-You write in this beautiful memoir,
Crazy Brave,
About how your mother's music
allowed you to enter
and you were called by the music.
Do you remember it?
-I remember--
I had a rough birth.
-Yes.
-So it wasn't a real easy birth
it was-- I kinda fought for two days
and they didn't think I would live.
So I have that kind of,
I know that I struggled
but I can't remember--
I can remember being
an infant, moments of being
an infant.
And remembering that I struggled with
even wanting to stay here.
-As an infant?
-Yes, because it seemed
everything, I could feel everything--
and it's not just me,
all children feel everything.
-Yes, I know that.
-And the burden of it and I thought
'How am I going to move through this?'
and it felt like too much.
-Yes, you know, it's interesting,
all of those years of talking to so many people,
during The Oprah Show,
I came to understand that we all come in
to the birth space
trailing the breath of the angels.
We all come in knowing,
and we all come in with that knowing,
and depending on where you are
and what your culture is,
you lose it quickly,
in some cultures more quickly than others,
because even when you
are still in touch with that other world,
people tell you, 'oh no you're not',
you know, they try to tell you that
what you see, and what you feel
and what you hear
isn't really real.
-Babies know,
I've been at the births of as many of my kids--
well my kids of course,
my kids,
my grandchildren, and
and someone always comes in with them.
I've seen usually,
somebody, an ancestor,
comes along with them to help them
and I watch how they remember everything,
they will look at me like,
okay, I remember you,
and they'll even smile
when they're not supposed to be smiling,
-The babies?
-Yes, and then you watch--
that's what all that sleeping is,
you know, babies sleep so much
because they have to adjust,
and they start forgetting.
-Ah...
-And every once and a while
they'll remember,
and I think when you get older,
like a lot of us are,
you start that remembering again.
-Aha, aha.
-It becomes more present.
-You know a lot of people will think we're crazy,
and not just "Crazy Brave",
having this conversation but
when I realized that this was true
about babies, because I did a book years ago
on the show called 'The Spiritual Life of Children',
and had multiple conversations about it,
I started acknowledging babies differently.
Because I had always like--
"oh they're babies, they don't know"
they actually know more than anyone else.
-That's right.
-They know everything.
-That's right.
-They know everything.