Wanting Both: Motherhood and Art

I've recently realized I don't like groups. Not because I don't like people. It's just that being in groups sends my social anxiety into overdrive. I lie awake at night replaying all the things I said wrong or didn't say, and imagining how people will hate me. Not a great trait, I know. I think it comes from wanting to be everything to everyone, and in a group, everyone needs something different. If you have intense social anxiety, you are not alone. And someone is actually researching what to say and when. Today I'm talking with social psychologist Vanessa Bohns, author of Should I Say Something? The Science of What to Share and What to Keep to Yourself, and I came away feeling like someone had finally handed the socially anxious among us a field guide. It's like an advice column that covers every situation you might find yourself in, except it's backed by research instead of vibes. The idea that stuck with me most: being honest, authentically, is often the kind option. Not the brave one or the risky one, the kind one. Vanessa’s research shows that when you reveal something vulnerable, people hear more than the content. They hear a signal that you can be trusted. In this episode, we talk about: * Why sharing something negative can build trust instead of breaking it * The 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative that keeps relationships balanced * Why venting to close friends can turn into rumination (and who to vent to instead) * Humble-bragging, “sad fishing,” and why they backfire * How to share good news with people who might respond with envy * “Benevolent honesty,” and why not giving feedback can be both unkind and dishonest * How to ask personal questions without making someone feel singled out * When to apologize, and what to say when you want to show empathy without taking the blame * What to do when there’s no clear right answer, only right versus right I also loved hearing how the book came to be (it was rejected by seven publishers before it found its home), and we spend some time on that gorgeous cover. If you’ve ever stayed up wondering whether you handled something the right way, I think this conversation will put your mind at ease. It did that for me. And if you want the book, you can find it here. It’s out TOMORROW, and she has a piece in the New York Times this week that pairs well with this conversation. Tell me in the comments: what’s the thing you’ve been wondering whether to say? With love,Carissa BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS is delighted you are here.

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A few months ago, I posted this episode, because I thought it was SO good behind a paywall. BUT I really want you all to hear what Savala has to say, so here goes. On Being Good with Savala Nolan Last night my husband was disappointed about a hot dog. He wanted a braught. Like not the thing I brought home. Not metaphorically. An actual hot dog, the wrong kind, because I’d gone to the store and grabbed a veggie one and we had some hot dogs. He didn’t make a scene. He was just quietly, visibly disappointed. And something in me lit on fire. I am not good at letting his disappointments not affect me. Because he had taken a nap. He deserved a nap. We all do. I stood in the kitchen doing the math that women have been doing forever — the meal planning, the grocery run, while doing laundry, the pickups, the social planning, the bedtime routine, all of it running parallel to a full time job — and I thought: I have spent my whole life trying to be good. And this is what it looks like. I’ve known Savala Nolan for a few years, since her first book Don’t Let It Get You Down stopped me cold. So when Good Woman came out — one of Ms. Magazine’s most anticipated books of 2026 — I couldn’t get my hands on it fast enough. Savala is a social justice lawyer, a mother, a writer, and about a thousand other things. And in Good Woman she asks the question I didn’t know I’d been waiting for someone to ask out loud: what does it actually mean to be good? Not good in the abstract — good as a woman. Good as a daughter, a partner, a mother. Good in the way we were all quietly handed a blueprint for and told to follow without question. Her argument is not gentle. We have been sold a lie. The lie is that goodness — the performing of it, the exhausting maintenance of it — will make our lives good in return. That if we are pretty enough, helpful enough, quiet enough, we will be rewarded with happiness, contentment, safety. That the hot dog will be appreciated. It won’t. It never was going to be. Savala has a practice she’s developing with her own daughter, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since she told me. She calls it raising her wild. Not wild like feral, not wild like out of control. Wild like: allowed to feel what she feels without being shamed into swallowing it. Wild like: she gets to choose what she wears, who she loves in movies, what she wants to be when she grows up — even if what she wants to be is the Wicked Witch and not Dorothy. Wild like: she can play in the mud because it feels good on her skin and that is reason enough. I am trying to do this with my daughter Margaret too. It is harder than it sounds. Because the training runs deep. I catch myself doing it — the gentle redirect away from the big feeling, the suggestion that maybe we don’t need to be quite so loud right now, the subtle steering toward the easier, softer, more acceptable version of herself. The good girl version. And then I have to stop and ask: good for whom? Savala’s point is that this is where it starts. Not with the hot dog, not with the marriage, not with the years of quietly shrinking — it starts here, in childhood, when we first learn that our hunger is inconvenient. That our wildness needs managing. That being good means making ourselves easier for everyone else to be around. What if it didn’t have to start there? What if we let them stay wild long enough to know what they actually want? I don’t have it figured out. But I am paying attention now in a way I wasn’t before. And some days Margaret comes home from school and something happens and instead of telling her to calm down I just say: tell me everything. And she does. And it is loud and it is messy and it is completely, perfectly her. That feels like a start. What I love about Savala is that she doesn’t just burn it down and leave you in the ash. She asks: if we don’t have to be good, what is the something else we’re all quietly yearning for? How do we even name it after a lifetime of not being al

Hi. It’s Carissa and this is bad at keeping secrets. How do you feel sad? What does grief look like? This week I have the pleasure sit down with Carla Fernandez to talk about something we all carry but don’t really know how to hold: grief. Her book, Renegade Greif, demands space for loss, offering tools, rituals, and language for navigating our sadness in a world that too often tells us to move on. If you’re yearning for a way to work with your sorrow, or just need permission to feel, this conversation is for you. It’s out in paper back now. Share this with someone to let them know they are not alone.

What if make-believe isn’t an escape from reality, but one of the ways we learn to face it? In this episode, I sit down with beloved children’s author Mac Barnett to talk about his new book, Make Believe, and why children deserve real art—not stories that simply try to teach them lessons. We explore the radical idea that kids aren’t unfinished adults waiting to become people. They are already whole human beings, and perhaps they have something to teach us. Together we talk about imagination as a practice of hope, why wonder might be one of our greatest survival skills, the history of children’s literature, and what makes a story true. If you’ve ever wondered how we prepare ourselves—or our children—for an uncertain future, this conversation is a gentle reminder that before we can build a better world, we have to be able to imagine one. Because maybe the best stories don’t tell us what to think. They remind us what it feels like to be alive. I hope you enjoy. XO, Carissa PS Bad at Keeping Secrets is something I do for fun, it is such a blessing to be able to share work that I wholeheartedly believe in. The podcast is edited by Mark McDonald, Music by my sister Officially Quigley and made possible by People I’ve Loved (in the sense that we pay for it). If you want to support us, get our new ONLY GOOD THINGS Calendar for 2027! PPS If you have made it this far, YAY! And also, I have a extra copy of Mac’s book, Make Believe. Do you want it? Comment here with your wildest dreams and I will randomly pick someone to sent it to in the USA.