Helen Schulman

00:00:02:11 – 00:00:21:04
Helen
I was in Portland for the first time. I was on my own. I was on a book tour. I’d never been there. I was so happy to get away from my kids. They were like, no. And everything was so time consuming. And I was staying in a hotel. So I felt really free and great. And I decided to go for a walk.

00:00:21:04 – 00:00:40:16
Helen
And I started walking down the street and I came to Pioneer Square. I think that’s what it’s called. And there was a huge crowd of people, and I was like, what’s this about? And it was the Dalai Lama, and he was in the middle of giving them an audience. And it was such a beautiful day. You know, Portland’s not known for its weather, but this day was stunning.

00:00:40:18 – 00:00:52:23
Helen
And there he was. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

00:00:53:01 – 00:01:23:07
Claudia
Hello and welcome back to Shift Happens. In this season we have heard from a number of women, among them two painting artists. And today I’m in conversation with yet another artist. But her language consists of words. Helen Schulman is a novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. A collection of stories, fools for love, was published last summer. And actually we recorded this podcast shortly before the book launch at Rosalie’s.

00:01:23:09 – 00:01:52:21
Claudia
Prior to publication, the title story of this collection was published in The Atlantic. Her newest novel, Lucky Dogs, was one of Oprah Daily’s top ten novels of 2023. Her novel This Beautiful Life is a New York Times and international bestseller, was made into a motion picture starring Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Paul Rudd and Marcia Gay Harden. For this, Helen has a screenwriting credit.

00:01:52:23 – 00:02:21:00
Claudia
Helen has also been teaching writing for almost 40 years. She’s a professor of writing at the Fiction Chair at the New School in New York City. Helen has written numerous pieces for all the big magazines and newspapers Vanity Fair, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, and the New York Times, The Atlantic, etc. she shares that between book writing, editing and publishing, sometimes is this hollow space and someone once told her to just keep on writing.

00:02:21:02 – 00:02:43:16
Claudia
So she did and does and writes her short stories. She also loves to dance and has a beautiful anecdote for us on this. Helen’s pivotal moment was many, many, many years ago, and it still influences her teaching and her being with other people profoundly today.

00:02:43:18 – 00:03:05:19
Claudia
On another note, I’m so proud and excited to announce that shift happened. Season five is supported by London based jewelry brand Chile Swim.

00:03:05:21 – 00:03:08:16
Claudia
Hello, Helen. So nice to see you.

00:03:08:18 – 00:03:11:12
Helen
It’s so nice to see you too. It’s been quite a while.

00:03:11:13 – 00:03:38:03
Claudia
Been a very long time. Yes, yes, I have to say. So I’m very, very excited and honored to have Helen Shulman here on shift Happens. We’ve known of each other for many years through a very close, dear mutual friend. But again, we haven’t really seen much of each other, so it’s it’s an honor to have you here and be in conversation with you.

00:03:38:05 – 00:03:39:22
Helen
Well, I’m very happy to be here.

00:03:40:00 – 00:03:57:01
Claudia
So, Helen, you are a bestselling novelist, a screenwriter, a short story writer, and a collection of your stories. Fools for love will be published this month, correct? Yes. July. Next week is the book party, right? The book launch.

00:03:57:02 – 00:04:00:16
Helen
Day. There’s. There is a launch. Yeah. Rizzoli. Yeah.

00:04:00:17 – 00:04:31:21
Claudia
Fantastic. Oh, at resilience, of course. Classic. So you are really a literary star with everything that you’ve brought out there and a strong voice for women, a strong woman’s voice. And your work, your fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Vanity Fair and Times, New York Times, The Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler. That was the piece I read recently, which I love, but we will get to that a little bit later.

00:04:31:23 – 00:04:42:21
Claudia
So before we start with the shifts, I wanted to get to know you a little bit. And of course, what is your current state of mind?

00:04:42:23 – 00:05:14:11
Helen
You know, my state of mind for the world is absolute fury, and I’m petrified at what’s going on, and I feel very stressed out, politically, emotionally. I worry for my children and my students. I worry for the people of our country and other countries. But my state of mind at home right now is pretty good because I just went on sabbatical today.

