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[0:00] Bobby Steggert: I'm Bobby Steggart, and this is The Quiet Part Out Loud.

[0:15] Bobby Steggert: Our need to compensate for how others might perceive us is an attempt to control the uncontrollable. And if I've learned anything about the commonly held belief that the only thing you can control is your reactions, there's even a paradox about that control. You have to surrender to your inner reaction first so that you can understand and accept whatever thoughts and feelings you might have so that it is acknowledged, else it will surely find its way to express itself when you least expect it. Even when we don't realize it, our brains are hard at work trying to control the utterly uncontrollable. That's what worry is. It's nothing more than an overtime strategy of anticipating danger or ruminating about the past in the hopes that if we encounter the same danger again, we can control a future outcome and live to see another day.

And why do we try to control so much of the uncontrollable? Beyond literal survival, it's a way of navigating the social world, besting our enemies, keeping our loved ones close, achieving or maintaining status. And at the very core of it all, it's to avoid the ultimate vulnerability of powerlessness. Elisa Galindez is an actress who I saw in the lead role of last season's Real Women Have Curves. It was a show that deserved a much longer run, in my opinion, and one that, while set in the 80s, was chillingly representative of today's immigrant experience. Elisa was performing the lead role of Anna, and it wasn't until intermission that I learned it was her first performance ever. In fact, not only was she the dance captain, but she covered almost every female role on the stage.

Her ownership of the role was complete and entirely realized, and I was determined to find her and invite her onto the podcast. Months later, here we are, and what transpires is a fascinating conversation about the need to be right, something that she seemingly nailed in her many roles on and off stage in her Broadway debut, but on a deeper level, the need to avoid being made small. Elisa has many identities that, in this world, risk being minimized. She's a woman from the Bronx, a Latina, she's 5'10", and she spent her early career in the ensemble, never stepping out into a lead role until the week I saw her on stage. And all her life, she has fiercely defended her strength and intelligence by, as she says, trying to make herself as big as she can in every room she walks into.

This part is simply trying to avoid the exposure of embarrassment, of being wrong or small or insignificant. And like all parts, it has been a successful protector, and at times, a complicated obstacle to connection and vulnerability. I'm excited to share Elisa's story with you, and whether you saw her in the show or not, this conversation will make you as curious about her as when I saw her center stage. So I've done almost 50 episodes, and I have never seen someone in a show and then just stalked them until they did the podcast. So you're the very first. I was just so deeply impressed with your work in Real Women Have Curves.

[3:27] Elisa Galindez: Thank you so much. That was a wild ride. Did you see it in previews? Is that when you saw me?

[3:36] Bobby Steggert: I saw you the first night you did a full show.

[3:39] Elisa Galindez: Oh, yeah. So that was previews. That was a wild week. Because earlier that Wednesday, I did a mid-show swing on for the lead, and then I was on for five shows consecutively.

[3:47] Bobby Steggert: What was so surprising was just the ownership of your performance. And it's obviously that you're skilled and talented, but is it also that the show was something that you knew really deeply at that point?

[3:56] Elisa Galindez: I did. I was really lucky enough to be a part of Curves as early as May of 2023, when I started working with Sergio Trujillo doing pre-production for the workshop. Then I did the workshop thereafter. Then I did all the in-between things, and then they asked me to stay on for the out-of-town tryout, which was in Cambridge at ART. And so I stayed on for that. And then my role changed a little bit, but they did ask me to continue on to Broadway. So I've been a part of this show for almost two and a half years. And Ana is someone who is very close to me and my upbringing and people who I know, and this community of people in the show feel very close to home. So at that point, when I was tasked with just jumping in, I hadn't had the opportunity to play her yet, but it felt like almost weirdly my last audition for this process.

[4:49] Bobby Steggert: Oh, my God. Well, you pass.

