Live Show: Remarkable People Live with Special Guest Melissa Bernstein

Saving up and down already. That's. This is what happens the day after you ship a book. So I am Guy Kawasaki, and I am in Santa Cruz, California. Melissa, where are you?

Westport, Connecticut.

Westport, Connecticut. So we have both sides of the country covered here. And Melissa Bernstein is the author of a great, great new book. And for those of you who have kids and have ever bought a Melissa and Doug toy, she's the Melissa in Melissa and Doug. And she is this week's Remarkable People podcast guest, which shipped this morning. And I'm just going to give you a little bit of background. Well, Melissa, why don't you start off by introducing yourself and then I'll tell the story I'm going to tell. So, Melissa, go ahead, introduce yourself.

Hello, everyone. I'm Melissa Bernstein, and for 32 years, I have had the pleasure and joy of creating toys at Melissa and Doug. It's been my salvation. And this new Lifelines adventure I'll call it is something completely different. It's my finally coming out from the shadows for so many years because I have suffered with what is called existential depression since the moment I was born. And my creativity has been my salvation. So Guy was kind enough to share my story on his podcast. We had one of the most incredible conversations of my life. So I'm so happy to be here.

Well, I'll tell you so when I, when I heard about you, and of course the initial attraction was that you're co founder of Melissa and Doug, this humongously successful company. So in, in know, in sort of mental space, getting ready for your podcast, I thought, I'll do the research, right? So I do the research. And of course I come across the how I did this Guy Raz podcast. And basically that was an ex, an interview with Melissa and Doug about how they created Melissa and Doug and the whole story. Because Guy Raz, that's what he does. He goes to Melanie Perkins of, of Canva and various founders and explain how they created their company. So I thought, oh, I'll just Guy Kawasaki. We'll do another Guy Raz and you know, this entrepreneurial journey. And then I get the draft of Melissa's book and oh, my God, my head is exploding. It's like nothing to do with how to be a successful female entrepreneur. It's all about finding yourself and, you know, coming out, as Melissa said. So to put it mildly, I did not expect the interview in the podcast to go like that at all. I mean, I boy.

And can I tell you something? The most incredible thing ever. So when I wrote this book that came pouring out of my soul like. Like a thousand toys at one time. It was just my. My biggest product of my life. It was in me my whole life, and it poured out. And I went to someone, a literary agent, to get it sort of professionally published. Guess what? I was told the same thing I've been told. With everything creative I've done in my life, I'll get emotional. And my very words, I was told this. I was told, memoirs with verse do not sell. Do not come out with a memoir with verse. It won't sell. And I felt the same way I had felt throughout my life when people, anything I've ever done, they've said, it's not what society needs, it's not what society wants. It's not going to be accepted. I said, this is my truth. If it can't be accepted, then I am nothing. And I'm tired of fighting and trying to be conventional. So I'm going to put it out myself. And Doug looked at me and he said, honey, this is what we've done our whole lives. We can do it ourselves. And to hit number one in all books on Amazon this weekend, doing it my own self has been like, you.

Are the number one best selling book on Amazon.

Well, I hit it on Sunday for a few hours. I don't know where I am right now.

I hope you took a screenshot.

I did. Are you kidding? I absolutely did not. Because again, honestly, it's not about the numbers. I mean, we sell 70 million toys a year, you know, and Melissa and Doug, like, I know what it means to create, like, a bestseller, but this was the validation that we can speak our truth and people can tell us it's not right, that will never be heard, that no one will care. And guess what? I want to say something not so nice, but we can. In pretty dramatic words. But we can say blank. You like truth. Truth can be beautiful. And if we can't share our truth, then what? What are we? So I'm just. I'm. I'm proud that I didn't buckle once again to convention. And that's. That's all it made me say. It made me say, melissa, you can be okay with being exactly who you are because people see you finally and they're okay. They're okay with it.

Melissa, you are a better person than me because if I were number one on Amazon for a few hours, I would be covering the earth with that screenshot. And because I'm an insipid kind of guy, make my day so why don't you tell the story about your favorite professor at the University of Connecticut so people can understand the context of, you know.

Yeah. Of never being accepted.

Yes. Yes. So tell that story.

