Kelly Corrigan, TELL ME MORE

Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

By Kelly Corrigan

Buy on Amazon

Zibby Owens: I am so beyond thrilled to be sitting here today with Kelly Corrigan who is the author of four consecutive New York Times best sellers including Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say, Glitter and Glue, The Middle Place, and Lift. She has been called the poet laurate of the ordinary by HuffPost and the voice of a generation by O Magazine. Kelly is currently the host of The Nantucket Project, a live event series and podcast. She is also the host of “Exactly” at KQED radio station. She is an accomplished columnist with essays in O, The Oprah Magazine, Glamour, and Good Housekeeping. A graduate of the University of Richmond and San Francisco State University, where she received her master’s in literature, she currently lives with her husband and two daughters.

Welcome, Kelly. Thanks so much for coming on “Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.”

Kelly Corrigan: Thanks. I'm psyched to be here. This is a killer room we’re sitting in, if you guys could see it. I'm going to say there are seven hundred to a thousand books in my eyesight right now. They're all arranged by color, which is how I have my books at home. I feel really, really comfortable in this space.

Zibby: I'm so happy. As I was telling you, I've been following you for years because I've reading all of your memoirs forever. This is such a treat for me to have you here where I have sat and read all your books. It’s very cool. Tell Me More is your most recent book, Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say. Can you tell listeners what this is about? What made you write this particular book?

Kelly: I had written my first book, The Middle Place, which is about my father and I both having cancer at the same time. It came out in 2008. Since then, I had written Lift and Glitter and Glue. Then this new editor that I was working with, his name’s Andy Ward, and I went out for sushi at Blue Ribbon Sushi in New York.

Zibby: Love.

Kelly: I was telling him about this argument that I got in with my husband about the difference between saying “I'm sorry” and saying “I was wrong.” It was my contention that saying “I was wrong” involves a level of humility that “I'm sorry” just doesn't somehow have. Maybe it’s because as parents we force our three-year-olds and four-year-olds to say “I'm sorry” four times a day that by the time they become adults, it can be a cheap, perfunctory statement. “I was wrong” is a big, bold, incredible thing to say. At this dinner table I was saying to Edward, “If you were really in a tense situation with somebody that you're in a permanent relationship with, they could stop everything if they were just to say, “You're right. I was wrong.” There's nowhere to go from there. The fight’s over. That got us wondering, what else do you have to be able to say if you want to be in big, juicy, satisfying relationships that last for decades and decades? We started to work out this list.

My father died. It’ll be five years in February. Then after my father died, not long after, my friend died. Her name was Liz Laats. She had three kids. I gave the eulogy at her service. I gave my father’s eulogy. In the process of writing those and thinking about what it is that it all comes down to, it became crystal clear that it’s just about these relationships. That combined with this funny conversation I had with Edward made me think this is actually a really worthwhile undertaking. If it’s all about relationships, which I'm entirely convinced it is, then how do we do them? I'm not a self-help kind of gal. I don't have that background or the expertise. I just went looking for stories that I thought totally underlined these big aha’s that I have had over the course of being married and being a mother. At one point, I had seventeen different things that I was learning to say. Then I had whittled it down to six. Then we ended up with twelve.

Zibby: What got left on the cutting room floor? What's something you learned to say that didn't make it in?

Kelly: A huge, huge thing that was left aside because it was too big for the book was “You can go,” which is what I said to my dad when he was dying. Telling that story in the way that it deserves to be told was running at seventy pages. Some of these chapters are eight pages. At some point, it was starting to become obvious to me. Then Andy Ward, my editor, said, “This really deserves its own space. Once you get to it, that's all anybody's going to remember. This is going to be the book about your father dying. I don't want to overshadow everything that comes before because it’s so useful. It’s so fun to read. Let's set that aside.” We did. I have this, now it’s two hundred pages, of that story in great detail of what it felt like to be in that three-week stretch.

Zibby: Is that your next book?

Kelly: I'm not really sure. When I write a book, I'm also committing to two fairly significant book tours. There's a hardcover tour and a paperback tour. The last time with Tell Me More, they were each twenty cities. It’s a huge undertaking. Reading even just the little bit about my dad and Liz that's in Tell Me More, I can never get through it without choking up. It gets heavy. It’s very easy for me to imagine sharing the pages somehow. Through an email to subscribers is really the way I've thought about doing it. I have six thousand people who ask me to send them emails very so often. I thought, maybe I’ll just share it with you guys. Maybe I’ll just send it to you in little pieces. That way I don't have to tour with it, which feels excruciating to me. I don't know quite what will happen to it. I’ll definitely find a way to share it. I'm not sure which. I can't imagine just plopping it up on Facebook. I was imaging that this email thing might be an interesting way to do it because these are people that feel super connected to my work. Maybe that's the most personal way to share it. It feels funny to try to commercialize it. I can't imagine being in a meeting at Random House talking about what the cover should be.

Zibby: What if you did an audiobook?

Kelly: I thought about an audiobook. I've thought about a podcast where I could read some and then talk some about what it feels like now to look at those pages. It’s been almost five years. Grief is such an animated force. It’s not stable. It’s not static. I'm right in the middle of trying to figure out how to share that stuff in a way that's helpful to people. It would definitely, definitely, definitely be helpful. If I had had something -- I was just starving for people's stories, detailed stories of letting somebody go, when that was happening to me. After it happened, I read H is for Hawk. I read A Grief Observed. I couldn't get enough of really intimate, thorough telling of that story. What is it to lose somebody that you don't know you can be in the world without?

Zibby: I would hate to think that the stumbling block of the tour and the travel is going to prevent this beautiful book from coming out. There's got to be a way. This is not for me to figure out. I’ll let you figure it out. Maybe there's something you could work out with the publisher or something. People are going to buy it anyway. Maybe you've gotten to a point, you don't have to tour as much. I don't know. You figure it out. [laughs]

Kelly: Maybe we’ll just do it on this podcast.

