Susan Orlean, my thought partner on the podcast this week, writes on Medium and for The New Yorker about things like umbrella inventors, origami artists and treadmill desks. She is a curious lady and a great thinker. Here are some edited highlights from our recent heart to heart about my very real fears about the empty nest moment.

Kelly Corrigan So, hi, how are you?

Susan Orlean I’m great. I’m so happy to be talking to you.

KC Tell me about how things at your house changed when your son left for school.

SO For one thing, we really just…

Come high water, come fires, come pandemics, riots and collapse, love happens. That’s what I’m noticing right now. We want each other. We were built for each other. Two at a time, parts come together and we make a thing and like weeds pushing through pavement, that thing finds the light. In fact, I wonder if feelings bloom despite obstacles or because of them. Maybe the terrain between us, real, imagined or metaphorical, forces declarations of intent as our willingness to travel is made apparent.

Love is what this month is all about on Kelly Corrigan Wonders. Each week, I’ll…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how change happens. To help me unpack the mother of all topics, I invited a dozen really big thinkers (and feelers) to talk to me on Kelly Corrigan Wonders and at the end of each conversation, I summarized my takeaways. I share them here in the hopes that they will be useful to us all as we inch our way toward something better.

On Violence:

I’ve been thinking a lot about how change happens. To help me unpack the mother of all topics, I invited a dozen really big thinkers (and feelers) to talk to me on Kelly Corrigan Wonders and at the end of each conversation, I summarized my takeaways. I share them here in the hopes that they will be useful to us all as we inch our way toward something better.

On Transitioning:

In a long, moving conversation, I connected with an insightful and forthcoming 15-year-old who is transitioning from a girl to a boy, as well as his mother about how…

I’ve been wondering about how change really happens. So I invited a dozen really big thinkers (and feelers) to talk to me on Kelly Corrigan Wonders and at the end of each conversation, I summarized my takeaways in the hopes that they will be useful to all of us as we inch our way toward something better.

On Becoming a Mother:

When you are a woman who is dead sure she wants to be a mother and the universe is not cooperating, how can you bend reality to your dreams? In this episode, two therapist-friends of mine, Lori Gottlieb (best…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how change happens. To help me unpack the mother of all topics, I invited a dozen really big thinkers (and feelers) to talk to me on Kelly Corrigan Wonders and at the end of each conversation, I summarized my takeaways. I share them here in the hopes that they will be useful to us all as we inch our way toward something better.

On Addiction

Starting in college and not stopping until long after law school, Rich Roll regularly and deliberately got black out drunk. He is now a widely respected wellness advocate and…