Next Question with Katie CouricMelissa Etheridge Has Been on a Hero’s Journey All Her Own
Melissa Etheridge has written two memoirs now–her new one is Talking to My Angels. For many people, writing more than one memoir might seem excessive, but Etheridge has lived a lot. She’s reflective on just how much she’s learned between 40, when she wrote her first memoir, and about 60 where she’s writing from now, especially how a definitive spiritual experience (thanks to what she calls a hero dose of cannabis) really separated her life into “before” and “after.”
On the other side, Melissa finds herself happier and more centered than ever. She’s articulate and sure about how she found that peace, and seems to have an amazing capacity to learn from and process the not-so-peaceful events in her life.
And of course music is the thrumming throughline underpinning everything from her career to her memories of childhood, to what drives her now after so many challenges that could have broken many. But Melissa seems to ground herself even deeper in times of trial, and has a lot to teach anyone about resilience, grit, and grace.
Cancer Straight Talk is a podcast for memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where hosts doctor Diane Reedy Lagunas has intimate conversations with patients and experts about topics like dating and sex, exercise and diet, the power of gratitude, and more. I love being her guest back in April. Listen to Cancer Straight Talk. You'll learn so much. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question. Melissa Ethridge has written not one, but two memoirs, and her new one is called Talking to My Angels and Wow, so much has happened between forty when she wrote her first one and sixty plus two. She talked with me about a definitive spiritual experience thanks to what she calls a hero dose of cannabis. Wow sounds intense. That really separated her life into before and after. Now on the other side, Melissa finds herself happier and I think, more centered than ever, and she'll walk us through how she found that piece. But she also has an amazing capacity to learn from the not so peaceful events in her life. And of course music is the thrumbing through line underpinning everything in her life. So there's a little of that in this interview as well. Hope you all enjoy my conversation with Melissa Ethriche. Melissa, Gosh, we have so much to talk about because you have so much going on, But one of the main reasons you're here is to talk about your new memoir, which is your second memoir. How can you possibly write too.
Well when you write one at the age of forty. At forty, you think, oh my gosh, I've lived so much life. But then when you turn sixty, you're like, I was just getting started, you know, because so much happens from in my life. So much happened from forty to sixty that really makes up so much more of what I am now. And you know, the first part was just kind of the history, you know, the growing up and how did I, you know, make it and that sort of thing, and this one is how did I survive? You know?
In fact, I know that your first memoir was called The Truth Is, and that was, as you mentioned, released in two thousand and one, so twenty two years ago. And you say you've come around to a different kind of understanding in the second part of life. So let's start there, specifically with what happened to you one summer night back in two thousand and three, You say that you had an experience that jump started I guess the spiritual awakening for you. So what happened, Melissa? Is everything sort of in your life before this and after it? Do you use it to delen ate your life in some ways?
Yes? And because it was so close to my cancer diagnosis, both of those things, one right after the other, is what really divides my early life and then the rest of my life. And now now that again, now that I'm in my sixties, I think that all of us sort of have a spirit awakening, you know, they're they're a soul awakening. And all of us that I think up to, you know, up till your forties, you're you know, working and trying to make it, and you're physically, you know, action oriented. And then you complete some journeys, you actually get some places and you start realizing, wait, it's not really about the thing or the the place. It's about the feeling and it's all the all the interesting things that happened to me along the way. It's the journey. And so how I lived my life, how I thought of my life really changed and my awakening came through plant spirit and it doesn't doesn't or plant medicine, and it doesn't. You know, it's different for everyone. This that's not the only way. There's all kinds of ways people can can have an awakening in their life. And mind just happened to be through an unintentional heroic dose of cannabis, and it was it was, you know, mind shattering to me.
In fact, it really kind of set you off on this kind of psychedelic journey, if you will. You say, I then received a kind of download of information and the arrival of a new understanding. And that understanding, well, you tell me what was that understanding?
A lot of people talk about how it feels like a download of information. It feels it's it's very uh. That's a common description of a moment. Sometimes it happens when a near death experience or or something will sort of put this off. But the understanding is it's so it's so hard to describe because it's I tell people it cannot be taught, it can only be learned. And you know, words don't teach, but I'll do my best. Sound it, Okay, it is it's an understanding of a of a certain oneness of humanity, of a of a common a commonality between everyone, where uh, you know, you can say we I mean, I could say it's it's all love, and that's a really simple thing to say, but to me, that is the truth. It's all everything is love, and everything is made up of love, and love is what I described the the particles. You can you can go into a quantum physics and they're saying the same thing. They're just saying it scientifically. I'm saying it from a more spiritual, sort of esoteric way. Everyone's made up of the same particles and how they're put together is up to us in our minds. Our minds are so much more powerful than we know, and you can find it. There's a lot of teachings, you know, there's a lot of modern day teaching, so this and a lot of uh, you know, ancient teachings that sort of speak to the very same thing.
How did it change you, Melissa? I mean, if it's all about love and we're all kind of connected and particles and all the things you just described change, did it change you as a person? Did it make you relate to other people differently? Did it make you less angry. I mean, how does that manifest itself in daily behavior? And can I get me some of that cannabis?
