- 33 minutes ago
You may have grown to love Stacy London through her breakout show "What Not to Wear," but Stacy doesn't want to be that person anymore. In fact, she's spent the last year letting go and laying the foundation for a new personal and professional path ahead, showing us that simply starting over can be its own revolution.
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00:01Welcome to Unstyled. I'm your host, Christine Barbrick, co-founder and global editor-in-chief
00:06of Refinery29. Each week, I invite a notable person to come in and talk with us as we explore
00:12the funny, inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking tales of life, work, and love, as told through
00:19the things that we wear. Here's what you probably already know about Stacey London. She's been a
00:31magazine editor, a super stylist, the star of a mega-hit TV series, red carpet sage, a designer,
00:39all sorts of fashion-related vocations that have put her on the map as not just a style guru,
00:43but an every-girl guru, someone you and your mom want to help manifest your dream uniform
00:49while also being your nutrition doula, matchmaker, and life coach. You probably remember that Stacey
00:55was a guest on the first season of Unstyled, but I asked her to come back because today you could
01:00say that Stacey is a different person than she was six months ago. This past spring, Stacey underwent
01:06a seven-hour surgery, a rare and science-fiction-esque procedure that essentially severed her spine in
01:12two and fused it back together again with titanium plates, rods, and some superpowers, too.
01:19After five months of physical therapy, learning how to walk all over again isn't something many of us
01:25will likely ever experience, but she had to do it, and through that, she's been discovering what it's
01:30like to find yourself in your 40s, starting over again, not just with a new spine, but with a new
01:36view as a single woman after her relationship of two years ended in the middle of a summer holiday.
01:42Before all this happened last year, Stacey penned an essay on Refinery29 loosely called The Evolutionary
01:47Woman, a piece that began as a standoff addressing the so-called rules dictating what women of a
01:53certain age should wear, but her story became a personal and public manifesto about living a life
01:59off the grid of what's accepted in society as an unmarried, child-free woman, and how instead those
02:05perceived disadvantages made her not just purposeful in her choices, but powerful.
02:11Reading it now feels like a salve for me, and a lot of women who've ever felt stifled by the
02:16pressure to be
02:16perfect, and whole, even when we feel broken.
02:20Stacey London hasn't just spent the last year in recovery.
02:24She's shown us that even through pain, fear, and loss, starting over isn't about the end.
02:30It's about the beginning.
02:37Stacey, welcome back to Unstyled.
02:39It's so good to have you here.
02:40I know we have a lot to cover.
02:42We're always talking over each other, and we already started a conversation before we started
02:45recording, so I'm just going to kick it off right here.
02:48What's your style uniform these days?
02:49I feel like you're in a really, as I am too, I'm in such a deep, passionate vintage phase.
02:56Vintage, I know.
02:56I was going to say.
02:57You and me, it's really nuts.
02:58We actually just, you guys have to know, we text each other.
03:01Stacey and I'll actually, when I'm on eBay, and I'm about to bid on something, or I've just
03:05bought something, I'll text it to her, and I'll be like, what do you think?
03:07Which is what I did yesterday.
03:08And it's really fun, actually, to have somebody to share that with.
03:11I mean, I credit you, I think, with, like, I used to have an incredible love of vintage,
03:16and I kind of lost that love, particularly when I was in magazines.
03:19Because when I was at Mademoiselle, may she rest, I think that was the most narcissistic
03:24and materialistic part of my life.
03:25Now that Christine has kind of taught me how to use eBay, because I was such an Etsy girl,
03:30and now I get the nuances between it.
03:33Like, I could not find anything on eBay.
03:35I was like, everything I find is crap.
03:37And then Christine sort of kind of coached me in how to do this properly.
03:42I'm so flattered you think that.
03:42It's true.
03:43And now I've been finding great things on eBay.
03:45And the funny thing was, like, I was obsessed with eBay around the time that Refinery29 was founded.
03:51In 2005?
03:52Yes.
03:53Wow.
