Prison Took His Freedom. Stoicism Gave It Back.
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Imagine being this good. Even though she was under unimaginable stress, even though she was suffering a parent's worst nightmare, watching as her only child was overcome by mental illness, by depression, by alcoholism, Even as she was doing the agonizing work of understanding her own role in her daughter's difficulties, Joan Didion was still writing. It wasn't for publication, it wasn't even for one of her famed notebooks, although I talk about that in the journaling chapter of Wisdom Takes work.
No, these were summaries of her therapy appointments for her husband. typed up as their then thirty something daughter Quintana spiraled into addiction. Helpless to save her daughter, but desperate to do whatever she could, Didion was trying to process an overwhelming and deeply painful situation. The private thoughts were not intended for anyone but her husband, and yet, when they were discovered in a small file near Didion's desk and published as notes to John, who carry the book in the painted porch, after the death of all three figures, They make for profoundly moving reading, detailing in Dideon's clear and refined writing style what it is like to watch as your child seems bent on self-destruction.
They also prove that even in private, Joan Dideon was apparently incapable of bad writing. In a way, this is a similar story to Marcus Aurelius's meditations. We have a man suffering and struggling. We have a man in the midst of a very specific singular experience. being the emperor of most of the world, and also having a difficult child, and here he is writing almost entirely for himself.
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