When writer, Interfaith Minister, and entrepreneur Anne (pronounced “Annie”) Kiehl Friedman began writing her memoir, Higher Love: a psychedelic travel memoir of heartbreak and healing, she embarked on a journey to rediscover her voice.
Friedman describes herself as having always been a journaler, using the medium to understand herself and move forward in light of her thoughts and feelings. But for many years, this was the only type of writing she did for herself. “Out of college,” she explains, “I worked as a speechwriter and a ghost writer, which was a different relationship with writing. And it was actually that that led me to write the book, because I realized I hadn’t written anything under my own name in ten or fifteen years.”
The author, Anne Kiehl Friedman. Photo courtesy of Friedman.
Discovering the importance of her narrative
As she sought to reclaim her written identity, Friedman had not initially planned to share her findings with the world. However, she states that early on in the process with only a couple of chapters written, she soon began to see the work differently.
“My writing switched from something that would live on my computer – and only ever on my computer – into something that I would put out into the world when somebody I really trust and respect said she thought it would help people,” Friedman recalls. “She said, ‘I think this could save lives.’ And when somebody says something like that, it makes you realize, ‘Okay, then I should be brave enough and resilient enough to share this, because I’m hoping it will help people.’”
The themes of Friedman’s work can be particularly pivotal for women; this recognition was the primary shift for her to understand the memoir as one for public consumption. Citing the high rates at which women suffer from PTSD, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other serious mental health problems, she notes, “psychedelics have the potential to treat some of these issues and improve quality of life, but the way society holds psychedelics means that women are less likely to explore if they could be helped by them.”
By integrating relatable circumstances including (but not limited to) turbulent relationships, insecurities, and self-esteem issues, the memoir’s portrayal of psychedelics is not only accessible but also communicates eye-opening perspectives about these commonly understood – and commonly struggled with – topics. The descriptions of her psychedelic trips are certainly abstract at times but are incredibly evocative in their sensory language and human in their openness. Ultimately, even to those wholly unfamiliar with psychedelics, these recurring scenes are a welcome common thread and vessel for the story’s moving realizations.
Approaching an act of creation
The fact that Higher Love began as a journal and evolved into a book should come as no surprise to readers of the memoir. The story’s fresh, rich prose and vivid, comfortingly honest tone serve as the basis for Friedman’s recollection of pivotal moments throughout her adult life.
Accomplishing this end required a multi-faceted approach. “One of the key, most important pieces of advice I got in writing was: writing and editing are two different hats, and when you’re doing one, you are not doing the other,” Friedman emphasizes. “So when I’m writing, the delete key does not exist.”
With this technique, she clarifies that the goal is to get everything down on paper, without judgment of any kind, avoiding discernments about what is relevant and what is not. “Judgment is not a constructive thing to bring to an act of creation,” she asserts.
The stylistic balance of her tone, which is equal parts sincere, reassuring, and comical, is thanks to this organic view of the writing process. “I write the way I talk. I try and figure out, ‘if I were to explain this to somebody, what would I say?’” Friedman elaborates. “I want it to be a joy to read.”
On the other hand, Friedman says that during the editing process is when judgment is most helpful: taking the biggest and most extensive version of the book’s portions and narrowing them down to follow a more specific path. “Late in the process, I narrowed down on four key themes and when I found anything that wasn’t acutely relevant to one of those four key themes, I struck it, or I tried to.”
Although as she was writing the book she existed in denial about it being eventually published, Friedman adds that the ability to edit helped ease this concern. “I created the work as if it was going to exist on my computer, and then edited it as if strangers would see it.”
Abundant detail and plenty of precision
The ability to recall the depth of the experiences Friedman includes in the memoir was no small undertaking, especially because the book spans a years-long chronology. While she explained that her mind’s way of working helped with the process, in addition to her writing method, she maintained a tangible grasp of these scenes primarily by having faith in what arose. “I went to a workshop with a writing coach who talked about trusting the glimmers, which are the things that stand out in your memory. The weird details. So I really tried to trust that if I remember something, it might have relevance.”
In addition to following those specifics that caught her attention, Friedman also took voice notes during and journaled after her psychedelic experiences to ensure she remembered portions well enough to write about them.
This practice helped her to achieve an accuracy that she’s regarded as a significant facet of writing since her time in academia. “I enjoy the freedom of writing about my life because I know I’m right on it. In terms of writing what you know, it feels like the only place where I can 100% defend that I am the right person to tell this story.”
With this emphasis on precision, she points out the importance of being plain spoken. “To be accurate and understandable to somebody without a PhD is, for me, kind of the North Star.”
And interestingly, this desire for accuracy in her writing has encouraged Friedman to pursue fiction’s creative liberties in the future. “I think I might really enjoy having the freedom to create what happens, as opposed to just retell what happens.”
Travel and a trust in the universe
In tandem with a focus on Friedman’s psychedelic journeys, the memoir is built upon her physical movement from place to place. Looking at how travel impacted the way the book’s events transpired, she believes this element can contribute to “greater self-recognition of growth.”
Friedman observes, “The act of moving makes the passage of time clearer in some ways. It can just all blend together more if you’re in the same place, in the same routine, seeing the same people, whereas if you can get some separation and then go back, you see it in yourself differently.”
Geographical change also highlights hard-to-ignore, but incredibly harmful, social messages that are often mistaken for fact. “If you can move from society, between societies, you will see that those rules are not true. They’re only true in certain places. It just makes you able to see the water that you’re swimming in,” she remarks. “It makes it visible in a way that you can’t see if you don’t ever get outside it.”