03:53I was, that must have been when it started, right?
03:56Because I, or maybe it was a little bit before that, but I remember searching and searching
04:01on eBay for things.
04:02And then I lost that, I lost that love, because it was taking up too much time.
04:06A lot of people email me, just ask me my recommendations on my favorite sellers on eBay.
04:11And I actually don't shop by sellers.
04:13I shop by searches.
04:14Like, I pay attention to the things that I like to wear, and I'm always searching for those.
04:18I have a list of, like, a hundred vintage designers and brands that I love that are just,
04:22like, you know, something like Cacharel.
04:24Right.
04:24It's, like, always, always good.
04:25You know, really pretty, like, little, like, floral silk blouses.
04:28And you just can't get enough of them.
04:30They never go out of style, and they're wonderful.
04:32And when she's done with them, she either puts them in a sale or gives them to me.
04:35Yeah.
04:36So everybody wins.
04:38Yeah.
04:38But tell me about your uniform really quickly.
04:40Like, what are you liking?
04:41What are you really enjoying wearing these days?
04:42Or what works?
04:43Yeah.
04:44I mean, for me, it's the jumpsuit.
04:46And it's the slouchy jumpsuit.
04:47It's a Rachel Comey jumpsuit.
04:49It's an Elena Cohn jumpsuit.
04:51Like a mechanic's jumpsuit?
04:52Yeah.
04:53There's the mechanic ones, like, I would say that's specific to Rachel.
04:57I, you know, Elena does these ones that are kind of just bigger.
05:00They're kind of sackier, and they've got these front pockets.
05:03Is there a trapdoor?
05:04There should be.
05:05Because when I wear them, I feel like I can carry a few children, if not my dog, in it.
05:10And when you go to the bathroom, whenever I do this, it's like all of a sudden you're
05:12naked.
05:12It's true.
05:13It's like you're naked going to the bathroom, because it's kind of an ordeal to actually
05:17like just...
05:17Well, it is.
05:18You're definitely naked.
05:19With Elena's, there are no buttons, no zippers.
05:22You just pull them off.
05:23Last year, you wrote an article for Refinery29.
05:26Thank you for doing that.
05:27I did, at your suggestion.
05:29Let's just be clear.
05:30Well, it was really, you were ready to write something.
05:33And I think you're just such an extraordinary writer and storyteller.
05:37I was just so happy to be able to work on that with you.
05:40And we loosely called it The Evolutionary Woman, which was really a phrase that you created in
05:46this story, but the story actually started out the assignment.
05:49It was initially around Fashion Month.
05:53It's always a time when I think we start to really meditate on a lot of the rules and
05:59restrictions, a lot of the traditions that, you know, that exist in the fashion industry.
06:03Some are great, and some we appreciate, and some are really responsible for the beautiful
06:09legacy of fashion that we all appreciate.
06:11But then some can be really toxic and really hold us back.
06:14And certainly outdated, you know, in the sense that for everything that is great about fashion,
06:19I think fashion is one of the industries that's slowest to evolve, you know, really digs in
06:25its heels.
06:25Why do you think that is?
06:27It's an interesting question.
06:29I mean, the industry itself, I think, you know, runs a little bit on the idea that people
06:36are insecure.
06:37And to make them feel more secure, if they buy this coat or that hat or this mascara, it
06:44will somehow make them feel relevant and maybe even trendy.
06:48And we rely on that sense of being less than in the industry to make money.
06:55Like, I mean, that's really what it's about.
06:58You know, why would anybody buy clothes every three to six months over and over and over again
07:03if we weren't sort of told that, you know, what we have is out and there's something new
07:07that's in?
07:08There's psychology in everything that we do.
07:11There's the psychology of business.
07:12And in fashion in particular, part of the reason that I think people do wind up feeling
07:18badly about themselves is that fashion has always been this rarefied air.
07:21It's always been about how much money you have, how skinny you are, and how young you
07:26are.