Yeah. And the same goes true, by the way, with our toys. You know, we've sold close to a billion toys, literally a billion units of toys. We've never won a conventional award. We've never been on the, you know, list for, like, most innovative. I've never won an award for being someone who created 10,000 toys, like, other than the. The recognition from our consumers, which is all we care about. So the other stuff matters zero to us. We've never gotten that validation either. But basically, very early on in our career, we had a profound trauma. Doug and I had our only product that we brought to our biggest toy show, the New York Toy show in the Javits center in. In the city. And we had it displayed, and we were so excited that we actually had four styles of our fuzzy puzzles. And maybe five minutes after the show opened, a customer, a dear customer of ours, we had a handful in those days, runs over and is, like, hyperventilating and says, you're not going to believe this. Five rows down, someone is selling your exact products, like, the exact replicas. And we look at each other and we're like, what? What are you talking about? She's like, you got to come with me. So I stay at the booth, manning the booth. Doug run. And comes back a few minutes later. He's white, he's ashen. And he says, basically, our factory owner is here, five rows down, with our exact product, selling our product as his very own. And we looked at each other, like, completely aghast. And we were like, what is going on? Like, we. This is our factory. We partnered with this factory. We had a verbal, of course, agreement that obviously they wouldn't take our products and sell them. I mean, it was implicit. And here they are selling our product. So we decided pretty much in an impulsive move that we were done with the toy industry. It was so brutal and morally corrupt, and we were better than that. And we did this for the love of children and sparking their imaginations. And, like, if we couldn't even sell our product and it was going to be copied within a few weeks of us coming out with it, then we would never survive. So we decided we would pursue completely different careers, and we started to wind down, and we decided we would go to graduate school. Doug would be a university president, which was one of his other dreams. And I would get an MFA in creative writing and pursue my poetry, which, by the way, I never showed the world. But I had been writing these verses my whole life. And probably at that point, in my early 20s, had maybe, you know, I don't know, 500, 1,000 of them. I now have, like, 5,000 of them. But. So we applied to the only school we could afford because we were really broke in those days. Those were the days of a hot pot with one rusty pot. And we ate ramen and turkey hot dogs for two out of three meals a day, because ramen were seven for a dollar. And turkey hot dogs, you could get a pack of 10 for 99 cents. And our meals had to be under 50 cents because that's all we could afford. So we would each have a good day. Was like one turkey hot dog cut up. I should say a bad day. A good day, we would take two, and we'd cut it up anyway. That was like, the really poor days. And we knew that if Doug was an R.A. we could get our tuition paid at UConn University of Connecticut in our backyard. So this is really long. I'm so sorry. It's really long winded. But I. I submitted. I had to submit as part of my application. I think it was like 50 of my verses. And it was the first time they had ever seen light. And I was completely exhilified, exhilarated and terrified. My word I've created because I knew that maybe for the first time I had the potential to be seen as a legitimate, like, poet. But terrified because this was the first time I was sharing my words and I didn't know how they'd be reviewed. Anyway, a few short weeks later, I get a letter in the mail. This was not email days. This was letter. And basically. And I wish I had that letter. Cause that would be the most precious thing. But I truly ripped it up. The letter said, dear Melissa, we are not accepting you into our MFA program. In short, your poetry is truly sophomoric and not of the caliber our program demands. Sincerely, you know, good luck on your future writing endeavors. Sincerely, head of the department. It was the head of the department. And I looked at it, like, a few times. And I was. You know, I can't. I. Heartbroken. I was. I was shattered. And I even had to look up the word sophomore, even though I had read the thesaurus for fun my whole life. Because I was like, I hope it doesn't mean what I think it means. Which is, like, stupid. I was like, maybe there's a good word in There and there wasn't. It basically said, dim witted, dumb, silly, innate, juvenile, juvenile. Like, it was all the most horrific words to describe what flowed organically from my soul and that rejection. So we ultimately, because I didn't get into the program, we ultimately, and we kind of started having a bunch of signs from the cosmos saying, like, stay in toys. We ultimately decided not to pursue that path and stay with our business. But that rejection was so profoundly horrifying and shattering that I actually stopped writing my verses for the two decades following. Well, I did not write a single verse for 20 years because I believed that that meant that my verses weren't worthy and I wasn't worthy as a writer and would never find resonance with anyone.

Well, I think the lesson there is one should never take an external review of your abilities too seriously, because I'm going to read the audience my favorite poem from your book. Okay? Okay. So it goes like this. Keep it coming. Bring it on. Attack me with your wrath, for I no longer feel the blows as I have found my path. And I just love that poem. I'm gonna put it on my gravestone.

And that's. You know, I really felt this vendetta against the world. I have to say, it was like anything I had ever done that emerged organically from my soul, my whole life had been rejected. Every, every. Everything I said about myself, every time I tried to share my deep, dark feelings, every time I tried to show people, like, what I cared about and that I was curious, I was so tacitly rejected and told, like, we don't. You're weird, you're. You're odd. Like, nobody cares about you. You're being so curious. And I think that was the message that I got, and I believe this, the message. So many of us who are hypersensitive, who think continually, who are curious, who are creative, I feel like our minds work a little differently and we're always judged for that. And. And I judged myself for that as well. So it was the double judgment.

So some people may be wondering, what exactly is an existential crisis like this? So what are the manifestations of this?

Wow. So from the manifestation started from the moment I took my first breath, because my mother said, and she repeated it recently to me when I, when I came out, that I had this because no one knew, including my own parents or myself until maybe five years ago. She said, I screamed 247 for the first year of my life. And they weren't normal, colicky screams. They were screams of sheer terror. And she said, I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. And I think those questions. There were three questions that I asked myself from my earliest recollection. I might have been two years old. And they were, why am I here? What is the meaning of life if we are all ultimately going to die and turn to nothing? And what am I meant to do in my brief time here? And because I couldn't even verbalize those questions, much less get an answer to them, I lived in a state of utter. An utter sense of futility toward life. And I couldn't understand if I was so plagued with these why questions, why the hell was everyone else walking around like nothing was wrong? Like, why were they just freely, carefreely, like, living and dancing and loving life when I was like. Like mortified and terrified of every single thing? And it. It led to this profound sense of unsettledness, of not quite rightness, of. And not fitting in on this earth and not fitting in. In my own being. So it was this sense of isolation from myself and from everyone and everything. And because that was so terrifying, I had to resort to coping mechanisms in order to still be here. Because honestly, Guy, I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't engaged in some really effective coping mechanisms, which were basically denial and repression and disassociation from single thing. I felt so deeply that it would never come up. And manifesting a facade of perfection, which I basically adopted and wore my entire life.

