I remember standing at the threshold of the door before knocking. She was expecting me. After all, the doorman had just called up to let her know that I had arrived. Still, I hesitated. I must have felt that I was in over my head. What would she ask me? What would I say? Would she accept me? What was I even doing here?

Presumably I was there for an interview, hoping to take part in an acting class run by an iconic comedic actress of the 1970s. But the class was actually tangential to my motives. I had discovered this actress’s work on a sitcom which was a darkly funny take on the American housewife of the time. When I looked her up, I found a personal website, then the acting class, then an email address. So I wrote.

“Presumably I was there for an interview, hoping to take part in an acting class run by an iconic comedic actress of the 1970s.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find. I’ve always been anxious about speaking to “adults.” Ever since I was a child, anyone older than me who had an air of knowing made me a shell of myself. I got shy, struggling to remember what my ideas were about things. But, in this case, I had strongly identified with the strange, depressed character that I’d watched on screen. I felt the need to go meet her — to find out something about myself, I guess. To see if there was another me out there.

Of course, by this point, she was over 40 years older than she’d been on the show and well, not on screen. Unlike other actresses, she hadn’t tried to keep up with the image of herself that re-ran when her films or shows were screened. (Mostly they weren’t, which might explain it.) She was an older woman, in an Upper East Side apartment, with a husband who worked at a department store. Distinctly not me, as it turns out, though that seed of identification was never to fade.

“I felt the need to go meet her — to find out something about myself, I guess. To see if there was another me out there.”

In the interview, I remember rotely recounting my personal history, my experience in Jungian analysis, my favorite movies. I was waiting for it to be over, this thing that I was so excited about. Speaking to an “adult” proved impossible again, I just hoped to live through it and get into the class so that I’d have another shot. And I did.

Soon enough a whole dynamic unraveled. I was attending an acting class once a week with a motley crew composed of other fans, a real estate agent, and aspiring actors. I always made it work, despite limitations on my schedule, a dog whose daycare closed just a touch too early, and well, my not being an actress — or even sure that I wanted to be. But I wanted to be there. I had something to find out.

I got to know her life story — anecdotes, yes, but also the more subtle structure that underlay her trajectory. There was the story about her bringing her friend’s rambunctious dogs to an appointment with the psychoanalyst, and the analyst locking the dogs in the closet during their session. (I was assured it was a large closet, breathable and comfortable, too.) It was a different time, and there’s something intrinsically interesting about hearing from a time before you were born. But, more than that, I wondered, what brought her to psychoanalysis?

“I got to know her life story — anecdotes, yes, but also the more subtle structure that underlay her trajectory.”

I eventually found out more about the tragic breakdown of her immediate family. The more I learned, the more clear it became that she hadn’t simply overcome tragedy to achieve success, but that these things were inextricably bound. The link between tragedy and comedy started to come into view, and many other links too. How one decision leads to another and then to another and then to an entire life.

“The more I learned, the more clear it became that she hadn’t simply overcome tragedy to achieve success, but that these things were inextricably bound.”

I spoke to her in a way that I’d never spoke to adults before. I heard her as a friend — different than the way one listens to their parents relaying experiences. “I once did this, but never again — now I’m your mother and that’s all.” The paralyzing trap that we’re in with our parents, with the deep psychological marks they make on us, can make it hard to understand how they came to be people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on. Especially when, after a certain point, their decisions affect us. We’ll never really be able to look at their life without factoring in our presence within it.

With my acting teacher, I was able to hear much more of her experience. The story of success, pain, and failures. The way her successes were her pains and failures, how her failures might have even been what saved her. I developed a way of understanding why she thought what she thought today, even if I didn’t always agree. I “got” something about why she lived in this apartment, why she took the acting jobs she took, and even, after I left, why she ran the acting class even when she was often sick or annoyed at us for our delinquency with regard to her strict method.

“I spoke to her in a way that I’d never spoke to adults before.”

We tend to imagine that our older counterparts either “have things figured out” or are “completely wrong about everything.” Even, somehow, that their experience has nothing to do with ours. When we do this, we miss out on understanding the logic of what makes someone tick, what led them here, and the fact that our lives will carry on in the same way. We’ll age, our lives will develop out of a series of experiences, and a great gulf will emerge between us and the younger generation. That is if we continue with these assumptions.

But, as I learned, staging a conversation at just the right distance, across generations, outside of one’s immediate family, makes understanding more possible.

“It’s precisely because she wasn’t me, and I wasn’t her daughter (i.e., the outcome of all those choices she made), that I was able to see life — what it is, what it can be.”

While my acting teacher was like me in many ways, or had been at one point, it was clear that she wasn’t me. And it’s precisely because she wasn’t me, and I wasn’t her daughter (i.e., the outcome of all those choices she made), that I was able to see life — what it is, what it can be.

After my time in the acting class, I started allowing my own decisions to take on a new gravity. It started to matter much more what way I chose at any given crossroads. It would come to be my life, after all, and someone might come asking about it someday.

Ashley D’Arcy is the Senior Editor at The Good Trade. She holds an MA in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research and has contributed to esteemed outlets such as The Nation, 032c, and Yale School of Management’s Insights where she’s leveraged her expertise in making complex ideas accessible to a broad audience. In addition to her editorial work, she is training as a psychoanalytic mental health professional and provides care to patients in New York City. Ashley also explores sustainable fashion, clean beauty, and wellness trends, combining thoughtful cultural critiques with a commitment to mindful living.