07:26And I am very proud to think that What Not to Wear was one of the first shows to say
07:31you
07:31don't have to be rich and you don't have to be thin and you don't have to be young and
07:34you can have style.
07:35So I always talk about fashion as an industry and I talk about style as an individual because
07:41I think that they are very separate.
07:43Part of the problem is that we're not aware that subliminally we're being taught that we're
07:49not enough by advertising and the industry because we don't keep up with trends or we're
07:55not as skinny as Giselle or we have different hair than what you see online or, you know,
08:01in magazines or on television, whatever it is.
08:04And while I do believe that diversity is becoming a forefront issue in the industry, I think in
08:11the past that's been the problem.
08:12If you don't look like this, you don't belong.
08:15And that may not be the direct message.
08:17It may be this mascara is got it's got 13 different proteins in it to help your lashes
08:22grow long.
08:22Well, why do we care?
08:23Why can't we be happy with the lashes that we have?
08:25But that kind of promotion of things making you prettier, more beautiful, you know, again,
08:32that's unfortunately that's all built through a male gaze.
08:36That's that's not exactly I think what women how women would feel about themselves if that
08:41wasn't part of the lizard brain sociobiological process.
08:45Yeah, and it is fantasy.
08:47But but to sell that fantasy as reality does make people feel badly about themselves.
08:53I am not going to tell you what to wear anymore.
08:55I don't want to be that person.
08:57Also, because, you know, I've learned from my own experience that we all evolve and we
09:01all need to have clothing that makes us feel beautiful and safe and comfortable.
09:06And those things are going to change at different stages of our lives.
09:09And so to say you have this body type, therefore you should wear this right is is a little too
09:15many shoulds for me.
09:17And so while I don't believe in concrete rules anymore, when you know, when I say I believe
09:20in open and prescription, I believe in being the guardrails to help somebody find their
09:27happy comfort zone.
09:28Yeah, their happy place.
09:29And that doesn't mean I'm going to pick the car, you know, the model, the color, how many
09:34doors it has.
09:35That's up to you.
09:36But I'm going to try and keep you true to the ideal that you have for yourself.
09:42My thing about working with people individually is asking them a zillion questions, what they
09:48think they want to look like, who their style icons are, and whether or not those are realistic
09:52or, you know, how we translate that hope and that desire, the things they want to get out
09:58of life.
09:58And literally, it might, I'm a translator.
10:01That's my job.
10:02I am supposed to take in all of that information and spit out basically an itinerary to help
10:08us, you know, it's like a roadmap.
10:09It's fashion GPS.
10:10It's to get you where you need to be in order to feel like you do have a style, like
10:15you do
10:15have an identity that is related to your wardrobe and not one that you can't let go of.
10:21You know, the biggest problem, I think, with a lot of people is that when it comes to style,
10:25they're not willing to evolve.
10:26They're like, this is what I wore at 20, and this is what I'm going to wear at 40.
10:30And sadly, that makes you look like you're trying to be younger than you are and not
10:34at all accepting of who you are in the moment right now.
10:46One of the things that I was setting up in this conversation is that you're a very
10:51different person today than you were a year ago when you wrote that story, when you wrote
10:55The Evolutionary Woman for Refinery29.
10:57But I think that what is so prescient about that piece is that all of this change was
11:04coming for you.
11:05And I don't know that if you even knew it at that time that there was going to be a
11:10lot
11:10of endings and beginnings in your life this year.
11:15And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your surgery that you underwent in the
11:19spring.
11:20Strangely enough, and I actually might get a little bit emotional about this, I'm not
11:25going to lie.
11:25I probably will too.
11:26Okay.
11:27I went to see my doctor yesterday for my annual physical.
11:30And she's been my doctor since I was 23.
11:33So that's 25 years.
11:35And she...
11:36That's a lot of life she's seen.
11:37That's a lot of my life that she's seen.
11:38And she was looking over my file.
11:42And when she came in to do like a, you know, the last kind of series of tests with me,
11:47she
11:48said, you have basically been in chronic physical pain for four years.