Zibby: That would great. Yes, use my podcast.

Kelly: I’ll do it episode by episode.

Zibby: Yes, at the beginning of every episode, I’ll read --

Kelly: -- Isn't it called “Moms Don't Read”?

Zibby: “Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.” It’s perfect.

Kelly: We’ll just read it to you.

Zibby: Done.

Kelly: Done.

Zibby: Perfect. We can hang out every week. You could read a little bit.

Kelly: I would come back to this room.

Zibby: Then you don't have to buy your own microphones.

Kelly: This room is pretty gorgeous, I've got to say. If you ever get invited to come to this room, you should come to this room.

Zibby: That's very sweet. That's probably why I can't motivate to leave it. [laughs] Let's talk a little more about what's in this particular book as opposed to the next one that I want to help market. As you said, you wrote beautifully about -- you didn't say you wrote beautifully, but I’ll say you wrote beautifully about your dad and your friend Liz’s loss. One of the things was how you almost made part of the book as if you were talking to her, like, “Here's how it happened after. Here's how it was with your kids. I told you I'd watch out for them. Here I am watching out. Here's what happened,” which was heartbreaking but so moving.

Kelly: That chapter is called Onward, which is definitely a thing you have to be able to say as an adult in the world. There is a time to accept things and keep moving. It is not always as easy as we wish it was. I had written this completely different story for that. What I thought was that I had already told you, the reader, enough about Liz and that there was a sense of completion there. Then I had this other story. The other story was too excruciating. I have this great friend. His name’s Jim Morrison. His wife and children were all killed in a plane crash. He has found a way to stay in the world and to be a lovely person to sit next to. It’s astonishing to me and all the people who know him that he's able to be so giving and to receive other people's lives which are so easy compared to his. Somehow, he can still have compassion for your, by comparison, quite small problem. I had written a lot about him, like thirty pages about him. A friend of mine, Ariel who is mentioned a lot in the book, she's a therapist. Her daughter and my daughter are great friends. She and I walk together once a week. She's really very wise. To the extent that there's anything in this book that you feel is wise, you should attribute it to Dr. Ariel Trost in Oakland, California. She really helps me understand what is universally true about what I'm saying, what's particular to me. She's an early reader of mine. We talk a lot. She grounds it in a much larger body of understanding and research than I have access to.

What she said about the Jim Morrison story is, “This stands out for several reasons. One is because it’s utterly horrifying. Most people don't know someone that that's happened to.” Everything else in the book, people know someone that that's happened to. She said, “The second thing is that's the only chapter that's reported. You didn't live through that with him. You met him after. Everything you're telling us is almost as if you're writing an article about him. It stands out for that reason. If you want to keep it in, keep it in. To me, I feel like it also deserves its own place. It’s separate thing.” I thought that was a pretty good observation honestly, the idea that it was the only part that was reported. I set it aside. I was afraid to tell Jim that I was setting it aside. I didn't know how he'd feel about that. We still feel like we’re going to do something with it, so I think he feels good.

Zibby: We can talk about that media plan next. I’ll weigh in on that in a minute. Go ahead.

Kelly: He's an amazing human being. Then I had this hole. I wanted to get to this point about “Onward.” Then I said to Edward, “I think I solved my problem today.” I had just recently spent time with Andy and the three kids. I had observed so many things that I thought Liz would love to see. For instance, they have this very enormous juicing machine. It’s this giant metal thing. You use this hand-crank to juice beets and carrots. Then you put all the herbs in there. It really does make an incredible glass of juice. It also makes an incredible mess. The juice-to-mess ratio, for me, is way out of whack. Also, just the sheer size of it, it needs its own cabinet to live in. Anyway, Andy and I saw that the same way, that this is a whole lot of drama for not that much juice. To Liz, it was this great joy. She really took pleasure in making the juice. She had a very thoughtful opinion of it, that she was showing her kids, “This is where juice comes from. When you go to Joe’s Juice and you get some beet juice, this is what happened before that. Here's how many oranges it takes to make a glass of orange juice.” She was really hopeful that she could somehow show her children how much work went into the things that we might be enjoying too casually.

Also, she was a believer in food as medicine. Medicine in and of itself was a topic that she’d spent a lot of cycles thinking about. She was sick for seven years with ovarian cancer. She tried a lot of things, Western and Eastern. She did eighty-eight rounds of chemotherapy. She tried all of the things that you're supposed to try on this side of the Atlantic. She also talked to nutritionists. She did a lot of reading. She was a very smart woman, really well-informed. Sure enough when I was there, Andy was making this juice with the kids. He and I shared a look across the table. I knew he knew what I was thinking. When I went home, I wrote her this letter. I said, “Look, you're never not going to be here. That is going to keep hurting. You're not going to be there when they get pregnant. You're not going to be there when they get engaged. You're not going to be there the day they get married. You're not going to be there the day their husband loses his job and they freak out. There's a lot of loss ahead that's unavoidable. I am not minimizing this. I want you to know that these people are doing as well as these people could be doing. There's a lot of love in that house. There's a lot of joy. They still laugh. They still run around. They still like to play the same games. Nothing’s been destroyed in the wake of your loss.” You just don't know. You wonder, if we all played Euchre together when you were alive, do you never want to play Euchre again? Do you want to Euchre every day? Do some of you want to play it and others of you can't believe that you would play that game even though she's not here? There's four people living under one roof. They're all doing this grief thing in their own rate and their style. The potential for conflict there is terrible, it seemed to me.