00:05:14:13 – 00:05:16:14
Helen
I was a first year sabbatical.

00:05:16:14 – 00:05:19:01
Claudia
Earth day. How long is it? A year?

00:05:19:03 – 00:05:40:21
Helen
I have the whole fall off, and then in the spring, I have reduced duties. So I’m so excited to have time to read and write. Even though my job I. I run a fiction program at the New school of the master’s degree program. The MFA program, as all designed to teach people to read and write. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for me to do so.

00:05:40:23 – 00:05:47:18
Helen
So I’ve been waiting six years for this and I’m thrilled. Yeah. So you’re catching me on a great day.

00:05:47:19 – 00:05:52:02
Claudia
Okay. Another question. Dogs or cats?

00:05:52:04 – 00:06:16:16
Helen
Well, we have two cats. They’re Siamese. We always have Siamese cats. My husband and I, when we first moved in together, we cat sat for a Siamese cat. And then we got one. And then when he died, we got all right. But we have two children, and they each got their own kitten. And then later on, when those cats passed, Bruce and I got two more brothers.

00:06:16:18 – 00:06:21:23
Helen
And you may see them running around in the background right now, and they’re snoozing in their country.

00:06:22:02 – 00:06:26:05
Claudia
Okay. Very clear. Apples or oranges.

00:06:26:07 – 00:06:30:19
Helen
I would guess. Oranges. I don’t really love apples.

00:06:30:21 – 00:06:32:22
Claudia
Still a sparkling.

00:06:33:00 – 00:06:34:15
Helen
Oh, sparkling.

00:06:34:16 – 00:06:39:20
Claudia
And can you share your superpower?

00:06:39:22 – 00:07:02:22
Helen
You know what? People talk to me. People, when I talk to them, they open up. I it’s always been that way. I don’t really know why. Maybe because I like to listen to them, and I’m really curious about other people. I always that’s always what has driven me in my work. And as a teacher and a friend.

00:07:02:23 – 00:07:15:21
Helen
You know, I’m very curious about why people do the things that they do. And about their lives.

00:07:15:23 – 00:07:32:08
Claudia
So, you shared with me beforehand one pivotal moment, of course, that always many. But you picked one where you had a chance to listen to the Dalai Lama in person in Oregon a few years ago. What happened?

00:07:32:10 – 00:07:50:17
Helen
You know, I don’t even remember the year I decided, after I wrote this to you, that I’d go look it up. And he’s been many audiences. I was in Portland for the first time. I was on my, I was on a book tour. I’d never been there. I was so happy to get away from my kids.

00:07:50:19 – 00:08:09:17
Helen
They went with mom, and everything was so time consuming. And I was staying in a hotel. So I felt really free and great. And I decided to go for a walk. And I started walking down the street, and I came to Pioneer Square. I think that’s what it’s called. And there was a huge crowd of people, and I was like, what’s this about?

00:08:09:17 – 00:08:31:10
Helen
And it was the Dalai Lama, and he was in the middle of giving them an audience. And it was such a beautiful day. You know, Portland’s not known for its weather. But this day was stunning. And there he was. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. And he was like, you know, I mean this with as much heart as I can.

00:08:31:11 – 00:09:01:22
Helen
He just seemed so regular. He was so plainspoken and friendly and down to earth and did not present himself in any way as a deity or, you know, a religious leader or anything but a really compassionate, nice, comfortable person. And he really set everybody at ease. And he started I came mid conversation because I didn’t even know he was there.

00:09:02:00 – 00:09:36:02
Helen
And but he was talking about the idea of sympathetic happiness and that’s the idea that if you can feel compassion for other people and you can feel sympathy for them, then when they get happy, you get happy. And so your chances of getting happy multiply infinitely. And you’ll have much better chance of being less envious or jealous or beating yourself up because you have all this room for joy.

00:09:36:04 – 00:09:39:12
Helen
And it really sounds like a simple concept.