11:55And I was shell-shocked by that.
11:59I realized that I have been in physical pain for four years.
12:03A lot of that came out of working so hard that my body kind of gave out.
12:07But to think about, it's the first time that I've ever had compassion for the person who
12:13has been in this kind of pain.
12:15And how much compassion I would have had if it had been...
12:18In back pain specifically, right?
12:19Back pain specifically, but also my hamstring I had operated on in 2012 or 2013.
12:25No, 2013.
12:26Maybe even 2014.
12:28I can't remember these things.
12:29I ripped my hamstring off my hip.
12:31I have been taking epidural shots for my back pain for years.
12:37And I just couldn't believe it.
12:40I was like, oh my God, if this was another person, like I would have so much compassion
12:45for them.
12:46And I have not given myself a break at all about the fact that I have been fighting physical
12:53pain and ignoring it.
12:55Living with it.
12:55And not living alongside of it, like as in accepting it.
12:59There's been this sense of being in pain is an annoyance.
13:06It's irritating.
13:06And in some ways, I don't feel like I gave it the due that it deserves.
13:13It's a funny thing to say, but you have to honor your pain.
13:16And I was not honoring mine.
13:18I was doing everything in the world I could to pretend that I didn't have it.
13:22And that's extra effort on top of being in pain.
13:26And it could be emotional or psychological pain, but physical pain is interesting because
13:33to me, sometimes that's the brain's way.
13:36I mean, I read about this.
13:37I'm not making it up.
13:38I'm not that profound.
13:38But I've read that the brain is such a complex computer that when you don't want to feel something
13:45painful, when you don't want to feel something emotional, your brain will not even allow you
13:50to think about it.
13:51It will redirect that pain into a physical pain, which is why we used to have ulcers.
13:56Now we have a lot of people.
13:58Dr. Sarno, who wrote Healing Back Pain, says that back pain is the new ulcer and that it
14:05definitely is psychosomatic and it can have to do with many other things.
14:10That's not to say that there aren't structural problems in life, you know, I mean, physical
14:14problems.
14:14But he's saying that sometimes our back pain is made worse by, you know, other issues,
14:21whether it's anger or depression or sadness or anxiety.
14:26All of those things can contribute.
14:27I mean, a lot of people tell me when they get stressed, they feel it in their neck or
14:30their shoulders.
14:31And I think I've had all of those things contribute to my back pain.
14:35But the great healer and writer, not to interrupt you, Louise Hay, who wrote How to Heal Your
14:40Life.
14:40Yeah.
14:41She wrote very directly about the fact that back pain was related to support and lack
14:46of support.
14:46Yes.
14:47Well, that actually doesn't surprise me because, you know, in a lot of ways I've been adrift.
14:52I mean, I did What Not to Wear.
14:54I spent a year developing a syndicated talk show that was bought and not made.
15:00And then I did Love, Lester, Run.
15:02And then when that ended, I wasn't tethered to anything.
15:07And while I've done projects and I've been interested in all sorts of things, it's not
15:11the same as going to work every day.
15:13I don't have that.
15:14And not having that structure I thought would be okay for a little while, I find that at
15:19this stage, it's really hard.
15:20I need structure in order to feel useful.
15:24But did you have that space to actually focus on your pain?
15:27No, because then I started scrambling around thinking, I'm not tethered.
15:31What am I going to do?
15:33I finally had to deal with the pain this past year.
15:36I mean, like I had no choice.
15:38I cracked a tooth on an almond in January of 2016 and I went to get it fixed.
15:45I'm sorry.
15:45It's not funny, but it's an almond is not that hard, which tells you something.
15:50I went to a dentist who was very unhelpful and who told me, yeah, you just bit on it
15:54wrong and you didn't break your root.
15:56And I was like, it really hurts.
15:57I feel like I broke my root.
15:58And he's like, you didn't.
15:59And I said, how do you know?
16:00And he said, I don't.