My observation of them as a foursome is that is couldn't be going better, which is to say it is excruciating and yet there is joy. There is connection. A thing that Liz and I talked about a lot -- we talked about things that I've never talked to anybody about because nothing will make you more honest and more of straight shooter than the potential of death. What she said about Andy was, “I'm really afraid that he's not going to know how to do this.” He's not particularly patient. That's a really high requirement for parenting. She was the patient one. There were things that she did that she was not sure he would be able to do. I agreed with her. I did not talk her out of that feeling. I did not reject it out of hand. I accepted it. I internalized it. I mirrored it back to her sincerely. He has a big career. He started a company. The company went well. He's the center of attention in every room. He's a great storyteller, big personality. He's not the guy who notices that one of his kids is starting to get a sty in their left eye. That would not be his nature. He's definitely not noticing that someone's not eating their dinner or that someone went to bed early. There's a lot that you have to be scanning for as a parent. Somebody's got to be scanning for it. The way they worked out their relationship is she said, “I got it.” She was very good at it, very capable, very tuned in, very sensitive.

The thing I really, really wanted her to know was he's doing it. He's doing this thing that we weren’t sure he could do. He is such a good student. He always was. He went to great schools. He was a great athlete. He was a college swimmer. He was a great businessperson. He is not a person who's going to get beat by something. In fact, probably that's why his wife having incurable cancer was so maddening for him. It was the first thing he couldn't learn his way out of or strategize his way out of or build a team to get his way out of. He did it. He is like mother and father. He's really quite good at it. He's really on his feet now. It’ll be four years very soon. For at least a year and a half, he didn't call Edward, he called me. He said, “Just tell Edward I don't need to talk to dads right now. I'm trying to learn how to be a mom. Those dads, they don't really know.” I'm like, yeah, no shit. Then he said something like, “The dads keep calling me saying, ‘C’mon, let's go out for a guys’ night.’ I can't afford to be hungover. I'm a mom now.” I was like, there we go. You should go on tour and just say, “Ten things I learned trying to be a mom.” There is a difference. It’s so gratifying to hear it. There's a letter to Liz in Tell Me More. It’s the chapter called Onward. It’s just, “Here's what's happening. It’s working to the extent that it can work.”

Zibby: Do you believe that she knows? Do you believe that she, in some way, knows the content of the letter, can look? Do you believe in that?

Kelly: No, I don't. I wish I did. The thing I believe, though, very strongly is that there's a lot of her that's still here. To be with her children is to be with her. It’s like it’s all been sprinkled all over all of them. Her youngest son looks so much like her. It'll give you the shivers. He's very kinetic, constant motion. Every now and then, he’ll just let me stare at him. I am convinced that he knows what I'm doing. Of course my dad’s still here, so much so. There's so many things I do every day that are part of Greenie. All of that, there is a distribution after a person dies, for sure. I think it’s their loss. I think it’s her loss, what she doesn't get to be with us. We get to be with her in a weird way that's insufficient but is what it is. She doesn't get to be here. I don't think that she knows. I don't. I would be thrilled to be wrong. I'd be thrilled to discover that I'm shortsighted and a fool.

Zibby: I'm sorry. That was so personal. I didn't mean to ask. I wonder. People have all these different beliefs and feelings. Sometimes I feel like I try to convince myself that people are still around, all these people who I've lost who I love. I know maybe it’s not true. Intellectually, it makes me feel better. What else do I have other than how I'm feeling about it, in a way? It’s only in my mind. I can trick myself, maybe. It almost seems unfair, the people who pass away without having children. Then are they still as sprinkled around? Do you know what I mean?

Kelly: I don't know. Certainly, the parent-child relationship is singular. There are probably people in the world who had a deep relationship with my dad who every now and then might pass the police officer manning the crosswalk and say, “Hey, how you doing? Have a great day.” That's really straight from him, that you would have that urge to splash around some positivity.

Zibby: When you were writing this book, how do you get into this headspace where you're going back through the losses and all the pain and everything else, and then stand up and go pick your kids up from school or something? When do you do your best writing? Where do you like to do it? How do you manage those transitions?

Kelly: Not very well. There's nothing about my process that anyone else should ever try to adopt. It’s very sporadic. There are long periods of very low production. Also, it’s hard to see yourself. I don't necessarily know how I'm getting things done. It never feels to me like it’s happening. I’ll say to Edward, “I think I'm finished.” He’ll be like, “What? When?” It’s like, “I don't know. I had a little burst.” Something will be more or less the same for eight or nine months. Then all of a sudden for three weeks straight, I’ll start going around tightening all the screws and filling things out and seeing where this thing should go and figuring out why it’s even there in the first place. Therefore, I can write a transition that makes the whole thing click together. It’s like that.

One thing that I'm starting to understand about me is that a lot of times when I'm in a really deep conversation, I'm collecting and testing. I do this thing called The Neighborhood Project. It’s the best part of my life right now. It’s small groups of people, friends. Someone raises their hand and says, “You can come to my house.” We’ll watch a short film. It’s twenty, twenty-five minutes. Then we talk for an hour and a half. There's no cell phones. It’s totally confidential. Then we come back the next month and do it again. I'm in two of these groups. I'm in one in Southern California of a friend of mine. I don't get to go very often. When I go, I learn so much. Then I'm in one in my little town. We just had it. We have ours on the third Saturday of every month. We all go somewhere at nine o’clock. You're not allowed to put out a whole bunch of food or whatever because we don't want any burden for anybody. It’s just a box of coffee.

Zibby: Nine AM?

Kelly: Nine AM. PM? I'm in bed by nine PM.

Zibby: I was about to be so impressed. Wow, that would be amazing.

Kelly: I don't even what nine PM is. Last night the debate was at nine PM. I'm like, nine PM? I can't stay up for that. We watch these short films. They're seven-minute documentaries or whatever about all sorts of different things. After the genocide in Rwanda, this law of Gacaca took over, which is the law of the grass hill. A person who had perpetrated a set of crimes against a family would say in front of the community, eyeball-to-eyeball to the remaining family members, “I killed your brother. I killed your mother. I put their body in this latrine. I raped your daughter,” the whole thing. They come completely clean. Then that person decides whether they want to forgive them or not.

Zibby: So nice and light?