00:09:39:17 – 00:09:45:22
Claudia
And that’s it’s so challenging, though, I believe, right. In our culture particularly.

00:09:46:00 – 00:10:10:03
Helen
Yeah, especially now when we’re taught to hate everybody. But, you know, I, my dad always said to me, drive your own car. And he meant, don’t look at the traffic. Do what you need to do. Go as fast or slow as you go. But this was something different. It was like, really invest in other people and then you’ll get so much goodness back.

00:10:10:05 – 00:10:31:22
Helen
So I’ve been teaching for a long time, and at that point I’ve been teaching for a while, and I had little kids, and it just changed my whole view about how I would deal with my students, that I could really invest in their successes and their lives and of course, their work, and get happy when they were successful.

00:10:31:22 – 00:10:59:08
Helen
And now I’ve been teaching, I don’t know, I’m 64, so I’ve been teaching probably about 36 years, and I have so much joy has come my way through my students, and it really has bullied me, through my life and their work and their progress and their books and their children and, you know, they’re happy times in their lives.

00:10:59:08 – 00:11:21:22
Helen
Of course, the sad times in their lives kind of kill me, too. And this has been very hard on them. All the changes and the government and the attacks on higher ed. And a lot of my students are from other countries and some of them are trans. And so there’s been a this has been a very hard year with them, but they lift me, they booing me.

00:11:22:00 – 00:11:48:01
Helen
And working with them girds me. And I really think that moment changed a lot. I think I was more conflicted about it, until he said this very simple thing to me. So it doesn’t mean that, you know, every moment is perfect. It’s not. I mean, it’s been really hard. I’m Jewish. The problems in Israel have been catastrophic on in every way.

00:11:48:01 – 00:12:03:10
Helen
And then in the university, it’s been very painful. So it’s not, you know, it’s not all roses, but that love that I have for them and that they show back really has makes my days feel worthwhile.

00:12:03:12 – 00:12:13:01
Claudia
And you feel it’s is it like a muscle that needs to be trained constantly or moved constantly used constantly to, to keep this up?

00:12:13:05 – 00:12:38:13
Helen
Yeah. It is. I mean, you know, everybody gets jealous and everybody feels like a loser and everybody gets competitive. And it’s good to remind yourself, you know, that it’s the opposite of schadenfreude. It’s like, wow, this is awesome that this is happening. This is good for literature. This is good for this person. And, you know, I get so much out of them.

00:12:38:15 – 00:13:01:15
Helen
You know, when I first started teaching, a lot of my students were older than me. And now most of them are younger. There’s some who aren’t, but but they keep me attuned to the world, you know? So, once you get to know somebody, probably you’ll invest in them. It’s not everybody, but the majority of people are worth investing in.

00:13:01:16 – 00:13:20:02
Helen
And then once you’re invested, it’s very hard to decent to invest. So I’ve, I’ve very hard to divest. So yeah it’s you know yeah. Again I, there are students who I drive crazy and they drive me crazy. You know, I’m a human being and I certainly have a temper and all of that.

00:13:20:02 – 00:13:42:20
Claudia
But but it’s really it’s an interesting concept, right. To be happy for someone is different than to be happy through someone, and to actually have the insight to differentiate and to really feel that that is, yeah, it’s something that needs, I think, training in the way we live at the moment.

00:13:42:22 – 00:14:10:10
Helen
It’s sad because I went back and looked at some of his speeches and teachings, and I think the date that I was there was May 13th, 2001. So it was before just before the Twin Towers. And he was talking about how violent the previous century was. And of course, that’s something that I felt acutely growing up because my grandparents were all refugees and their families were murdered.

00:14:10:12 – 00:14:25:23
Helen
I shared a room with my grandmother, growing up and, you know, and he was saying, we can choose at the birth of this new century through compassion to have a more peaceful way forward. And then, you know, four months later or whatever.

00:14:26:01 – 00:14:28:02
Claudia
Little did we know that.