Oh? Yes, well new York it's legal now. So although California makes the best lead, but it changed me and my relationship to me. And that's the That's the first and really most important relationship is how I'm what I'm thinking about me, how I'm connect to me, meaning that inner being that we have, that that that thing that we say is either you know, critiquing us or or you know, all those things in our mind that we walk with every day. That relationship changes. You stop blaming things outside of you, when you no longer take the manifested world personally, when you don't think something or someone's after you, when you realize, oh, I'm I'm creating this myself every day, and I have a choice how I'm going to respond to it. Am I just going somebody pushes me, Am I just going to push back and then you create that energy. Or if someone pushes me, am I going to see it more through an eye of love and go, Wow, that person must really be having a bad day. And I, you know, I'm really grateful that I'm not having a bad day and I'm grateful, and you just sort of channel your thought into more appreciation, more gratitude. You know, you hear these things all the time. You know they're all la la, but the truthful, truthfully, if you practice these things on a real practical level, they can make a real, big, large difference in your life.
Do you ever slip up? Do you ever want to push that person back? I mean, I'm fascinated by this. How do you discipline yourself or how do you get yourself in the mindset every day that I am going to see things through a prism of love. I'm going to try to seek understanding and I'm not gonna I'm not going to have this short fuse or I'm not gonna take ill of people, all the things that bring out the worst in us.
Well, first I realized it's an understanding. That this is not sort of like a college degree where you get there and you're there that you know and you have it forever and ever. This it's a practice. It's like yoga. It's like, you know, you start yoga, you can barely bend over, and then after a while you can bend. But there's no end to yoga. There's nobody that finishes yoga and I've done it, and that's it. Now I'm yogi or something that that that you It's just a practice you do every day and this is the same thing. And there are little little things that you can do that helps you because by the time you get something from someone in the outside world, the momentum that you've had going during the day is one of oh, this is a bad day, I'm having a bad Oh you know, Oh I stubbed my toe. Oh now it's you know, and things grow. That momentum grows, and if somebody pushes you, you bet I'm going to shove them back at that point because I've let it grow. You you go back to the your beginning of your day and the very moment you wake up. If you can just find something in that moment to be grateful for, for just you know, just a half a minute, then that can grow a little bit more and you might you might get ten, fifteen, twenty minutes before you read an email and it sends you back into a bad place. But the more well you've heard the you know, the better it gets. The better it gets because it's it's it is a it's it's I'm sure you've also heard of the law of attraction. This is sort of what it's. This is on is you get what you're going to put out, So it's up to you. I realize I can't change anyone or anything, and once you give that up, then you're just working on yourself. Going all I can do is work on the way I feel, and I can be pointed towards happiness. So it's just it's just a practice every day, and you don't. Yeah, there are times I had a horrible day yesterday my show last night. I'm glad you weren't there. It wasn't it wasn't horrible, but for me it was. You know, ah, this happened, I said, the drums fell over, this sort of thing. You know, it's just that kind of day. I was having that day. Today I'm not, I'm speaking to you. I'm having a much better day. It's going to be a great show tonight.
Well, it seems like you let things roll off your back too a lot more, and you don't let things fester and you kind of release them out into the universe because it doesn't help to hold it in. Right.
Yeah, there's a great book Don Miguel Rui's a lot of people know this book. The four agreements and the real simple You don't take things personally. You don't assume. You do the best you can, and you are impeccable with your word. And those four things go very deeply. If you read the book and see it's a very short book and it's really just amazing, and you just the less you take personally in the world or assume. I used to always assume I knew what everyone was thinking, and I was going to make everything in the room okay before I got there, before anybody else could say anything. You really have to let that go. There's a lot of wasted energy.
I'd interviewed Jada Pinkett Smith. She wrote a memo more called Worthy, and she talks about a similar spiritual awakening, which was interesting, and you both write about your experiences with ayahuasca, and I'm curious what that journey was like for you. I do know friends who have done this. I'm afraid to do something like that, like, I don't know, first of all, do you have to do it in those really hot tents and everything.
New? I actually did it in my home, so.
Okay, because a lot of people, you know, what do they do that in those sweat lodges And that just sounds that sounds miserable to me.
And no, no, first off, to really sort of listen to yourself. And there's people that are like, oh yeah, give me that you know, and we'll go and do it. And there's people I've met many people have come up and go and set the exact thing. I'm just afraid because it is it is a very different experience. And I would not advise someone to just, oh, just go to ayahuasca because it's gonna rock your world. It's it is not something to do recreationally. It's not fun if you are in a place. And like I said, this is not for everyone. This is some people come to there. It just just go through life very easily. And I mean we have things that happen, we lose people, and you understand, life is full of loss and and everything, and it's I would suggest it for anyone who's who is having a very hard time, like it's very good for drug abuse, it's very good for people who are having hard time letting go of grief or something. If you're really searching, this is a great answer and you know, it suits people and some people it doesn't. Myself, I was searching, I was looking. I was I had already had this unintentional, huge journey, and I wasn't as afraid of it anymore. It does help help people. It helped me get over my sense of fear of death, and sometimes the fear of death can really rule a person's life. And when you go on an ayahuasca journey and ceremony, you realize that we are not our bodies, we are eternal beings inside here. And our bodies, yeah, they're going to expire someday because they're just meat suits. But we are eternal. And when you kind of feel, when you get the sense of our eternalness, then it's that's a gift because you live your life differently.
I've heard people tell me what they experienced when they did ayahuasca or whatever, and I'm curious, what was it like? Can you just tell me, like what it was like for you?
