When Anne Lamott was 37 and was trying on clothes with her best friend, Lamott asked the friend if her dress made her hips look too big.
“Annie, you don’t have that kind of time,” Lamott’s friend said.
The friend, who had breast cancer at the time, passed away six weeks later. Lamott said those words changed her life forever and taught her to stop resisting love.
Lamott, whose latest book “Somehow: Thoughts on Love” was released earlier this month, spoke at Loyola Academy’s McGrath Family Performing Arts Center in Wilmette Tuesday evening.
The conversation was organized by the nonprofit Family Action Network and facilitated by Heidi Stevens, the director of external affairs for the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health.
Lamott’s new book is about love in all its forms — be it for a late-in-life partner or for children. Above all, it’s about the transformative power of love and how it forces people to be vulnerable with each other.
“(Love) is like playing tennis, or pickleball, or writing — you practice doing it. You practice being vulnerable with somebody,” she said.
Lamott, who is now 70, spoke about the challenges she faced growing up in the ’50s and ’60s. She said she witnessed several feminist movements during her adolescence that helped her learn how to love herself.
She said her family and surroundings had taught her to keep striving for more and think only about impressing others.
“Because I was a girl, a woman raised in the 1950s and 1960s, I just was like a flight attendant to the world,” Lamott said. “I just gave everything I had, and then I took the leftovers because that’s what my mom taught me.”
Lamott said she has struggled with alcohol addiction in the past and became sober at the age of 32 in 1986.
She realized she needed to reflect deeply on who she was to stay sober, she said.
“I’ve always heard in recovery that ‘The willingness comes from the pain,’” Lamott said. “As you get older, you start to notice how much time you’ve squandered and how much you’ve fixated on this stupid s— that doesn’t matter like, you know, what your butt looks like.”
Lamott encouraged audience members to stop resisting love and open themselves up to the community of love to advance a culture that is more loving.
Wilmette resident Cindy Fey said she is a huge fan of Lamott. She said her biggest takeaway from the event was when Lamott said, “If you want to have loving feelings, do loving things.”
Fey said one of the author’s books, “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year,” convinced her to have children. She said she’s looking forward to reading more of Lamott’s books.
“You can tell she’s really funny, but also she goes to some very deep places and helps people get through some very difficult places, and that’s one of the reasons I love her,” Fey said.
Glenview resident Carolyn Collins echoed this sentiment. She said she resonated with Lamott’s idea that people live on “borrowed time” and should reap the benefits of love while they can.
Collins added that she appreciated how Lamott’s advice felt universal.
“I’m just very grateful that she is vulnerable and open and sharing with communities so we all can be more interconnected with one another,” Collins said.
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Love, intimacy and body positivity prevail in Lipstick Burlesque