[4:51] Elisa Galindez: Thank you. Thank you. I think that was like, if I hadn't, there's no way to know. But if I hadn't been a part of the process, as long as I had been, I don't know if I would have been as confident. Because when I jumped in mid-show that two days before you saw me, I was already on in an ensemble track because for the production on Broadway, I became an offstage swing in the dance captain. And I was already on for several days in an ensemble track because we had a cast member who was ill. And then mid-show, we were towards the end of Tony season, there was so much press, these women were really pushing themselves as much as they could. And a couple days before, I just had a gut feeling. And I said, Let me go over the lines. But I had not walked the track. I had not really been on stage.

[5:33] Bobby Steggert: You have been concentrating on your ensemble work, really?

[5:36] Elisa Galindez: Yeah. Had you ever sung it? You sang it like you have been singing it for years.

[5:40] Elisa Galindez: So thank goodness, the producers throughout the last couple years have always asked me to do the investor events when you're trying to get people to. So I knew the music. And I originally had auditioned as Anna. And they had other plans for me. So the music was very much in my bones that I had been doing for a long time. It was really the scenes because you saw the show once she's on, she's never gone. I had never done any of the scene work. And the script had changed so much over two years as a new musical does. So it was really fascinating. And it was an adrenaline train. I was like a bullet. And I said, I think I didn't really grasp what was happening until the first time I bowed and I got like halfway through like singing bows.

And then I couldn't make no more sound because I just started sobbing on stage. Because again, it felt like my final audition and number two, I haven't done a lot of leads in a musical or leads in a play or lead actor things. I'm working my way towards that. But it was really exciting and something I hope to accomplish. And I didn't think it was going to happen, at least not that soon. And there it was, let me tell you, people who have influence, listen to this podcast. And I'm telling you, if you're one of those people, see this girl, listen to her sing.

[6:47] Bobby Steggert: Thanks, Bobby. I'm fanboying. My friends are gonna be so excited because they've been talking about you too. You really were really impressed with your work.

[6:55] Elisa Galindez: Thank you so much. Really, that means more than I know that we're here to talk about my feelings around embarrassment.

[7:01] Bobby Steggert: It's an interesting segue, because you were so probably very proud of what you did there.

[7:05] Elisa Galindez: I was there's this fear of being wrong. I don't know how many people who listen to this or even you believe in zodiac signs, but I am very true Leo at heart. And that fiery like diva ego is always there. And I've worked my whole life to do that gracefully. It's a scary thing to do. Final bow in a Broadway show is like what? And I don't know that my Leo showed up. The adrenaline is really what got me through that. And I was so terrified of doing it wrong for a long time. Actually, after I did it for the very first time was the first time I got off stage and I finished and I was like, wow, I feel like an actor for the first time in my entire career.

[7:44] Bobby Steggert: Because before that embarrassment had always kept you from feeling like you could really embody something.

[7:48] Elisa Galindez: Yeah. And I think that I feel really at home as a singer. I'm a singer first, if you want to label things. And I think I had to trick my brain into taking compliments for people who are like, Oh, you're such a fine musician. You're such a good singer. To me, my brain was interpreting that as okay, then that means you're a bad actor, which the two things are not the same. And one thing does not mean the other. But it was the first time when I was like, this was probably she does more scene work than singing in that piece. And I felt like I proved it to myself, not to anybody else, right? They knew I could do it. They had me understudy her for a reason. And they kept me on for several years for a reason. But I think that was the day that I finally proved it to myself. And so this maybe feeling of embarrassment subsided for the first time in a really long time or fear of being embarrassed.

[8:39] Bobby Steggert: What a gift that gave you the pressure cooker gave you that?

[8:43] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, yeah.

[8:44] Bobby Steggert: Will you take me all the way back to early life and your earliest memories of what embarrassment felt like and what the context might have been?

[8:53] Elisa Galindez: Sure. So I'm a little girl growing up in a Puerto Rican household in the Bronx. I have four older siblings, all boys, but I'm significantly younger than them. There's about a 15 to 22 year age gap between me and my siblings. So I have only child syndrome. And so that in itself, like there's an independence there, but there's also like a need to fit in, right? Because you don't have like your sibling next to you to do things with or to back you up. And I was a feisty kid. I was also a really stubborn child. And I don't know if we're talking really about embarrassment or the fear of being wrong, or both, or if because I am wrong in a situation, I then become embarrassed. But I think I was always an overachiever and really like stubborn to a fault of I must be right because if I'm not right, then I'm afraid of what people are going to think or say.