Well, you fooled a lot of people for 50 years, including myself. Yeah. And then what happened? What. What made you come out, so to speak?

It was a. It was a combination of a bunch of things. You know, the first, just more generally, is that pain plus resistance equals suffering. I was in such sort of unconscious pain. I was resisting who I was and what I was feeling for so many years. And I was suffering so greatly. I didn't show it, but I was. And I'm. I got 5,000 letters from Sunday when I was on a show on cbs. Five thousand and counting.

Oh my.

A hundred more almost every single hour. And those letters are so deep and soulful. And we hit a chasm of despair in this world. And they mention a word, and it was funny. They all use similar words. They mentioned the word exhausted, exhaustion, exhausting. And I looked in my book. I decided, I'm going to see how many times I use that word. And I used it like 25 times because we, all those of us who feel this weight of the world on our shoulders, feel. It was so exhausting. I reached this point where living was so exhausting that I couldn't spend another day fighting myself. And there was a point when it sounds like, too dramatic, but I am overly dramatic. I'm a creative. Where literally the pain of living, the unbearable being of myself became so great that one day I couldn't take it any longer. And I just kind of looked up, I sat down, I looked up toward the heavens. I'm not sure why, but, like, that's where I find, seek help, and said, I give up. Like, take me. I'm yours. I can't do this anymore. And that was the first day in my life, I was like, 49 years old, that I admitted I needed help, that I couldn't do this alone anymore, that I wasn't perfect. I was imperfect and flawed and needed help and needed to finally stop racing outside myself for the answer, to stop denying and repressing who I was and go inward and finally take all those disintegrated pieces of Melissa and try to put them back together and repair my soul so I could try truly gain self acceptance and come out as I truly am.

So if people are suffering from the same kind of issues right now, what is your recommendation to them? How should they?

It's not a great one because. Because we're all looking for the answer outside ourselves, you know, And I'm not a professional. I am one person who has created toys for 32 years and now has written a book and has. Has taken her own arduous, arduous journey. So I'm one person's advice. But having read so many letters and talked with so many individual people who are suffering, basically, there comes a point in life when what we've been doing doesn't work anymore. And almost all of us are doing the same thing. We are looking outside for the answers. We're chasing dreams to every corner of the earth, right? Trying to find fulfillment and peace and happiness out there. And we're looking to the next program, the next guru, the next self help, you know, podcast to get us there. And I was doing the same thing. I was engaged. One of the volumes of my book is the Feudal Race. And that's where I was my whole life. I was racing as fast as I could to do everything to help myself when I finally realized with a deep, sad face, that the answer was always inside me all along. I just had to make that journey inward. And that journey is the most terrifying journey most of us will take. So the answer comes in finally admitting that it's not out there, that we cannot be Invested in our pain and our. Invested in our shame and guilt and blaming and denying. And I wrote a couple verses that. Really, that day, that day that I had my crisis, I wrote two verses that are my mantras every day. And one of them is, we alone possess the power to spend life forevermore brokenhearted in a cell or walk right through the open door. Like, the door is always open, and it's our choice whether to walk through it or. Or to remain imprisoned in our head. And the other one is, we can stay a lowly victim, blaming others for our plight, or start living with intention to make every moment bright. And it was that intention. I can sit there, entrenched in my own misery for the rest of my life, blaming and shaming and denying, or I can realize I actually have power over my own behavior, attitude, and actions. I can choose to stop sitting here in my own malaise, and I can walk the path. I can take this boulder in front of me. I can't walk around it. I can't jump over it, but I can have the courage to go through it. And with the help of my trained professional, which I needed for my journey. It was so dark. Touching. Existential despair is not for the faint of heart. And I almost broke. I was this close to ending my life when I. When I finally had to face it. But I didn't. And I went through it, and I stared that despair right in the eye. And I realized after I came back up that even though that few days that I did it were some of the darkest of my life, they weren't as dark as 40 years spent repressing it. So I made my goal in life to show others the light and show others the path that I took. And I know I can't save anyone else. I can't wear their backpack for them, unfortunately. I want to. I want to wear everybody's backpack and say, I can drag you down the path. I realize nobody can do that but yourself. And so many of us are so invested in our pain that we're not ready to go down the path toward ourselves and sow our own seeds of salvation. But I can show you the light, and I can tell you that it's your choice. And if you choose to not do it, that's also your choice that you have to live with.

Well, let's talk about what you're doing now with Lifelines, and we explain what that is and how people. How that can help people.