Well, it was in a house. It was with a shaman who had been in Peru for twenty years, who was taught by the original shamans down there, who had been passed from generation to generation. And you know, for thousands of years. It's an ancient medicine that they boil down from a vine and a leaf, and the vine has the DMT in it, which is what all of us, every living thing has DMT in it. It's sort of the it's been called the spirit molecule. And the vine that they brew it up with has the enzyme that helps our own body. If we were to just take the vine, our own enzymes would block the DMT from doing anything and it would go through us. But the vine suppresses our own body's enzyme and allows the DMT to interact with our own DMT that's in our pineal gland back in the back of our head. And that is the only times that it occurs naturally that we know of, is at birth and at death. So this is released, and you, your spirit, not your body, but your spirit goes on. Your soul goes to that place of oneness where we all come from, that the non physical, whatever you want to call it, you are. You know that you're still in a house, in a room. You understand you don't go anywhere, but you also understand that your mind, your understanding of it, is all different. You're disconnected from your body. You often you throw up, you purge, not so much the other stuff, but sometimes that happens, and then again there's a feeling of a download. There's a lot of visuals that are different with with with different people. Some people visualize actual spirit, they see large beings, they see things that it can be fearful. Sometimes it sort of depends on the person mind. I've had bad what I would call a bad experience, but it was a very learning experience.
Do you see things that happened in your life, do you kind of reconcile with hurts or traumas or relationships that have gone wrong.
It is not a review in your mind, No, it is a way of understanding that those things were necessary to be who you are. And you come out of it and you go, oh, I'm not going to hold onto those traumas anymore. Those traumas don't affect me anymore because I'm grateful they were a part of my life that helped me ask for more so that I could bring that in so that I could bring better into my life. An understanding I got through all this is that we live in a dualistic world. There's good and bad, there's light and dark. There's up and down. Everything has an opposite. There's wanted and the lack of it. And every time we want something, we also bring that lack of it with us. There will always be rich and poor. There will always be that, because you can't be one without the other. And to then inside be okay with that, to understand that that is how this existence is and outside of this reality is a oneness, is a fairness, is a is pure joy. And so you go, oh, the only way I can, the only way we were are are here to create and move what we call the us here on the bleeding edge of creation is to experience this light and dark. So there's there's a kind of an understanding. You don't you don't work anything out. It's not here to you know, work it out, and what's good or bad that that it's all oneness. It's all that sort of yin and yang symbol. That's the reason that that symbol is is is it's you get the whole by having both the light and the dark.
That makes sense, Yeah, I mean it does. I just think I'm not that deep.
I'm like, you don't have to be you really don't know. This is not something that everyone has to be this. This is what it took for me to be that way, to need to find peace. You find your piece the way you do, and a lot of us, especially women, a lot of us don't have to Our left brains don't have to read it all and figure it all out. Our right brains just know it instinctively. It's you know, that's the intuitive part. And you've seen enough of the world, I'm sure, and talk to enough people to kind of understand. I'm sure you don't have a false thought about celebrity. You understand the people are people, and so there's probably you probably don't need that sort of thing.
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll hear from Melissa on how her spiritual progress has affected her relationships.
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We're back with Alyssa Athriage.
Would you say you're now a much happier person, Melissa? Do you feel settled and happy because you have been through a lot. You've had a lot of turmoil in your life, you lost your son, you had a very distant mom. It made me so sad about what you wrote about your mom. I'm going to read this. You described your dad as a nice guy and fun parent, but your mom seemed pretty unhappy and you were determined not to be like her. And you write as I grew up, what became clear was my mother's lack of enthusiasm for her life. She didn't want anything more than to go through the motions of work, to come home, get dinner on the table, with a sigh and very little eye contact, and then get lost inside one of her many classics books that transported her out of her life. When I pull from my memories, I see my mother sitting in her favorite living room chair, angle down toward her book, a glass of something at her side. I love this line by the way that I'm about to read. The tableau carries with it an untouchable and loneeness, an image bringing into high relief the signal radiating off of her telling me she didn't want to be approached or interrupted.
Yeah, there you go, And you know what, I'm grateful, I truly am because of that. I was sent on a journey of looking for that comfort outside of myself. I went through some heavy relationships because of that, because I wanted that person to fill that up, but not until I realized it's up to me to fill that part of me up, to love me. And then once I once I could do that, once I started doing then I have a relationship now where I don't need that person to do that. And it's the most loving relationship I've ever had because we both are coming from a place of nurturing ourselves. And I know that I'm more available to my children. And because of that, because I don't have that.
Do you understand your mom better today?
Oh? Oh yes?
And what made her that way? Do you think, Melissa?
Well can you? I mean, I don't know about your mother, but remember them growing up in the thirties and forties and fifties, and they come of age in the fifties and sixties. And my mother was extremely intelligent. She really was. She started as a as a secretary just to make extra money because my father was a teacher and unfortunately we don't pay our teachers here, and so she started making extra money. And it was the time when computers were just being made, and she was hired by Booz Allen, the financial company or whatever it was in Kansas City, and she was one hundred percent hidden figures. They sent her in because she could understand how to program the She used to tell me when computers were as big as whole rooms and she would she would do that and she got really good.
I remember that. I remember seeing those ads. Remember they were just like wall to wall, big massive things.
