Grace Bonney Shares Her Wisdom

Image via Natalie Chitwood

By Leslie Price

Grace Bonney is the founder of the website Design*Sponge. She’s also hosted two podcasts, launched her own magazine, and written three books (NBD). The latest of those, Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women Over 50, is out now.

I spoke with Grace in a wide-ranging conversation about her book, changing careers later in life (at 40, she’s in graduate school working towards a degree in marriage and family therapy), perfectionism, imposter syndrome, the value of therapy, and more.

There's so much to your new book, which features interviews with more than 100 women. How would you advise someone to consume it? Because there are just so many ways you could.

Grace: What surprised me about [my previous book,] In the Company of Women, was how many people said, "I’ve spread this book out over the course of six months. I've started my day reading one profile with a cup of coffee and really stretched it out." That meant so much to me. What a wonderful way to actually be very present with these stories. I tend to just fly through books and look for things that jump out at me.

There are so many profiles and stories in [Collective Wisdom] that you could probably revisit the same one several times and catch something different each time. There's no wrong way to do it, but I very much appreciate the one-profile-with-a-cup-of-coffee-in-the-morning kind of consuming of it.

You turned 40 this year. Did you feel like you were hitting an age where you desired this perspective [from older women] more?

This book had less to do with my age in the beginning than it did my friendship with a woman named Georgine; I dedicated the book to her. We were friends, and met through a volunteer group here in the Hudson Valley. That was the first time I'd had a real friendship with somebody significantly older than me. She was in her 90s, and I was in my late 30s.

Our cultural references, our historical references, our political references were completely different. We found a world of friendship outside of those differences. That friendship gave me such a sense of perspective. I thought, I just want to meet a bunch of other people like Georgine, and I also want to hear from people who've had friendships like that and what it meant to them. 

I had been collecting books about older women for a while because that was a topic that's come up a lot in my own work in therapy — of being a bit afraid of aging, being afraid of my body falling apart. I felt self-conscious about my age at first, [that it wasn’t] fair for me to ask these questions because I can't possibly understand the complexity of the lives that most of these women have lived. Originally, I thought about hiring like, 100 different writers, [but I realized] very quickly that that was going to be incredibly complicated, and I think it would make the book a bit disparate in a way that would be hard to digest.

[I realized that] I’m going to make mistakes. I'm going to ask questions that are rooted in ageism that I don't even realize are. And I have to be okay with making those mistakes, learn to apologize, and move forward. That happened less than I anticipated, but it did happen in moments, and I appreciated a lot of the feedback and women taking the time to be like, "The fact that you even thought of that question tells me your age."

For example, I asked everybody what they wanted to be when they were little, and a lot of women over 70 were like, "What kind of question is that? I didn't get a choice." I never even thought about that. Those moments were very educational.

One thing I hope everyone takes away [from the book]: Your life doesn't stop. Curiosity does not stop. And if we assume people stop caring about things at a certain point, and that their lives are not interesting and worth caring about, what kind of culture are we? The ableism in our society that perpetuates this myth that the forever-healthy, forever-functional human body even exists at any age is a flat-out lie. Perfect health or perfect mobility or any of that is very much a temporary state. That's why I felt it was important to include the voices of disabled women in [the book].

You are sharing the profits of the book with your subjects. How did you decide on that format?

My last two projects, and most of my projects for the past seven or eight years, have been collaborative. I've always paid people to participate in those projects, but I never considered profit sharing. Nothing is set up to tell authors, but especially white authors, that there should be equity in pay. 

I've always put my entire advance into paying people in the production of [a book]. So I thought, okay, well, a year and a half from now is when I get paid for this project, and that's fine. I think because I've spoken so publicly about equity when it comes to race in particular that I've created the atmosphere where people will hold me accountable. Not because they have to, but because they feel like maybe I will actually listen.

And some people wrote me and were like, "Hey, you do a lot of work where you benefit from the stories of women of color. What are you doing to support those people financially?" I was like, "Oof. You are right."

It looked like dividing up the remaining advance after production cost among the women up front, [and] committing to sharing half of the profits in perpetuity with them. I don't think my solution is a perfect one. It's just an attempt to figure out what that looks like. And if it works, I hope it's something that other people will consider. I've seen [how often] my wife, who does recipe writing, has been asked to contribute a recipe or an essay to a book that goes on to win a James Beard Award. And those people maybe get a stipend, but they don't get a cut of the profit.