Yes, absolutely. So Doug and I decided that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives In. In, you know, we. We love toys. And we're still involved in Melissa and Doug in every way. But we had an even greater mission to serve, which was helping people one realize they're not alone. Because I spent my whole life truly feeling like I was on another planet, completely alone and isolated. And I don't want anyone else to feel that way again because it's untrue. Like, I now see now that in the short time I've come out and shared my truth, like, I realized we're all the same. We are all the same, rich or poor, no matter where you come from, we all share the same feelings. And depression doesn't choose. I can have everything in the world and still be depressed. I promise. I have everything in the world, and I've been depressed. So that's one. Two is we all have the ability and the power to turn our darkness into light. That's what we were just talking about. We do have those sparks within our soul that if we have the courage to sow them, they will kindle into a bonfire with humanity. They really will. And three is until we make that inward journey, we will never find peace or ultimate fulfillment. And that journey is the centerpiece of our lifelines.com ecosystem that Doug and I are funding completely from the goodness of Melissa and Doug. It's entirely free. It's the journey that anyone can take. It's my journey, and I put it on there and wrote it with my therapist. So it's been really cool. We've gotten to partner in more ways than her just helping me with psychotherapy. She helped me as a partner on lifelines. We have content. We have these workshops which are so meaningful. We get in these groups and we really talk about some of these feelings that people are so scared to talk about. And I love that I want to talk about everything. Like, all these things that I felt so stigmatized about sharing, we're talking about. It's not all happening today because we're a work in progress, but we're talking about them. And it's a community. Like, our Facebook group is so strong, and people are sharing beautiful, beautiful things and feeling a communion because all our seekers are mostly. I should say most of our seekers are introverts who never felt accepted or that anyone would ever see them. And we now have hundreds of these seekers together.

Wow. I remember when we were doing the interview, we would go on a topic and you would just, like, in real time, recite one of the poems you wrote about that topic. And that was absolutely uncanny to the point of almost being unsettling that someone could just whip off a poem like that. Maybe you can do that as a demo right now, because I remember that in the podcast, I told you, and I hope you took this as a compliment, that you're like a female Jewish Muhammad Ali. You could just whip these poems out. So can you give us a sample? Because I was blown away by that ability.

Yeah, I. You know, I wrote one a couple months ago, and it really describes sort of where I've been and where I've come. And it's. I've spent five long decades quaking in the backseat of my car, incapacitated passenger observing, flying from afar while the landscape raced on by. And I gawked utterly agape, knowing life would never change until I opted to escape from the backseat to the driver's seat and grab the steering wheel, now absolved to choose my course and voice exactly how I feel.

Wow, that continues to blow me away that you can do that.

I'm just, you know, they are my lifelines. Like, this isn't a joke. Like, when I write them, they are what are keeping me here alive. So when I voice something, it becomes woven into who I am. It's like knowing my children's names. Like, every one of them is as precious to me as one of my children because they kept me here. And many of them, I can't even say without sobbing because they. I know they're like my beacons and what's saved me so. And, you know, my, My, my one that's the first one on my book is Today I Saved a life, although it was my very own, but won't serve a greater purpose till I rescue lives unknown.

I. I'm just speechless. Oh, Melissa, I. I told you that I read. When I read your book, that meant that I read more poetry in that one day than in the prior 67 years of my life. So now I. I don't give a. What that University of Connecticut said. You are not a sophomore poet at all.

Oh, my God, that means so much to me. And, you know, after that incident, it still makes me emotional. That's how much one person's words. And I think it's another lesson, like, we have to really be careful about what we say to people, especially hypersensitive people, because one person's words can literally change the trajectory of their lives. I mean, that one person changed my life. And thank goodness I channeled that same, you know, philosophy into making 5,000 toys during that period, because if not, I might have ended My life, like, because of that. Because it invalidated me as. As a person. So I think, you know, we. We have to allow our truth to emerge and know that people will either. Oh, but I know what I was going to say. I was going to say I. After that, I knew in my heart that I could never even call myself a poet because the fact that some erudite professor at a university, like, told me that I was sophomoric meant that I wasn't even a poet. And, like, the greatest gift in my life would have been to be called a poet. And here I couldn't even call myself that, you know, and so I think I don't even call my verse. I call them verses because I can't even bring myself to call them poems today because those words were so hurtful. So I think we have to really. We have to really think about what we say to people.

So on the flip side, there is a value in being honest and providing feedback, some of which is negative. So how does one do that without crushing the person's soul or possibly crushing the person's soul?

To be honest with you, it's very simple. I think the issue that I ran into was someone was judging it from the wrong perspective. They were judging it from their head, not their heart. And like, with our toys, I mean, we're judged every single day. And a beautiful judging in a good way. We bring our toys to our audience, to our children, and we watch them, play with them, and we say, oh, my goodness, this is not engaging at all. This feature that we develop, no one cares about or can't use or is too confusing. And we look at user testing of the actual audience, and that isn't. That's not criticism. That's your people really using it and telling you what they need and what doesn't work and what they want. That's entirely different. You know, I feel like what was happening in the poetry and I write about this in the book because I needed to justify it. I was so hurt that that was an intellectual analysis of it when it was against my entire philosophy that real art, real poetry, real toys should hit you right here and you shouldn't have to decipher it. And I think he was saying to me, because they're so simple, like, they're meaningless. Like, there's nothing for us to talk about in a class. Like, we can't take six months to figure out what this means because you're saying it right there. So I was like, yeah, I guess I am. I'm distilling bigger, you know, bigger wisdom into small truths. Like, I'm sorry, that's how it comes out for me. So I think it means bringing what you want evaluated to the appropriate audience and really then listening to their feedback and not taking it as criticism, taking it as beautiful gifts they're giving you to make your product better.