Yes, And so she could understand it. And she was hired by the army base that we had Levenworth and fort Levenworth, and they hired her and she started. She worked in wargames and scenarios, and she would do all these computer computations and the generals would take them and take all the credit, and she would get paid half of what everyone else was paying. And I don't know how else she was treated, but she was just angry the whole time because she got no credit and no money for what she did. And yeah, I'd be a little cranky too at the end of the day, you know. And so I do understand. I understand that women back then were highly underused, underappreciated, and you know she was. She was absolutely part of that.
You also write about your older sister Jenny. Yeah, gosh, Melissa.
It's well, look, there are people that have had worse lives, you know than me.
No, no, I know that, but this was this was like she sexually abused you. Yeah, from the age of six or seven.
Yeah, it's about seven or eight, I think, and till about when I was twelve and went no, stop, you know, and and it's you know, you know, that's again no fun as a as a kid, and you kind of it can mess you up a little bit. But I'm again I'm not going to be, you know, tethered to that. I freed myself from that. I I went on from that. It became you know that that's so far distant from me that it's almost funny talking about it, you know, and her life. She was just miserable. She just had a miserable life, and you know, still kind of is. But we you know, I don't, we don't talk. We just it's just a fine understanding that, you know, we just were two people that happened to be in the same family together.
How strange, though, you know, I haven't heard of a sister really sexually abusing another sister that often. Is that unusual?
No, yeah, I think it is. I think she was being sexually abused somehow, not from my parents, but somehow in the in the family system. I think it was happening. I don't know where. I long time ago. I tried to talk to her about it, and it was just she was just kind of disconnected from it. So, you know, I think it was happening to her because children act out what's happening to them, so you know, there you go.
You know, it seems to me that music sort of was your lifeline I mean, you're an incredible lyricist and obviously musician, but I have to believe that all these traumas and all these kind of feeling unlove by your mother, all these things fed into your music, oh as well as your relationship with your father, because you write about music being the communication between the two of you. So can you just talk about that a little bit, Melissa, and how that music fed your soul at a time where your soul needed feeding so much.
Well, yeah, when you're in a situation that is not feeding you, not giving you the energy you're looking for, you're going to go. I always call it the kids go where it's warm. They just naturally are going to go there. My father was very warm, He was very fun, He was understanding, was he wasn't the smartest guy, but he was clever, and he loved music. He didn't play music, but he loved it. He played the records all the time, and the radio was on, and so it filled my life and it lifted sort of the heaviness that was in our house. You know, you grew up in the sixties and seventies, and yeah, you know a lot of us we just it was like we're just supposed to pretend everything's okay, and you're like, yeah, but my sister is really losing it here. But you're all pretending that everything's okay, and that sort of messes you up for that tension that can build. Music released it, and I would love nothing more than to grab my guitar and go into a room by myself and play. That made me very happy. It pushed all of that. I didn't have to worry about any of that outside of me, and it just grew from there. My father he was never one to say, oh, Melissa, you're really good, You're going to be big, you know. He never said anything like that. He just never said you can't do it. He was like, oh, you need a ride, I'll take you there. I will take you here, I will I will do that. He was available, and just that availability enabled me to grow my musical career.
I'm trying to picture you as a young girl sitting on your bean back chair listening to your dad put record after record on the turntable, and I'm wondering what kind of music he played.
He loved Neil Diamond, so he loved he loved singer songwriters, which really, you know, affected me I listened to a lot of Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond. I remember him playing me one of Neil Diamond's albums and he Neil Diamond covered a song by Randy Newman. It was called I Think It's going to rain today, beautiful song, and he one of the lines was Scarecrow's dressed in the latest styles, broken smiles, that chase love away, human kindness is overflowing, and I think It's going to rain today, And he said, you see how he writes that, and you know he's he's describing, you know, metaphors and things and how they work to me and how you know, he's talking about people walking down the street and human kindness is overflowing. Isn't is an overstatement? It's it's you know, it's And he's showing me how to write and what moves people in the mind when you're writing. And I'm so grateful for that. It was like a class in songwriting.
Was your dad telling you that or were you just learning this from Neil Diamond and the other artists your dad loved well.
He would he would just play me a line and go, gosh, isn't that great? I knew that he would love it, and so I would pick it apart and go, oh, my gosh, what is it that's so great about this? And I would listen to them.
Oh, how cool. Yeah. So that was obviously incredibly formative for you as a songwriter, and you realized after a talent show when you're eleven years old, hey, I'm going to be a famous musician.
We yes from Kansas, a woman rockstar. There is none, but I'm going to do that. Yeah.
Take us back to that Talent show and what you played and how it clicked.
I can't wait for you to come see the Broadway show because this is you know, some of these parts you know play in the show. I actually talk about the guy who put the Talent show together. He was from like Philadelphia, it was just passing through. He's sort of like the music man kind of guy. He was a ventriloquist and he you know, this is nineteen seventy two or something or seventy.
Three, sounds like Professor Harold Hill.
Exactly, and put he took all the things from the Talent Show, all the acts, and he made a variety show and we would go around to old folks homes and the prisons in Leavenworth, you know, in prisons.
Wow.
And yeah, we would play for real audiences, and I'm twelve years old thinking this is awesome, you know. And it gave me a chance to play in front of people, to start writing songs and consider, you know, oh, I've got to write this for our next thing. And from there I found a band that was playing around town and my whole career just grew from there.