Kelly: Some of them are really light and funny. There was this one about this guy, Wayne White, who makes this hilarious art. It was the story of, how did he come to make this art? It’s really extraordinary in the literal sense. It’s extra-ordinary. He tells his story. It’s a gas. He worked for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and made puppets and stuff. It could be about just about anything. The people in my group I have such high regard for. They're such interesting -- my group in Oakland is all women. The one in LA is co-ed. When you're listening to their stories, the more you listen the more you realize where the points of intersection are. That helps me understand what ideas I want to lean into on the page. It helps give me the confidence that this isn't going to completely miss when I put it out there because I kind of put things out there in these groups. It will resonate. People will talk about it. They’ll add something interesting to it, as people do in great conversations. The problem is -- the whole reason The Neighborhood Project exists is because there's not that many great conversations happening right now. People just aren't making the time.

They're also responding to current events. This is more universal. These are themes about forgiveness or humility or curiosity, stuff you could've been talking about five hundred years ago in a completely different society. That's a relief. That really helps me understand -- the nicest thing people ever say to me about my books is, or if I give a talk or something, they say, “Exactly. That's exactly how I was feeling. I could never have put it that way. I've never been able to put words on it. That's exactly how I felt.” I feel like I get to “Exactly” in conversation first. Then I can write more confidently. All it’s doing is, some kind of validation conversationally gives me the confidence to even bother trying to write it. If I'm toying with something, then I’ll discover myself floating it conversationally. If it generates interesting conversation, then I think, oh yeah, that's good. I’ll definitely keep going on that. I'm working on a novel right now. It’s a little bit like reticular activation. Once you buy a red Jetta, then all you see on the street are red Jettas. Everything that comes up in conversation, this is such validation for this novel. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Zibby: Can you say what the novel’s about?

Kelly: No.

Zibby: Nothing?

Kelly: No.

Zibby: Do you know when it’s coming out? Is it already scheduled?

Kelly: I think it will come out in early 2021.

Zibby: That's soon. That's not so far.

Kelly: A year from next year.

Zibby: That's exciting.

Kelly: It is. It’s the most comfortable I've ever been in a creative project. I'm so confident that this is worth doing, that it’s worth reading, that it’s worth talking about, that it’s core enough to everybody that everyone should have an opinion about this question I'm putting out there through this story.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I cannot wait to read this. What a teaser. Thank you for that. Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors? I know you've already said a lot of --

Kelly: -- I just did a thing. I don't know if anyone's ever heard of this thing. It’s called She Writes University.

Zibby: Yeah, “Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books” sponsored your class.

Kelly: You did? Great. I think it’s available. You can just get it. It’s an hour and a half of me sharing everything I know about writing nonfiction. That's available to you. I do think that being in your document every day has a certain unappreciated value. Every time you open it, you're making this tiny commitment. Not opening it is like not getting on the scale. It’s like you're afraid of something. You should really make yourself open it. It keeps it alive in your subconscious, which is super valuable. There's a lot that we know that we don't know we know. There's a lot of weird odds and ends of conversations and observations and feelings and life experiences that can all swirl together if we just keep that activated, keep the question open in our minds. To do that, it helps just to read a chapter every day. Most people, once you open the document, you're not going to be able to resist. You're going to noodle around in there and do something. There's always a little activity that can match your mood. Writing on a blank page is one kind of mood that you might be in. Another might be really fine-tuning some editing. Another might be -- this thing I'm doing right now for this novel is so fun. I've made this little paper book that I sewed the spine of.

Zibby: Now you're just bragging about these skills. That's enough now. Thank you.

Kelly: So fun. I shot it right through the sewing machine which is set up in our house. Now I have this little sewn paper book. It’s a reference guide. The girl in this novel is born in 1994. Every page is a different year. Sometimes I'm in the mood to remind myself, what was the number-one song? What won the Oscar? Who was president? What was the biggest scandal? Who won the World Cup? When were the Olympics? What was the cultural catchphrase that year? and map that against the life of this character. That's a kind of activity that's actually moving me forward in the process. It’s all work that has to be done. Even if I'm not in the mood to create from scratch, like write the next chapter, I can find something to do that will move me forward. That's another reason why I think it’s really valuable to be in the document every day. Every day means Saturdays and Sundays too.

The last thing I’ll say that I think is really encouraging is that even at thirty minutes, it can be really effective. I know from reading books out loud at readings for ten years that there are these million-dollar lines. It’s the best line you've got in a whole chapter. That might easily come to you in one of these quickie sessions. You could be in a document for twenty minutes and find the line. The words might come to you just right. It’s the whole punchline of this whole passage that you wrote. You can live off that for years. When I'm reading out to loud to people, I know when I've got one of those lines coming. It’s so fun to see it there and think, I can't believe I'm still getting the hit off of that little line that was one of those twenty-minute drop-ins where I was like, I know what I'm going to say. This is so funny. That's another gift. Small little pockets of time can actually be very high yield.

Zibby: Love it. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with “Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.” I really appreciate it.

Kelly: Bye, ladies.

Raakhee Mirchandani, SUPER SATYA SAVES THE DAY

Super Satya Saves the Day

By Raakhee Mirchandani

Buy on Amazon

Zibby Owens: I'm here today with Raakhee Mirchandani who's the author of children’s book Super Satya Saves the Day, which recently won the Purple Dragonfly Award from Bharat Babies. She's an award-winning writer, editor, and pediatric cancer crusader. Her work has appeared in Elle, Redbook, HuffPost, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, among other publications. She's currently the editorial director of diversity and inclusion at Dow Jones. Raakhee has appeared on The Today Show and on SiriusXM.

I'm here today with Raakhee Mirchandani. We met at the Brooklyn Book Festival. My kids and I have both all fallen in love with you. I'm super excited you're here. Actually, my younger daughter invited Raakhee to our house and asked her to sleep over.