[9:40] Bobby Steggert: So really, the stubbornness was protecting you from embarrassment?

[9:43] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

[9:46] Bobby Steggert: And that need to fit in, how did that play out as a sort of only child in that early part of your life?

[9:53] Elisa Galindez: I think it alienated me a bit in my friend groups, right? Because I'm a little bit of not only am I going to be right, but I'm going to be the leader. And doing that gracefully is something that comes with age and time and experience. So when you're like, eight, and you're physically the most developed person, right? I went through puberty very young, and you're bigger than everybody else. Although now, I stopped growing when I was nine. So it's a real bit, but my parents thought I was going to be really tall. I was so needing to be seen and be heard. And I would come off bossy and not in the way that society talks about women being bossy. Like actually, maybe you give other people a chance to speak in the room.

I think a big part of that was like my upbringing, my parents are again, because I have older siblings, they are older to have a child my age. I'm 32, my oldest brother's 55. So if that gives you context, but that makes my parents older, and they're of a generation that didn't communicate very much. My parents have been together 35 years. And the way that my parents just did not talk about things really frustrated me. So I am like often an over communicator to a fault. And that has shown up in my husband and I have been we've been married three years together 13. And that was our challenge as a couple, especially as young as we met, because we became adults together, essentially. And he's the kind of guy who has to process how he's feeling, and he dwells in those feelings.

And then he's ready to come back to have a resolution. And I'm like, No, if we don't fix this right now, then the world is going to end. So very interesting in how I think that some of that like the lack of communication in my home, lent itself to feeling embarrassed and having to be right all the time.

[11:32] Bobby Steggert: And because you didn't have sibling energy around you, did it give you perhaps more of an entitlement to being right because you weren't being challenged as much?

[11:40] Elisa Galindez: 100%. I have many friends, I'm very fortunate to have a circle of people who are very close to me. But I always joke, I'm like, I have the one friend, she and I have been friends since we were six years old, I refer to her as my sister. And she was a protector in that way. Neither of us grew up with our siblings. So she loved me no matter what. And so when the consequences of my actions of being the bossy one in the room, taking up too much space being entitled, would show up any backlash I would get, she was just redirected and get in the way of it or shut it down or because she had a very deep understanding of who I was and where it was coming from. Now as an adult, I understand that like sometimes intent versus impact are two different things.

And doesn't matter how good your intentions are, sometimes your impact is worse. And so that's something I've had to navigate in my workspaces and my relationships and my friendships of how I can open up the space for other people to be heard and figure out a new way in with my leadership.

[12:44] Bobby Steggert: We'll be right back.

[12:47] Bobby Steggert: Wonderful about what you're sharing is that you are talking about what you did to cope with the soft underbelly, which is much deeper, and that's the fear of the embarrassment. And when you would be bossy, and you would be challenged in any way, how would you respond to that embarrassment?

[13:07] Elisa Galindez: I would cry. I'm a big crier in general, I cry for everything and anything. And I have never—it's weird, I have this fear of embarrassment, and I hate being embarrassed. Yet, I find it extremely cathartic to cry it out. I have to get those things out. I've never been the kind of person who like stifles things or holds things back. What's so interesting when I'm in a confrontation that I'm confident that I'm right, and I'm not intimidated by the other person, I keep my cool. The minute there's like a power dynamic that maybe shifts, even if I am right, depending on how that confrontation goes. The thing that makes me the most frustrated is that the way my anger or my frustration comes out is by crying.

And sometimes, especially if the person in that confrontation is maybe of higher status, I don't want to cry in front of that person, because I don't want them to interpret my crying as being weak. I'm crying because I'm frustrated. And if I don't cry, it's going to come out in a different way that maybe it's not so conducive to the conversation. But no, when I was a kid, and even now, when I hit my emotional peak, and I feel unjustified, I am waterworks almost immediately. And I don't know how to control it. I have no idea.

