Some guests are just sent from the Source. I swear. Today I had the honor to talk to my friend Narae, and I just wanted to keep talking but we’ll do it in person, without microphones. She’s a friend, an artist working in immersive storytelling, and a tech co-founder building VR for pain and anxiety management, but what the episode is really about is the thing she and I both circle constantly: how you protect your inner state, and what you let in. She said her whole life — the art, the tech, the way she moves through people — sits on three connected things: who she meets, what she eats, and how she feels. Social connection, nutrition, meditation. Mind and body as one system, given outward to the people around her. It’s the most coherent way I’ve heard anyone describe living holistically, and it came out of her like she’d known it forever. Then we got into boundaries, and she said something that reframed the whole idea for me. Her green flag isn’t charm or chemistry — it’s someone who can say no in a way that’s kind, and tell you why. Someone who protects themselves cleanly enough that you trust they’ll respect your limits too. She’s noticed that boundaries are contagious. When you’re around someone who does it naturally, you can suddenly do it too. When you’re around people who never do, you spend the whole time braced and guarded. The skill is the room you’re standing in. The centerpiece of the whole conversation was a story her therapist pointed her to, from The Four Agreements — the smoky mirror. The idea that we each see everyone through our own reflection; that when someone’s cruel to you, they’re not really handing you a fact about yourself, they’re offering you a drink of their own poison, and you get to say thank you, but no. You can recognize the offer, even honor the intention behind it, and still decline to drink it. I told her about the man who screamed at me at a gas station on a good day, for the crime of existing near him, and how, years later, it’s still lodged in me. Her answer was gentle and devastating: that anger was his. He just never named it, so he handed it to the nearest person instead. Because that’s her real practice: naming the feeling. She learned in therapy that when you name a bad emotion, it shrinks and loses its grip and when you name a good one, it grows. But she couldn’t always find the words, so she found another door. She’s a visual person, an athlete who grew up in a culture where you endured feelings instead of speaking them, so when she can’t write the feeling, she draws it. Doodles, colors, jagged lines or round ones. She gets the thing out of her head and onto the paper so she can look at it from the outside and ask: is this anger worth three weeks, or three minutes? Is this anger worth three weeks, or three minutes? —Narae And then she told me about the letters. Yes, she writes letters too! When she’s furious at someone, she writes the letter. The long one, the real one, revised until it says exactly how she feels. And then she reads it back and realizes she doesn’t need to send it. She already got what she needed: she knows how she feels now. Sending it would just cost her another day of her own energy. So she closes it, and moves on. Narae. I’m the woman who writes the letters she doesn’t send. I’ve built a whole podcast on it. And here you were, on the other side of the mic, telling me you do the exact same thing, for the exact same reason. Different countries, different lives, same instinct: say the whole true thing, out loud or on paper, and then let it go. We were meant to meet. Period. We ended, of course, on the animals. Her two cats, ten years old, who draw boundaries better than any human she knows — they take what they want, refuse what they don’t, and do it so cutely you can’t be mad. She taught me something I didn’t know: cats don’t meow at each other. They only meow at us. They invented a language just to talk to the humans they love. Which felt like the truest note to end on, these small creatures building a whole vocabulary to reach us, and us barely noticing they’re speaking. Thank you, Narae. Same instinct, different tools, different worlds — and somehow always the same conversation. I feel very lucky to know you in this lifetime. Good night! — L. Find out more about Narae and her work at the following links: Narae * Website / portfolio: kimnarae.com — her art, immersive/VR work, exhibitions * On Instagram * On LinkedIn Her work * Flowly — the VR app for pain and anxiety management she co-founded with Celine Tien and Julien Soros; she created the app’s virtual worlds; founded 2019, went through Y Combinator, it’s on Instagram * Rallie — a social tech platform that helps friend groups turn every “we should hang out” Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Laura G. at nightnightatlauras.substack.com/subscribe