Raakhee Mirchandani: She did. Day one, minute one, “Hey, want to come over for a sleepover?” Maybe. Why not?

Zibby: Luckily, you weren’t totally creeped out by that. That's good.

Raakhee: It would've been weirder if I asked her.

Zibby: That's true. That would not have been good.

Raakhee: When she asked, it was okay. [laughter]

Zibby: I'm sure she will be sneaking in here at some point. She's so excited to have you in the house.

Raakhee: It’s the best.

Zibby: Super Satya Saves the Day, this is a children’s book. Tell us what this book is about. What inspired you to write this children’s book?

Raakhee: It’s a picture book. I always thought I would write a book. I'm a journalist. I always wanted to be a writer. That was the thing I wanted to do. I was editor of my school paper. I was not going to have another career. I was going to write. I figured I would write newspapers, which is what I did for the last fifteen years or so. I set out. In my brain, I'm going to write a novel one day. This is what I'm going to do. I love to read novels. I have a daughter. She is going to be six. Her name is Satya. She loves the bookstore. She loves books. We spend all of our time and all of our money at Little City Books in Hoboken. She was really into Wonder Woman. This is about two and a half years ago or so. She’d dress up like Wonder Woman. She’d wear Wonder Woman shirts all the time. It was a full-blown obsession.

I thought it'd be great, I'd go get a book, there's a girl, kind of looks like her, who's a superhero. Seems like an easy ask. They have books about everything, dragons eating salsa. You name it, there's a book. I go to the bookstore. I'm looking on the shelves. I come up with nothing. There is one board book, but it’s actually about Wonder Woman, but she's just a child. I was like, this cannot be. It’s not possible that no one has ever had this thought before. I go on Amazon. They must have it. Maybe bookstores don't. Zero. Now I'm really frustrated. I didn't say anything to her because it’s not her frustration. It was clearly mine. I was angry in that moment because I grew up not seeing myself in books. I'm thirty-eight years old. To think that I have this daughter and the same thing was going to happen to her just blew my head apart.

Zibby: Tell us about your heritage and why you're not finding [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Raakhee: My parents are both from India. My husband is a turban-wearing Sikh. His parents are both from India. We’re Indian Americans. We’re very Indian and we’re very American at the same time. It was really this moment, and it happened so fast on that day, that crystalized. I was very upset about it, much more so than I thought I would be.

Zibby: Were there superhero books about kids who were not Indian?

Raakhee: There were. My only thing, I walked into the store, was I wanted the character to kind of look like her. I didn't expect the character to be Indian, but kind of look like her. There were none. It was so angering for me in that moment. I remember being upset and then letting it go for a little while, a day or two, and then just writing it. I sat on the train to work. I have a twenty-five-minute train ride every day. I'm writing it. I sat down. It came together very, very quickly.

Zibby: Then what happened?

Raakhee: It’s such a weird story. I now understand, having sold a book after that, this is not exactly how things work. I wrote it. I told my agent, “I wrote this book. Do you want to look at it?” She's like, “Yeah.” I was like, “I'm going to send it to you.” Then I remembered that I knew this woman who ran this small indie publishing house in Boston. I didn't know her as a friend. I had used one of her books in a column I had written for Elle. I had liked it very much. I sent it to her. She was like, “I love this book. I would like to buy this book.” I was like, “Okay.” I did not tell my agent. I went fully rouge. Then I was like, uh, oh. I've sold this book to her. Now I have to tell my agent who's going to be like, “What happened here? We had a plan. You write manuscript. You send the manuscript to me.”

Zibby: Wait, the agent that you had, what were you doing with that agent? Had you written a novel?

Raakhee: No.

Zibby: You were doing a lot of magazine and newspaper?

Raakhee: Yeah, I was just exploring, what is it like to have a literary agent? What do you talk about? What does that relationship look like?

Zibby: It can be hard even to get --

Raakhee: -- It’s very complicated. A friend of mine, Linda Stasi, who was the long-time New York Post and Daily News columnist, had written two novels. Liza was her agent. Linda and I are very great friends. She introduced me to Liza. We all hit it off. It was fine. When I think about it now, it’s really quite idiotic, the way that it all [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: No, it’s not. It’s amazing.

Raakhee: Poor Liza, my long-suffering, amazing human of an agent was like, “Okay, Raakhee.” I was like, “Hey, look at the contract.” She was like, “What happened in the time that we spoke and now? What did you do?” I was like, “I told her she could buy it. I'm sorry.” It turns out in the beautiful way that's it’s meant to. When you really believe in something, the intentions are really pure and really strong and really good, the things just work out. They did for me. Every time I think about the story and I think about Liza, I'm like, what did I do? I would've fired myself. Liza didn't fire me. She was like, “Okay, Raakhee, let me tell you how this is going to work the next time. Don't ever do this again. I'm glad you did it this time.”

Zibby: The great part -- what I'm sure the publisher in Boston responded to is that it’s not just an old-school story about a superhero. It’s so modern. The girl can't find her cape at the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner is closed. The mom needs a cup of coffee. It’s so of-the-moment and yet timeless at the same time. You can see moms laughing to themselves.

Raakhee: Every time it’s story time, I read that line and all the parents laugh because that is our daily struggle.

Zibby: What was the line? There's this joke. This is when they're doing errands on the way on to school. “They did stop for coffee, though. They always stopped for coffee. Mama says if she doesn't have any coffee, her head will explode.” [laughter]

Raakhee: That's our life in the morning. You've got to get somewhere. I have no time to do these fifteen things that we’re supposed to, but we have to get a cup of coffee before I take you to school so I can get to work. That's just how it goes.

Zibby: I keep to-go cups in my house. I fill a to-go cup.

Raakhee: That is genius.

Zibby: They're not expensive.

Raakhee: This is very smart.

Zibby: It’s a lot less than going out for coffee. Then I hold it all day. I don't have to wash my mug. I'm sure this is not environmentally amazing.