[14:22] Bobby Steggert: To me, that just speaks to the depth of feeling you must experience. It sounds like you experience anger and vulnerability to a wider spectrum than other people might.

[14:31] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, I think so. I think so. That sounds perfectly correct.

[14:36] Bobby Steggert: And are you also saying that because your parents didn't communicate much, what you were responding to was a lack of feeling that frustrated you?

[14:44] Elisa Galindez: It's so interesting. I wouldn't say lack of feeling. I felt very loved in my home, and my parents are, especially my mom, is a very emotional human. It was more so them not communicating with each other and me being put in the middle of it. But it's so interesting. My mother and I are very close. I'm close to both of my parents. But my mother and I are like this, really close. And as I grew older, I had to set up certain boundaries, because there's an oversharing that happens there because there is no communication in that marriage, or less communication.

[15:16] Bobby Steggert: You become the partner in some ways.

[15:17] Elisa Galindez: Exactly. Exactly. And so while I am so grateful to have that relationship with her, setting up the boundaries has actually strengthened and saved our relationships in a lot of ways. Because I was—I can't be there for you and weigh in on your marriage, because he is my dad, right? And I'm your child and not your friend. And even though we are close like friends, there has to be that dynamic always has to stay there because it's not healthy otherwise. I have to process my own feelings about my relationship with my dad without the influence of whatever's going on over there. That should not be my battle as well.

[15:58] Bobby Steggert: You talked about power dynamics. And of course, tied into power dynamics is always gender. What did your dad teach you about men?

[16:04] Elisa Galindez: It's an interesting question. I don't know that he necessarily taught me this and that I believe it. What I watched my dad, how he treated me versus how he treated my brothers was very old school, very much like, you're a girl, so you will do girl things. And your brothers are boys and men, and they will do boy and men things, right? So it's so interesting. My father was an athlete, most of his life, and my brothers were very athletic. And my dad played stickball in the Bronx. While I was growing up, he would do the tournaments across the country all the time. But I was never taught how to play stickball, like really silly things that like cliché things, honestly, like that, or like the dating thing, right?

I was 15, I think when I started dating. And I told my mom first, and she made me keep it a secret from my dad for the first six months in a relationship, because she was afraid of having to have that confrontation with him. Even though my mom would walk around being like, no, I wear the pants in this house, and I make the decisions. So it wasn't necessarily that I believed those things about gender. It was just that I watched my dad believe those things about gender. And I always, always from as young as I can remember, challenged them.

[17:15] Bobby Steggert: How did you challenge them?

[17:20] Elisa Galindez: I would verbally, we would have open, I don't want to say, I guess arguments. And I'd just be like, Oh, interesting. Or I remember my grandfather, my mother's side, and he was with us until two years ago, he passed in 2023. But he was also that very much machismo, older Puerto Rican man. And he had his own ideas about women, being the caretakers taking care of the children taking care of the house. And that's what my grandmother did. She had five kids, and he worked, and she worked, but she was mostly home with the kids until she was like, I'm done with this. And they separated when my mom was 16. But it would come off that way, like almost like disciplinary, that I wasn't supposed to act any a certain way that lent itself towards, quote, the male, you know what I'm saying?

To behave in a way that boys behave was inappropriate for me. And I feel like I use she/her pronouns, and I identify as a woman, but I express myself very differently in the way that I dress. Like some days I wake up and I really want to feel feminine, and I'm in florals, and I'm in a dress and whatever. But most of the time, I am in like baggy pants and a t-shirt, and a hat as you see me today. And I love all of that.

[18:33] Bobby Steggert: Part of your what you're calling bossiness, or maybe need to be dominant? Was it rebellion against femininity in any way?

[18:41] Elisa Galindez: Maybe I think so. My mom was pretty good about not having that be an issue. My father didn't bring that out in their marriage or anything. It wasn't like what he says goes, because my mother is a very strong personality, and that never would have worked. They would not be together now. But I do think that I was always fighting against whatever the norm was, whether it was femininity or religion. I was always—I would wake up and I would question. I grew up going to Catholic school my entire life. And I was just like, this does not make sense to me. I was like, what do you mean babies are born with sin? What do you mean? I just had all these questions about structures that were in place that were put in place by men.