In this way, a sense of physical place, specifically nature, plays a huge role in the book. Not only can the natural world offer companionship in solitude, but Friedman recognizes how she must apply the same adoration she has for the environment’s irregularities and quirks to herself. “I love so much about nature that I am so critical of in myself,” she acknowledges. “When I think it is so beautiful the way oaks twist and they are never symmetrical, why am I worried about one eyebrow being more arched than another?”
She connects this sentiment to a greater, simultaneous appreciation for being both a mortal human and an infinite soul. Friedman discusses how finding a balance between these two elements of life can be difficult, but powerful. “The greatest challenge is to stay in touch with the part of you that is infinite while not losing your mortality.”
To trust in the universe’s processes, recognize humanity wherever you find it, and believe that circumstances occur for a reason are all huge parts of this understanding. In Friedman’s eyes, it’s all about “allowing the infinities to exist so that you appreciate the days in the instance.”
Anne Kiehl Friedman’s new book, Higher Love, is now available. Photo courtesy of Friedman.
Reimagining work and following your heart
These higher order realizations about life affect many long-held societal norms, including what it means to be productive. Friedman redefines this idea in her memoir: “valuable productivity is when we’re doing our life purpose, when we are producing according to our soul, spirit, personality.”
Not doing what one truly wants to do with their time on earth, she makes clear, means that someone is just doing for the sake of doing – and likely someone else is profiting from their work in the process.
But how do you even determine if something is aligned with your joy or not? This happens to be one of the book’s central concerns, and Friedman admits that it’s an extremely complicated inquiry. “We as women are overwhelmingly taught to be aware of others’ wants and needs. It can be really, really, really hard for me to even know what joy wants me to do, and to remember to ask that question.”
When the circumstances are reframed, the signposts to joy and what it feels like to make a resonant decision can become much clearer. One can navigate the denial, doubt, anxiety, and shame less as obstacles and more as indicators. “I think we all know what doesn’t feel right,” posits Friedman. “We’ve just learned to do it so much anyway. We forget that those signs convey actual information.”
Integrating her psychedelic experiences has made Friedman particularly aware of her own beliefs and what society has merely convinced her to think. However, she points out that the practice of folding psychedelic realizations into her life is more effortful the more entrenched the pattern is.
To exhibit this, she unpacks what it has meant to her to start getting gray hair. “Each time I unintentionally default into what society tells me I should hate and fix about my body, I try to bring another layer of awareness to that thought, and ask, ‘Is this something I really believe?’” she says. “‘How would I feel differently if our society honored aging? If we saw each gray hair as a visible symbol of valuable wisdom that you would never want to cover up?’”
Friedman underscores that having to return to these questions is not a shortcoming, and revisiting concepts she’s struggled with in the past does not mean failure. “My experience of life is that there are only a handful of issues, and they just keep coming up in different people, in different relationships, in different situations, in different shapes.”
So, what does ‘love’ mean, anyway?
By seeking to uncover the truth of one’s own beliefs through mindful inquiry, Friedman explicates how harmful thought patterns can be unraveled. The same can apply to the sort of love we hope for and seek from others. Friedman clarifies that love “is very much a verb.” She continues, “My three core tenets are being seen, understood, and cared for. If a relationship is missing any of those, it doesn’t fill that need.”
Of course, like anything, it takes time for this understanding to come into fuller effect. What Higher Love accomplishes so magically, and truthfully, is the portrayal of love as something you don’t have to work for or struggle to achieve. “I realized,” Friedman observes, “love that comes easily is the only real love. If I don’t have to work for it, that’s love. If I have to work for it, it’s something else.”
And the memoir makes clear that the kind of love, which might not come easily upon first glance but is in reality the most important, is the love you give yourself. And yes, the idea to “love yourself” is thrown around quite easily, making it confusing to comprehend what it could possibly look like in practice. Indeed, Friedman explains how she often chose to focus on all that she could give others, and the love she could shower upon other people. “That is all a deep and subtle form of control. That’s not love,” she highlights.
Reflecting on past relationships, she adds, “Because I couldn’t love myself, I didn’t believe people who loved me. I thought they were wrong. I thought they weren’t seeing me clearly and that I could only trust the people who said the things that I thought about myself out loud.”
But really, she now sees that rather than looking outside yourself to be known, love, especially self-love, flourishes best when one considers all that they don’t know about themselves but would easily ask someone else. “There was a whole, and still is a whole, wealth of information about myself that I don’t know, that I’ve never asked, that I’ve never cared to ask,” she says. “If you don’t know yourself, you can’t be yourself. If you can’t be yourself, then any love you’re getting just doesn’t feel real because it’s not for you.”
Friedman’s outlook on love gives readers a beautifully simple task: to get to know themselves. In doing so, not only is self-love actualized, but it is far easier to have faith in the various other types of love and recognize where love is and is not.
Spreading Higher Love
Explaining her purpose for writing this memoir, Friedman evokes Toni Morrison’s observation that “if there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Creating this memoir, to Friedman, has served as both an antidote to shame and a unique opportunity for human connection. “It is not our perfect parts that connect us to people. It is being able to be messy and be seen and loved or accepted anyway.”
Throughout the entirety of the story, Friedman reaches her audience where they’re at, takes their hand, and shines a light on common, honest struggles that, for so long and for so many people, feel like an inescapable, mental status quo. The memoir swiftly bridges a connection to the reader in a way that’s both hard to come by and awe-inspiring in its effect. Higher Love is a must-read for anyone hoping to reframe their understanding of love, life, and self. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel grateful for and encouraged by Friedman’s perceptions long after you finish the book.
Anne Kiehl Friedman’s memoir, Higher Love: a psychedelic travel memoir of heartbreak and healing, is out now and available for purchase. For more information and to get your copy, please visit annekiehlfriedman.com.