Raakhee: I get it. Sometimes, life is life.

Zibby: You're already going to waste the cup at Starbucks. You might as well.

Raakhee: That is right. It’s not a hundred percent.

Zibby: Buying the little pods is so much less than buying -- also, it’s not even the price. It is the price, but also the time you'll spend waiting.

Raakhee: This is every morning. You think she'd learn by now. She doesn't care. “Can I have...?” No. We’re not here for you. You're not getting a cake pop. It’s seven thirty in the morning. What do you think your life is? [laughs] Every morning. One day when I say yes to her, she's going to be like, what has happened? Who are you?

Zibby: Then she’ll ask the rest of her life. It’s like the study with the mice. It’s intermittent reinforcement. Sometimes when you press the button, you'll get the cheese. Your poor daughter.

Raakhee: I know. All the people in my life are long-suffering. That's what you can refer to them as.

Zibby: No, I'm kidding.

Raakhee: No, it’s true. [laughs]

Zibby: This is a book that appeals to me and also the kids. It’s a perfect combination. It’s amazing. Then how did you come up with the next -- you already sold another book.

Raakhee: We did. I listened to Liza. I wrote the manuscript. I sent it to Liza. Liza read it. Then she did all of the proper channels. She reached out to the editor she knew at various houses and however that sausage gets made.

Zibby: Did you pick a different publishing house?

Raakhee: Can I tell you a crazy story about this? At the end of last year, I said to Liza, “I really want to sell a book to Little Brown.” Little Brown, I think they make these really exquisite children’s books. I remember saying to her, “Little Brown, that's where I want to sell my next book.” She said, like a very supportive, loving woman, “I don't know about next year, but we’ll get there.” Fine, but we’re going to do it. What do you know? Not six months later, Liza, the wizard she is, we sold the book to Little Brown.

Zibby: Yay! That's amazing.

Raakhee: I know. It’s awesome.

Zibby: It’s all about setting your intentions.

Raakhee: It feels really weird when it happens. I believe it. I really believe that's true. When you really have a pure intention and you set it out and then you do the work, it’s coming. It’s going to happen for you. I believe that. Then when it happens, you're like, wait, how did this happen?

Zibby: Amazing. In my head, I have my dream publishing house and dream editor of the book in my head that I have yet to write. I will get there. [laughs]

Raakhee: Of course you will.

Zibby: You have to believe it.

Raakhee: You have to believe it. You have to say it out loud to the stakeholders who are going to help you make it happen. I just do. I knew when I said it to her.

Zibby: Because then you gave her a goal.

Raakhee: That's it. I knew she was going to hear it and it would sit there in her mind.

Zibby: It’s a challenge.

Raakhee: Yes. It was wild. I get to work with this amazing editor at Little Brown, Sam Gentry, who I just love.

Zibby: What's the next book going to be called? Can you say?

Raakhee: Yeah. The book is called Hair Twins. It’s about a turban-wearing Sikh father and his daughter who are hair twins. In the Sikh faith, generally the practitioners don't cut their hair, so the dad has long hair just like the daughter. That's why they're hair twins.

Zibby: I love it.

Raakhee: It’s a cute story.

Zibby: Did you use the same illustrator?

Raakhee: No. The illustrator for Super Satya is Tim Palin. It’s a beautiful book. Every time we meet people at bookstores or we do events, people are always like, “Who is the illustrator of this book?” It’s really vibrant and lovely. For Hair Twins, it’s Holly Hatam who did Dear Girl.

Zibby: Let's shift gears a tiny bit to the sad part of your life, if you don't mind. I'm sorry.

Raakhee: I don't mind at all. It’s part of the story.

Zibby: You are a pediatric cancer crusader. Tell me what happened.

Raakhee: I sure am. Like I said, Satya is five. She's going to be six in November. When she was about five months old, she had cancer. She had cancer for five months until just about a year old. She had a tumor called neuroblastoma. It is a very aggressive, scary kind of cancer in infants. We were very, very, very blessed because we caught the cancer so early that she didn't need chemo. She didn't need radiation. We needed to watch it all summer and measure it. They wanted her to get a little bit bigger before they did the surgery. They wanted to make sure it wasn't growing very quickly.

Zibby: Where was it on her body?

Raakhee: It was between her kidney and her aorta.

Zibby: How did you find it?

Raakhee: She was just a tiny baby. They're very small at five months old. [laughs] There are two schools of thought. You could say we found it by accident or you could say that we were guided to it. It depends on how you look at things. I went to the doctor three times. I kept saying, “Something's wrong with the baby. Something wrong with the baby.” The third time, my doctor, Doctor Mahmoud -- I will never forget her. I say her name every single night. She was like, “You're the mom. If you think something's wrong, something's probably wrong. Let's get some blood and some urine. We’ll see.”

Zibby: What were the signs?

Raakhee: All I could describe was that her eyes looked really far away. I felt like she wasn't locking eyes with me, which sounds exactly like it sounds. It’s not terribly scientific. I was like, something is happening here. She called me back in twenty-four hours. Everything was fine. Maybe it is teething like everyone says. In thirty-six hours, they called me. They said, “Rush her to the hospital.”

Zibby: A test came back?

Raakhee: Yes. They said she has a bacteria type resistant to oral antibiotics. It’s a UTI. She will need IV antibiotics for two months because it’s this crazy, hyper-resistant strain called ESBL. Fine. We get there. When they do a UTI, they have to do an ultrasound. In the course of doing the ultrasound for the UTI, they found the cancer. That's how they found it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. She did have a UTI also?

Raakhee: It’s unclear what's related and what was a UTI and what was actually this bacteria. There was a lot going on at the time, but that's how they found it.

Zibby: Did you freak out?