And I was like, I don't really think that this is true. And it does not sit well with me. And so mostly I appreciated the discipline that Catholic school gave me. But in terms of religious aspect, I'm like, I'm good with my God. And I'll leave that there. I'm more interested in being a good person.

[19:42] Bobby Steggert: So what's so interesting to me is this duality, you are comfortable questioning very early, you're comfortable deciding what you think and what you want. What was it that could most easily flip the switch and make you feel embarrassed?

[19:53] Elisa Galindez: You know, Bobby, I think I've been trying to figure that out for a really long time. And I don't know that I have an answer. To go back to the gender thing. I'm almost never pushed to tears when I'm having a back and forth with anyone who lives outside of identifying as a man. But when it comes to some men, not all men, there's this weird switch that happens for me. Actually, now that we're talking about it, we're bringing up my dad, my dad, who's not a very intimidating man. He's a very soft spoken human being. But going back to keeping things from him as long as possible to keep the peace, right? My dad, you ask him a question, and he's immediately shaking his head no before you've gotten the question out.

I don't know. I don't know why. And so I am very comfortable being like, Mom, you did this thing. And I didn't like it. And we should address it. With my dad, because I know it's going to come with resistance. I get uncomfortable asking him for things or addressing certain things to the point that I'm trying to be better about this. But if he says something that is of a man of his generation that is not necessarily politically correct, now I think I'm better at addressing it. But I'm talking like in the last year or two of my life, not for very long. I would be like, oh, it's just him. He's older. Leave it alone. As opposed to wanting to engage in that because I always knew the end result. And maybe that is how it's shown up in other relationships, whether it be in the theater or in my workplace. So the immediate physical message is, you're wrong.

[21:30] Bobby Steggert: Yeah. And then I feel like I have to prove myself before I've even gotten the point across.

[21:36] Elisa Galindez: Right. It's destabilizing from the beginning. Right. You just mentioned relationships and work wherever this feels most natural to go. How did that start repeating itself in terms of that feeling for you?

[21:47] Elisa Galindez: I started as a salsa dancer. And so I grew up in a community of other Latina kids. And I specifically remember, without naming names, this very specific human who identified as male that I would always clash with. And it would always end in tears. And I think it was his stature. He was a very large human. And I'm four foot ten. And I try to make myself as big as I can in every room I walk in. But you can only do so much. And this feeling of always being made to feel less intelligent, a word that was used a lot to describe me by this person was snarky, as opposed to like, actually hearing my opinion. Like we can differ in our opinions, but that doesn't make me snarky. So that's where that would show up when I was a kid through my teenage years.

And then I think as I started working professionally, a lot of these theaters are run by men. And I have been very proud of the work that I've done and mostly happy with the places I've worked. But there have been a handful of times where, you know, I go to work somewhere, and something's not right. And I try to address it in a professional way. And I'm made to feel less than because I'm in the ensemble of the show, and I should just be happy to have a job.

[23:07] Bobby Steggert: Interesting. There's like a hierarchical thing.

[23:09] Elisa Galindez: Yes, yes. Because a lot of regional houses are run by people who either used to work in New York, or have it at a long time, or never did. And they are of that old school mentality where, okay, there's the attention that must be paid to your Christine Diaz and your Rowles, but maybe not necessarily Coruscant number three, who's doing six pirouettes in her pointe shoes. Yeah, she's a body to some of those people.

[23:32] Elisa Galindez: Exactly. And what I'm trying to find is not being so black and white in my thinking, I can be very definitive, because I, again, I feel unjustified, where I'm like, okay, I'm never gonna work there again. Or I'm never gonna work with this human again, which sometimes, yes, but not always. That's not always the answer. And I'm trying my hardest these days to when I'm in that heightened sense of emotion in my most vulnerable state, where I feel embarrassed or feel upset or frustrated, I go, I'm not gonna actually make a decision about how I feel about this until tomorrow. I'm gonna sleep on it. I have to, because not only do I not want to not be truthful to myself, but what I certainly don't want to do is say, I'm never working with so and so again.