00:14:28:04 – 00:14:54:09
Helen
And then the whole world exploded and, but he was just so lovely and just so approachable and human, without any airs or. I mean, obviously he’s a wise person and he’s fought a lot for his beliefs, but there was something very happy about him. You know, he seemed to be a person who could find joy in life.

00:14:54:11 – 00:15:17:12
Helen
And, I found that very moving because sometimes it’s hard and sometimes we’re trying to think it’s always hard and, you know, hope he lost his homeland. Right? And being picked this way at such a young age, in some ways, he lost the chance at a, I don’t know, a typical life. He was really smiling.

00:15:17:14 – 00:15:31:23
Claudia
Yeah. And I mean some interviews and videos I’ve seen of him. He’s also like funny and silly and you know, like in an interview with an easy laughter. Yeah.

00:15:32:01 – 00:15:45:09
Helen
It’s his 90th. That’s. Yeah. He’s coming up. And so this was years ago right. He I remember he said, but that could probably help me figure out when I was there. He said he was in his early 60s. So it’s a long time ago.

00:15:45:11 – 00:16:02:19
Claudia
Yeah. It’s a long time ago. So, I learned you are also a dancer and have always been, yeah. Immersed in this art form. Is it a, like, another language for you or or just a way to move your body?

00:16:02:21 – 00:16:40:01
Helen
I love to dance. And I danced as a kid. Seriously. I mean, not professionally, but seriously, I was really, I loved it. I don’t dance now. I still take ballet bar classes and I do yoga. And if you turn on good music, I’ll dance. But what you’re referring to is this trip that my husband and I took, we were in Bavaria, and we were at a spa that had waltz lessons and dance lessons, and my grandmother had taught me to waltz when I was a little girl.

00:16:40:03 – 00:17:04:16
Helen
She had my grandmother grew up in Austria-Hungary and, she had a very lovely beginning to her life. She was very beautiful and she was educated, which Jewish girls weren’t. She went to gymnasium. She spoke seven languages. She was good to point. But by the time she came to the United States, her family, a lot of them were gone.

00:17:04:16 – 00:17:27:13
Helen
And she came to one brother and she quickly married my grandfather, and they had a laundry. So the life and then she found out that most of her family had been murdered. So the life that she was raised to believe that she would have, she didn’t have it all. And, it was a very hard, very painful life.

00:17:27:15 – 00:17:44:23
Helen
And so she and I shared this bedroom and I remember I was reading a book and in it somebody was waltzing. She was on her bed and I was on mine. And I said grandma what’s a waltz? And she got up and she started to waltz. And it by that point she was a heavyset woman. She was slow.

00:17:45:01 – 00:18:25:22
Helen
I think she was in her nightgown or a house dress. She was depressed, too, but she really could dance. And then she put her around me and we danced in my room and I never forgot them. So we when we were in Bavaria, I was like, let’s waltz. And we took waltz lessons and it was so fun. I mean, we were horrible, but my husband and I had such a good time, and there was this very lovely young German dance teacher, Eric, and he he just I mean, I didn’t know that Elvis’s song Wise man’s, you know, Fools Fall in Love was a waltz, but it is what you wanted with that on.

00:18:25:23 – 00:18:33:04
Helen
And then we danced to that. And he also put on he did a whole history of, waltz music and it was great.

00:18:33:06 – 00:18:51:19
Claudia
But what stuck with me from this, story or essay that you wrote for the of Nast Traveler that, also that your husband and you seem to have connected really in a special new way over this activity. Yeah, yeah. And that was that was so sweet.

00:18:51:19 – 00:19:15:11
Helen
Yeah, but it was it was Eric. I mean, Eric said you have to make the connection. That’s how he that’s how he started the class. So he had me put my hands on him, I and Bruce and, we had to look into each other’s eyes. I mean, for him, it was like a spiritual thing. And so Bruce was gain, which was great because he doesn’t have a dance background.