Those books tend to do really well, so why do we assume the person who coordinates it deserves exponentially more money than the people who put their time and their personal story into something?

Norms should constantly be questioned. Who established that norm, and who's benefiting from it mostly? The concept of mutual aid and equity have existed in communities of color for a very, very, very long time. I just think white people...that's not how we were raised to think.

How were you able to ask questions that feel sensitive, like raising or not raising children? When you're speaking with women, those choices affect what happens in their lives so dramatically.

As a queer person for whom having biological family was not necessarily something I felt inherently drawn to in my personal life, I'm always thinking about people who choose not to parent in the traditional sense of the word. There aren't enough stories of that. 

[Some] people were like, "Yeah, I might do it differently. Looking back, I might wait much later to have children, or I might not have had children at all." That's a really difficult thing to talk about, because you can deeply, deeply, deeply love your children, and then also be like, "Wow, what could I have done with my life had that been a different option or if I had more of a choice?" Which is definitely more of a generational thing in this book. 

That's why I was happy to include Joan Biren's story, because she is this iconic queer filmmaker, and [of] a generation where that type of work was absolutely not financially compensated in the way that it could have been. She has chosen family who created a retirement fund for her because they wanted to recognize and financially compensate what she had brought to their community.

People need to see that there's more than one way to retire with loved ones. There's more than one way to address parenting. But it can be a nuanced choice.

Was there anything that you were really surprised by in the answers? One of the things that struck me was how many women were like, "Looking back, I would never have gotten married." (laughs)

Absolutely. That became a funny thread of the book. I was like, is this person going to regret getting married too? (laughs) I didn't hear that from women in their 50s and 60s so much as 70s, 80s, 90s.

But honestly, I went into this very naively thinking that I was going to find the secret to when you stop caring so much about what other people think about you. And I don't think that exists. [But] when society deems you less relevant, as it does earlier and earlier for women in this country, you don't have as many eyes on you. That's not a great thing, but there is also a form of freedom that comes with it.

Women were like, "Nobody's watching, and nobody cares, so now I’m going to actually do everything that I want to do and worry less about reactions." That's a double-edged sword, but there's something interesting about having the space to create and make and be outside of the intense male gaze.

You’ve spoken about feeling imposter syndrome about this change in your career [from media to therapy]. This also kind of came up in one of the interviews in your book, where someone said, basically, "I had an arrogance in my 20s, and now I realize that I don't have all the answers." I have found that there is an assumption that women will have imposter syndrome in their careers, and I didn't feel that initially, but the older I get, the more I have it.

I wanted to ask you about that feeling, because I think it's such an interesting phenomenon, the idea of losing the arrogance of youth.

I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling that. I don't think I ever felt imposter syndrome once with Design*Sponge, primarily because I was just writing about things I liked. And what an incredibly privileged position to be in. But when I went to apply to graduate school, I associated [it] with a type of academia that I have never been interested in. It is the only path to being a licensed therapist, so I knew I had to consider it. When I started to fill out the application, I had to write a resume. I hadn't written a resume in 17 years.

I thought, what the hell do I have to contribute? I was going to back out, and my therapist recommended people she knew who were young practitioners. They were like, "Wait a minute. You don't need to have a degree in psychology. You don't need to have studied this in undergrad. The most valuable thing you can bring into a therapeutic relationship is just having lived more life." 

I'm one of the older students in my class, and I realize I have lived through so many more things. For the most part, people in their 20s haven't gone through a ton of trauma, marriage, divorce, kids, all the things that happen the longer you live. You realize how complicated life is. Just existing in life provides you with a certain amount of understanding and cred that I think is important to acknowledge. 

You have accomplished so many things. You worked in magazines. You started a blog. It was a major sensation. You had a podcast. You launched your own magazine. There've been books. I'm wondering what success looks like to you now, and if the definition has shifted even in the last few years.

Yeah, absolutely. My definition of success has gotten much smaller, and I think it's become... I don't think I would have admitted in the past 15 years that it was so quantitative, but I think it was. I guess I'm, what, three years out of Design*Sponge now. I've needed this much time to be able to appreciate what happened in that project.

I felt like I couldn't ever look back and enjoy any of those moments, because that would be giving into my ego a little too much. I was constantly comparing myself to other people in the field. But I'm glad I can look back [now] and be proud of it. It was very much the work of a large team of people. [When I] think about all of the people involved, that gives me a sense of accomplishment that I really appreciate. 