And then five years later, I'm caught working with so and so again. And people were like, didn't you say that you weren't gonna do that? I'm like, and then having to explain yourself, which, you know, you can or cannot do, or whether that's necessary is a whole other conversation. But

[24:29] Bobby Steggert: You're making me think about all the ways it must be frustrating to come up against power. You're a woman, you're Latina, you're a small person, and you're talking about being the ensemble. So all four of those can combine. I imagine how angry I would feel if I was minimized in all four of those ways.

[24:44] Elisa Galindez: Yeah. And I can also imagine those identities being easily picked at and it being very easy to feel small if made to feel small.

[24:56] Elisa Galindez: My husband told me the other day, and I've actually been thinking about this since he said it. Because I was a first time dance captain on Broadway in my Broadway debut, which, whoa, I didn't even know I was a dancer until I got the job. My husband said this to me the other day, and I've been thinking about it. And in being an over communicator, sometimes that can come to bite you in the ass. And that was like the hard lesson I learned while being a dance captain is you are walking a very fine line between a company member, right? You want to be friends with everybody. And you're also managing personalities. And you're also collaborating with management. And it puts you in this very unique

[25:35] Elisa Galindez: I found myself in order to not ever be in a position of being embarrassed, over sharing information so people in the company felt that I had their back. But then I was blurring lines, I think, in terms of maybe some company members felt that I either was on the side of management or management felt that I was not properly walking that fine line in the unique position that I was in. And my husband said it. He said to me, you do this thing and he's like, it's not judgment. It's just an observation. I was like, okay. He said, you do this thing where you walk into a room and you immediately set your boundaries preemptively before anybody's actually gotten to know your name. You walk into a room and you're like, I'm Elisa, this is how I work.

And this is how it's going to happen. And as long as we follow these guidelines, then we're going to be okay. And that way, if something goes awry later, I could be like, but I told you, it's a safety structure for you. It really is. And I think that sometimes that can intimidate people because it comes off as, if you follow these rules, then you're good with me. If you don't follow these rules, then you're in trouble. Because I have that personality where I'm like trying to compensate for my size all the time walking into a room. And he's like, I don't think it's a bad thing. But I don't think you can be surprised when certain people don't take that well. Did it create any interpersonal challenges for you in that last process?

I think so. I was in a weird position where I'm offstage swing, I cover nine tracks, and I cover the lead, right? And all three principal tracks I covered were the same tracks another actor covered who was younger than me. We are fine. Me and that actor are fine. But it did present challenges because I felt like I had to upfront be like, I'm here to support you in whatever that you need. And know that because I'm in this position does not mean I'm in a decision-making position. And I would never so that when things became weird, because I was offstage, and I was put on more in the production, it made it seem like I was trying to sabotage that person or in the decision-making seat of keeping that person off when that person just simply wasn't ready.

And because they had not had rehearsal and were in the show every night. But you were seen as a member of the creative team by some of the people. Yes, yes. And you were a little bit. Yeah, I was a little bit. Yeah, it was very challenging. And I know what I do and don't want moving forward. What I will take on as positions. Dance captaining taught me so much about how my brain works. And I'm very proud of the work that I did. But I don't know that I do it again. It sounds so multifaceted. And it's so curious that you've used your childhood coping mechanism of needing to know a lot because the dance captain needs to know it all. So funny that you bring that up to like, circle back to using those words to describe my childhood.

You know, my mom would always have to give me the agenda of the day. I was a very anxious child. I was like, what are we doing? I have to know what's happening. Because if I don't know what's happening, then I don't know. I don't know the world's gonna end. It's the worst case scenario. And it would drive my grandmother lived with us till I was 11. We were very close. But it would drive her crazy. Because she was of that old school mentality that was like, you tell her too much. She's just the kid. She doesn't need to know all of that. And you're letting her run the show when you're the parent. And my mom's no, it's actually going to make my day much easier because then she knows everything we're going to do.