Okay, now let's pretend that you know it's Melissa, freshman in college. What would you tell freshman in college, Melissa, with hindsight, now that you know, you know what happened?

Wow. So that those years of college were the darkest of my life. Those were when I came the closest to ending my life. And I now know why. And I just told a freshman in college this. I just spoke with someone the other day who was asking my advice, who's about to start college, and she said, what can I do to protect myself? So this is fresh. So what happened to me is I was a musician and a creative my whole life. I didn't realize it was my, like, salvation. But I realize now I innately needed to do it to survive and stay in my heart. I wrote music, I played four instruments. I was thinking of being a professional musician. And when I decided to go to college, I chose academics over my creative channel. And I left everything cold turkey. I dropped everything. I did creative and I anchored to two things in college. I anchored to my academic performance and my social performance. I was determined to get into the most sought after Barbie sorority where everyone looked like Barbie because she was like my, my hero. I was a Barbie playing girl and I wanted to get all A pluses and graduate as valedictorian. Those were like truly my two goals. And I left. Anything that brought me in my heart, that actually brought me to the present and was a lifeline, I left and dropped out the window. And basically what ended up happening, I had a tremendous breakdown my junior, the second semester of my junior year, a complete crash. Because the two things that I anchored to, I quote, unquote, failed in. I didn't get into the Barbie sorority. You can see why. I don't look like Barbie, not even close. And you don't see my height. I'm 5 foot 2. And the Barbies in that sorority were all like 5, 10 to 6, 4 because they were Runway models. And I didn't get all A pluses. I, I got close. But for me it was all or nothing. So I completely collapsed. So what I would say to you is, develop your practice before you go to college. Keep alive and vital every single day. Those things that keep you squarely in your heart, those things that make you feel alive, and you're doing for nothing other than the joy of doing them. And that practice, which is what I have now to keep me grounded when I go either up there or down there is exactly that. It's playing music. It's listening to music. It's writing my verses. It's drinking tea. It's walking in nature. It's being with people who I love. It's my furry friends. You know, it's all those things that for each one of us, are unique. So. And I told this. This girl that I was sort of mentoring, I said, create your practice today and assess. Especially practice it during the good times. Because what we do is when we're feeling good, when life is free and easy, we don't do our practice. Like, who the heck wants to do a practice when you're feeling great? But that's the problem, because then the day you wake up, you open your eyes and you're like, oh, this is a really low day. Like, I don't want to get out of bed. It's not muscle memory. You haven't practiced it. So then it's almost impossible to enforce it once you haven't practiced it. So I stick to my practice like glue. In fact, the minute we're over, we're done. I am. I'm forcing myself to go on my hour walk in nature. Like, if I don't do that every day, no matter what's going on, I start to go below the line, and I feel it. I feel myself starting to sink, and it's like, I can't do that. I can't do that for myself. I can't do it for all my seekers. I can't do it for my kids. So I have to take care of myself and do my practice and every single day.

Okay, that. Great advice. Oh, my God. I think I should stop monopolizing this conversation and open this up for questions. So, Jeff, do we have any great questions that Melissa can take from the audience?

I hope so.

Do you see that Melissa on your screen?

Yes. Oh, you know, I'm so glad you said that, Hollywood. So I have. We have a line of books called. Well, we have a whole bunch of books, but our polka dot books and a whole bunch of others are rhyming. And I did. I wrote all those books. I've written about 25 of the Melissa and Doug books. Anyone that has a rhyme in it, they're mine. So thank you. And yes, that was profoundly joyful. And we just did that a Couple years ago. So it was once I started writing my verses again, we did that. So, yes, I'm so happy because I think they are maybe more suited for children. Maybe that was my problem. I should have applied to preschool and using my verse, they would have been like, yay, she's valedictorian of the preschool.

Well, you know what they say about children telling the truth, right?

So it's so true.

It's a tougher audience, arguably.

Exactly.

Here's another question.

To the pandemic. That's a great question. So believe it or not, it was not connected at all. Like this was just, you know, my own journey and it had reached such a crescendo in wanting to heed the cry of my soul to be seen that it just happened simultaneously. But I can tell you we have tapped into a deep, deep well of despair. And it is so deep that I had to go to my own therapist today, to be honest, because I feel like I might become overwhelmed by the pain in the world right now. There is such deep despair out there. I can't even, I can't even come to terms with it. So, yes, I think, you know, and, and I think one of the things I said on the Sunday show that was resonated was our next pandemic, which is happening right now, is depression. I mean, There are nearly 300 million people in the world suffering from depression right now. And the letters I have received, it is so deep and so many people are suffering and it's no 1 age. It's going from 8 year olds all the way to 108 year olds. So again, we're just one tiny little cog in this huge mental health wheel. But I'm really hoping that we can just help elevate this conversation to what do we do about these folks who are so profoundly isolated and alone and how do we get them to discover those unique gifts in them because they're so hopeless that can allow them to engage in the flow of life. And, you know, all I can do is show my own experience and shine my own light. But I'm trying to do that as best I can because I think this last year has made the crisis so, so, so much greater.

Okay, here's another one. Oh, you've kind of done this, haven't you?

