Anne Gildea & Aoife Dunne: Good Grief, Menopause and the Glorious Business of Being a Woman

So this is a question kind of for both of you, but is there a difference between using humor to process pain and using humor to avoid pain? Because I find that oftentimes when I'm deeply uncomfortable with something, I'll just start clowning as hard as I can as a way to not have to sit in that.

And how did you recognize that difference in yourselves?

I didn't recognize you either, but I never thought about that.

I wouldn't, I never thought.

think of it that way.

That's interesting.

And like a protective kind of mechanism.

Well, I mean, you've never thought about humor as a way to process pain or like using humor to process pain or using humor to avoid pain? That's never come up?

I've never thought of the difference between either it's processing or dealing with because I've just always...

I just think having a humorous perspective on life for me is just so essential and it's just a brilliant way of processing existence overall because ultimately when you think of the bigger picture, it is so absurd.

So it just seems a natural in to anything, serious or light.

Yeah, I agree with Anne on that one.

Yeah.

I think of the late and great Robin Williams and...

There was something, I'm not quoting this verb to him, but there was something he said where it was along the lines of he thinks the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it feels like to be low, to be low and self-ward.

And they don't want anyone else to feel like that.

And did that kind of ever... come into the equation where, like, even in the story you just told, Ari, for you were like, you know, wow, I'm after finally releasing this tonic immobility stage of where I was kind of solid and still in my grief and I didn't know how to process it.

And then, you know, whether it was just the dismantling of your inhibitions with the weed or And it just kind of allowed your body to loosen up a little bit.

So you went out of that tonic immobility mode and just went into kind of, OK, I need to I need to cry for three days, you know, and then you stepped into it.

And obviously there was some sort of click in your brain that went, you know what? I'm going to turn this into a show.

I'm going to share it with people.

So I think that's where that kind of question stems from is where was that? And likewise with yourself, Anne, like with the overcoming cancer and realizing which I've just been told I've been told I've been bearing menopause as well last week officially and you're just it can be so validating but then also you're kind of going oh Jesus Christ it's such a huge part of a woman's life that very very few people talk about so it's kind of that notion of well look it I'm going to turn this into you know a funny story or I'm going to tell this in a way that people relate to Like, was that a conscious decision in both of you or was it just, it's part of your nature, it's part of your personalities and you just wove it into what you do?

Well, I'm interested, Aoife, did you, like, always have, like, through it all and even when you were younger, did you always have a comic take on the world? Like, would you always, through your perspective, have been, like, seeing the amusing?

Yeah, I always describe myself as a silly person.

So I've always been silly.