16:01I just know that you didn't.
16:03I was in pain for three days.
16:06I went back.
16:07He sent me to another guy who tapped my tooth with like a mallet in just the wrong way.
16:12And then he hit it and it just fell out.
16:14So there was a hairline crack that nobody could see.
16:17Then I found out that I had small fissures in almost all of my teeth and that I have
16:23a gum disease that my mom had and my grandfather had.
16:25So basically I was going to lose all of my teeth and I had to go see somebody and figure
16:29out what to do, which basically had to do with like getting veneers, which over time
16:34is not only incredibly expensive, it is incredibly painful.
16:39Yeah.
16:39That was January.
16:41In February, I went to the Oscars and slammed a child lock door of a car on my foot and
16:47I
16:47couldn't get it open and I broke three toes that went completely black.
16:52And they told me there's nothing you can do for that.
16:55You just have to be careful.
16:55Walk around.
16:56It'll get better.
16:56Were your toes in pain?
16:57I've been wearing high heels for 25 years.
16:59It doesn't occur to me to think about foot pain.
17:03And even when I'm in pain, I can shut it off.
17:05Like I can mentally shut off all of my thinking from any physical pain.
17:10That's how high my threshold for pain is now.
17:12And you're in a relationship this whole time.
17:14Oh, yeah.
17:15I'm in a relationship this whole time.
17:16We're going to get to that.
17:16Yeah, we're going to get to that.
17:17Because one of the things that was most interesting about that was that I was trying to pretend
17:22like I was fine in order to be in that relationship because I have always been afraid to ask for
17:28help.
17:28And I've definitely been afraid to ask for help from significant others.
17:34And I don't think you're alone in that.
17:36Yeah, I think it's hard.
17:37I think it's hard to be that vulnerable.
17:39Asking for help means somebody can say no or they can let you down.
17:43And when I was raised by a very independent woman who stressed how important it was for
17:49me to be independent.
17:50So asking for help is very hard for me to begin with.
17:54And at that stage, you know, I was dating somebody who was a little bit younger than
18:00me and goes out a lot and is very social.
18:03And I didn't want to be the, you know, ball and chain.
18:06I didn't want to be the albatross.
18:09And so I, you know, smiled my way through it and pretended that everything was fine when
18:14it actually was not fine.
18:16And I guess that was March.
18:18And then by May, I started having back problems.
18:23You know, I'd been doing okay with my back, but they, they came back and I had my first
18:27spinal epidural.
18:29And I usually know immediately you have an epidural, you can feel immediately how something
18:34has, you know, the pain stops basically from having an epidural and mine did not.
18:39I sat up and I was like, something else is wrong.
18:41The, the upshot of it was that I had to go for several MRIs and several CT scans and several
18:49x-rays to determine that my spine was auto-fusing and that the loose vertebra were kind of destroying
18:57my discs.
18:58And we didn't know until I finally had surgery that, um, my vertebra were sitting so hard on
19:06my spinal cord that my surgeon didn't know how I was walking.
19:10And I spent all of last year dealing with that pain, like that physical pain while trying
19:17to be a happy, funny, cheery girlfriend.
19:21And I didn't do such a great job.
19:24I tried.
19:30So, um, ah, so I had the surgery in December.
19:35You did a good job.
19:36And it was, it was a lot.
19:39I mean, I couldn't wait to have surgery to be honest with you.
19:41I was like, got me open like a fish, whatever you need to do to get me out of pain.
19:45Like I can't wake up one more morning and feel this way.
19:49And of course the week before I had my surgery, um, my ex got hit by a car riding his
19:55bike
19:55and he broke his leg.
19:56So there was a lot of drama.
19:58My dog had to get fixed.
19:59Like we were all basically, I think we have a photograph that says like Merry Christmas
20:03from the cripples, you know, and I'm eight months out of surgery and I'm still, I'm still
20:08healing.
20:09Um, but nobody, I had one friend who told me about who'd had a similar spine surgery.