And it was actually a very progressive thing for my mom to do in the early 90s. As a parent, I won't say a first-time parent, but definitely a first-time parent to a girl who had a lot of opinions and had a lot of questions. And it's so funny now that I say that out loud. And maybe my mom was also over communicating. Because there was not that communication with my dad. Over communicating with you. Yeah. Yeah, I've never drawn those two things together. It's a dot connected for me. Oh, I love that. That's why I do this show.

[29:27] Bobby Steggert: We'll be right back. You mentioned your husband. So tell me how all this stuff folds into a marriage. When you're 18 years old, and you meet each other. There's a lot of arguing. Honestly, you're still learning who you are.

[29:37] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, I mean, we didn't know. We fell into a relationship. It was one of those things where we're both from the Bronx. I was in college at Hofstra University in Long Island. He was at home working. And we fell in love very quickly. But we knew nothing about how to have a healthy relationship because you learn from what you know. And so it was a lot of growing pains for many years. And then after I think seven years, I called it. I was like, I don't know who I am, what I am, what I want. And we broke up for a year. And I don't think we would be married if I hadn't made that decision. Was there an inflection point that made you break it off?

[30:18] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, I had just finished. So after college, I went to cap 21. So I did the two-year conservatory afterwards. And then I was like, a person in the real world. And I was like, I had booked my first non-union, regional job. And I was like, ready to go. Grew up in New York, went to college in New York. And I've never been anywhere other than the few times my parents took us on vacation. And I had a high school sweetheart too. So it was like I went from one relationship at a very young age into another relationship for a very serious amount of time. And I was like, I want to experience this thing by myself. I want to walk into this part of my life independently because I at that point had already recognized that I was a very codependent human and was very controlling in that relationship.

On my end, we both came with our issues. And we had to work those out. But my flaw was that I was like, I must know everything all the time. I must know what you're up to. I must know what you think. I must know what you feel.

[31:16] Elisa Galindez: Yeah, it was a lot of I was uncomfortable in silences, right? So I'd be like, you must be thinking something. What do you mean? You don't want to talk about it? What do you mean you don't have anything? What do you mean? You're not thinking about something you must be trying to communicate from not like maybe he's a human who just wants to sit there and is comfortable sitting in silence with me. And really, was that connected to the same fear of embarrassment, something might be wrong here?

[31:35] Elisa Galindez: I think so. And that came up a lot. And so after seven years, we broke up for a year. I lived on my own. I lived with a roommate, I got my first apartment. And I worked a lot, which was great. And I learned a lot about myself. And I said, okay, this is what it is. And then we came back together because we are serial monogamists, not by choice, just how we are. And we realized number one, we had missed the whole dating app thing because we got together so young. And when I was a freshman in college, that was when dating apps really became a thing. Did you go on to that hellscape in that year?

[32:10] Elisa Galindez: We sure did. And I was like, I don't know what this is. This is crazy. I don't know how people are meeting out here like this. And when we realized what was out there, I was like, okay, all right. So that was like fun and exciting and weird and horrible all at the same time. And that's actually what brought us back together. We were like, maybe we just need like therapy and to talk. But I had to learn how to be like, okay, maybe we do need to give things a beat sometimes. And he had to learn how to talk.

[32:37] Bobby Steggert: As most young men do, right? Because that's what society does to boys and men. It's awful.

[32:42] Elisa Galindez: And now we're together 13 years married for three. And he's my biggest champion. And I could not have gotten through our Broadway run without that man. I'm very grateful. He showed up in ways that I never even had to ask for, kept a clean house, made food for me, picked me up when I needed to be picked up from the theater, because I live in Westchester, which is not far. When you get out of a 10:30 showing, your next train's not till midnight. He's, I'm going to come get you. And I'm like, all right, thanks so much. And also just being a sounding board, because I was experiencing this thing that I'd been wanting to accomplish for the very first time. And he was just really great about that. Our relationship has ultimately made me a softer human who makes space for other people, right?

Because he is not necessarily the most vocal person, but I have to actively choose to make space for him to voice his opinions and share what he's thinking. And when I finally let go of that, like controlling feeling, he naturally just started opening up more.