00:19:15:11 – 00:19:36:15
Helen
Right? Like kill Rock out at home. But but I took years and years of all different kinds of dance. And so music and rhythm and moving is not foreign to me. But he was gay and he just said, I want to twirl her. And so we talked and it was really fun. There was no audience like, oh yeah, yeah.

00:19:36:15 – 00:19:40:07
Helen
But, we really had a good time. Yeah.

00:19:40:09 – 00:20:07:17
Claudia
Oh that’s great. I mean, these we need these islands at the moment, right to, to recuperate and, refill our cups. So you’re the new collection of your stories. Talk about this a little bit. Because the your recent publications were all books, novels. And now you decided to do a collection of stories again. How did this come about?

00:20:07:19 – 00:20:32:05
Helen
So I started out writing short stories, and my first book was a collection of stories. I was my thesis in graduate school, basically. And then, the first novel I wrote was a novel and stories. It was a bridge between the two forms. I mean, we marked it as a, novel, but, it was really written in stories, and it’s centered around a terrible tragedy.

00:20:32:07 – 00:20:57:12
Helen
A boy dies in a car accident. You know that from the beginning. But, in the years that followed, I always sort of juggled writing novels, writing screenplays and teaching. And that’s basically how I supported myself and my family. I also write nonfiction reviews, travel pieces. That’s how we travel. I mean, everything there was always everything.

00:20:57:12 – 00:21:18:22
Helen
Time. We travel like we were teaching or doing a story. It was always around work. But in between big projects, you have these periods where you’re like, oh my God, I’ll never write again. I don’t have a book idea, I don’t know what to do. And so I always wrote a story in that period. And my friend Rick Moody, who I met in grad school, always said to me, just write a story.

00:21:19:00 – 00:21:40:08
Helen
And so two of those stories turned into books. But after that first collection, my stories were never collected. And, I always I love my agent. He’s the greatest agent in the world, Sloan Harris. And he’s we’ve been together for so many years, and he’s all. But he does not love stories. Or at least he doesn’t love trying to sell them.

00:21:40:08 – 00:22:00:18
Helen
Maybe he loves to read them, I don’t know, but whenever I’d say I have a story, I could just feel him wince because they’re really hard to sell. Even individually. It’s been years trying to place a short story a much easier to sell a novel than a short story, and then short story collections. Very few people read them.

00:22:00:20 – 00:22:28:10
Helen
Agents don’t like to sell them interests. Most other brands don’t want to publish because your numbers drop like when I first started publishing, it wasn’t quite this way. People publish the books they love. There were small advances in small printings, and it didn’t really matter that much. But the whole world has changed in every way. So I kept saying over the years, you know, now I’ve got six stories, I’ve got eight stories, I’ve got this.

00:22:28:12 – 00:22:51:01
Helen
And he’d say, no stories. But when I sold my last book, Lucky Dogs, to my editor, Jennifer Baras, and she’s now been my editor for four books, which has been great for me because I wandered around publishing for a long time, for various reasons. And, when we sold Lucky Dogs, I said, try just try it.

00:22:51:01 – 00:23:12:12
Helen
Because they really loved Lucky Dogs. And so he did. And she said yes. And I was just so grateful to her for that and many other things that I had dedicated this book to her. So the stories were written over decades, really. Two of them became novels. This also became a movie. It started as a story. It became a novel.

00:23:12:12 – 00:23:36:10
Helen
It became a movie. The last story in the book, I probably wrote about ten years ago, the first story I wrote this year, it’s about the same couple. It’s their origin story, and it’s the first story of the book. And because Jennifer, when I handed her the story, she’s like, look, these are good stories, but we have to make it better.

00:23:36:12 – 00:23:58:06
Helen
And, you know, I think if these characters sometimes sometimes touched each other’s lives, it would make it feel more coherent and for this, I was like, I don’t know. You know, maybe that’s gimmicky, I don’t know. But of course, all the stories came out of my head, which I forgot, and I hadn’t read them in a long time.

00:23:58:08 – 00:24:22:18
Helen
And you could see the progression of obsessions and interests and humor and, in them. And then she also felt some of them were dated, which they were. So I spent a year interconnecting them, trying to get them to work in a time frame and make them less dated, and then also, yeah, I wrote this new story, which The Atlantic just published this week.