Yes, yes, Andrea or Andrea. Yes, we are doing workshops. We've just started. We've been doing them and absolutely, that is the thing I want to do most. I want to create workshops for all these topics We've been talking about perfectionism We've been talking about martyrdom. We've been talking about loneliness. That was, like, a really deep one. So many of us were crying, including myself. Like, these are really deep topics that we need to talk about, because when we shine the light on things that we think we're alone and feeling, we don't feel alone anymore. And that alone, for me, has been so profoundly validating. Just knowing that other people share these deep, dark, stigmatizing feelings, like, makes me feel like, almost like I'm wrapped in a blanket, a warm blanket. So that's what we're doing. We had one last night, and some of them are not going so well because our attendance is. Has gone way up, and we're not able to give that intimate, like, attention we want. But we're. We're. We're not stopping. Like, this is what I'm doing the rest of my life. So hopefully I'm here a good long time, and I have 40, 50 years to. To keep making this what our audience, what our seekers want it to be.

All right, Jeff. Anymore.

Yay. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, there is. It's not. It's a shortage of good mental health professionals. I have to be honest. Like my friend, my good friend was telling me his wife is a therapist. The training for therapists is terrible. Like, it's not real world training. It's like academic training in here. And I can tell you, with my own therapist, the reason it's worked so well is because she had been to that deep, dark place herself. Like, she had such calm, you know, calmness to be able to go there with me and such experience in touching the darkness and being able to stay there. And she told me, she said, melissa, you wouldn't have been able to go to anyone else. And they, you know, and have them be able to do what I did. Like, so few of them have actually done, done the work almost like that professor. You know, they're up here in the academic, and they're not here in the heart. So that's a great question. I think that field has to. There's so much that has to be done. And I mean, we're just peer to peer, but I feel like, you know, we're going to do our part in just trying to support people and maybe show them they're not alone. And hopefully one of our goals is to get incredible referral services so that it doesn't have to be like, call this hotline, that we can give them some more referral and hopefully one day finance the ability for people who can't afford mental health. I talked to a woman yesterday. She said, you know, it's easy for you, Melissa. Like you can afford to go to a therapist. I can't. And it really, you know, I'm getting lots of letters like that. Like, you know, I understand you're afflicted and I empathize with you, but you're fortunate. You have resources and I get it. So many are suffering and don't have resources. So there's a lot that needs to change. Like, I'm, I'm probably not that person who's going to change those things, but I'm going to try to do my part to support people as best as we can at lifelines.

Are you working at all with Arianna Huffington?

That's so funny. I mean, we're close to working together. Sort of like a few degrees of.

Separation, but I can make you one degree of separation. But I mean, she's all about thriving and so are you in a sense.

Yeah, I mean, I would love that. I would love that connection.

I'll take care of it as soon as this ends.

Thank you. Your platform is helping us so much. Get this word out there. And you know, many have said to me, just knowing that you, who look like you have it all, have these feelings has made me feel so much better. And I think that's when we share our truth and when, when I can say, like, I have everything. I have a husband who adores me to such a degree I can't even bear it sometimes. I have six kids who, yeah, despite their, they're, they're like regular kids, but, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're cool. I have every material, like, thing I could have ever want and more. I have a 500 million dollar toy company that's still growing. Like, there's nothing more that I could ask for. I have a number one selling book. But did that, has that brought me inner peace? Absolutely not. Do people like us enjoy the trappings? Sure we do. It's nice to, you know, go on nice vacations. But I can tell you it didn't do a thing for my soul and nothing. In fact, it probably made it harder for me to actually go inward because it was so easy to cling to the success and the validation through that. I had to do the work just like every single other person does. So I think the more people like me and like all of you can come out and say, we're all the same, we're not so different and I see you and you see me. And we can find communion in that and. And know that that isn't the answer. Chasing the success like that alone, hopefully will do a little good in this world. Cayman Kelly. I don't know if that's the Cayman Kelly. So can I. Can I share this guy?

Yeah, whatever you want.

So Cayman Kelly reached out to me on Instagram a couple days ago, and I don't even know how to use Instagram. So my daughter kept saying, this guy came in, keeps reaching out to you. And I was like, okay, whatever, Cayman. And then yesterday, I finally looked at it and I was like, cayman Kelly. So I am. Music is one of my lifelines. And my favorite radio station on the planet is Sirius XM48. Heart and soul. Because R B is my favorite genre, and I'm like an RB queen. Queen. And if you asked me in my next life what I want to be, it's two things. It's an NBA basketball player and an R and B. An R and B star. Like, I want to be able to sing my heart out like. Like Andre Day or, you know, some of these incredible singers. So, anyway, the host of my favorite, you know, part of Heart and Soul is Kayman Kelly. Like, he's like a household name to me because I listen to it wherever I go. And he has this deep voice and he's so soulful, and he interviews these stars. And I was like, that can't be the Cayman Kelly. Like, the Cayman Kelly I listened to every day. She's like, yeah, I think it's that guy. He didn't say his show, but he said he's like a. Has a show, so. And he, you know, shared beautifully with me. And I hope that's you because you've brought such light into my life. And I know when you're. When you're on radio, sometimes you don't see the impact you're having on people. But, like, I listen to you and sometimes cry because your words are so beautiful. And the music you play on that station just touches my soul.

