YouSaid · the spoken record

Lara Love Hardin

lines on the record: 60
first: 2024-02-28
most recent: 2024-02-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I almost gave up once. The one thing I can teach my children is I have not given up. I had one moment that's the only time in my life where I wanted to give up. Thought that was an option.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you can never heal that piece of you if you're not in community. I mean, that's the greatest gift. I can be messy and me and not be my best self on any given day. And now I have people that I can be real with. And they get me through that. And I let them. And I don't worry that my feelings and emotions are a burden to people. And I will ask for help all day long now. And I think what I found from readers who have no shared experience of going to jail or being an addict. They know shame and they know keeping secrets, and they know self-doubt and self-judgment. And now people tell me all their secrets. And I think there's something about failing and not giving up.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And my job now is to make sure that, you know, that someone who doesn't love me or like me or who doesn't believe in me or doesn't judge me isn't me, right? It always came down to self love and self-compassion and love in general. And when you're trying to pretend to be someone else, it is so isolating because you're not letting anyone get to know you.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many big takeaways for me, I think. Of it is that every situation and circumstance in person has the capacity to change and transform. I think for me From the time I was young, I wanted to be someone else. And that Pursuit of being who I thought Anybody and everybody needed me to be led me to the opposite place. I thought it would give me love and acceptance and approval. And I thought it would be seen And so doing this book where I am, here is all the light in the dark, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the spectacular failures and the self-doubt. That was me being seen. Like here's everything. I don't have to hide anything anymore. That's when I say it's like freedom. Not everyone's gonna love me or like me.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As helping them tell their story. This is my childhood dream right before motherhood, before addiction, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books that made people feel. Help them make sense of the world, that gave them hope.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I was trying to manifest it. I mean, it, you know, obviously it's a dream of every author and writer. And, you know, for me, I... Wrote a lot of books as other people. and being in service that way felt good. And I did my own book. And I had this moment where I was like, Am I better at being other people than being me?”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it really is. Having compassion for yourself. Understanding that you're human, that you make mistakes. And I think it is what you do with those mistakes and how you Not only learn from them, but maybe help others not make the same mistakes. I think. Know the, I think you probably said this, but there is that. Message in the mess, and when you can, you know, I work with authors who have really powerful stories, memoirs, and there's always this moment where their pain and suffering is transformed into helping in some way. And that feels really good”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's so much. freedom and being honest. About the worst thing you've done? I mean, within reason, in a way that won't hurt. But I think I got to work with Archbishop Desmond Tito, who has a whole process for Forgiveness, but it was”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And into my first love, you know, writing, and writing was always how I process the world. And my feelings, and to do that again and get to do it in a way that felt it was making an impact in the world. Even if no one knew And I was good adjacent. It helped me feel good. And I remember every word of our conversation because I got to sit next to you at lunch, but you were talking about Power and getting to choose who you shine a light. And I felt Very inspired by that, and you know, it would be Couple years before I ultimately made a career move so I could do that in my little lane, in my little way”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was so moved and honored that he trusted me with his story. I mean, the last person he thought to help him tell his story was a middle-aged white woman. California and helping him Get his, you know, rearrange the letters on the page. It was his story, but helping him tell his story.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was keeping a big secret as I was working on that book and nobody knew that I was incarcerated and I was trying to do my good work quietly. And that lunch was Such a full circle moment, you know, to go from”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It took me Almost a good decade post jail to recognize that. And it was so hard. And I had the. To spend some time and work with Brian Stevenson. Couldn't give myself the same compassion and non-judgment that I would give anyone else. I could say that about someone else and I couldn't say that about myself. And I think it was because I was so full of shame. It took a long time to give myself the same compassion I would give to other people.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“at any second because you don't have transportation, which I didn't get to a drug test, you don't have childcare, you have to get a job that'll hire you with a record, but also that you can leave out a moment's notice to drug test. You have to... There's just so many illogical obstacles. That it's a setup for failure, and there's also, you know, the first thing that happened to me is someone called and said I was somewhere I wasn't when I was out of jail. And I didn't, you know, I didn't know that anyone could say anything to get you put back in jail. And it was terrifying, this constant fear that you could do nothing wrong, never commit a crime again, and still end up back in jail. I still have dreams. I had a dream a month ago that I have to go back to jail and it's a mistake and no one knows, you know, there's just this constant fear.