20:16The only advice that she could give me because she said it's so different for every person
20:19is don't make any plans.
20:22And I thought that was kind of ominous.
20:24Like she didn't mean it that way, but I was like, what does that mean?
20:26Don't make any plans.
20:27How am I not?
20:28I can't make plans.
20:29Like I can only, I only have this six weeks.
20:32They told me it would be six weeks that I needed to like recover.
20:35Then I got to go work.
20:36I mean, I'm working on things all over the country.
20:39Like I have things I need to do.
20:40I plan.
20:41A lot of plans to make.
20:42Yes.
20:43And, uh, it's not as simple as that.
20:46And I think anybody who's had spine surgery out there knows what I'm talking about.
20:50It is, um, so physically traumatic and I had no idea.
20:55I had no idea that I was going to feel so helpless.
20:58I had no idea that I was going to feel powerless.
21:01And the funny thing is, is that I had to have the surgery because, you know, basically
21:06from L3, that's a vertebra to S1, which is at the, like your tailbone, my spine basically
21:12just collapsed.
21:15So I guess I didn't feel like I could support myself in some way, or I wasn't feeling supported
21:20in some way.
21:22But, you know, when Louise Hay talks about that, that similarity, I actually really felt
21:26it when I had the surgery.
21:28I was like, oh my God.
21:29How could you not?
21:30I can't walk without a walker.
21:32I have, I had to wear a brace for six months.
21:35And it was, um, you learned how to walk all over again.
21:41Yeah.
21:41I learned how to walk all over again, but I also learned how much you have to ask for
21:46help.
21:46I have never, that doesn't mean, that doesn't, um, disallow independence and achievement of
21:53your own, but life doesn't work without help.
21:56Like, that's the thing that I realized.
21:58I think that was like one of the greatest things I took away from it.
22:01And there are situations that are so extreme that the people who love you can't necessarily
22:08help you.
22:08They don't even know what to do.
22:10And I think that because I'd had hamstring surgery and I'd kind of breezed through that
22:1412 weeks on crutches, it was nothing, right?
22:17I could do that.
22:18That was fine.
22:20Um, this was very different and I had a very different reaction.
22:23Even as I started to get better, I started to feel worse, not in terms of pain, in terms
22:30of mood.
22:31And after six weeks, when I went to, in to see my x-rays for the first time since the
22:37surgery, I kind of flipped out.
22:40Like I saw all this titanium in my spine.
22:43There's all this plastic where the discs used to be.
22:46And it was after that, that I couldn't get out of my head that there was all this like
22:52inorganic material living in me, not living in me, just in me.
22:57Um, and I started to get really, really depressed and I just couldn't get out of it.
23:02I mean, it was that type of thing where I don't know how to describe it.
23:05It's like knowing that something inorganic is inside you.
23:09It made me feel even more like an alien than having a skin disease did.
23:13Or maybe it just brought back all those feelings of never being like other kids or never being
23:19quite normal and, or feeling normal, which by the way, is why I went into the fashion
23:24industry just to pull this full circle.
23:26I felt like I wasn't good enough and I wanted to be cool and I wanted to be beautiful.
23:30And I thought, oh, I'll go into magazines and I'll be, you know, sparkly and glittery and
23:34happy.
23:35And I mean, it did that to some extent and then it didn't.
23:38And then I realized that that's not how I was going to find my self-esteem.
23:42But I want to go back to this sort of darkness that you kind of descended into.
23:47And I don't think that that's uncommon, having serious surgeries or illnesses and feeling this
23:53aftermath, you know, this emotional aftermath and just feeling like you want to retreat.
23:57I will say that, um, after the fact, my doctors told me that, um, it's very typical to get
24:02depressed after spine, brain, or heart surgery because it's actually so life-threatening that
24:08your body kind of goes into trauma.
24:10Yeah, yeah, to your functionality of everything.
24:12Yeah.
24:13It's very similar also to, you know, like the, the best example is men who have heart
24:17surgery in middle age have a tendency to get very depressed afterwards.