Wow.

I mean, there can't be too many Cayman Kelly's.

I meet the. Subscribe to Sirius again. Okay.

It's really good. Oh, yeah. And, you know, one of the other things we're doing, which I'm so excited about, so. Because the English language doesn't allow us to adequately express feelings, I think English is very black and white. It's like we're happy or we're sad, where it's dark, or we're. Or it's Light. And so many times I have a mix of feelings, like, I'm both happy and sad. And I've used this word just in the last two days. I call it crafting. Because on so many of these calls, I'm crying and laughing at the same time. Like, it's so funny, but it's so sad, or it's so powerful, and it's just like, there's no word to describe. I don't think laughing and crying at the same time. And, you know, so we're going to create an entire lexicon of Lifeline's emotional language and our community. I want to help with this. And I mean, some of my favorite words that I've created for myself are exhilified. Because if I don't wake up every day exhilified, which is the combination of exhilarated and terrified, like, something's wrong. And I realize now, like, it's not going to only be exhilaration, because I'm terrified. Like, today, I. I mean, I'm not a speaker. Like, I'm terrified of doing this, but it's. But I'm also exhilarated because if it goes well, we get more followers and people who need our support. Like, that's going to mean the world to me. Another one is blurs. I'm blursed because I finally came to see that my blessing was also my curse. And I now kind of see it as, like, they're both the same. They're intertwined for all of us. Like, you can't have just one without the other. And another one is danieling. I spend many days danieling, which is denying what I'm feeling. And so many of us, Daniel constantly. And I want to stop doing that. And then the last one just is another one. It's kind of the lesser form of exhilified. It's nervited. And it's when you know it might be something smaller because it's not the exhilaration and the terror, but it's being nervous and excited at the same time, and that's. That might be just as you're about to. I don't know what, like, go to one of your kids games, and it's like the championship game. So it wouldn't be exhilified, but it could be. I'm nervited. I'm nervous about what might happen, but I'm also excited, you know, so those are just a few, but I feel like there's so many. I'm always trying to excite, express the ineffable, which is one of my favorite words. It's unable to be expressed in words, and I believe there should be nothing ineffable. That's what I'm trying to prove through my verses, that my goal is to describe the ineffable in everything.

I may have to rip off some of your new words. Oh, those are great words. And Cayman Kelly has confirmed that it is him.

Yay. It's my hero. That's awesome.

Melissa. I'm afraid that this interview is so good, people won't have to listen to the podcast anymore.

Oh, of course. Are you kidding? You asked so many. You asked the best question any interviewer has ever asked me in a question. Can I say it?

Yes.

So in the middle of it, you just stopped and you said, I have to ask you a question. I was like, of course. Ask anything. You said, how can you not be divorced after all this?

Yeah. And you might as well answer, because.

I loved that question. I was like, this guy is so honest. And that's what, you know, we're trying to do here, right? We're trying to rip off the. The guys and say, here we are in all our. You know, in all our authenticity. And that's why today, even though when I was younger, I wore makeup and stuff, I don't even wear makeup now. You know, I'm trying to say, like, I'm not putting on anything, truly anything. I am just coming to you exactly as I am, and I. Because I want you to see that I'm a real person, and that's. That's all I can do. I can't do anymore. So, anyway, the answer to that. Why am I not divorced? I guess I'd say Doug is a very patient man. And I think, you know, we've moved with each other. You know, I think we've had this extraordinary journey with Melissa and Doug, which has taken us to the peaks of exhilaration and the depths of despair like nobody's business. And we've had that same journey with our children, and we've just. We've held hands through the whole thing. And it's not that we don't have. You know, we're both very strong personalities, so absolutely. We have our issues every single day. It's not like it's a. You know, like rainbows and. And sunshine every day, But I think we're just committed to being there for each other. And like anything you're intentional about. If you're intentional about keeping a relationship alive, then, you know, you make it happen. And that's what we do we make it happen?

You know, I find it a little interesting that no one has ever asked you that question, because it seems like such an obvious question that you, you know, you talk about. For 50 years, you had this existential depression and all these issues going on, and that's one of the first questions that came to mind. And I thought about it a long time before I said, God, guys, should you be the asshole who asked that question?

I love it. Like, I wish. And that's the thing, to be honest with you. I'm so tired of the ones that just ask the same old questions like. Like, that's not what people wanted. They really want to hear, like, how did you grow your business to, you know, like, that people can't relate to that. Like, tell. Ask the stories about when we thought the business was going to end or, you know, the days that, you know, those are the stories people can relate to and should relate to. And. And it's not the success. I mean, you know, that. That's. That's elusive. That's, like, out there. So that isn't what gives you fulfillment and meaning, and it's not what gives me fulfillment and meaning. To be truly honest, like, I could care less about the numbers and the. You know, I just. The only reason it gives me validation is I know that we're doing something that's touching people. You know, that's the. That's all I seek is if we're selling that many toys, then it means that we're creating something that might ignite a child's imagination, and that's all you hope for.

Well, I think another question that people would wonder naturally is, in the midst of all of this, how did you raise your kids?

I mean, they might ask the same question.

Maybe I should interview them.

