Celeste Ng: Why You Feel Stuck (Best Of)

We Can Do Hard Things

Glennon Doyle & Audacy

Society & Culture, Relationships, Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1. What to do when you’ve done everything you were supposed to do and ended up in a place you don’t want to be. 2. Why the question “What do you want?” is terrifying – and how to start answering it authentically for yourself. 3. The power of imagining what does not yet exist in order to make space for new possibilities. 4. The gift of a “midlife crisis” 5. What a mother’s job really is. About Celeste: Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, is available now. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages. TW: @pronounced_ing IG: @pronounced_ing To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.
0:12.6	We are here with the incredible Celesteing.
0:16.6	I've been really, really psyched to have this conversation.
0:20.6	Celeste, welcome.
0:22.3	Thank you so much for having me.
0:23.8	I'm thrilled to be here.
0:25.1	I have read all of your books, Little Fires Everywhere, and your new book are missing
0:29.8	hearts, which my son and I read together.
0:34.9	And I will tell you, Celeste, it just feels like all of the things that I'm working out in my life or on this podcast or wherever in my little heart.
0:46.7	All the things I'm wrestling with, whether it's in my family or in my personal life or in my public self or in activism or in motherhood, you're just always working
0:56.1	it out in your latest book, which makes me know you're always wrestling with something like
0:59.4	five years before I am, which makes me so grateful to you. And each of your books just feels
1:07.6	like this, it's not answers, but just beautiful explorations of these
1:13.2	questions in the form of a character's life and love and struggles and decisions.
1:18.2	I saw this teacher say on Twitter the other day that she was so sick of students saying that
1:23.8	nonfiction was real and that fiction is fake, that she now says that nonfiction
1:30.6	is learning through information and fiction is learning through imagination. Oh, I love that.
1:37.2	Isn't that great? So your imagination has taught me so much, Celeste. So thank you for your work in the
1:44.0	world. Oh, thank you. That is
1:46.3	maybe the nicest thing that a writer could hear. I write my books always because, not because I have
1:52.2	answers at all, but because I'm working through those same questions, like you said. And so to hear
1:57.8	that, you know, that the books reached you and, like, resonated with things
	...

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