. She told me a story about her late friend Michael “Wolf” Snyder who was her sound recordist for Nomadland. “He said to me, ‘I don’t always need it, but just so you know, I am going to watch you. And when I tell that you are a little frazzled, I’m going to ask for a room tone … just to give you space.’” she recalled. “‘And if you feel like you need the silence space, you just look at me, nod. I’ll come ask for a room tone.’”
I closed our interview ceremony with that moment of silence, a moment of peace, for director Chloé Zhao.
Lifestyle
This spring, have a tea ceremony inside of an art installation and shop the latest Givenchy
Givenchy by Sarah Burton introduces the Snatch
Givenchy’s “The Snatch” handbag.
(Marc Piasecki / Getty Images)
Echoing the designer’s ready-to-wear sculptural designs, the Snatch from Givenchy by Sarah Burton is sensually shaped by the contours of the person who carries it. Its supple leather, fluid silhouette and three sizes allow it to slip effortlessly and intimately into the hand, over the shoulder or across the body. Now available. givenchy.com
Guess Jeans opens new L.A. store
Guess Jeans store interior.
(Josh Cho)
In a move familiar to many millennials these days, Guess Jeans has returned home in its 45th year. The new flagship store in West Hollywood is both a return to its California roots and an envisioning of its future still ahead. While the brand may be an established icon, the store boldly reimagines the retail space as a living laboratory for design, craftsmanship and collaboration, with dedicated workshop and customization spaces. 8700 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. guess.com
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection highlights sodalite.
(Louis Vuitton)
Taylor Swift’s sky may be opalite, but the starry blue hues in the new jewels of Louis Vuitton’s Color Blossom collection belong to sodalite. Rarely used in jewelry, the dark navy of sodalite adds an unexpected layer of depth to Color Blossom’s existing luminous gemstone lineup. Sun and star motifs rendered in gold enhance the gem’s night sky coloring, while the classic flower designs celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Louis Vuitton Monogram. Sodalite pieces available March 6, entire collection available April 4. louisvuitton.com
Loro Piana debuts Library of Knits
Loro Piana’s Library of Knits comes in over 20 shades.
(Lora Piana)
L.A.’s (many) winter showers bring spring wildflowers, and a bouquet of Loro Piana’s new Library of Knits fits right into the vibrant spectacle. The exquisitely soft cashmere pieces in classic styles now come in over 20 shades inspired by Sergio Loro Piana’s personal wardrobe. With a spectrum ranging from blues and greens to corals and creams, it’s hard to choose just one for a frolic in the fields. Now available. loropiana.com
Margesherwood X Peanuts
The Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration features instantly recognizable motifs.
(Marge Sherwood)
Love is famously in the air this time of year, apparently even for cartoon characters. This enduring love is illustrated (literally) in the Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration. Inspired by the heart-fluttering love letters Sally writes to Linus, the designs feature instantly recognizable motifs that marry the Peanuts’ charm with Margesherwood’s refined silhouettes. The zig-zag of that famous yellow shirt winkingly graces a crescent baguette, while the black stripes of Linus’s red red shirt wrap around a slouchy shoulder bag. For the true heads and lovers, there’s even a petite hobo emblazoned with Sally’s pet name for Linus: “FOR MY SWEET BABBOO.” Now available. margesherwood.com
Ryan Preciado at Hollyhock House
Ryan Preciado’s site-responsive “Diary of a Fly” at Hollyhock House features Oaxacan-woven textiles.
(Roman Koval)
Ryan Preciado’s new site-responsive installation at Hollyhock House, “Diary of a Fly,” is titled after a late-1930s musical composition by Béla Bartók that imitates the frenzied pace of a fly — a fitting name since his show reconceptualizes the experience of the springtime pest flitting around a house. Instead of hovering around overripe fruit or stalking a trash can long neglected, however, viewers are invited to take in Preciado’s Oaxacan-woven textiles and brightly colored sculptures situated throughout the city’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site. Open through April 25. 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. hollyhockhouse.org
Veronica Fernandez at Anat Ebgi
Veronica Fernanadez’s “Prey” filters childhood memories through experience and emotion.
(Veronica Fernandez)
In the figurative paintings of Veronica Fernandez’s first solo exhibition, “Prey,” the artist’s childhood is recalled through dreamlike and fantastical scenes, with memories filtered through experience and emotion. Many of her works place a child at the center of the scene among family, friends and caretakers, who usually appear shadow-like at the edges of the paintings. As a kid, Fernandez endured periods of homelessness. But rather than depict a childhood of adversity, her paintings empower the kids within them to claim their own space, imbuing her memories with strength and light. Open through April 4. 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. anatebgi.com
Dior launches J’Adore Intense
Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers with Rihanna as its muse.
(J’Adore)
Florals for spring can be groundbreaking, especially when they’re created with none other than Rihanna as their muse. Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers — jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, violet — right before they burst into fruit. The result is a warm, bold, addictive fragrance that drips with sensuality and femininity, down to the curves of its signature gold and glass figure-eight amphora. In other words, it’s Rihanna in a bottle. Available now. dior.com
Rocky’s Matcha X Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán
Rocky’s Matcha hosts Japanese tea ceremonies in an ensō-inspired tea house from Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán.
(Stade New York)
The single, uninhibited brushstroke of the ensō, the circular form in Zen art, serves as a record of a moment. Commissioned by Rocky’s Matcha, Oscar Tuazon’s “Circle House” at Morán Morán shares both the ensō’s form and its call to mindfulness. In the artist’s tea house, constructed from cardboard, wood and tatami mats, architecture is inseparable from ritual: visitors will soon be able to partake in a Japanese tea ceremony inside the installation, thereby participating in a choreography of attention not unlike the act of gliding an ink brush across a sheet of washi. Open through December 31. 641 N. Western Ave. Los Angeles. Subscribe to rocky’s newsletter for tea ceremony information. rockysmatcha.com and moranmorangallery.com
Celebrate Mr. Wash’s new book, “Artists in Space”
Celebrate the launch of Mr. Wash’s new book of studio visits and interviews with other L.A. artists.
(Mr Wash)
Make your first BBQ of the season a meaningful one at the Art By Wash Studio & Community Center, where Compton artist and criminal justice advocate, Mr. Wash, will celebrate the release of his book “Artists in Space.” Proceeds from the book, which features interviews and studio visits with 20 Angeleno residents, go toward establishing the new community center where individuals returning home from incarceration will have access to art classes, creative residencies and housing. Mr. Wash will be in conversation with Patrisse Culllors and Evan Pricco (co-publisher and founder of the Unibrow) as well as displaying new works. The event is on March 7 from 2-6 p.m. 15 W. Rosecrans Ave., Compton. artbywash.com
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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