But, yeah, yeah, that's the better question to ask. You know, and the other thing that's the myth that I'm trying to dispel, the other word, that's a bad word to say to me is that balance word. And I'm on a lot of podcasts, and people are like, so, Melissa, how do you balance it all? And actually, Kim and Kelly could ask that question a lot better. How do you balance it all, heart and soul? But, you know, that word is like the word perfectionism. To me. Balance is something you strive for and you always fall short of, because there is no blanken way anybody can achieve balance. And certainly not I, with six kids and the business we had. And I never tried to go for that balance, because if I did I knew I would have every day been berating myself for not achieving it. And I think life to me is about being intentional. And I know that's a cliched word now a lot of people use it, but really, intentional means doing everything you do from your heart, not your head. So I always said to moms who would ask me, how do you balance at all? And I was like, I don't. There's no balance. So get that word out of your vocabulary. There's no balance, however, if you go to your job or stay home for your job, whatever it is today. But let's say go to your job and you're thinking about your kids and you're guilty about your kids, and you're lamenting everything that's going on at home, and then you come home and you're worried about your job because you didn't give your all to your job, and you have phone calls to finish, then you're not being intentional, then life is a complete and utter mess. But if you first, as a mom, admit that you, or I should say, really believe that you love what you're doing and. And want to do it. And that's. For me, working was something that I was so profoundly grateful for and I had to do for my soul. Like, I never thought I would be one or the other or work. And, you know, I always knew I wanted to work full time and I wanted to have kids. And so I always communicated to my kids, like, I don't love you any less because I go to work, because they'd always say to me, you don't love me. You love the other kids, you make toys, her more than me. And I would say, no, actually, I love you the same as them. I don't love you more than them, but I love them, too, because they need our toys and, like, we're making them happy. And that makes me feel really good in here. And I would always communicate to them that my job was my first child before I had them, and it really was. So it was my first child, and I loved that as much as them. And I was going to do it because it made me whole as a person. So that was the first. So that when. And then next I had to get really good childcare, which we couldn't afford for many years, and we had horrible childcare. So when I was at work, I was fearful for their lives when they were home, truly. But once we got good, once we got good child care, this is really long winded. Sorry. Once we got to good childcare I could go to work, be intentional about work, give my all there. And then I made a point when I came home, even though it wasn't balanced, it wasn't 50, 50. I was working, like, way too many hours. However much time I had with them, whether it was one hour a night or three, I would focus utterly and completely on them and give to them 100% from my heart. So whatever that meant, whether we were playing a game, whether we were just talking, whether I was reading them a book, like, I was there, I wasn't on my phone, I wasn't thinking about work. And that's. I knew that was all I could do. So that's. It's a longer answer, but that's basically, you know, trying my best to. To give them all I could give them in the time I had with them.

Oh.

And the last part of that is I have four daughters and two sons. And I would say one of my most profoundly joyful things is that all my girls say, when I have a career and have kids, like, they would not even think for a second that they wouldn't be able to do both, even though I was certainly not the role model for doing it all perfectly. But I proved that you can do both. And that makes me really happy because, you know, I want it to be a role model for them to try and strive for everything they would want to. And if I didn't give that impression, if I. If I showed them that I despise my job and really wanted to be home, and when I was home, I was, like, angry about my job. Like, what message would I be telling them? You can't effectively do both. So I had to be the. The. The. The change or the. The person that I want them to become.

So where we're at the one hour mark, this could go on for quite a while.

Bring it on, baby.

Yeah, well, but I think we should give people an action item. So action item number one is, of course, to buy your book. Action item number two would be to listen to your podcast on remarkable people. And I would like to ask you, for you to just recite one more poem. Not a verse. We're calling it a poem. Okay. Because I'm officially. I refuse to denigrate and call it a verse. This is a poem. So I want you to read your poem. Yes. And then we'll go. Let everybody go to Amazon and buy your book and download the podcast and listen to another hour of great Melissa Bernstein wisdom. Okay. So give us one more parting poem.

Wow. Okay. So this is about. This was when I sort of finished my journey, and I came the full circle in where I started and where I finished. And it's, I think, the second to last in my whole book. It's in the liberation volume. And it kind of was that time, that point at which I became free. So I was solely outcome driven, with results deemed black or white. Some days wallowing in anguish, others basking in delight. Yet a hostage to perfection left me serving time in jail with no courage to take risks or the capacity to fail. Till at last I welcomed, grazed to flow amid the other two. For there's nothing more profound than living life in every hue.

Wow. Oh, my God. Okay, I. That's a tough act to follow. Okay, that.

Really.

No, really?

The words are poetry, too.

No, not at. No. So. Oh, my God. Melissa, thank you so much, so much for coming on with us on the. On the social media platform and being a guest on my podcast and writing your book and just giving thank you light to all.

You are so authentic and such a bright light, and I have so enjoyed this journey with you. It's really. You can see the joy in my face. Like, when you meet someone who's truly like himself or herself, it is like a gift. So thank you so much for being exactly who you are in all your questions about divorce. I love it.

All righty. Thank you, everybody. So thank you, everybody for tuning in. Thank you for Melissa for being our guest and utterly fantastic. Okay, book and podcast, that's your next action items. Thank you, everybody. Have a great week.

Thank you for listening.

Jeez.