And did you just sort of were you a natural born singer? Did people say, wow, Melissa, You've got an incredible I mean, your voice is so unique and so special. Did people say wow this you know, you've got a particular sound. And I know you say that you've always wanted to sing like Carol King, And I think it's interesting because you do have similarities I think in your voices.
Yeah. I listened to Tapestry a lot because she was a singer songwriter. And actually Tapestry was the first album that my father ever got for just for me on Christmas.
I listened to that album eight trillion.
Times, Yes, over and over.
You must have been in like fourth or fifth grade when it came out, maybe fourth, because I think it came out when I was in seventh grade that I'm four years older than you.
Are, right, Yeah, so it was that time, and you know, the music that was out there just delicious.
Oh so you're traveling around Kansas, you're performing, do people say, wow, girl, you know you've got it.
When I was in a choir, I was in a church choir first, and would sing. The choir director would put me in the back row because my voice was so strange and I shouldn't have been like a tenor or a baritone singing with the boys. But they weren't going to do that with me, you know. And later as I as I started singing in bands, I was told, hey, you know, I like your voice because I was able to sing kind of popular songs. But when I was in school and stuff, people were kind of like, what's that voice? It sort of stood out, and it was not a pleasant standing out.
Well, it's so different, I think, you know, it's sort of raspy and strong, and you know, I think of people like Janice Joplin, right, and Carol King with this very unique sound.
Everyone kind of assumed that I drank a lot of whiskey and smoked a lot of cigarettes, and I didn't. I was in those places where people were doing that, but I didn't. I just my father. The one thing, the only thing he ever really told me, is kind of a a not a critique but advice. He was like, don't sing through your nose. He used to say that, and I didn't know quite what he meant. So I kept pushing all my sound into my chest, you know, and everything was really big so that I wouldn't sing through my nose. And so I think that I sort of trained my voice to be this kind of large sound.
You write about in the book Dealing with Your Sexuality, And you know, sometimes I think about, and again, because we're contemporaries, what it was like for gay people when we were little kids, and I grew up in Virginia, you're in Kansas, and how much has changed now, And it's just remarkable to me, how much I hope, and I don't know if you agree with me, how much progress has been made, how much more acceptance there is, you know. I mean, I remember my gym teacher thinking, oh, miss miss Beats and Miss so and so live in the same house, Like what's that about? But we never kind of even you know, I remember my dad talking about somebody he worked with who he thought was gay. And I don't think my dad even used the word gay, you know, I don't know how he described him. But it was so so secretive and such a subculture, and it must have been really hard. I mean, how hard was it?
Yeah? How hard was it? Yeah? To go through adolescence. And there there was a knowing that started happening around eighth or ninth grade, when all my girlfriends were ah, isn't Bobby so cute? Isn't Mark so cute? And I'd go, I don't know, you know, what do you mean? And and and then I would like watch you know, the Bionic Woman and go, oh, isn't Listening Wagoner so beautiful? You know, there's something like that, you know, And and and then I started feeling this way about maybe certain girls in school, and I'd go, well, that's you know, what's what's that? And then I remember, in about eighth grade, is someone in in gym class or something going oh, she's a lezie. I was like, what's a what's a lezie? I didn't know. Oh, that's a girl that likes other girls. And I went, oh, there's there's something wrong with this, oh, this is and and the first thing, you know, when the first say you.
Hear they weren't talking about you.
They were doing somebody else. Yeah who was not you know, they were just calling somebody names. And you realize, oh, there's this. This is a bad thing, this is a this is a thing that you call somebody else. And then and then you have that deep sinking feeling, Oh maybe that's me, Maybe I am and And you know, you go through high school. I tried, I had a boyfriend and tried, and was I like this guy as a person. But there's I just I feel nothing else. I feel nothing else after that, and then the first time I ever kissed a girl, you know, it just blew my mind. And you just realize that, you know, even though it wasn't spoken about, it was not in popular culture, there was nothing. The first thing I ever saw was the Billy Jean King and the trouble she got into. That was the first thing I ever saw in the newspapers. And I remember standing there looking at it thinking, oh, you get in trouble when when this happens? And so you you know, you keep it to yourself. This is a this is a deep, dark seeker because you're going to and then once you kind of turned eighteen, the first thing you think is, I got to get it out of this small town and go to a bigger city where there's more of us that gather. And that's why the bars used to be such a safe place, because you know, you could go there, you could meet other people, and community was very important. Then then in the eighties, when when AIDS came, those communities became politically active. We realized we were dying and nobody cared and it really affected us. And some of the smartest and strongest of our leaders got together. And those are the people that I knew back in the late eighties and early nineties that when I finally said, look, this is who I am and I came out and started talking about it, I was already very educated, and I had been within this community for ten years and had learned the importance of people seeing someone gay. And I still to this day people will come to me and say, you know, you got me through my childhood. You were the only other person I knew that was gay, And it means so much to me to see artists now who just are gay and it doesn't matter this is a part of who they are and it's okay, and that this just brings me so much joy. And all the other mishigosh that's going on in our politics is just they of division, and no matter what, we are definitely definitely getting better. It's getting better.
You talk about a relationship you had, You're first with the woman Jane, the colonel's daughter. You call her and you say that this set up a pattern for you that would repeat itself in future relationships. What happened with Jane and how did it keep manifesting itself over and over again?