00:24:22:20 – 00:24:40:19
Helen
And, and that’s the opening of the book. And many of the characters in the book appear in that opening. So the kind of they’re not tied together, but they exist in the same planet. So that’s a cool name to be.

00:24:40:21 – 00:25:00:21
Claudia
Yeah. That’s fascinating. So and then you finished that and it’s going to be published next week and then you’re off to your sabbatical. And do you have any particular intentions or plans or goals or do you feel you’re on a roll creatively and with your writing?

00:25:00:23 – 00:25:19:08
Helen
No, no. About that. I mean, everything is while I’m in the midst of it. It’s also frustrating. But I do have an idea. I’ve been researching it a long time, and it takes place in France and I don’t speak any French, but I spent a lot of time in Paris. I teach often in Paris, and I have for about.

00:25:19:12 – 00:25:39:19
Helen
I don’t even know how many years. A long time, probably since 2012, maybe even longer than that. In fact, now I run my own program and I used to teach for NYU, and then that stopped over Covid for me. And then I started my own program at Parsons Paris. Parsons is part of the new school. Oh, cool.

00:25:39:21 – 00:26:01:02
Helen
And the head of the Parsons was very generous to me. And we’ve become good friends, and it gives us, classroom, classroom space in June. So I’m going to go to Paris for four months. That’s how I’m going to spend my sabbatical. My husband’s going to come with me and work on this book. That’s my plan.

00:26:01:02 – 00:26:24:07
Helen
If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But I figured the motion would help. The book is also historical fiction, which I’ve never really done. I mean, I think most of my books have been a reflection of the times in which the characters live, and in that way I was put on a historical fix. I’ve been put on historical fiction, panels, because I wrote about 911.

00:26:24:09 – 00:26:49:23
Helen
I wrote about the, you know, a lot about actually, the invention of the internet and, tech tech in our lives. I’ve learned a lot about women’s issues. I wrote about, Harvey White. Well, you know, me too. And, I write about Civil War. I’m just, you know, as part of my last book took place in, the war in Sarajevo.

00:26:49:23 – 00:27:05:08
Helen
Part of it. So, yeah, I, I definitely kind of find stories out in the world. And so I figured maybe I can do it with something that happened in the past. So it’s a big challenge. But I’m excited and I’m excited to be in Paris.

00:27:05:08 – 00:27:09:02
Claudia
Oh, yes. I mean, for four months. Yes.

00:27:09:03 – 00:27:09:19
Helen
Four months.

00:27:09:19 – 00:27:14:20
Claudia
Beautiful. And then afterwards, you go back to to teaching at the new school.

00:27:14:22 – 00:27:35:17
Helen
I in the spring I will have five thesis students. That’s it. And a lot of that I can do online. So I don’t necessarily have to be back in New York. We just haven’t gone that far yet. I mean, we rented apartment, for the fall into winter to, into, into the middle of January, and then, we may be here.

00:27:35:21 – 00:27:57:00
Helen
My husband’s family is all in California, on the West Coast, and we have plenty of places to stay there, so we might go out there for a while. I don’t know, you know, there’ll be a lot of freedom of movement. He. My husband used to work in magazines. He was the magazine editor and writer for 40 years.

00:27:57:00 – 00:28:26:05
Helen
And then the magazine world fell apart. And so his life changed about 6 or 7 years ago, where he now writes books, adult books. And he also writes children’s books. And he writes for various magazines, especially The New Yorker, The New York Times. So he’s free like he always was in an office and was always working really long hours, and I was always busy taking care of the kids in my.

00:28:26:05 – 00:28:34:16
Helen
I took care of both my parents and, and teaching, this is like us, you know, being free.

00:28:34:16 – 00:28:36:08
Claudia
It’s a whole new stage. Yes.

00:28:36:08 – 00:28:40:00
Helen
Like the beginning. Yeah. There’s something really fun about that.

