Mark: Okay, Michelle. You read the book. Review it in exactly five words. Michelle: Painfully funny. Made me apologize. Mark: Nice. Mine is: "Hardest words are the kindest." Michelle: That’s it! That perfectly captures the magic of today's book, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan. Mark: It’s a book that’s been widely acclaimed, a New York Times bestseller, and for good reason. Corrigan has this incredible ability to find profound wisdom in the messiest, most ordinary moments of life. Michelle: And she’s someone who knows about hard things. She's not just a celebrated author; she's a cancer survivor who has written with gut-wrenching honesty about her own health battles and her father's. She's been called 'the poet laureate of the ordinary,' and you feel that on every page. Mark: Exactly. She doesn't preach from a pedestal. She writes from the trenches of family life, which is where we find our first, and maybe most counter-intuitive, hard thing to say. It’s a phrase that feels like a failure, but Corrigan argues it’s actually a superpower.

Mark: So, Michelle, in your daily life, at work, with family... do you feel that pressure to always seem like you know what you're doing? To have the answer? Michelle: Oh, constantly. It feels like a basic requirement of being an adult. Admitting you don't know something feels like you’re admitting you're not qualified to be in the room. It’s terrifying. Mark: That’s the cultural script, right? Certainty equals competence. But Corrigan flips that entirely. She argues that the three most powerful words you can sometimes say are "I don't know." It’s not a confession of weakness; it's an expression of intellectual honesty and, in a weird way, a source of trust. Michelle: Okay, but isn't that what we pay experts for? For answers? If I take my kid to a doctor and they say, "I don't know," my first reaction is panic and a desire to find a doctor who does know. It feels deeply unsatisfying. Mark: It does, and Corrigan has a perfect story for that. She talks about her friend Sarah, who is a pediatrician. A mom brings in her fourth-grade son, Sam, completely convinced he has ADD. She's done her online research, her nephew is on Ritalin, and she wants a diagnosis and a prescription, now. She wants a plan. Michelle: I can feel that mom’s anxiety. She just wants to fix the problem. Mark: Exactly. And Sarah, the pediatrician, examines Sam and listens. But she resists the pressure. She tells the mom that Sam's behavior could be caused by a dozen different things. Maybe he just hates math. Maybe he doesn't like his teacher. She says, "I'm not ready to make a diagnosis." And the mother is furious. She wants certainty. Michelle: And Sarah just holds her ground? That takes guts. Mark: It takes immense professional courage. Because what Corrigan is getting at is that a quick, confident, but wrong answer is infinitely more dangerous than an honest admission of uncertainty. By saying "I don't know," Sarah is actually being the better doctor. She’s committing to a process of discovery rather than jumping to a convenient label. It builds a different kind of trust, one based on honesty, not on a performance of certainty. Michelle: Huh. When you put it like that, it makes sense. It’s the difference between a quick fix and a real diagnosis. But that requires so much patience, from everyone involved. Mark: It does. And it applies to life's biggest, most painful questions, too. Corrigan shares this heartbreaking story about her cousin, Kathy, whose son Aaron was killed in a car accident. For years, Kathy tortured herself with the question "Why?" She tried to create a narrative, a reason. Was it because she let him go to that party? Was it the weather? She needed it to make sense. Michelle: Of course. How do you even begin to process something so random and awful without a 'why'? Mark: You might not be able to. And that was Kathy's breakthrough. After a decade of searching for an answer, she finally came to a different kind of peace. She realized the accident didn't happen for a reason. It happened because it could. Cars can flip. Life is fragile. And in letting go of the need to know why, in embracing the "I don't know," she found a way to move forward. Michelle: Wow. So "I don't know" isn't just about intellectual humility. It's a tool for accepting the profound, sometimes terrible, mysteries of life. It’s about surrendering the illusion of control. Mark: Precisely. It’s a release. It’s permission to stop fighting with reality.

Michelle: Okay, so admitting 'I don't know' is about our own internal posture, our own humility. But what happens when you turn that outward? When someone you love is struggling, and every fiber of your being is screaming to jump in and fix it for them? Mark: Ah, the "fix-it" instinct. Corrigan argues that our best intentions there are often misguided. And she offers another simple, transformative phrase as the antidote: "Tell me more." Michelle: I love that. It’s so simple. Mark: Deceptively simple. She tells this fantastic story. She's in the car on the way to a college reunion with her friend Tracy, and her daughter Georgia, who's in sixth grade at the time, calls her, sobbing. She's been accused of being mean to another girl at school, and she feels it's totally unfair. Michelle: Oh, I know that call. And my first instinct would be to get on the phone with the principal, to give Georgia a script of what to say, to solve the problem. Mark: That was Corrigan's exact instinct! She's ready to leap into action-mom mode. But her friend Tracy, who is in the passenger seat, just whispers to her, "Don't say anything. Just ask questions. Say, 'Tell me more.'" Michelle: That must have been so hard to do. To just sit on your hands and listen. Mark: Incredibly hard. But she does it. Instead of offering solutions, she says things like, "Wow, that must feel so unfair." And then, "Tell me more." And then, "What else?" And this amazing thing happens. Georgia just unloads. She talks and cries and gets it all out. By the end of the call, she feels heard, she feels validated, and she feels better. She didn't need her mom to fix it. She needed her mom to witness her struggle. Michelle: That’s such a powerful shift. It's like being a detective for their feelings instead of a paramedic for their problems. You're not rushing in with a stretcher and a plan; you're just gently asking, "Where does it hurt?" and letting them show you. Mark: What a perfect analogy. And the key insight is that when we jump in to fix things, we are subtly communicating to the other person, "You're not capable of handling this on your own." But when we say "Tell me more," we're communicating the opposite. We're saying, "You've got this. I'm just here to listen while you figure it out." It builds their confidence. Michelle: It’s so much more respectful. But it requires you to quiet your own ego, the part of you that wants to be the hero who swoops in with the solution. Mark: That's the core of it. It’s about making the conversation about them, not about your need to be helpful. It’s a profound act of empathy that’s disguised as a simple question.