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, having not gone in and out of jail before. I would see women I was in there with that were getting out and they were full of good intentions and I'm going to connect with my family and go back to school and not do drugs and then they would be rearrested and I didn't understand. And I thought at the time that I was going to follow the rules and pay for my crimes and then it would be done. And when you get out, I had no idea how everything is set up to send you back everything. And I had no idea. There would be times that I would feel like I would be safer if I were in jail than out of jail on probation. Because you're walking this tightrope.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me a better mother. Made me a better writer and prepared me for a career. I didn't know I was going to have. It helped me develop empathy, which I think is a superpower. And it gave me community. I think people will make a family wherever they are if they're together. Yeah, I think. Saved my life”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and the thing is, is... We might have the women I was in jail with, we might not have ever run into each other outside of jail. 80% of women in jail are mothers like me. Minor children, and we had that in common. We were all experiencing the separation from our children, mostly everyone.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The cul-de-sac helped, and you know, women of color in the prison system were way overrepresented. And more likely to be sentenced to prison and more likely to be arrested.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. And I think if I hadn't been a middle class white woman, I would have gone to prison. There was a woman I was in jail.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there's no other community that was welcoming me both while I was in jail and after for a long time. But they helped me feel valuable and good again too because helping them write letters is them, you know, everyone has their skills. And in jail, everyone's expressing their talents as a chef And mine was writing, and I was able to start writing again. And I stopped writing when I started using opiates. And without the opiates, I started writing again and listening to their stories and helping them write letters to the judge because that was a skill I had.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The women I was in jail with, there were incredibly creative and intelligent and business savvy and artists, and they taught me the power of community. They helped me not feel alone.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It came while every woman in jail has a nickname. And you get it, you know, either it's given to you or, you know, it's something you had out on the streets. And my best friend in jail was only two years older than my oldest son. So I was still a mother at my core. I had all this mother energy. And that was the nickname that was given to me.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I carried them figuratively in my head, but literally I kept looking back and trying to figure out who was saying these things and who was, you know, strangers. And there were threats and all of these horrible things. And it was sort of the manifestation, the physical reality of the worst things you've ever thought about yourself, the worst things that I've ever thought about myself. Like I'm bad. Don't deserve good things. I'm a horrible mother. And it was this reinforcement. And it took a long time before I stopped both reading those and thinking about that moment, but also became okay with what people think about me. Way longer than I thought it would.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It took a long time. Someone had anonymously printed out all those comments and mailed them to me in jail and I read them over and over again and I carried them around for years. I mean, literally. I carried those around and I read them.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to both think about and dream about where they were. And in my dreams, I'd always be running on the beach near where they lived. And there was something, because I was that whole year I missed birthdays and holidays and Mother's Day and all the things, again, that I took for granted. But there was something coveting to know that We were a few miles away. I would imagine We were breathing the same air that I could send my love to them through that distance.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Originally, when I was charged, they were saying it could be 27 years in prison. And that idea that I'm not going to see my children until they're in their 30s, I couldn't comprehend. That, but I came to a place because there is so much uncertainty as you're going through court dates over and over again before your sentence, before you know. Had to just stay in the moment. And then in all those court dates, the other thing I learned from that book was sending love and light to that prosecutor who's glaring at me. I'm just trying to Be here and be in acceptance for whatever happened. going to happen.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It ended up being a plea deal where I had a year in County Jail. Which with time off ended up being 10 months for good behavior a year in drug court is what it was supposed to be and then five years of probation.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, I'm okay. I can't think about 37 years in prison not seeing my children again tell their adults right now, I'm okay.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And beauty, and I wanted more of that, and I kept meditating, and I would get that longer and longer for longer and longer periods of time.