Design Matters with Debbie Millman · Design Matters Media

Jennifer Pastiloff

July 7, 2025·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Jennifer Pastiloff shares how telling her father 'I hate you' shaped a lifetime of self-blame.

Honesty is where this conversation starts. Pastiloff talks about naming depression, grief, and hearing loss, and how people moved closer instead of pulling away. The things she had treated as private or shameful became a way for other people to recognize themselves, which is a small miracle without the greeting-card gloss. Millman keeps returning to permission. Pastiloff's work, especially Proof of Life, comes through as a practice of looking for wonder in bruised places while still admitting that the bruise is there. The story stays close to the body. Someone sees Pastiloff reading poems and tells her this could be her thing. That little blessing lands. From there, poems, prompts, sticky notes, writing, and movement begin to fold together, even as formal yoga matters less. Pastiloff knows her gift is people, not flawless form, and the episode sits with that. The body is where the harder material arrives. Pastiloff says people can speak differently when they get out of their heads and into their bodies. She connects that softened state to exhaustion, anorexia, shame, and old patterns around eating and intimacy. Millman gives the answer room. By the end, the episode feels less like a lesson than a portrait of a teacher making a practice from poems, movement, confession, and care. Proof of Life stops sounding like a title and starts sounding like what happens when hidden things become recognizable.

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