Processing Our Childhood

“You don’t want to live on someone else’s fumes,” says Lisa Brennan-Jobs, author of Small Fry, a bestselling memoir about growing up in Silicon Valley as the daughter of artist Chrisann Brennan and Apple legend Steve Jobs. Today, Brennan-Jobs and Elise Loehnen talk about the complicated feelings that often arise when we look back at our past—and about how we can sit with and process those feelings. They talk about learning to see our parents—and any human—as human, as multidimensional, as both good and flawed. “It’s hard for people to live their value system sometimes,” says Brennan-Jobs. But that doesn’t erase all the moments when they do.