Raakhee: I'm a very freak-out kind of person. I can go from zero to a hundred and then back to zero. The tech was doing the ultrasound. She walked outside the room. I heard her call the doctor. She called the radiation oncologist and said, “You need to come downstairs. I think that there's a tumor.” I was like, what? I didn't say anything to her because I was obviously eavesdropping with my ear outside. They were like, “Just meet the oncologist. It’s probably nothing.” I knew exactly the road we were going to go down. It’s wild that I did not freak out. It is actually wild and very uncharacteristic.

Zibby: Was your husband there too?

Raakhee: He was not there at that moment. He was traveling for work. He came the next day.

Zibby: Then did you go on full-on warrior mode?

Raakhee: It was like I was possessed by another spirit of a human. It was unlike how I am now or in my normal life. It was all about, how do we make the appointments? What do we need to do? How do we get in first in the day? It was total mission oriented. We need to figure this out. We need to figure this out quickly.

Zibby: What did you do with the rest of your life?

Raakhee: I was so lucky. I worked at the New York Daily News at the time. I was so, so lucky to have the kind of editor-in-chief that I did. They were like, “Your job is to take care of your baby. That is your job. We will still be here. Your job will still be here. Take care of your baby.” That is exactly what I did. Having that confidence and knowing that the other parts of your life are not going to fall apart because this part is, is so empowering. You don't realize it at the time. At the time, you're like, I don't care. I’ll never work again. What difference does it make? As you unpack things years later, I understand how fortunate I was.

Zibby: Did you not release your breath for months?

Raakhee: Sometimes, I think I still haven't. It certainly is easier and better. I don't panic at the thought of every cold and every cough. That is all true. I also have learned in that experience, I will celebrate every single joy, and I mean every joy. Every tiny, you-could-forget-this-ever-happened moment, I will celebrate it. I will take it because there was a large part of her first year that I was not sure we were going to have them.

Zibby: How do you do that? I say that to myself a lot too. I'm going to savor this moment. How? Do you write it down? How do you remember? I feel like my memory -- does that happen to you?

Raakhee: All the time.

Zibby: Do you write it? Do you take pictures? How do you capture the joy and the gratitude when you feel it? I feel like it’s all so fleeting.

Raakhee: I think you're right about that, by the way. There are two things. One, my friend Hoda -- I had said this to, actually, Jo, who wrote How to be Married. My friend Hoda had taught me this practice.

Zibby: The Hoda?

Raakhee: Yeah, Hoda Kotb. She taught me this practice of writing down, every single day, three things that you are grateful for. She does it every morning. I was like, this is useless. I'm not going to do this. It takes so much time. Who wants to do this? I don't want to keep a diary. I'm never going to do this. She brought it up quite a few times. She would talk about what it did for her. I started doing it. I'm not terribly organized about it in the sense that it’s not always in one book, but I do it every single day now. What it does for me is that it forces me -- sometimes gratitude feels like this really large concept that you have to say you are, but it’s hard to wrap your arms around. In the day when you think about the three things that you're grateful for, there are actually three things every day that you are grateful for. They are not always big things. Sometimes they are small things, like you got a seat on a train when you were really tired. That is a perfectly fine thing to feel grateful for. Sometimes it’s a really large thing, like my daughter’s health, which is always the first thing on my list. Just feeling every single day that things happened today and I'm thankful for them, it’s the way I end my day every day. When you put your head on that pillow, you're feeling real good about what happened today. As shitty as the day might have been, there were three things that you can be thankful for. There's that.

The other piece also is -- I celebrate these small joys, I do, but I don't ever intend to carry all of them with me forever. Sometimes, and many times, I celebrate them in the moment. I'm really happy in that moment. It is okay if I don't remember it again. It is okay for that moment to leave. There will be more moments that come after. I really mean it. If I happen to pick her up thirty minutes early, I'm so much more likely -- we do it all the time. We’re like, “Let's just stay at the park for another forty minutes,” or I made dinner at home -- this is a thing we've done a few times. Why don't we sit outside? It’s a beautiful day. We’ll get french fries. Then we’ll go home and eat dinner, just really silly, small things that make me feel like we’re soaking up every single piece of each other.

Zibby: That's so nice. It’s so sad, but it’s so nice. Do you still lose your patience?

Raakhee: All the time. I lose my patience all the time. That's the kind of person I am. I'm not a Zen person. I'm not. I have moments of Zen. When I write these three things down, I'm quite Zen. I'm an impatient, loud, brassy person. That's who I am. I yell a lot at her. I yell a lot at myself.

Zibby: Does your daughter understand what happened to her when she was little?

Raakhee: It’s interesting. My girlfriend just asked me this recently. We do a lot of things together for the hospital. My husband, my daughter, my family, my brother, everyone's involved. We take her there a lot.

Zibby: What hospital?

Raakhee: It’s Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. We’re going out to St. Jude in a couple of weeks. I take her with me a lot. She's very involved. We do bone marrow drives. There was a couple of kids who needed bone marrow drives. I would set them up in my town. I would rally the people. I make her come. Sometimes she just hangs out. Sometimes she's involved. Sometimes she's entertaining the troops, whatever it is. She is aware. She understands that cancer’s a thing that happens. She asked me recently, “Why didn't I die if some people die?” They understand things. She's going to be six. She gets it. I wasn't expecting her to ask me that. I didn't have a particularly brilliant answer. I said, “Sometimes some people get to live and some people get to die despite having great doctors and great medical care.” She just looked at me. She goes, “Phew.” [laughter] In some ways, phew. What else is there? There is no good answer.

Zibby: There's no good answer. You still go on a mission to help other people?

Raakhee: Yeah. I'm the president of a pediatric cancer charity. It’s thirty years old. It’s called the Tomorrows Children’s Fund. I do a lot of work with the hospital foundation at Hackensack, a lot of work with St. Jude, as much as we can, truly, for as many people as we can. I've seen firsthand, especially spending the time that we did on the oncology floor as patients, what happens when you're there. Your whole world is falling apart. Your entire life is falling apart. To know that there are people out in the world who don't know you but are willing to lend a hand to let you keep some things together in that moment, it allows you to focus more deeply on the task at hand, which is your child. It’s a tragedy on a million levels that when your child is sick, you're also worried about paying bills and groceries and mortgages and rent and car payments. All that stuff still happens. The world still spins. It is not stopping. Allowing people to participate in someone else's life is beautiful.

