After 32 years of being together and 25 years of marriage, Florence Williams discovered her husband was in love with another woman when he handed her his phone with the wrong email open (by accident). For Florence, the subsequent break down of her marriage was (as is often the case) traumatic, painful and heartbreaking. This was a broadly relevant and super-interesting chat with a woman who went on a significant journey to truly understand the experience and science, of heartbreak. Her recent book is called ‘Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey’ is super-popular and has been critically acclaimed. In this chat we talk about managing stress, rejection, nervous system and immune system responses to threats (real or perceived), social pain and physical pain responses in the brain, her use of psychedelics (fascinating) as therapy, her month in the wilderness to find herself and a myriad of other healing ‘therapies’ she explored. Enjoy.
*Bio: Florence Williams is a journalist, bestselling-author, and podcaster. She is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books and numerous other publications.