24:21They're, you know, maybe it has something to do with mortality.
24:24I don't know.
24:24But I think it just more has to do with trauma to those specific areas.
24:28Did you think about your mortality?
24:30I did.
24:31And I, it, I did.
24:33And I, it also made me think about the article.
24:35And part of the reason that it did was, you know, here I've been talking about, like,
24:39what does an evolutionary woman look like?
24:41What does an evolutionary woman do in a situation like this?
24:46You know, I don't have kids.
24:48I'm not married.
24:49I can't.
24:51There's nobody around me that's required to help me.
24:56There's also no rule book.
24:57Right.
24:57There is no rule book.
24:58But I, but I felt my mortality in the sense that I can't imagine being as an older person,
25:05let's say 80s, 90s, and feeling that helpless.
25:08And realizing that, like, I'm not leaving a legacy of children and grandchildren who can
25:14visit me or take care of me or any of that.
25:17We're all going to be in it together.
25:18Of course.
25:19I mean, I know we're all going to wind up in the same house in Boca.
25:21Yeah.
25:22I'm fine with that.
25:23But I got completely disoriented by the surgery.
25:26I needed the surgery.
25:27I just didn't know that on the other side of the surgery, I would feel like I walked into
25:32a Mack truck.
25:33And there was this deep sense of sadness, but my depression really took on a sense of
25:40anger.
25:41I was always irritated.
25:42I was always, you know, kind of at the end of my rope and even paranoid.
25:47I'm sure part of that was medication too.
25:49Yes.
25:49And I will tell you that I am not a big fan of pain medication.
25:53So I tried to get off of that as quickly as possible.
25:55I highly believe in CBD, which is the non-psychotropic part of cannabis.
26:01And it is a great help for pain and got me off OxyContin in nine days.
26:06We have one funny memory when I went to visit you and you have no recollection.
26:10No, none, none, no, no recollection.
26:12She doesn't remember anything.
26:13I did bring her a Bobca.
26:14I brought her a chocolate Bobca.
26:16You did?
26:16I did.
26:17I did.
26:17I don't remember that at all.
26:18Yeah, at her house.
26:19But yeah, you didn't remember, but it was okay.
26:22It wasn't, you didn't need to remember it.
26:26What did you learn about yourself?
26:28I didn't like what I learned about myself.
26:30If I'm going to be really honest, what I learned was that, um, by not asking for help
26:35for so long, the amount of help that I felt I needed was astronomical.
26:40It was like a hole that you could never fill.
26:43And I am the least likely person to admit to the fact that I felt really needy and I
26:54don't, I can't stand feeling needy.
26:57It's such a, it feels to me or it felt to me like such weakness, like that not being
27:03able to take care of myself was in some way a flaw in my character.
27:08And it's why I hired nurses, private nurses to take care of me when I got home because
27:13I didn't want to ask anybody to help me.
27:16And it didn't work out.
27:18There is no adequate way to explain what you need in that kind of situation.
27:23The more depressed I got, even though, you know, I was, the surgery was successful.
27:28I kept saying, I'm not sad.
27:30I feel sick.
27:32I feel like there's something inside me that's not right.
27:36And I think that I started to feel that way when I first saw all the mechanical, you know,
27:41material in my body, you know, even as that started to get better, I think that there was
27:47too much going on in my life, in my ex's life.
27:51And, you know, basically that relationship had to come to an end because of it.
27:55I think that that kind of surgery would be hard on anybody.
27:58But certainly, you know, after a little over a year of dating somebody, it's, it was too
28:06hard.
28:06It was just too hard.
28:07I just, we couldn't get back on our feet from it.
28:10Literally.
28:10How are you stronger now?
28:13Well, I don't know that I can say that I'm stronger.
28:16Only the thing is, I know that I'm strong because I got through this, like to get through
28:22this on the other side of it, be able to walk.
28:25I've never been so grateful to have a body that moves, that functions.