[33:39] Bobby Steggert: That's the law of physics, almost.

[33:41] Elisa Galindez: Truly, truly is. It really is.

[33:44] Bobby Steggert: Do you still feel that young instinct to grab onto a situation and wrestle it?

[33:50] Elisa Galindez: Sometimes. Not so much in my personal relationships, but sometimes in my day-to-day work life. That's where it shows up more now.

[33:55] Bobby Steggert: What's an example? What's the most present example of that?

[34:00] Elisa Galindez: Ooh, what's the most present example? Oh, okay. We're in tech for Broadway. And one of our actors is sick. And our director has decided to have the understudy step in. But she's in the show, she's learning her own track. And first of all, it should have just been like, cool. Or before I let him explain that to me, I was like, you know what, I think it's best that I just step in so that she can continue to learn her track and blah, blah, blah. And he was like, no, absolutely not. There was a lot of tension in that moment. And I thought I was being helpful. But number one, not my room. Number two, we're in the most stressful part of this process, shut up. And number three, the actor was fine doing it.

And it was a very good learning opportunity for her to step into an understudy track that she then went on for very short after. So sometimes when I'm being helpful, or I think I'm being helpful, I got to recalibrate and be like, is this actually helpful? I have to like put it through the test in my brain before it comes out of my mouth.

[35:05] Bobby Steggert: What I'm so appreciative of you for is that you are illustrating so beautifully how the need for control is always based in fear. It is not about being a boss or a bitch or an asshole. It is about fear.

[35:18] Elisa Galindez: Yeah. And I think that I am able to recognize that now when I maybe encounter another human and I'm like, that person's being bossy or a bitch or whatever. And I'm like, oh no, this person's just scared. And it actually has helped me in my other relationships where I'm like, why are you really feeling like this? And then I'm able to address it. There's a lot of accountability in my relationships now on both ends. There's a lot of, I'm gonna give that a beat. That person is in a place and I can't control that they're in that place. And when they are ready to talk about it, they will talk about it with me. As opposed to, I must fix it right now because I'm uncomfortable. Sometimes my discomfort is not the most important thing in the world.

It's not the thing that needs to be addressed right now. Sometimes it's more important for that person to process however it is that they're feeling or why they've reacted in a certain way. And oftentimes in the relationships that I hold closest to me, that person often comes to the table and is like, okay, I'm ready to talk about this. And if I go back to the fellow actor where we shared the duties of covering the same people, that's what ended up having to happen, right? There was tension there for a while. We thought we had addressed it. We sort of just let it sit for a week or two. And then there was laughter again. And then I was like, let's talk. I want to really make sure that this is good. I don't think I could have done that five years ago. And that was a growing moment for me. And I was like, wow, that's so much easier than the other thing I was trying to do for so long.

[36:39] Bobby Steggert: It also shows that you're willing to tolerate the discomfort of embarrassment, which is part of any sort of messy human interaction. To wrap up here, what are you less afraid about exposing about your humanity or the complexity or maybe the soft underbelly of who you are that it would have been too dangerous to expose when you were younger?

[37:04] Elisa Galindez: I think that I'm a very vulnerable, soft, sensitive human being. I jokingly describe myself as Scrappy-Doo almost every day of my life.

[37:13] Bobby Steggert: Like Scooby-Doo but Scrappy?

[37:15] Elisa Galindez: He has a cousin who's very small and he's like, ah, why I oughta and always like with his fist. Like that is how I feel like I always came off when I was a child. And sometimes it shows up like in a funny way now as an adult. But I think that taking that mask off now makes me a much happier human being and allows me to. It's so interesting being a very vulnerable person, but not allowing vulnerable relationships to happen is a lonely existence.

[37:42] Bobby Steggert: Yes.

[37:43] Elisa Galindez: And so I think that I am much fuller and happier and loved and loving in my circles now.

[37:51] Bobby Steggert: What I can tell, as we all know, the best artists are both fierce and extremely vulnerable. And I can tell you probably always found that in your art and now you're finding it in your life.

[38:03] Elisa Galindez: Exactly. 100%.