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely not. But I read the one book I had in the main jail was this book called The Power of Now. And I read it over and over again. And there was one thing I learned in that was this trick to think Yourself, I wonder what my next thought will be. And when you think that there was this little brief glimmer,”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned to meditate. Again, some of us learn things the hard way. There's better ways to do it, but it is a great place”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was not pleasant physically, but it was really emotionally the hardest thing mentally because Wasn't numbing out all the pain I had been running from my whole life. Now I had quadrupled it a million times over that I had to deal with with no chemical buffer in me. And rumination and endless thoughts and trying to rewrite the past like you do if only I had done this and not this. And all of that self reflection was the beginning of. Starting over with who I am from a blank slate.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I was In jail, and that number, everything I had constructed out of my identity was gone. And there's a lot of time to think and reflect. And I was not on drugs. And so I had...”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My older boys who are with my first ex husband And I knew as long as he was with his brothers and family, he would be okay.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then that morning As I'm trying to undo knots and embarrass that someone might think I needed help still. They called me into emergency court and I found out that Caden was going to be okay. And everything was not great, you know, the next day, but I was never in.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And luckily, I was not in that. I found out that day that Caden was going to be able to be with his brothers and my ex-husband.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could hang myself I ended up sleeping through the guard changes, the light shining, the noise, and not waking up until they pushed in the chairs for breakfast.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way I think about it now, what happened that night in my darkest moment feels miraculous. Me, I fell asleep. Now, when you're detoxing from opiates, I didn't sleep again for a month, but that night with the sheet tied around my neck in six knots. Waiting for everyone to fall asleep”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I do. I told them I was sorry I told them I loved them. I told them I hope addiction never got a hold of them. Because I did believe in that moment, which again, when you look back from where you are now, how could I ever think that? But I thought it would be better for them to have a mother who was. Not alive, then a mother who was. That moment”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I felt some relief in that decision because I didn't think I had any spark of anything to get through what was in front of me.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in that moment, it was a few nights after jail, I Came to the darkest moment I've ever had in my life where I just thought I Actually, have failed at life. Like, it's over. I tried. Did my best”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They took him away. They didn't tell me. And I imagined the worst. You know, they're taking them away to protect him from me. But in my mind, he was potentially getting harmed with soldiers.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was... Full of fear and terror. But not from the women I was in jail with. I was mostly in terror from my own mind. The power structure. The Not everyone, but”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Times. It was Culture shock, it was a foreign world. It was also a community that ended up saving me. That first morning waking up, I didn't know where I was. I didn't know what was happening. I had not been in and out of. And so I didn't know the rules and the system.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it ended up where there was no time, there's been no moment since then where I've ever thought, hmm, that wasn't bad enough for me. And that's a gift. And I'm sorry that learning things the hard way. Creates a lot of collateral damage for the people you love.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was the moment that I think The bad decisions I've made, all of the inability to ask for help, all of the Choices I had made in that moment, seeing him terrified and pulled away and taken away by strangers. Was too much. There was no delusion anymore. There was no convincing myself I could fix things or everything was going to be okay.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My son Caden, who was almost four, at the time was the only one home, the others were in school, junior high in high school. And they wouldn't let me call someone to come get him. I was under arrest. I was read my rights, as was my husband at the time, his cadence dad. And I was begging them to call someone they called child protective services. And he ran to me for comfort. My hands were handcuffed behind my back. It's 15 years ago, it's still.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember walking down the hallway and going down the stairs and there's sheriff's deputies looking up at me. I knew it was over, and part of me was relieved. No idea what was in front of me, but part of me felt relie”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything had been spiraling out of control. And I was in that place where I'll just tomorrow I can fix it tomorrow is the day I'll fix it. And then I ran out of tomorrows. And there's pounding on the door. And my husband at the time said, hide the drugs. And I threw them in a sock drawer. And I remember walking down the hallway.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know where I got the idea. It's a horrible idea. I cared about these people. And when you're in that sort of desperate place to maintain the addiction, to maintain the facade, it was the most available place. It felt like the easiest, and maybe some part of me thought. Wouldn't be as much trouble. I don't know. I don't know exactly. These are people I cared about, people who trusted me, and you're just not, it's hard to like now with logic, look back at a time when you're so illogical.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The price I paid. I had them in my life. I loved them. We spent time together. But I never, it takes so long to rebuild. I never had. By the time I had that, they were off to college. You know, I never had. Those moments that I took for granted.”
2024-02-28 · Oprah's Super Soul · Oprah & Lara Love Hardin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source