What has the value of therapy been for you?

Every single person is different, and I want to clarify that I don't think that traditional talk therapy is right, nor is it a solution for everybody's problems. Our culture associates therapy with a person sitting in a room across from the other person, but there are peer groups, peer-to-peer counseling, faith-based support systems.

All of those are valid and important, but what they boil down to, for the most part, is sitting with somebody who is fully committed and trained in what it takes to create a safe space. That's not just a nonjudgmental space. The phrase in the field is culturally humble or cultural humility, which basically means the person in that room with you has committed time and training to understand all the different ways that systems of oppression affect somebody. 

For me, therapy is very much about the value and importance of somebody being curious about you, and that your feelings matter and your story matters, and that the ultimate goal should be to bring community into that. I think our country's far too individualistic. If therapy isn't about finding ways to connect you with other people outside of that room, then I don't see it as that effective. It has the capability to make people feel seen and heard and valued, but it has to extend beyond that room, I think.

Another thing that struck me about your path has been the amount of change that has happened in your life. So much of it has been public. Your career development, coming out, getting married again after divorce, moving to the Hudson Valley, renovating a house, doing volunteer work, even your diagnosis [of Type 1 diabetes]. There's this concept now that people talk about, parasocial relationships. What was it like to evolve that much, that quickly, and in the public eye?

I recently started working with a new therapist because my older therapist, who I love, was not the right person for what I'm curious about now, which is my own gender identity and how complicated that is. I'm working with somebody who can help me unpack that. When I was talking to the therapist about what my life has looked like for the past 15 years, they were like, "Wow. You've been through a lot."

I was like, "I guess?" Because it's been public, those changes have felt magnified. To be clear, I chose to make those things public. It wasn't done to me. I now associate change with a pretty large level of upheaval. I have approached a lot of my discomfort with my own gender identity as like, oh, this will be another life upheaval. And my therapist was like, "Change doesn't have to be rupture. Change can just be a thing that happens. And actually, we're always all changing, and so it's not that big of a deal."

But when you live your life really publicly like that, you get used to the idea that there's going to be a response to some sort of change. That's actually been the nice part about not being that public anymore, getting to figure out change in a different way.

You’ve said that you used to be really defensive. When you look back at that phase of your life and career, what do you see?

That connects to a lot of the struggles I've had with perfectionism and boundaries. I started unpacking that thanks to one of my coworkers, Max, at Design*Sponge, who was like, "Why do you get into it in the comments sections? Can't you just say, 'I'm sorry you felt that way'?" I'm like, "I didn't do anything wrong."

He was like, "That's not what you're saying. You're just acknowledging that someone had feelings when they, you know, witnessed something that you produced." And I was like, "Oh." It seemed so simple. I've been operating fully from this bravado/defensiveness position, and that's not helping anybody. It took me five more years to fully not only be okay with the intense criticism that comes with working online, but to figure out how to handle it, how to respond to it, to accept that even a response that's rooted in compassion and taking accountability can still get responses that are just sometimes actually violent.

This year, though, I have finally figured out how to set boundaries around that. No, you're not entitled to scream at me and you're not entitled to call me a piece of shit because I didn't provide something that you thought I owed you on the internet. It's an interesting process to really figure out, because I think women are not taught to enforce boundaries. And then if we do, we're “aggressive.”

I think a lot about how to enforce boundaries in ways that feel compassionate, but compassionate to yourself first. With very few exceptions, if someone can't speak to you with a certain level of respect and understanding that you are also a human, no. The answer's just no. That's taken me a really long time to learn. So complicated, but I think boundaries really go hand in hand with learning to be less defensive.

Are there any other takeaways from the book that have stuck with you?

I interviewed a woman named Mahboubeh, who's originally from Iran and is an exiled feminist activist. We talked about how many different versions of herself exist in her memory and [how she] imagines those versions of herself sitting at a table. She was like, "I think about all those different versions of myself, and I have to be at peace with them."

I had never really thought about how important it is to not only accept and understand who we are at earlier stages of life, but to actually embrace that. To think back and be like, wow, that decision I made that really hurt somebody...I have to love that part of myself, too. And if I shun it, I am more likely to not learn from that.

I've been trying to take in what she said and spend more time trying to appreciate the earlier versions of myself and carry them with me.