Mark: And that leads us to what might be the hardest phrase of all. It's one thing to listen to someone else's mess, but it's a whole other level of difficulty to own your own. Michelle: Ugh. The apology. I feel like we're taught to say "I'm sorry" from the time we're two, but it rarely feels like it fixes anything. Mark: Because "I'm sorry" can be a deflection. It can mean "I'm sorry you feel that way" or "I'm sorry I got caught." Corrigan argues for a much more potent, much harder phrase: "I was wrong." Michelle: Oof. Yeah, that one lands differently. There’s no wiggle room in "I was wrong." Mark: None at all. And she illustrates this with one of the most hilariously, painfully relatable parenting stories I have ever read. It involves her dog, Hershey, an unflushed toilet, and a phenomenon I had to look up called coprophagia. Michelle: Wait, don't tell me. That's when... oh no. Mark: Yes. The dog eats poop. So, one morning, Corrigan hears a splashing sound from the upstairs bathroom. She runs up to find the dog scampering away, and discovers... a horrific scene. Solid human waste smeared all over the bathroom floor. Michelle: I am laughing so hard because I can picture this with cinematic clarity. And I can also picture the rage. Mark: The rage is immediate and volcanic. She starts screaming at her daughters, Georgia and Claire, accusing them of not flushing the toilet. A huge fight erupts. She's yelling, they're crying, her husband is trying to mediate. She is completely unhinged. Michelle: I have been that unhinged parent. Over something much smaller, I might add. The guilt you feel after the red mist clears is just crushing. Mark: Exactly. She goes out to walk the dog, fuming, and then it slowly dawns on her. The mess was trivial. Her reaction was not. She was the one who had behaved terribly. She had modeled the exact behavior she rails against. And she has to go back inside and face her kids. Michelle: And this is where "I was wrong" comes in. Mark: It is. She goes to her daughter Claire, and instead of a flimsy "I'm sorry I yelled," she looks her in the eye and says, "That was a total overreaction. I was out of line. I was wrong." And she says it’s like a magic spell. It doesn't just excuse the behavior; it takes full ownership of it. It tells the other person, "Your feelings are valid. I was the one at fault." It’s the foundation of repair. Michelle: It’s so much more powerful. And it’s not just for the small, everyday blow-ups. I was really struck by how she applies this to the bigger regrets in life. Mark: The story about her grandmother, Cleta, is devastating. She lived in the same city as her grandmother for years but was too self-absorbed with her new career to visit more than once. Her father would gently nudge her, and she’d promise to go, but she never did. Then her grandmother died. Michelle: And her father’s disappointment in her was just palpable. Mark: It was. And years later, she realizes the depth of her mistake. She wasn't just failing a social duty. She was failing to love someone her father loved. She was wrong. And that realization, that acceptance of her own failure, is what allowed her to grow and become a better daughter, a better person. It’s a lesson that sticks with you.

Mark: When you put these three phrases together, you see a beautiful pattern emerge. "I don't know," "Tell me more," and "I was wrong" aren't just collections of words. They're postures. They're fundamental shifts in how we approach ourselves and the people we love. Michelle: That’s a great way to put it. They’re about choosing connection over ego, curiosity over certainty, and repair over being right. Each one requires a little piece of you to get smaller so the relationship can get bigger. Mark: And what’s so brilliant about Corrigan’s writing is that she shows how this isn't some enlightened, zen-like state you achieve. It's messy, it's hard, and you'll fail at it constantly. But the effort, the attempt to say these hard things, is what matters. That’s where the love is. Michelle: It really makes you think. For anyone listening, which of these phrases do you avoid the most? Is it admitting you don't know, resisting the urge to fix, or owning up to a mistake? Mark: That’s the real takeaway. It’s a personal inventory. Michelle: And maybe, what's one small conversation you could have this week where you could try one of them? Even in a low-stakes way. We'd actually love to hear from our listeners on this. What are the hardest things for you to say? Let us know what you think and join the conversation in our Aibrary community. Mark: A beautiful challenge. These phrases are the building blocks of a more honest, more connected life.