Well, I wouldn't blame it on Jane. It was the dynamics that came from my mother and my sister, that sort of you know, messed upness with them, the unavailable, the coldness, and the sort of psychoticness, you know, it combined, you know, that sort of troubled person. Oh that's attractive to me, you know, let's you know, you find yourself being attracted to sort of that situation. And so the more I as we started a conversation with the more I was looking for it outside of myself to fix the emptiness inside of me, the more I was going to get that trouble, and that was the first, you know, couple serious relationships in my life. We're looking for, Oh, I need someone who is really interesting and dark and gorgeous and beautiful because I'm not and you know these things that you think, Okay, this person is going to fill that up in me and then me the pleaser. I'm going to make the world all right for you. I you know, I held back the world for you. I did this. I'm going to do everything so that you will love me.
It's just a.
Really dangerous hole to dig yourself in. It will give you cancer.
That well, we'll talk about that in a moment. But that's why that line in Jerry Maguire was so dangerous. Yes, and such a bad, you know, sort of way to go through life. You complete me? Yeah, and I think that it's better to say you. What would be a better word than complete?
You? You delight me? You you boy. There's a word that we're both looking for. But between our.
Brain I know what is that word? Wait?
Wait, what is that you?
Oh?
Thank you?
I just thought of it too. Yes, you compliment me?
Yes, right, it works together?
Yes, right, well we could between the two of us, we actually came up with it. You know, I have to ask you about your relationship with Julie Cipher because you were together for more than ten years, you had two kids, bothered by of course, David Crosby pretty famously, and you split up in nineteen ninety nine, and there must have been a lot of pressure on you, Melissa, because I know breaking up with Julie made you feel like you were letting down the gate community, oh very much.
So I felt like, you know, I had gone out to be this you know, famously out person with a famously you know family, being one of the first you know, out families of the gay community and it's okay to be you know, gay and have children, and back then that was really really not okay to a lot.
Of right right, that was you were one of the first public gay companies and to then you were raising a family like and.
Then two years later go, yeah, we're our family's broken now. It just it it hurt even more than the getting out, because the getting out was good for me. I needed to find my happiness. I was not happy. It was not a healthy relationship, so you know, that was good for me, but the feeling of shame of letting everyone down was really dark, very much.
So what do you think that you were looking for her to complete? You were the same dynamics playing over with that relationship.
Yes, I think one of the It's so funny because I look back now and I just think I was just so crazy and so stupid just to believe that I wasn't attractive. There's a this this neat. It came with the wanting to be, you know, famous and a rock star, and I want to be in the public eye. I want to give my music and have people listen, and then I'm going to be a very visual person, especially in the eighties and nineties when that was everything was was the cover of the magazine and how we looked and it was and music videos. Music videos were huge, and I was not a fashionable person at all. I was most comfortable in my jeans and T shirts, which I should have just stayed with. But you know, you try to please you, and you think you have to be something else than what you are to make it, and you hire someone else to do it. So, oh, if I have this really attractive, dark, gorgeous wife, then they'll think I'm attractive somehow. So that was so much a part of it, which is so shallow when I say it, it's like God, but so true. The insecurity was really there, and it tortured me for a long time. And you know, now I look back and go, I do I think I'm just so ridiculous. I think I was very attractive when I was younger, and I just never ever saw it.
We just waste so much time worrying about this and comparing ourselves to other people, and it, you know, is it is such a fool's errand to be full of self loathing and to feel like you're less than. But society really pushes us to think that way. Yeah, and you know what society values, what images we are costed by on a regular basis. So I mean, I want to say it's not necessarily your fault or my fault when I would be critical or never think I was thin enough, or you never thought you were pretty enough?
You know. Yeah, I mean, now, yeah, I look back and know that, Oh, it was so much of it was what I was saying where I was at, and and just the lack of the kind of support either family support or you know, peer support of no, you're you know, we're all fine. And that's why I really look actually back then, Well, when I look at the younger generations, the millennials that you know, jen zd or whatever they are now, and it's like, oh no, they're they're going to be okay because there's so many different looks. There's so much there's not just this one idealized look that you know you have to be. It's it's just being who you are. Being the more individual is actually celebrated.
You know. It makes me think of what David Cassidy said on his deathbed, which wasn't really about caring about his appearances, but it was about not repairing his relationships. Do you know what he said? No? What so much wasted time? That makes me so sad, But it also makes me think about things.
Yes, getting back to ayahuasca, that's the sort of knowledge you come back with and you don't have to be dying because, like I said, it's the same sort of experience when you realize, oh, oh no, why did I waste all that time thinking I wasn't enough, I wasn't good enough? When those thoughts don't serve anything. If I just looked up and looked out, I could have seen, oh this is this is delicious. I can enjoy this more. We are here to enjoy things. We really are and we put ourselves through so much.
We'll be right back after this shortbreak. When we come back, Melissa talks about her cancer diagnosis and what it was like undergoing treatment in the public.
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We're back with Melissa Etheridge.
You know I have to ask you about your breast cancer because we talked a little bit about this with Andy Cohen, which was a funny setting to talk about it. But any any setting, honestly, is an important setting, I think to get it out in the open. And you were diagnosed in two thousand and formalists, so you were just forty three years old, and I know you decided to stop chemo when you decided to perform at the Grammys. Bald is a cue ball because you went through a lumpectomy, but also because you had a lot in your lymph nodes, you also needed to get chemotherapy and radiation and it took its toll. But tell me about performing at the Grammys when you were balled as a cue ball and you sang this incredible tribute to Janice Joplin.
