Lindsey: I always think of that Gail Godwin quote, “The more you focus on the singular and the strange, the more you access the universal and the infinite.” Each essay actually comes at the question of -- we were like, “Write about being forty.” It’s a pretty broad prompt. I do think that some themes emerge.
Sarah: Read. Read everything. Read outside of your time too. When you're aspiring to be in the book world, there's a tendency to focus on, “What are the new books coming out? What's fashionable right now?” I love going way back. I was rereading Anaïs Nin. I love her writing. Go back. Read broadly. Read poets. My favorite prose writers are poets. It’s not fair. They get to do it all. Reading is really important.
Jeanne: It obviously isn't always lovely to have a writer in the family at all. I got different answers. The one thing that seemed to be the general truth in all of that and the take-home for me was you cannot let that stop you from telling your story. Whatever footwork you have to do to go to various people and talk to them about it, if you're going to tell your story, you're going to tell your story. That was the way I proceeded. I knew it was not going to be easy.
Glynnis: Figuring out how to talk about grief and how you can feel like, “Oh, it’s been a year and a half. I should be over this or dealt with this.” That's never the case. It just takes on different forms. In the moment as those things were happening, I dealt with it by eating a lot of chocolates. I gained twenty-five pounds that year. In the aftermath, I dealt with it by writing the book. You can ask me in a year how I'm dealing with it now. Now, it’s all wrapped up in the book too. I'm having to come out of the book-writing process and deal with real life, sort of.
Rebecca: No one’s going to graduate from college and go get hired to be a fiction writer. That's not a thing. Also, I don't know anyone really wants to read what a recent college graduate thinks about life. Give it a few years. No offense. There's no such thing as a writing prodigy. It’s probably for a reason. There needs to be a little bit more time that passes. I would say that.
Courtney: The mother daughter relationship is another really key motor to this story. Her mom is the exact opposite of Sloane. She gives of herself readily, generously. She self-effaces a little bit. Sloane has a sister. Her sister’s about to have her third child. Her mother’s joy is taking care of other people. She went into overdrive when her husband died.
Aimee: A lot of people who like the book are saying that it’s not this page-turning thing. Women are feeling understood in what it means to give birth now and to be a woman. There's a lot of these subthemes in the book. Most of the women have had some sort of harassment or abuse at the hands of powerful men. They're dealing with discrimination in other ways. Hopefully that's the reason that it’s also resonating.
Caitlin: How do we connect as mothers? Often it’s through shared confusion, complaint, sharing our challenges, and admitting how hard it is. She’s somebody who it’s almost not in her code to do that because of the way she was raised. She was raised in a harsh environment. It is a bit judgy. She’s almost portraying this, “Cannot compute. I don't understand.” She's one of those quietly on it, effective, efficient mothers and people who get it done. I think of her in the book as a good mother.
Sarah: I always loved fairy tales. As a kid I used to fracture fairy tales also. I would tell the story of “The Princess and the Pea,” but it would be “The Princess and the M&M” because I was not a fan of vegetables. I liked chocolate. I always loved fairy tales. When I had a daughter of my own and I would tell her these stories, I wanted to teach her that she doesn't have to wait for a prince to come and save her. That's not how she's going to get her happy ending. She has to have agency. She has to be empowered.