28:29I have taken my body for granted my whole life.
28:32First world white girl problems, you know, and now I'm like, I'm just so grateful for
28:38my body.
28:39You have a really, really strong sisterhood and I'm really proud to be a part of it and
28:44grateful to be a part of it.
28:45There is this kinship that exists now among women that's really much more openly celebrated
28:51now.
28:51Now, what do you look for today in, in a really, really strong female friend?
28:56Well, I'll be honest with you.
28:58I wasn't a woman's woman.
28:59I wasn't a girl's girl.
29:00What?
29:01No, I really wasn't.
29:02I would say that my, I mean, I have good friends from, you know, when I was super young,
29:07but I would say that some of the most meaningful female relationships I've made were after I
29:13turned 40.
29:14And part of that was because I was like very competitive and also I thought there was one
29:19job and one guy and we were all fighting to get them, you know?
29:25I don't think that's uncommon.
29:26Well, it's sort of what I was brought up with.
29:28And part of that was because, you know, the next generation after the first wave of feminists,
29:33you know, we were, we were told to like fight, like, you know, like be like a duck, you know,
29:39like paddle like hell underneath and just be all perfect.
29:42There was a shortage of everything.
29:42Right.
29:43There was only, there was only a finite number of eligible men, a finite number of great,
29:47you know, creative jobs.
29:48Exactly.
29:49And that you would have to fight to hold on to them if you even got them.
29:53And it's only in my forties, I think I've dropped into myself in the sense that I am
30:00not watching who I am from some other space, you know, some sitting on my shoulder like
30:07Jiminy Cricket, like being like, Stacey, don't do that or whatever.
30:10I am wholly accepting of all of the parts of me that make me and including the titanium
30:19that's in my spine.
30:20And that hasn't been such an easy one to accept, but there it is.
30:24But there it is.
30:25And I can accept those dark parts of me.
30:27And I have really, truly come to understand that just because you're next to a beautiful
30:34flower that you can't bloom as well.
30:36Like there's no reason because there's all the room in the universe for everybody to have
30:45and get what they want.
30:46That sense of abundance was already there.
30:49It's that we have to fight our way to get back to it, right?
30:52We act a lot of times from a place of scarcity because of fear, because of cultural norms,
30:59whatever it is.
30:59But that's actually not, in my opinion, the way the universe is set up.
31:03If you look at quantum physics or astrophysics, I mean, the universe is ever expanding.
31:08That's more and more stuff, whether it's room or dark matter or more stars.
31:15And, you know, that's what we're made of.
31:17And so I always now make it a point to put myself in situations where I am in with women
31:24or I get to meet women who are smarter than me, who have a completely different set of
31:31skills to offer so that I can always learn.
31:34And I always feel like I'm coming from a place of abundance because my circle expands to new
31:41heights.
31:42I get to learn things I didn't know before.
31:44And as it turns out, like, there's a lot of things I don't know.
31:48Well, I can say from experience that you make us feel that way, too.
31:54Thank you so much for being, for coming back to Unstyled again.
31:57It's always such a pleasure and such a gift to talk to you.
32:02Thank you very much, Christina.
32:03I hope you'll have me back again.
32:04Definitely will.
32:08I hope you're inspired after hearing Stacey's story.
32:12For even more Unstyled extras, check out Refinery29 or my Instagram at Christine Barbrick.
32:18You can also join the conversation using the hashtag Unstyled across your social media.
32:23And of course, we'd be infinitely grateful if you'd please subscribe to Unstyled on Apple
32:27Podcasts and rate us while you're there.
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32:39Our show today was executive produced by Sarah Bernard, associate produced by Rebecca Easley,
32:45and edited by Priscilla Mena.
32:47Copy support was provided by Elizabeth Kiefer.
32:49Our theme music today is by the artist Koff, and we recorded Unstyled with Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.
32:56We'll see you back here next Monday for a conversation with Gabrielle Union
32:59on her new memoir and fearlessness for real.