Well, it was after I had decided to stop my chemo treatment. So I'd been through a I'd just been through that spiritual thing and understanding about my body, and I thought, you know what, give me, give me a little I'm going to try to do it this one. I'm trying to really heal myself from the inside out. And I was going to walk a different path, less stress, less, self loathing, all those things. And so I really was. So I stopped. I was still doing radiation, and I went to radiation that morning of the show. I hadn't been out in public at all for three months, about three almost four months. I hadn't been out, and I I got radiation that morning. I told my radiologist and what I was doing, I'm going to be on the Grammy tonight, you know, watch me. I had no idea what the response would be. I really didn't. I was. I was backstage with my band and Josh Stone. She also sang we sang together Janis Joplin song. She sang cry Baby, and I sang Piece of My Part, and Josh was back there and she was a big fan, and she was really sweet, and I was telling her she'd never been on the Grammys, and I was doing the old veteran thing of saying, well, you know, nobody, you know, the Grammys are the worst audience to perform for. They don't they just sit there, they don't give you anything. They're all just, you know, concerned about how they look.
And so if you know, don't have low expectations, have low expectations, don't think that anything's you know, going to happen.
And my guitar player walks over to me and he looks at me, goes, Melissa, you don't know what you're about to do, do you? And I looked at him and went, huh, you know, what are you saying? And then once I took the stage and the reception I got, I mean, it still brings I still get choked up about it, The hugely warm reception I got singing and even though I was really weak. That was probably the weakest I've ever been when I was singing. I remember I was singing the song and thinking, wow, I got to save my energy for that scream at the end. There's the big Joplin scream I was going to do at the end, and so I just sort of stood there, which I think made the performance on camera better because they were able to just focus on me. I didn't kind of move around and stuff, and I let out the scream. I finished the song. The crowd went crazy. I was so one hundred percent wrong about the crowd right.
And I'm sure Josh Stone was saying that bitch just set me up.
No, Josh is beautiful. She was wonderful, was very very great. But I was like, oh, I was wrong, sorry, and I just I went home and I didn't think about it. There was no you know, there was a really social media back then, not really and so it wasn't until a couple of days later because I went home and I went to bed. I just went to sleep, and that my best friend, now my wife called me and said, oh my god, You're all over everywhere. You're all over the news. People are having discussions about you and baldness and cancer, and I was like, what what are you talking about? And it just it just blew up. And still to this day, I still get people. I met a little girl at a bookstore. She was in a wheelchair and she was bald. I'm like, oh, she's in treatment, and I just feel so much for the young ones that are going through it. And I just approached her and her father was talking to somebody and I just said, oh, you know, I just want to say I went through this. And the father looks down, she goes, oh, honey, remember that video I showed you. This is the woman. Ah, you know, so it's still it still touches me all the time.
I'm sure. Well. It was such a memorable and the visual of it, Melissa, was just so dramatic, coupled with this voice, the powerful voice you were able to summon, probably propelled by all the love you felt in that room.
Yeah, there's a lot of that, a lot of that.
You dedicate the book to your son, Beckett, and as I said, you know, I just marvel at your resilience, but the roller coaster ride that has been your life and you lost your son, and it's so upsetting because I know, he started taking vicodin after a snowboarding accident. Yeah, and like so many people in this country, became addicted to opioids, which is just so infuriating.
Yeah, his life before he started vicodin, he was he was not in a I wouldn't call him a happy individual. He was one that sort of had a hard time. He had a hard time finding happiness. And so it's that sort of personality, that sort of individual that can then, man, if you give them something that not only takes the physical pain away, but nums that that dissonance inside of them, Yeah, that's that's gonna be addictive. And then physically if you don't take it, you're gonna feel bad. Then you're stuck. You don't have the the will well willpower, you don't have the ability, you don't have the tools at all to get out of it. And we you know, he went in and out of rehabs and the tools of just don't do it. And here's therapy to talk about all the bad things you went through. Is not really working. It's it's it's not and and that's that's why uh I started the Etharge Foundation. It it raises money to provide research into plant medicines and psychedelics that are helping with this. It's directly to help with opioid use disorder, but there's so many there's so much other research. You hear about psilocybin and cancer, you know, people that have cancer and the what is it when hospice hospice, Yeah, you know helps with people that are at the end of life and.
Also with PTSD, all kinds of all these.
Things that it helps so much. So let's and and it's still these are still schedule one, which is saying there's no medical you know, there's no medical data that it's any good. So we are providing the research and the medical data so that we can come and change this so these things can't be available. And that that makes me feel like I'm doing something to move this forward.
There are so many exciting developments in this area of research. I think we just scratched the surface, and I think it's really really fascinating and it's changing lives for a lot of people. You live streamed a concert that you called the heel Emy Concert, and in that you sang something to your son.
It was you are my Sunshine, right, Yeah, that's that's a song. I used to always sing to my kids, you know, to put you know, as lullabies when when it was time to go to bed. I would just sing a few songs to them, as one that I sang because it's such a sweet melody. But I would sing it and it would I would try not to make it so sad, because it's actually a very sad song. You know, the second verse, you know, the other night, DearS, I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms. When I woke, I was mistaken, and I hung my head and cried. It's the second version.
I know, I forgot about that.