Zibby: I wonder also about people going through this who have other kids at home. I'm sure every parent has been to the ER, or they will at some point, for some little thing or another. I'm not trying to compare it at all to what you're going through.

Raakhee: Anyone who's ever had a sick kid, even with a cold, you know the fear. You understand the fear. What is this? What are we doing?

Zibby: Then you get so drained. A day in hospital, it’s like a time warp. It’s like a prison-y, time warp-y, awful universe. Then to have other people depending on you too, or life in general --

Raakhee: -- Think about the other children, though. All of a sudden, the child is sick with cancer. This goes on for years, two years, three years. What happens? Cancer threatens everyone in the family and every relationship in the family. That's why doing this work, especially with these organizations -- the Tomorrows Children’s Fund, it is a holistic understanding of what happens when a family deals with a cancer diagnosis.

Zibby: If people want to help, what should they do?

Raakhee: There are a couple of things. The first thing, and it’s the most obvious, is make a donation.

Zibby: To Tomorrows Children’s?

Raakhee: Yeah, tfckid.org, whatever is the thing that speaks to you. For me, it’s pediatric cancer. Know where your money’s going. That's what I always say. Know where your money’s going. When people give me money, I make sure -- I'm involved with the charity. Even with the Hackensack hospital foundation, I was like, “This money is for patient aid.” That means that the money goes to actually pay these bills for these families, which is the thing that I care about the most because I understand the stress. I was very lucky. My job, they were like, “We've got you.” That is not what happens all the time. People have to quit jobs. You spend years digging out of that. That is the first thing you can do. Also, there are other ways to help. There are corporate giving programs. You don't have to do a ton of work, but the money will still go to the places that need it. Call your local hospital and be like, “What can we do? What can we do in the community? What do you need?” We have a food panty at the Tomorrows Children’s Fund and Hackensack. When patient families go home, they can grab stuff for dinner. Small things like that make huge differences to people. We have the local ShopRite. His name is Larry Inserra. He pays to keep the food pantries stocked. That is such an amazingly generous, beautiful act. You're actually putting food on the table for people. There's so many ways. It matters.

Zibby: Why have you not written a book about this?

Raakhee: I think about it all the time. I think it’s because it still is a tremendous place of pain. I just need a little more space. I think about it all the time, all the time.

Zibby: No pressure.

Raakhee: No, I'm so glad you asked me.

Zibby: It seems so natural. You could've written that book right now. I could just give you the transcript of this. You could send that off as your proposal.

Raakhee: I know. You know what I think about, though, about this experience that I would really like to write? The thing that I have observed so many times is the relationships between the parents and the child in these moments. I often think about ten tales, twelves tales, whatever it is, of what the parents learn from the children in these moments and what they learn about being parents in these moments. There is so much that changes.

Zibby: If I were your agent, I would probably say, start with an article. That's what they say.

Raakhee: [laughs] I know. That's what they say all the time. I have written so many articles.

Zibby: If I were a publisher, I would want to buy and read the book about your experience. I'm hanging on every word of your story. It’s inspiring. Every parent worries. As soon as you create life, you know that life -- I hate to knock wood or whatever. In the act of creating life, you are creating an imminent death. We can only hope that we’re not here to see it. That doesn't make me feel better. To address it head-on, early, it’s powerful. There's power in what you've learned.

Raakhee: There is also something in -- you were asking before about, do you write it down? Do you take pictures? I do. I do all those things, but also being really comfortable with not having to remember and keep everything. You don't have to be the keeper of all of the memories for everyone's life. You just don't. I wonder what happens when, instead of focusing on preserving, we just focus on living and being.

Zibby: Put away the phones. [laughs]

Raakhee: What does that feel like for us? How does that change our experience being parents, being partners, just being people?

Zibby: Do you speak places? You should be going out and going and doing stuff. We’re going to turn this off in a minute. I'm going to give you a to-do list of what you need because you don't have enough on your plate.

Raakhee: [laughs] I'm going to come here for all the things that I --

Zibby: -- I know you have a massive full-time job as well, and a mom, and everything else.

Raakhee: I've never felt better about myself than right now.

Zibby: Thank you for sharing your story.

Raakhee: Thank you. Thanks, Sadie. [laughter]

Zibby: You're welcome to sleep over if you want.

Raakhee: I love it.

Zibby: Thank you. Thanks for everything.

Raakhee: Thank you. I'm a fan. I'm nerding out being here. I'm excited that my funny Instagram message -- the world brought us together.

Zibby: Right. Isn't that so funny?

Raakhee: That's how it is. It happens all the time in life. It makes me laugh. When you walked into Brooklyn Book Fest that day, I was like, of course.

Zibby: What did you say? “Great article,” or something.

Raakhee: I was like, “I'm really happy for you.”

Zibby: “I'm happy for you.” I'm like, that's so nice. Who is this saying such a nice thing? Then you happened to go to Brooklyn Book Fest. I was like, wait a minute. I think this is the same person who DM’d me. I can't believe it. I'm like, “Hi, I'm here.” [laughs]

Raakhee: It was so funny. I remember reading that piece. Oprah of New York? Is that what it was? I'm just happy for you. What a moment to be called that. I like this. I remember thinking, cool. That's cool. That's so cool. What a day. Then when you walked in, I was like, this is exactly how the world works. It’s exactly how it works.

Zibby: For me too because now this is an amazing experience. Now we’ll be friends. Sorry, you didn't know this. Now we are friends.

Raakhee: Oh, no. I'm taking over. We’re friends. [laughter] Thank you.

Zibby: Thanks, Raakhee.