00:28:40:03 – 00:29:01:02
Claudia
Yes, absolutely. That’s beautiful. So, can I ask you, how do you calm yourself down? I mean, you know, with all the things that are going on that you’ve mentioned earlier that are really on your mind and are really also challenging on so many levels, like what’s the place where you really feel like you can you can center yourself?

00:29:01:06 – 00:29:30:13
Helen
I tell you, it’s been a lot of years working on this one. I take anti-anxiety medication. I really had to and I do and it’s really helped me to I work out I every morning I do some kind of class or even to, I have a lot of energy. I find that the wall, a lot of the work with students has been extremely painful because of the world and wanting to protect them.

00:29:30:15 – 00:29:53:12
Helen
When I give over to other people, I just get focused on that. And the same thing is true with writing. When I write, I go into that world. So those things help me, you know, reading is great, but I have to calm down enough to read. So I just reviewed a book for the New York Times this month, called Bug Hollow.

00:29:53:14 – 00:30:14:14
Helen
It’s by Michelle Honeybun. And, I really had and read a novel for pleasure and so long because most of my reading is I read students work, I read books to blurb, I do book reviews, and I was on this kind of scared to get into the novel. There’s a way that diving into a novel is like diving into a cold pool.

00:30:14:17 – 00:30:36:15
Helen
You know, you got to get your courage up and you have to get your mind to calm down. And this just opened up. It’s a very absorbing read. And for three days I didn’t think about Donald Trump. And that’s the book Donald Trump I read. I don’t know, five newspapers a day. I’m constantly doomscrolling. I am not healthy.

00:30:36:17 – 00:30:53:23
Helen
But I also don’t want to not be fighting and working towards a better, better life for everyone. So. But reading really helps. So those are the things I do. I enjoy being with my family and my friends. I, I really love my friends.

00:30:54:01 – 00:30:55:23
Claudia
Yes, friends. Our friends are great.

00:30:56:01 – 00:30:57:17
Helen
They’re everything. They do make.

00:30:57:20 – 00:31:00:09
Claudia
Sense. Yes, yes. Yeah.

00:31:00:09 – 00:31:08:04
Helen
So that absolutely helps me. You know, I like to sit down, a bottle of wine with people that I love and talk.

00:31:08:06 – 00:31:14:12
Claudia
Yeah. I think that’s the essence. Right. Talk share stories. Pass on knowledge.

00:31:14:14 – 00:31:14:22
Helen
Yeah.

00:31:14:22 – 00:31:27:12
Claudia
Storytelling. Yeah. And in all its ways that’s the essence. Well then I wish you a wonderful rest of your first day of your first trip. Thank you.

00:31:27:14 – 00:31:33:01
Helen
Thank you very much. You. This was a great launch for my first day. Thank you.

00:31:33:03 – 00:31:40:20
Claudia
And, have a beautiful time in Paris. And then we will all be curious to see, what comes out of that.

00:31:40:22 – 00:31:41:12
Helen
Thank you.

00:31:41:15 – 00:31:47:09
Claudia
In France and in history and. Yeah, your work. So thank you so much, Helen, for your time.

00:31:47:12 – 00:31:50:20
Helen
Thank you. Claudia. Bye bye bye.

00:31:50:21 – 00:32:05:22
Claudia
Bye bye. Great to see you. Bye.

00:32:06:00 – 00:32:27:16
Claudia
I love the part when Helen tells the story. How she shared a room with her grandmother who would teach her how to waltz in a tiny space. And my takeaway from this conversation is really that we should never forget. That people are worth investing in.

00:32:27:18 – 00:32:45:07
Claudia
Thank you for listening to Shift Happens. Please follow and subscribe to this podcast. It’s an easy hit for you with a huge impact for me. It helps me grow even further and bring you more conversations with women from around the globe.

00:32:45:09 – 00:33:03:12
Claudia
Shift happens has been created and is hosted by me. Claudia Mahler editing. Andy Boroson, social media. Magda Reckendrees. I hope you felt connected and heard by listening to shift happens.