It's so it's like I would only try to sing like the first verse over and over. But it was a you know, it was something I sang all the time to all of my children.
Let's talk about the show, Melissa Ethridge My Window, which The New York Times describes as a rock concert, splice with memoir. So what made you want to do abroad show? Melissa? I mean, you're like, I've done this, I've done that, why not go to Broadway?
Well, I've deeply loved Broadway from as a child. I mean I just adored Barber Streissan and everything she did, and it sort of went from there to things like Godspell and Jesus Cresh Superstar and hair. I just love that sort of stuff, and Broadway was always this very magical place that to me was a step, let's just say, apart from sort of popular music and the way you can manipulate pop music, you can't manipulate someone standing on a stage singing to you. That's real. That's raw talent and the writing and the gathering and moving a live audience with story like that. There's just nothing else and there never will be. It's such a pure form of entertainment. And my wife and I for years, even before we were together, we were working to We were always trying to create something for television or Broadway. And when this opportunity, when I actually saw Bruce the Springsteen do his thing, I went, Okay, there's a door that now I can go in. I can say, look, Bruce did this. I want to do sort of amalgamation of what he did and a Broadway show. I want to create a rock concert memoir. It's a linear story of my songs, of me, of my life, of the book you just read, you know, it's the whole it's you know, it's that in two hours and.
Must have been so fun to combine those two creative exercises, you know, writing and you're beautiful writer, which isn't a surprise when you listen to your lyrics, but you're writing and your musicality and have them marry in this production, right, I mean, that's a pretty cool thing to be able to do. What's your favorite moment in the show.
Oh, there's so many. There's so many that I didn't know would be my favorite until the audience got there and I was like, oh, they're having so much fun. One is where the theater I'm in is called is circle in the square and it's almost in the round. I'm able to go into the audience, and there's a couple of times that I do that are so much fun. So when I do the song, I want to come over. It's just ridiculous. The whole audience is with me, you know, really understanding every line now a little better because I've given them the background on what's happening.
Oh that's cool, that's right, and sort of the life experiences that have informed your lyrics, where you were, what you were thinking. I love stuff like that. Because I love to understand the genesis of a song and why did they write this? What was happening? And I'm really excited about it. Before we go, I know, Andy, and you and I talked about the fact that you are not, sadly in the rock and roll Hall of Fame. I hope you are at some point. You've won two Grammys, an Academy Award. Maybe you'll be up for a Tony after this Broadway show. And you said whatever, But Andy referred to Jan Wenner's quote, and I just want to read it because it's so annoying that he said this. He okay. He obviously is the founder of Rolling Stone magazine. He wrote a new book about his interviews, and he's facing criticism for saying that black and female musicians were not articulate enough to be included. In his new book, which features seven interviews with white male rock and roll icons. Winner said the many interviewed were kind of philosophers of rock and that no female musicians were quote as articulate enough on this intellectual level as the men. And I'm thinking what And he even said Joni Mitchell was not a philosopher of rock and roll, and I was just like, what was he smoking when he made these insane idiotic like tone deaf and I mean even if he thinks it, the fact that he said.
It, I know, and you know what, it really set me free. It really did, because I used to be a little tortured about, you know, in the nineties thinking, I mean, you know, I was on the cover once, but they didn't they they never gave me a favorable review except for The Awakening. That was the one album, which is like barely anybody knows about that album that I made, but they didn't even review. Yes, I am, they didn't think it was good enough to even review. And I kept taking it so personally. This was back in the days when I took it personally, and because Rolling Stone, to someone like me who followed rock and roll, followed music, that was the voice in which, you know, it told us what was good?
Right, you knew you made it? I mean, there's even who wrote that song.
Thote doctor Hooken, you know, the Medicine show. Yeah, and to realize, oh my god, I was trying to join this club where the men hated women in blacks, you know, and how am I wait a minute, you know, I.
Do I really want to be a member of that club?
Do I really want to be a member of that club? And it set me free. It's like, oh and he He also is on the founding board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which has been criticized for years over not you know, over just being of white. They kicked him off, they did, so who maybe we'll see different now, but it just, uh, it really freed me to go, Okay, right, No, I'm just I can't look again, I can't look outside of myself for that acceptance. I have to know that my music has changed lives, that it has touched people. And every time an audience comes to see me, there are people there who who love this music, who cherish it. And that's all. And that's that's that's my success and and and that really helps me sleep at night. And yeah, oh yeah, what's thinking? What do you think?
I know? I keep saying before we go, But I realized I didn't ask you about the title of this new book, talking to My Angels.
Well, one of the songs on my sim album is talking to My Angel and I wrote it after my father died, and my father was very close to me, so I it's about leaving say, it's about change. It's about keeping that that person, even though they're not physically with you there and being able to to draw on it and get you know, warmth and comfort from them. And so having lost my father, having lost my son, and understanding that he's in that place now of no pain, of a non physical where if I'm joyous and happy, then I can connect with him because he is too. And so it's it's it's that song, and it's it's just explaining that That's what I'm doing is talking to my angels.
Well, Melissa, it's been so fun talking to you.
Thank you so much, Ken.
Thanks Melissa, thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a short message at six h nine five point two five to five five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz and Our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows with no fees or minimums. Banking with Capital one is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast, and with no overdraft fees. Is it even a decision that's banking reimagined? What's in your wallet? Terms apply? See capitlwe dot com, slash bank Capital one NA member FDIC
